PETER stepped across the threshold of the open door, and into the shaft of light spilling through the partly curtained doorway of the room beyond. Looking to the end of this vista of light, he saw the figure of a man sitting in a chair by a table. The head and upper part of this man’s body were only vaguely visible and merged against the dark background of the far wall. But his boots were silhouetted in the radiance of the beams of the lamp which shot downward under the shade—boots that looked grotesquely large and misshapen, for their shadows were cast upon the floor in elongated outline.
Katerin stopped at the curtained doorway, and by a gesture, bade Peter enter before her. He went on, and as he neared the lamp on the table, he saw that the figure in the chair was a frail old man with his head tied up in a bandage. And behind the chair, better hidden by the gloom, was a man standing, whom Peter took for a servant hovering over his master with watchful care. Only the face of the moujik was plainly visible to Peter, and his eyes shining with the reflected light of the lamp, like two luminous pin-pricks, were boring across the room at Peter. The tense alertness of the moujik’s posture suggested an animal crouching for a spring.
Katerin passed Peter, and approached her father. She said, “Our friend has come to us,” and to Peter, “This is my father.”
Peter’s heels came together, and he bowed low. When he looked at the old man again, the withered head, wrapped in the encircling bandage, was nodding gently as if with a palsy. And the bent shoulders leaned forward under a gray blanket, to peer at the visitor. The right hand, hidden beneath the blanket over his legs, seemed to be trembling, while his left hand lifted from his knee made a motion toward a chair—it was a thin, bony hand, more like a claw than a hand.
“I bid you welcome, sir,” piped Michael, hoarsely. “But I have little hospitality to offer a guest under this roof.”
“May God’s blessings fall upon you, sir,” replied Peter, his heart quickened by sympathy with this pathetic old ruin of a man—a man who, like his own father as Peter thought, had suffered the life of an exile under the cruel rule of the Governor, Michael Kirsakoff. Here, Peter supposed, was another victim, in feeble senility, still pursued and threatened by Zorogoff and the same Governor Kirsakoff who had brought about the death of Peter’s father, and thrown the boy Peter into a big prison. And these thoughts fed the inward flame of hatred which burned through Peter’s being against Michael Kirsakoff—the very man before him, and on whom he had just called for the blessing of God! Here was his enemy of old, and he looked upon him, yet knew him not.
For a time the two men peered at each other, one knowing that an enemy was before him, and one thinking that he was in the presence of a friend. But Peter saw nothing in the old man which brought to mind anything of Michael Kirsakoff. Katerin, as Vashka, the samovar girl, had so arranged the shaded lamp, and the chairs, that her father’s face should not stand out clearly in light against a dark background. Also the bandage hid the jaws and cheeks of Michael in such a way that the old man’s facial contour was blurred. Age had done much to hide Michael, and Peter’s memory was clinging to his own picture of Kirsakoff of twenty years before. And Peter had adjusted his mind to the finding of Kirsakoff as a result of this interview, and somewhere beyond it, so it would have been hard to convince him that Kirsakoff was now before him.
“You come as an American officer, yet my daughter tells me that you are one of us—a Russian who has come back to help Russia,” said Michael.
“Yes, and it is twenty years since I saw my native land,” said Peter, as he sat down.
“Ah, it is a sad home-coming for one of the motherland’s children,” sighed Michael. “They say now that the people will rule at last.”
Katerin stepped to the table to draw hot water from the samovar, which was so placed that she stood almost between Peter and her father, though without preventing them from seeing each other. She did not trust to her precautions against Peter’s recognizing her father, knowing that there were elements in the situation which might bring on some mischance on the side of tragedy.
And Wassili acted according to his instructions. As Peter sat down, the moujik left Michael’s chair, and offered the guest a cigarette from a tin box, lighted a match—and remained behind Peter’s chair. Thus it appeared to Peter that he was being tendered the usual courtesies.
“It is true that times have changed, sir,” said Peter.
“Ay, they have, truly,” said Michael. “And some say for the better. Perhaps. But I’ll not live to see it all finished. I shall get no good from it. But we must remember those who have died dreaming dreams for the future.”
“True,” said Peter. “And this ground is full of such—we must remember them, and it is our duty to see that they did not sacrifice themselves for nothing.”
“My daughter tells me that you know our story—that I was a political here.”
“In the time of Kirsakoff, the Governor,” said Peter.
“Kirsakoff!” said Michael. “Ah, yes, I had good reason to know Kirsakoff. There are many waiting their chance to settle with him, and he has but a short time for this world. But one of the lessons we learned here, my friend, was to bide our time—and I am waiting.”
“And Kirsakoff is in with Zorogoff?”
“That Mongol dog!” said Michael. “Have you heard that he has visited upon my daughter and me the silent torture? And that even now we hide from him? Yes. Well, he has buried people to their necks by the dozen, and then sent horsemen galloping over the ground. But if God is good I shall live to see his head carried about on the end of a pole!”
“And Kirsakoff stands behind him, I hear,” said Peter.
Michael exchanged glances with Katerin. “True, it is Kirsakoff who helps him hold his power.”
“But it is dangerous to talk of Kirsakoff,” said Katerin, as she handed Peter a glass of tea. “That is whisper talk, and I warn you.”
“No,” grumbled Michael. “Your life would be worth little if you let it be known that you are in possession of that secret. You are playing a dangerous game if you wish to get close to Kirsakoff.”
“But if he only knows me as an American,” suggested Peter.
“What! You, who speak the real Russian!” exclaimed Michael. “Do not be fooled—he will know you for a Russian!”
“I can arrange that,” said Peter, with a smile. “If I can find him, that is a matter easy enough to be handled as the business needs.”
Michael shook his head energetically.
“No, no, my friend! Kirsakoff’s hand is hidden. Your life would be in danger at once if you gave a hint that you even know that Kirsakoff is in the city. Be sure of that.”
“Then I can pretend I do not know him,” pressed Peter. He was somewhat disappointed by the resistance offered by the old man.
“You must remember, my father, that our friend has reasons of his own for wanting to find the Governor. And danger may not be a matter of concern.”
Peter gave her a grateful glance for thus allying herself with him.
“If I were to tell you my reason for wanting Kirsakoff, I am sure that you would say that it is good, sir. I have waited many years to come back—and now I must not fail. I shall find Kirsakoff.”
“But I should not like to be the one who puts your life in danger,” said Michael. “You may not be aware of all it means—this business of the Governor is not a light subject. You will do well not to cross his tracks, for he will strike at you through Zorogoff’s spies, and you will never know who struck. One cannot fight an army—and Zorogoff will not brook any interference. He will destroy you like a fly upon his bread.”
“I court the danger,” said Peter, sipping his tea, and willing to wait till the old man was in a humor to be more communicative.
“The Governor has five thousand rifles at his back,” said Michael. “You cannot know yet the full danger.”
“I shall go gladly to meet it,” persisted Peter. “It cannot be any greater than my desire to find Kirsakoff.”
“You would risk death?” asked Michael.
“Even death.”
“What! Twenty years in America, and you would risk death to find Kirsakoff?”
The old man studied Peter carefully for a minute. “You speak,” he said finally, “as if you had spent twenty years in the Governor’s prison, instead of twenty years in America.”
“I spent time enough in his prison,” said Peter.
Katerin uttered an involuntary exclamation of surprise.
“Here! You were in the old prison here?” she asked.
“I was,” said Peter, with a grim tightening of his lips.
“But you are too young to have been an exile!” gasped Michael. “If you had been one of—us, I can well understand. There are many who have been here for long years—they have known the chains, they have known a lifetime in cells. And still, they have no stomach for meeting the Governor face to face. That is because they know Kirsakoff—and that he is not a man who can be hunted like a rabbit.”
“I also knew him,” said Peter. “I doubt if I will fear him, even if I come face to face with him—and he knows me for a Russian, and by my true name.”
“Oh! So you knew Kirsakoff?” asked Katerin. “Then it will not be so difficult for you to find him.”
“I knew him too well,” said Peter, now beginning to fear they would settle themselves against helping him to find Kirsakoff, and seeing that he would have to take them into his confidence if they were to be of any help to him. “I knew him when I was a boy here—and I have an old score to pay off. I have come to pay it, and I shall not be kept from finding Kirsakoff, even though he were the new Czar.”
“You must have been an unfortunate to have been in the prison,” said Katerin. She was still gazing at him with curious eyes, as if she could not believe that he was really telling the truth about himself—as if she thought he was making his story fit his necessity for finding Kirsakoff and was making it as serious as possible to induce them to help him.
“My father was an unfortunate—a political—here in the Valley of Despair.”
“Indeed, was he?” asked Michael, with renewed interest. “You mean that he was here in the time that Kirsakoff was Governor?”
“In the same time—when I was a boy,” said Peter, and looked at Katerin. Her face was full of shocked surprise. She seemed horror-stricken at the idea, and he wondered why she should think it so strange and so terrible. He rather expected that she would see that they would all be drawn together in common trouble, and have a common hatred for Kirsakoff.
“How strange,” she said, turning to the lamp. “Then you are one of us—no wonder you seek Kirsakoff.”
“Ay, that is a new string to the fiddle,” agreed Michael. “I can understand now that you should want to find the Governor. Perhaps you are right in this matter after all—and I must think it over. You have reason enough, yet it is a serious thing for me to put you in danger.”
Peter felt better at this new attitude of the old man, and thought that now they regarded him with a more friendly eye. He was, in truth, one of them, and there is a strong bond of sympathy between exiles and the children of exiles.
“And we might have known—could we have known your father?”
“You could not have known my father. He died here twenty years ago—before I went to America,” said Peter.
“Twenty years! That is a long time to wait for vengeance,” said Michael. “Many things are forgotten in twenty years, and time cures many things.”
“Ay, so it is a long time, in one way, and in another a short time. It seems but yesterday that I was a boy here in Chita. You, sir, have worked all your life to see Russia a free land. And like you, I have learned to bide my time.”
“Things must look strange to you here,” said Katerin. “The city has grown in twenty years.”
“Yes, outwardly things look different. But the hills, the old prison, the streets—I see them as they were. During my years in America I never forgot, though I confess I had little hope of ever coming back. But the war gave me my chance. I was going to France, but when the government decided to send troops here, I volunteered for service in Siberia. Was it not God-given that I should be allowed to come back to my native land—and to come to Chita?”
“True,” said Katerin, “if the debt, as you call it, which you owe to the Governor, is such that God would have it paid.” She moved her chair in such way that she was nearer the table, and so that she was closer to her father. Also, she managed so that she cut more light from her father’s face.
“And what is the debt?” asked Michael. “If it is not a secret—if I am to tell you where you may find the Governor, perhaps you will see it in such way that you can trust me with the secret.”
“It was Kirsakoff’s orders which brought about my father’s death.”
Katerin’s teeth shut down upon her lower lip, and her fingers closed slowly upon the sides of her chair. She sat rigid, staring at Peter, and her face became paler. Michael did not move, but his breath began to come faster, and he wheezed, as if his chest had tightened and he was about to cough.
“Killed your father?” asked Katerin, in low tones.
“No, Kirsakoff did not strike with his own hand,” went on Peter, still gazing fixedly at the lamp. “But he ordered my father back to the prison, and when my father ran after the Governor to beg for mercy, a Cossack soldier cut my father down with a sword. And I was thrown into the big prison on the hill—I, a poor helpless boy who had done nothing.”
Wassili moved uneasily behind the chair of Peter, and Katerin gave the moujik a glance of disapproval.
“Then you do know,” said Katerin to Peter, “how cruel the Governor was to the poor unfortunates. And that is why you seek him.”
“What was done to my father and me—what was it? Only the ordinary thing of the old days, as you know. Yes, that is why I seek Kirsakoff, and why I ask your help to find him.”
“And how long were you in the prison?” asked Michael. “There must have been a charge against you?”
“I was in prison three months, as near as I can tell,” replied Peter. “Three months of hell on earth and in darkness, forgotten to the world! It might have been three years, or three hundred, measured in my suffering—the terrible sounds by day and by night, the rats—and I might have been there till now, or dead, so far as Kirsakoff cared.” His bitterness was growing, and his face was getting livid with rage.
“And for nothing?” asked Katerin. “Had you done nothing against the Governor—or the laws of the Czar?”
“Ay, even Kirsakoff would have mercy on a boy,” said Michael.
“I did nothing, I swear,” went on Peter. “It was the orders of Kirsakoff which sent me to prison. It was this way—an officer knocked me down in front of the post-house. And when my father came to pick me up, the Governor ordered both of us taken away to the prison.
“You see, my father belonged to the free gang—he was a political, as were you. My mother died here, in the Street of the Dames. I never knew her. But my father was good and kind to me. He was all I had in the world, he was all I loved, though in those days (and Peter smiled wistfully) I was taught to love the Little Father, the Czar.
“My father was struck down before my eyes, and when I was taken to the prison, the officer in charge of the books was drunk—and he put my name down in the book wrong—put my name down as my father’s—gave my father’s name to me, so that the records appeared to show that it was my father and not me, the boy, back in prison. I did not know what they were doing, and for three months it was supposed that it was my father, the political, who was in the cell by order of the Governor.”
“Then no doubt the Governor freed you—gave you the pardon,” said Michael.
“No,” said Peter. “It was God’s hand that set me free. Some convicts escaped one night, and were recaptured by the cordons in the taiga. But before the soldiers took them, they had waylaid a sledge carrying an American fur-buyer to Irkutsk. His name was Gordon. The convicts robbed him. When Gordon got back here to Chita, he was taken to the prison and the convicts were brought out to be identified by him as the robbers. It happened that one of these men, named Grassi, had been put in the cell with me. When he was taken out into the prison yard, I was taken with him. Then it was discovered that I was the son of my father, and that there was no charge against me. Mr. Gordon, the American, asked to take me as his servant. I was released, the prison commandant corrected the records, and Mr. Gordon took me with him to America.”
Peter paused, and looked at Michael, to see what effect the story had had on the old man. But Michael’s head was nodding gently, and he seemed to be turning the matter over in his mind, his lips moving as if he were shaping words which he did not speak aloud.
Katerin stood up suddenly, and tested the fire in the samovar. She seemed agitated, and Peter assumed that she suffered with indignation at hearing his sufferings at the hands of the Governor. Then she turned to him swiftly.
“What will you do—when you find the old—Kirsakoff?” she demanded.
“I shall kill him,” said Peter simply, and was aware of a quivering hand upon the back of his chair. He turned and looked at Wassili. The moujik’s eyes were shining like a cat’s before a fire, and there was the look of murder in his face.
“Kill him!” cried Michael. “But he did not kill your father!”
Peter was startled for an instant by the old man’s horror, and Katerin’s face revealed the fact that she had never dreamed that the American officer was bent on murder—she seemed actually to be in terror of him. Peter suffered a moment of abashment, and gulped down what was left of the tea in his glass. He understood that these people did not yet fully appreciate how wantonly his father had been killed, nor how little provocation there was for the killing. He was determined to convince them of the justice of his designs.
“My father and I,” he began anew, “lived in a little hut down the Sofistkaya—it is there yet—I can see it from the windows of my room. An old man lives in it now, a queer old patriarch, who sells cigarettes——”
“That is Rimsky!” exclaimed Wassili to Katerin. She nodded, and looked at him so that she checked him.
“Yes, Rimsky,” said Peter. “That is his name. That is where I lived with my father, and where he taught me the almanacs. We were happy, for we had a samovar, and the ladies of the Street of the Dames came to us often. They gave me cakes, and my father money. Of course, I know now that he was an underground to the prison—he carried messages back and forth between wives and their husbands in the prison.”
“Yes, they had many ways of getting news in and out in the old days,” said Michael, with a smile. “But go on with your story, my friend.”
Peter struck a match to light a fresh cigarette, and the flame showed his face to be flushed by his emotions.
“The year of which I speak,” resumed Peter, “the almanacs from Moscow were late. The mail-sledges came in from Irkutsk one morning. I ran down to the post-house to learn if the almanacs had come. There were Excellencies in the sledge. As I remember, the Governor’s daughter—Katerin was her name, I think, and——”
“Yes, yes,” cried Katerin, striking her hands together. “Katerin Stephanovna! She was the Governor’s daughter—I have heard of her! It is said now that she is dead!” and Katerin turned to her father, as if to verify what she had said.
“It has been said that she is dead this long time,” assented Michael. “Some say that Zorogoff——” He checked himself.
Peter continued with his tale, warmed to it again by the evident interest of his listeners.
“Yes, that was the Governor’s daughter. Her coming was his reason for meeting the sledge that morning. Well, I was eager to be sure that the almanacs had come—and a Cossack knocked me down because I called to the Governor’s daughter for news of the almanacs. And when Michael Alexandrovitch, the Governor, came to the sledge he found my father picking me up. I was bleeding and stunned from the blow. And the Governor was in a rage at us—that my father should be making trouble—and ordered him to be stricken from the free gang and put back in the prison once more—and me with him.”
“But you said your father was killed,” said Katerin.
“Yes, as I say,” replied Peter. “My father”—and Peter inclined his head toward the icon in the corner over Michael’s head—“my father was so broken in spirit at knowing he was no longer of the free gang and that I was to go to prison, that he ran after Kirsakoff. It was then that a Cossack ran my father through with a saber—and swore that my father had struck at the Governor with a knife—a leather knife which he pulled from my father’s pocket.”
“But did the Governor know—could he know—of this terrible happening?” asked Katerin.
“Ay, did the Governor know?” echoed Michael.
“Know!” cried Peter. “What would he have cared if he did know? He had just ordered us both to prison for nothing! And did he care enough to investigate the case during the three months I was inside a black cell—to give me my freedom? No! He forgot all about it and me, even if he did know what had happened? Does he care now what the fate of you and your daughter may be? I tell you, sir, I must find Michael Kirsakoff! And you must be the one who puts me on the right road!”
“True, you must find him,” said Katerin. “Now we know that you have good reason for wanting him.”
“Thank you,” said Peter fervently. “I knew that when you saw my story as I could tell it, you would realize that above all things, I must find Kirsakoff.”
“What was the name of your father?” asked Michael.
“Gorekin—Peter Pavlovitch—a bootmaker.”
“Gorekin!” gasped Michael, his head snapping back in his amazement. “Gorekin!”
“Have you heard of him?” asked Peter, with a quick look at the old general.
“I thought for a moment I knew the name,” said Michael. “But if you say he was a bootmaker, it must have been another. No, not if he was a bootmaker—and this man I knew less than ten years ago.”
Michael looked at Wassili, and put a hand upon the table beside him, keeping the other under the blanket. He began to drum with his fingers, deep in reflection. No word was spoken for several minutes. Peter could hear Wassili breathing behind the chair.
“You have our sympathy,” said Katerin. “And you must find the Governor. If you will give me time to talk it over with my father——” She gave Peter a significant look, which he interpreted to mean that it would be wiser not to press now for information about Kirsakoff, but to leave it in her hands.
“Thank you,” said Peter, and he rose, and bowed.
“You shall find Kirsakoff,” said Michael, staring at his hand on the table. “By morning I shall know where he may be found—perhaps. We must not act hastily.” The palsied head was shaking gently, and the old man was lost again in thought.
“Yes, yes,” Katerin put in hastily. Peter saw tears in her eyes. She followed after him as he turned to go back through the rooms, and they left Michael and Wassili alone.
Peter stopped at his own door, and looking back over Katerin’s shoulder, saw against the light of the room he had just left, a shadow cross—and then the figure of Wassili peering after them.
“Good-night,” said Katerin. She seemed nervous and worried. She also had caught a glimpse of the old moujik outlined against the glow of her father’s lamp.
Peter seized her hands in sudden impulse and pressed them heartily. “I cannot tell you of my gratitude, Vashka,” he whispered. “It was you who helped me in this—and I have waited long! You are going to persuade your father to tell me where I shall find Kirsakoff!”
She gently drew away from him, and he released her hands.
“I shall do what I can,” she whispered. “But take care—this house is full of enemies. If we are to defeat the Ataman, be wary. Bolt both your doors to-night!”
Then she slipped away to her father.