Olga Davidoff's wedding was one of the most brilliant social successes
of that Tobolsk season. Davidoff pere surpassed himself in the
costliness of his exotics, the magnificence of his presents, the
reckless abundance of his Veuve Clicquot. Madame Davidoff successfully
caught the Governor and the General, and the English traveller from
India _via_ the Himalayas. The Baron looked as gorgeous as he was
handsome in his half Russian, half Tartar uniform and his Oriental
display of pearls and diamonds. Olga herself was the prettiest and most
blushing bride ever seen in Tobolsk, a simple English girl, fresh from
the proprieties of The Laurels at Clapham, among all that curious mixed
cosmopolitan society of semi-civilized Siberians, Catholic Poles, and
orthodox Russians.
As soon as the wedding was fairly over, the bride and bridegroom started
off by toross to make their way across the southern plateau to the
Baron's village.
It was a long and dreary drive, that wedding tour, in a jolting carriage
over Siberian roads, resting at wayside posting-houses, bad enough while
they were still on the main line of the Imperial mails, but degenerating
into true Central-Asian caravanserais when once they had got off the
beaten track into the wild neighbourhood of the Baron's village.
Nevertheless, Olga Davidoff bore up against the troubles and discomforts
of the journey with a brave heart, for was not the Baron always by her
side? and who could be kinder, or gentler, or more thoughtful than her
Buriat husband? Yes, it was a long and hard journey, up among those
border mountains of the Chinese and Tibetan frontier; but Olga felt at
home at last when, after three weeks of incessant jolting, they arrived
at the Buriat mountain stronghold, under cover of the night; and Niaz
led her straightway to her own pretty little European boudoir, which he
had prepared for her beforehand at immense expense and trouble in his
upland village.
The moment they entered, Olga saw a pretty little room, papered and
carpeted in English fashion, with a small piano over in the corner, a
lamp burning brightly on the tiny side-table, and a roaring fire of logs
blazing and crackling upon the simple stone hearth. A book or two lay
upon the shelf at the side: she glanced casually at their titles as she
passed, and saw that they were some of Tourgenieff's latest novels, a
paper-covered Zola fresh from Paris, a volume each of Tennyson,
Browning, Carlyle, and Swinburne, a Demidoff, an Emile Augier, a _Revue
des Deux Mondes_, and a late number of an English magazine. She valued
these things at once for their own sakes, but still more because she
felt instinctively that Niaz had taken the trouble to get them there for
her beforehand in this remote and uncivilized corner. She turned to the
piano: a light piece by Sullivan lay open before her, and a number of
airs from Chopin, Schubert, and Mendelssohn were scattered loosely on
the top one above the other. Her heart was too full to utter a word, but
she went straight up to her husband, threw her arms tenderly around his
neck, and kissed him with the utmost fervour. Niaz smoothed her wavy
fair hair gently with his hand, and his eyes sparkled with conscious
pleasure as he returned her caress and kissed her forehead.
After a while, they went into the next room to dinner--a small hall,
somewhat barbaric in type, but not ill-furnished; and Olga noticed that
the two or three servants were very fierce and savage-looking Buriats of
the most pronounced Tartar type. The dinner was a plain one, plainly
served, of rough country hospitality; but the appointments were all
European, and, though simple, good and sufficient. Niaz had said so much
to her of the discomforts of his mountain stronghold that Olga was quite
delighted to find things on the whole so comparatively civilized, clean,
and European.
A few days' sojourn in the fort--it was rather that than a castle or a
village--showed Olga pretty clearly what sort of life she was henceforth
to expect. Her husband's subjects numbered about a hundred and fifty
(with as many more women and children); they rendered him the most
implicit obedience, and they evidently looked upon him entirely as a
superior being. They were trained to a military discipline, and
regularly drilled every morning by Niaz in the queer old semi-Chinese
courtyard of the mouldering castle. Olga was so accustomed to a Russian
military _regime_ that this circumstance never struck her as being
anything extraordinary; she regarded it only as part of the Baron's
ancestral habits as a practically independent Tartar chieftain.
Week after week rolled away at the fort, and though Olga had absolutely
no one to whom she could speak except her own husband (for the Buriats
knew no Russian save the word of command), she didn't find time hang
heavily on her hands in the quaint, old-fashioned village. The walks and
rides about were really delightful; the scenery was grand and beautiful
to the last degree; the Chinese-looking houses and Tartar dress were odd
and picturesque, like a scene in a theatre. It was all so absurdly
romantic. After all, Olga said to herself with a smile more than once,
it isn't half bad being married to a Tartar chieftain up in the border
mountains, when you actually come to try it. Only, she confessed in her
own heart that she would probably always be very glad when the winter
came again, and she got back from these mountain solitudes to the
congenial gaiety of Tobolsk or Petersburg.
And Niaz--well, Niaz loved her distractedly. No husband on earth could
possibly love a woman better.
Still, Olga could never understand why he sometimes had to leave her for
three or four days together, and why during his absence, when she was
left all alone at night in the solitary fort with those dreadful
Buriats, they kept watch and ward so carefully all the time, and seemed
so relieved when Niaz came back again. But whenever she asked him about
it, Niaz only looked grave and anxious, and replied with a would-be
careless wave of the hand that part of his duty was to guard the
frontier, and that the Czar had not conferred a title and an order upon
him for nothing. Olga felt frightened and disquieted on all such
occasions, but somehow felt, from Niaz's manner, that she must not
question him further upon the matter.
One day, after one of these occasional excursions, Niaz came back in
high spirits, and kissed her more tenderly and affectionately than ever.
After dinner, he read to her out of a book of French poems a grand piece
of Victor Hugo's, and then made her sit down to the piano and play him
his favourite air from _Der Freischuetz_ twice over. When she had
finished, he leant back in his chair and murmured quietly in French
(which they always spoke together), "And this is in the mountains of
Tartary! One would say a soiree of St. Petersburg or of Paris."
Olga turned and looked at him softly. "What is the time, dearest Niaz?"
she said with a smile. "Shall I be able to play you still that dance of
Pinsuti's?"
Niaz pulled out his watch and answered quickly, "Only ten o'clock,
darling. You have plenty of time still."
Something in the look of the watch he held in his hand struck Olga as
queer and unfamiliar. She glanced at it sideways, and noticed hurriedly
that Niaz was trying to replace it unobserved in his waistcoat pocket.
"I haven't seen that watch before," she said suddenly; "let me look at
it, dear, will you?"
Niaz drew it out and handed it to her with affected nonchalance; but in
the undercurrent of his expression Olga caught a glimpse of a hang-dog
look she had never before observed in it. She turned over the watch and
looked on the back. To her immense surprise, it bore the initials "F. de
K." engraved upon the cover.
"These letters don't belong to you, Niaz," she said, scanning it
curiously.
Niaz moved uneasily in his chair. "No," he answered, "not to me, Olga.
It's--it's an old family relic--an heirloom, in fact. It belonged to my
mother's mother. She was--a Mademoiselle de Kerouac, I believe, from
Morbihan, in Brittany."
Olga's eyes looked him through and through with a strange new-born
suspicion. What could it all mean? She knew he was telling her a
falsehood. Had the watch belonged--to some other lady? What was the
meaning of his continued absences? Could he----but no. It was a man's
watch, not a lady's. And if so--why, if so, then Niaz had clearly told
her a falsehood in that too, and must be trying to conceal something
about it.
That night, for the first time, Olga Davidoff began to distrust her
Buriat husband.
Next morning, getting up a little early and walking on the parapet of
the queer old fortress, she saw Niaz in the court below, jumping and
stamping in a furious temper upon something on the ground. To her
horror, she saw that his face was all hideously distorted by anger, and
that as he raged and stamped the Tartar cast in his features, never
before visible, came out quite clearly and distinctly. Olga looked on,
and trembled violently, but dared not speak to him.
A few minutes later Niaz came in to breakfast, gay as usual, with a
fresh flower stuck prettily in the button-hole of his undress coat and a
smile playing unconcernedly around the clear-cut corners of his handsome
thin-lipped mouth.
"Niaz," his wife said to him anxiously, "where is the watch you showed
me last night?"
His face never altered for a moment as he replied, with the same bland
and innocent smile as ever, "My darling, I have broken it all to little
pieces. I saw it annoyed you in some way when I showed it to you
yesterday, and this morning I took it out accidentally in the lower
courtyard. The sight of it put me in a violent temper. 'Cursed thing,' I
said, 'you shall never again step in so cruelly between me and my
darling. There, take that, and that, and that, rascal!' and I stamped
it to pieces underfoot in the courtyard."
Olga turned pale, and looked at him horrified. He smiled again, and took
her wee hand tenderly in his. "Little one," he said, "you needn't be
afraid; it's only our quick Buriat fashion. We lose our tempers
sometimes, but it is soon over. It is nothing. A little whirlwind--and,
pouf, it passes."
"But, Niaz, you said it was a family heirloom!"
"Well, darling, and for your sake I ground it to powder. Voila, tout!
Come, no more about it; it isn't worth the trouble. Let us go to
breakfast."