The Price of Power Part 29

remarked the prison governor.

"To Parotovsk!" I echoed. "That is beyond Yakutsk--two thousand five hundred miles from here--far in the north, and one of the most dreaded of all the settlements!"

"All penal settlements are dreaded, I fear," remarked His Excellency, blowing the cigarette smoke from his lips. Then, turning to the prison governor, he inquired under what number the prisoner was registered.

On referring to one of the books the officer declared Madame to be now known as "Number 14956" and her daughter as "Number 14957."

I took a note of the numbers, protesting to His Excellency:

"But to compel delicate ladies to walk that great distance in the winter is surely a sentence of death!"

"And if the politicals die, the State has fewer responsibilities," he remarked. "As you see, we have received notification from Petersburg that your lady friend was a dangerous person. Now, of dangerous persons we take very special care." Then, turning to the prison governor, he asked: "How did they go?"

"By taranta.s.s. Excellency. They were in too weak a state to walk, especially the elder prisoner. I doubt, indeed, if ever they will reach Parotovsk."

"And if they don't it will perhaps be the better for both of them," His Excellency remarked with a sigh, rising and casting his cigarette-end into the pan of the round iron stove. He was a stiff, unbending official and ruled the province with a ruthless hand, but at heart he often evinced sympathy with the female exiles.

"Were they very ill?" I inquired quickly of the prison governor.

"They were very exhausted and complained to me of ill-treatment by their guards," he answered. "But if we investigated every complaint we should have more than sufficient to do."

"How long ago did they leave here?"

"About two months," was the man's reply. "The elder prisoner implored to be sent to the Trans-Baikal, where the climate is not so rigorous as in the north, and this would probably have been done had it not been for the special memorandum of His Excellency General Markoff."

"Then he suggested her being sent to the Yakutsk settlement--in fact, to her death--eh?" I asked.

His Excellency replied:

"That seems so. The prisoners have already been on their way two months, at first by taranta.s.s and now, no doubt, by sled. There were fifteen others, nine men and six women--all dangerous politicals, I see," he added, glancing at the order which he had signed and was now produced by the prison governor. "If it is your intention to travel and overtake them, then I fear your journey will be futile."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I expect that long before you reach them their dead bodies will have been left upon the road," replied His Excellency. "Politicals who die here in Siberia, and especially those marked as dangerous, are not mourned, I a.s.sure you."

"There was, if I remember aright, a telegram to Your Excellency from General Markoff regarding prisoners of that name only three days ago,"

remarked the Cossack captain. "It inquired whether you knew if Madame de Rosen were still alive."

"Ah, yes, I remember. And I replied that I had no knowledge," the General said.

I was silent. My heart stood still.

By the fact of that telegraphic inquiry I knew that Markoff was, as I feared, aware of my journey. He would most certainly prevent my overtaking her--or, if not, he would, no doubt, contrive to seal her lips by death ere I could reach her.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

HOT HASTE ACROSS ASIA.

I resolved to push forward in all haste and at all hazards. I lost no time.

With only forty-eight hours' stay at the wretched Hotel Million in Tomsk we went forth again, our faces set ever eastward on that wide, straight road which first runs direct for a hundred miles to Marinsk, a poor, log-built place with a dirty verminous post-station and an old postmaster who, when I presented my Imperial permit, sank upon his knees before me. Fortunately the mail was two days behind me, hence, at every stancia I was able to obtain the best horses, though it seemed part of Vasilli's creed to curse and grumble at everything.

With the snow falling continuously our journey was not so rapid as it had been to Tomsk. Winter had now set in with a vengeance, although it still wanted a few days to the English Christmas. Yet the journey from Marinsk to Krasnoyarsk, two hundred miles, was one of wondrous beauty.

It was cold, horribly cold. Often I sat beside the sleepy Petrakoff cramped and shivering, even in my furs.

But those deep, dark woods, with their little glimpses of blue sky; the dashing and jingling along under the low-reaching arms of the evergreen trees, league after league of the forest bowed down to the very earth and in places prostrated with its white weight of snow, the weird ride over hill and mountain, skirting ravine and precipice, the breaks along and across the numerous watercourses, over rude bridges or along deep gullies where rough wooden guards protect the sleds from disaster--with this quick succession of scenery, wild and strange, was I kept constantly awake and charmed.

At the stancias we met the travelling merchants from the Far East and from China with their long train of goods hauled in sleds or packed on the backs of horses. Five _pood_, we found, was the regulation load, and all packages were put up in drums bound with raw hide and so strapped that they could easily be transported by the pack-horse, which carried half a load on either side of a saddle-tree prepared for the purpose.

But those stancias were filthy, overcrowded, evil-smelling places, wherein one laid in one's sleeping-bags upon a bench amid a crowd of unwashed, vodka-drinking humanity in damp, noxious sheep-skins.

Fortunately the moon was at that moment nearly full, and often at night I went forth alone to smoke, sometimes with the snowy plain stretched on every hand about me, and at others with gigantic peaks lifting their h.o.a.ry heads far into the blue night vault of heaven; silent, frigid, white. Ah! what grandeur! I rejoiced that it was night, when I could smoke and ponder. So cold and still was it that those snowy summits, bathed in the silver radiance of the Siberian moon, filled me with awe such as I had never before experienced.

Yes, those were wonderful nights which will live for ever in my memory-- nights when my thoughts wandered far away to the gay promenade at Hove, wondering how fared the little madcap, and whether her peril were real or only imaginary.

Ever obsessed by the knowledge that Markoff was aware of my journey, and would endeavour to prevent its successful issue, I existed in constant anxiety and dread lest some prearranged disaster might befall Madame de Rosen ere I could reach her.

Siberia is, alas! the country where, as the exiles say: "G.o.d is nigh, and the Tzar is far away."

Thus, after three weeks more of hard travelling, I pa.s.sed through the big, straggling, snow-covered town of Krasnoyarsk, and arrived at the wretchedly dirty stancia of Tulunovsk, where the road to Yakutsk-- distant nearly two thousand miles--branches to the north from the Great Post Road, up the desolate valley of the Lena.

We arrived in Tulunovsk in the afternoon, and, having sent a telegram to Her Highness from Krasnoyarsk, eight days before, I was delighted to receive a charming little message a.s.suring me that she was quite well and wishing me a continuance of good fortune on my journey.

Since I had left Tomsk no traveller had overtaken me. At Tulunovsk we found a party of politicals, about sixty men and women, in the roughly-constructed prison rest-house, being permitted a few days'

respite upon their long and weary march.

Already they had been six months on the road, and were in a terrible condition, almost in rags, and most of them so weak that death would no doubt have been welcome.

And these poor creatures were nearly all of them victims of the bogus plots of His Excellency General Markoff.

To the Cossack captain in charge of the convoy I made myself known, and after taking tea with him I was permitted to go among the party and chat with them.

One tall, thin-faced man, whose hair was prematurely grey, begged me to send a message back to his wife in Tver. He spoke French well, and told me his name was Epatchieff, and that he had been a doctor in practice in the town of Tver, between Moscow and Petersburg.

"I am entirely ignorant of the reason I was arrested, m'sieur," he declared, hitching his ragged coat about him. "I have not committed any crime, or even belonged to any secret society. Perhaps the only offence was my marrying the woman I loved. Who knows?" and the sad-eyed man, whose life held more of sorrow in it than most men, went on to say:

"I had been attending the little daughter of the local chief of the police for a week, but she had recovered so far that I did not consider a further visit was necessary. One morning, six months ago, I was surprised to receive a visit from the police officer's Cossack, who demanded my presence at once at the house of his master, as the child had been seized with another attack. I told him I would go after breakfast as the matter was serious. But the Cossack insisted that I should go at once, so I agreed and went forth. Outside, the Cossack told me that I must first go to the police office, and, of course, I went wonderingly, never dreaming for a moment that anything was wrong.

So I was ushered into the office, where the chief of police told me that I was a prisoner. `A body of exiles are ready to start for Siberia,'

said the heartless brute, `and you will go with them.' I laughed--it was a good joke, but the chief of police a.s.sured me that it was a solemn fact. I was completely dumbfounded. I begged for a delay in my transportation. Why was I deprived of my liberty? Who was my accuser?

What was the accusation? But I got no answer save `administrative order.'

"I begged to be allowed to revisit my house under guard, to procure necessary articles of clothing--to say farewell to my young wife. But the scoundrel denied me everything. I waited in anguish, but they placed me in solitary confinement to await the departure of the convoy, and in six hours I was on my way here--to this living tomb!"

Of course the poor fellow was half crazed. What would become of his young wife--what would she think of him? A thousand thoughts and suspicions racked his mind, and he had already lived through an age of torture, as his whitening head plainly showed.

At my suggestion he wrote a letter to his wife informing her of his fate, and using my authority as guest of His Imperial Majesty I took it, and, in due course, posted it back to Russia.

Not until three years afterwards did I learn the tragic sequel. The poor young lady received my letter, and as quickly as she could set out to join him in his exile. With womanly wit she managed to apprise him of her coming and a light broke in upon his grief. He had been sent to Irkutsk, and daily, hourly he looked and longed for her. Yet just as he knew she must arrive, he was suddenly sent far away to the most northerly Arctic settlement of Sredne Kolimsk.