"We should all wear black for so mournful an occasion," said Rafaella Sal, spreading out her scarlet skirts.
"Father Abella is right. The occasion is sad enough without giving it the air of a funeral."
"Sad! Dios de mi alma! Will he return?"
Elena Castro shook her wise head. She was nearly twenty, and four years of matrimony had made her sceptical of man's capacity for romance. "Two years are long, and he will see many girls, and become one again of a life that is always more brilliant than our sun in May. His eyes will be dazzled, his mind distracted, full to the brim. To sit at table with the Tsar, to talk with him alone in his cabinet, to have for the asking audience of the Pope of Rome and the King of Spain! Ay yi! Ay yi! Perhaps he will be made a prince when he returns to St. Petersburg and all the beautiful princesses will want to marry him. Can he remember this poor little California, and even our lovely Concha? I doubt! Valgame Dios, I doubt!"
"Concha has always been too fortunate," said Rafaella with a touch of spite, for years of waiting had tried her temper and the sun always freckled her nose. The flower of California stood on the corridor of the Mission and before the church awaiting the guest of honor and his escort. A mass was to be said in behalf of the departing guests; the Juno would sail with the turn of the afternoon tide. Men and women were in their gayest finery, an exotic mass of color against the rough white-washed walls, chattering as vivaciously as if the burden of their conversation were not regret for the Chamberlain and his gay young lieutenants. Concha, alone, wore no color; her frock was white, her mantilla black. She stood somewhat apart, but although she was pale she commanded her eyes to dwell absently on the shifting sand far down the valley, her haughty Spanish profile betraying nothing of the despair in her soul.
"Yes, Concha has always been too fortunate," repeated Rafaella. "Why should she be chosen for such a destiny—to go to the Russian court and wear a train ten yards long of red velvet embroidered with gold, a white veil spangled with gold, a headdress a foot high set so thick with jewels her head will ache for a week—Madre de Dios! And we stay here forever with white walls, horsehair furniture, Baja California pearls and three silk dresses a year!"
"No one in all Russia will look so grand in court dress as our Conchita," said Elena loyally. "But I doubt if it is the dress and the state she thinks of losing to-day. She will not talk even to me of him— Ay yi! she grows more reserved every day, our Concha!—except to say she will wed him when he returns, and that I know, for did not I witness the betrothal? She only mocks me when I beg her to tell me if she loves him, languishes, or sings a bar of some one of our beautiful songs with ridiculous words. But she does. She did not sleep last night. Her room is next to mine. No, it is of Rezanov she thinks, and always. Those proud, silent girls, who jest when others would weep and use many words and must die without sympathy—they have tragedy in their souls, ay yi! And you think she is fortunate? True she is beautiful, she is La Favorita, she receives many boxes from Mexico, and she has won the love of this Russian. But—I have not dared to remind her—I remembered it only yesterday—she came into this world on the thirteenth of a month, and he into her life but one day before the thirteenth of another—new style! True some might say that it was an escape, but if he came on the twelfth, it was on the thirteenth she began to love him—on the night of the ball; of that I am sure."
Rafaella shuddered and crossed herself. "Poor Concha! Perhaps in the end she will always stand apart like that. Truly she is not as others. I have always said it. Thanks be to Mary it was Luis that wooed me, not the Russian, for I might have been tempted. True his eyes are blue, and only the black could win my heart. But the court of St. Petersburg! Dios de mi vida! Did I lie awake at night and think of Concha Arguello in red velvet and jewels all over, I should hate her. But no—to-day—I cannot. Two years! Have I not waited six? It is eternity when one loves and is young."
"They come," said Elena.
The cavalcade was descending the sand hills on the left, Rezanov in full uniform between the Commandante and Luis Arguello and followed by a picked escort of officers from Presidio and Fort. The Californians wore full-dress uniform of white and scarlet, Don Jose a blue velvet serape, embroidered in gold with the arms of Spain.
As they dismounted Rezanov bowed ceremoniously to the party on the corridor, and they returned his salutation gravely, suddenly silent. He walked directly over to Concha.
"We will go in together," he said. "It matters nothing what they think. I kneel beside no one else."
And Concha, with the air of leading an honored guest to the banquet, turned and walked with him into the dark little church.
"Why did you not wear a white mantilla?" he whispered. "I do not like that black thing."
"I am not a bride. I knew we should kneel together—it would have been ridiculous. And I could not wear a colored reboso to-day."
"I should have liked to fancy we were here for our nuptials. Delusions pass but are none the less sweet for that."
They knelt before the altar, the Commandante, Dona Ignacia, Luis, Santiago, Rafaella Sal and Elena Castro just behind; the rest of the party, their bright garments shimmering vaguely in the gloom, as they listened; and enough fervent prayers went up to insure the health and safety of the departing guests for all their lives.
Rezanov, who had much on his mind, stared moodily at the altar until Concha, who had bowed her head almost to her knees, finished her supplication; then their eyes turned and met simultaneously. For a moment their brains did swim in the delusion that the priest with his uplifted hands pronounced benediction upon their nuptials, that probation was over and union nigh. But Father Abella dismissed all with the same blessing, and they shivered as they rose and walked slowly down the church.
Dona Ignacia took her husband's arm, and muttering that she feared a chill, hurried the others before her. The priests had gone to the sacristy. Before they reached the door Rezanov and Concha were alone.
His hands fell heavily on her shoulders.
"Concha," he said, "I shall come back if I live. I make no foolish vows, so idle between us. There is only one power that can prevent our marriage in this church not later than two years from to-day. And although I am in the very fulness of my health and strength, with my work but begun, and all my happiness in the future, and even to a less sanguine man it would seem that his course had many years to run, still have I seen as much as any man of the inconsequence of life, of the insignificance of the individual, his hopes, ambitions, happiness, and even usefulness, in the complicated machinery of natural laws. It may be that I shall not come back. But I wish to take with me your promise that if I have not returned at the end of two years or you have received no reason for my detention, you will believe that I am dead. There would be but one insupportable drop in the bitterness of death, the doubt of your faith in my word and my love. Are you too much of a woman to curb your imagination in a long unbroken silence?"
"I have learned so much that one lesson more is no tax on my faith. And I no longer live in a world of little things. I promise you that I shall never falter nor doubt."
He bent his head and kissed her for the first time without passion, but solemnly, as had their nuptials indeed been accomplished, and the greater mystery of spiritual union isolated them for a moment in that twilight region where the mortal part did not enter.
As they left the church they saw that all the Indians of the Mission and neighborhood, in a gala of color, had gathered to cheer the Russians as they rode away. Concha was to return as she had come, beside the carreta of her mother, and as Rezanov mounted his horse she stood staring with unseeing eyes on the brilliant, animated scene. Suddenly she heard a suppressed sob, and felt a touch on her skirt. She looked round and saw Rosa, kneeling close to the church. For a moment she continued to stare, hardly comprehending, in the intense concentration of her faculties, that tangible beings, other than herself and Rezanov, still moved on the earth. Then her mind relaxed. She was normal in a normal world once more. She stooped and patted the hands clasping her skirts.
"Poor Rosa!" she said. "Poor Rosa!"
Over the intense green of islands and hills were long banners of yellow and purple mist, where the wild flowers were lifting their heads. The whole quivering bay was as green as the land, but far away the mountains of the east were pink. Where there was a patch of verdure on the sand hills the warm golden red of the poppy flaunted in the sunshine. All nature was in gala attire like the Californians themselves, as the Juno under full sail sped through "The Mouth of the Gulf of the Farallones." Fort San Joaquin saluted with seven guns; the Juno returned the compliment with nine. The Commandante, his family and guests, stood on the hill above the fort, cheering, waving sombreros and handkerchiefs. Wind and tide carried the ship rapidly out the straits. Rezanov dropped the cocked hat he had been waving and raised his field-glass. Concha, as ever, stood a little apart. As the ship grew smaller and the company turned toward the Presidio, she advanced to the edge of the bluff. The wind lifted her loosened mantilla, billowing it out on one side, and as she stood with her hands pressed against her heart, she might, save for her empty arms, have been the eidolon of the Madonna di San Sisto. In her eyes was the same expression of vague arrested horror as she looked out on that world of menacing imperfections the blind forces of nature and man had created; her body was instinct with the same nervous leashed impotent energy.
The white rain clouds, rolling as ever like a nervous intruder over the great snow peaks behind the steep hills black with forest that rose like a wall back of the little settlement of Sitka, parted for a moment, and the sun, a coy disdainful guest, flung a glittering mist over what Nature had intended to be one of the most enchanting spots on earth, until, in a fit of ill-temper—with one of the gods, no doubt—she gave it to Niobe as a permanent outlet for her discontent. When it does not rain at Sitka it pours, and when once in a way she draws a deep breath of respite and lifts her grand and glorious face to the sun, in pathetic gratitude for dear infrequent favor, comes a wild flurry of snow or a close white fog from the inland waters; and, like a great beauty condemned to wear a veil through life, she can but stare in dumb resentment through the folds, consoling herself with the knowledge that could the world but see it must surely worship. Perhaps, who knows? she really is a frozen goddess, condemned to the veil for infidelity to him imprisoned in the great volcano across the sound—who sends up a column of light once in a way to dazzle her shrouded eyes, and failing that batters her with rock and stone like any lover of the slums. One day he spat forth a rock like a small hill, and big enough to dominate the strip of lowland at least, standing out on the edge of the island like a guard at the gates, and never a part of the alien surface. Between this lofty rock and the forest was the walled settlement of New Archangel, that Baranhov, the dauntless, had wrested from the bloodthirsty Kolosh but a short time since and purposed to hold in the interest of the Russian-American Company. His log hut, painted like the other buildings with a yellow ochre found in the soil, stood on the rock, and his glass swept the forest as often as the sea.
As Rezanov, on the second of July, thirty-one days after leaving San Francisco, sailed into the harbor with its hundred bits of volcanic woodland weeping as ever, he gave a whimsical sigh in tribute to the gay and ever-changing beauties of the southern land, but was in no mood for sentimental reminiscence. Natives, paddling eagerly out to sea in their bidarkas to be the first to bring in good news or bad, had given him a report covering the period of his absence that filled him with dismay. There had been deaths from scurvy; one of the largest ships belonging to the Company had been wrecked and the entire cargo lost; of a hunting party of three hundred Aleuts in one hundred and forty bidarkas, which had gone from Sitka to Kadiak in November of the preceding year, not one had arrived at its destination, and there was reason to believe that all had been drowned or massacred; and the Russians and Aleuts at Behring's Bay settlement had been exterminated by one of the native tribes.
But the Juno was received with salvos of artillery from the fort, and cheered by the entire population of the settlement, crowded on the beach. Baranhov, looking like a monkey with a mummy's head in which only a pair of incomparably shrewd eyes still lived, his black wig fastened on his bald, red-fringed pate with a silk handkerchief tied under his chin, stood, hands on hips, shaking with excitement and delight. The bearded, long-haired priests, in full canonicals of black and gold, were beside the Chief-Manager, ready to escort the Chamberlain to the chapel at the head of the solitary street, where the bells were pealing and a mass of thanksgiving was to be said for his safe return.
But it was some time before Rezanov could reach the chapel or even exchange salutations with Baranhov. As he stepped on shore he was surrounded, almost hustled by the shouting crowd of Russians,—many of them convicts—Aleuts and Sitkans, who knelt at his feet, endeavored to kiss his hand, his garments, in their hysterical gratitude for the food he had brought them. For the first time he felt reconciled to his departure from California, and Concha's image faded as he looked at the tearful faces of the diseased, ill-nourished wretches who gave their mite of life that he might live as became a great noble of the Russian Empire. But although he tingled with pleasure and was deeply moved, he by no means swelled with vanity, for he was far too clear-sighted to doubt he had done more than his duty, or that his duty was more than begun. He made them a little speech, giving his word they should be properly fed hereafter, that he would make the improvement of their condition as well as that of all the employees of the Company throughout this vast chain of settlements on the Pacific, the chief consideration of his life; and they believed him and followed him to the chapel rejoicing, reconciled for once to their lot.
After the service Rezanov went up to the hut of the Chief-Manager, a habitation that leaked winter and summer, and was equally deficient in light, ventilation and order. But Baranhov in the sixteen years of his exile had forgotten the bare lineaments of comfort, and devoted his days to advancing the interests of the Company, his nights, save when sleep overcame him, to potations that would have buried an ordinary man under Alaskan snows long since. But Baranhov had fourteen years more of good service in him, and rescued the Company from insolvency again and again, nor ever played into the hands of marauding foreigners; with brain on fire he was shrewder than the soberest.
He listened with deep satisfaction to the Chamberlain's account of his success with the Californians and his glowing pictures of the country, nodding every few moments with emphatic approval. But as the story finished his wonderful eyes were two bubbling springs of humor, and Rezanov, who knew him well, recrossed his legs nervously.
"What is it?" he asked. "What have I done now? Remember that you have been in this business for sixteen years, and I one—"
"How many measures of corn did you say you had brought, Excellency?"
"Two hundred and ninety-four," replied Rezanov proudly.
"A provision that exceeds my most sanguine hopes. The only thing that mitigates my satisfaction is that there is not a mill in the settlement to grind it."
Rezanov sprang to his feet with a violent exclamation, his face very red. There was no one whose good opinion he valued as he did that of this brilliant, dissipated, disinterested old genius; and he felt like a schoolboy. But although he started for the door, he recovered half-way, and reseating himself joined in the laughter of the little man who was rocking back and forth on his bench, his weazened leg clasped against his shrunken chest.
"How on earth was I to know all your domestic arrangements?" he said testily. "God knows I found them limited enough last winter, but it never occurred to me there was any mysterious process involved in converting corn into meal. Is it quite useless, then?"
"Oh, no, we can boil or roast it. It will dispose of what teeth we have left, but that will serve the good purpose of reminding us always of your excellency's interest in our welfare."
Rezanov shrugged his shoulders. "Give the corn to the natives. It is farinaceous at all events. And you can have nothing to say against the flour I have brought, and the peas, beans, tallow, butter, barley, salt, and salted meats—in all to the value of twenty-four thousand Spanish dollars."
The Chief-Manager's head nodded with the vigor and rapidity of a mechanical toy. "It is a God-send, a God-send. If you did no more than that you would have earned our everlasting gratitude. It will make us over, give us renewed courage in this cursed existence. Are you not going to get me out of it?"
Rezanov shook his head with a smile. "Literally you are the whole Company. As long as I live here you stay—although when I reach St. Petersburg I shall see that you receive every possible reward and honor."
Baranhov lifted his shoulders to his ears in quizzical resignation. "I suppose it matters little where the last few years left me are spent, and I can hang the medals on the walls to console me when I have rheumatism, and shout my titles from the top of the fort when the Kolosh are yelling at the barricades."
"You must make yourself more comfortable," said Rezanov emphatically. "You are wrong to carry your honesty and enthusiasm to the point of living like the promuschleniki. Take enough of their time to build you a comfortable dwelling, and I will send you, on my own account, far more substantial rewards than orders and titles. Build a big house, for that matter. I shall be here more or less—when I am not in California." And he told Baranhov of his proposed marriage with the daughter of Don Jose Arguello.
The Chief-Manager listened to this confidence with an even livelier satisfaction than to the list of the Juno's cargo.
"We shall have California yet!" he cried, his eyes snapping like live coals under the black thatch of wig. "Absorption or the bayonet. It matters little. Ten years from now and we shall have a line of settlements as far south as San Diego. My plan was to feel my way down the northern coast of California with a colony, which should buy a tract of land from the natives and engage immediately in otter hunting—somewhere between Cape Mendocino and Drake's Bay. The Spanish have no settlements above San Francisco and are too weak to drive us out. They would rage and bluster and do nothing. Then quietly push forward, building forts and ships. But you have taken hold in the grand manner and will accomplish in ten years what would have taken me fifty. Marry this girl, use your advantage over the entire family—whose influence I well know—and that great personal power with which the Almighty has been so lavish, and you will have the whole weakly garrisoned country under your foot before they know where they are, and the Russian settlers pouring in. Spain cannot come to the rescue while this devil Bonaparte is alive, and he is young, and like yourself a favorite of destiny. Those damned Bostonians inherit the grabbing instincts of the too paternal race they have just rejected, but there are thousands of miles of desert between California and their own western outposts, hundreds of savage tribes to exterminate. By the time they are in a position to attempt the occupation of California we shall be so securely entrenched they will either let us alone or send troops that would be half dead by the time they reach us. As to ships, we could soon build enough at Okhotsk and Petropaulovsky for our purpose. For the matter of that, if your gifted tongue impressed the Tsar with the riches of California there would always be war ships on her coast." He leaned forward and caught the strong shoulders above him in hands that looked like a tangle of baked nerves, and shook them vigorously. "You are a great boy!" he said with a sort of quizzical solemnity. "A great boy. This damned, God-forsaken, pestilential, demoralizing, brutalizing factory for enriching a few with the very life blood and vitals of thousands that will suffer and starve and never be heard of" (all his language cannot be recorded), "will make two or three reputations by the way. Mine will be one, although I'll get nothing else. Shelikov is safe; but you will have a monument. Well, God bless you. I grudge you nothing. Not even the happiness you deserve and are bound to have—for when all is said and done, Rezanov, you are a lucky dog, a lucky dog! Any man may see that, even when these infernal snows have left him with but half an eye. To quarrel with a destiny like yours would be as great a waste of time as to protest that California is warm and fertile, while this infernal North is like living in a refrigerator with the deluge to vary the monotony. Now let us get drunk!"
But Rezanov laughingly extricated himself, and sending a message to Davidov and Khostov to come to him immediately, walked toward the tent he had ordered erected on the edge of the settlement; only the worst of weather drove him indoors in these half-civilized communities.
As he was passing the chapel, followed again by the employees of the Company, to whom he had granted a holiday, he suddenly found his hand taken possession of, and looked up to see himself confronted by a dissipated-looking person in plain clothes. His hand became so limp that it was dropped as if it had put forth a sting, and he narrowed his eyes and demanded with a bend of his mouth that brought the blood to the face of the intruder:
"And who are you, may I ask?"
The man threw back his head defiantly. "I am Lieutenant Sookin of the Imperial Navy of Russia," he said in a loud, defiant tone.
"And I am Chamberlain of the Russian Court and Commander of all America," replied Rezanov coolly. "Now go to your quarters, dress yourself in your uniform, and present your report to me an hour hence."
The officer, concentrating in his injected eyes all the lively hatred and jealousy of his service for the Russian-American Company in this region where it reigned supreme and cared no more for the Admiralty than for some native chieftain covered with shells and warpaint, glared at its plenipotentiary as if calling upon his deeper resources of insolence; but the steady, contemptuous gaze of the man who had dealt with his kind often and successfully overcame his sodden spirit, and he turned sulkily and slouched off to his quarters to console himself with more brandy. Rezanov shrugged his shoulders and went on to his tent.
There was no furniture in it as yet, and he was obliged to receive Davidov and Khostov standing, but this he preferred. They followed him almost immediately, apprehensive and nervous, and before speaking he looked at them for a moment with his strong, penetrating gaze. He well knew the power of his own personality, and that it was immeasurably enhanced by the fact that of all with whom he had to do in these benighted regions his will alone was never weakened by liquor. These young men, clever, high-bred, with an honorable record not only in Russia, but in England and America, looked upon a hilarious night as the just reward of work well done by day. Brandy was debited to their account by the "bucket" (a bucket being a trifle less than two gallons), and they found little fault with life. But the profligacy gave a commanding spirit like Rezanov's an advantage which they did not under-estimate for a moment; and they alternately hated and worshiped him.
"I think you have an inkling of what I am going to ask you to do." The Chamberlain brought out the euphemism with the utmost suavity. "I have made up my mind not to ignore the indignity to which Russia was subjected last year by Japan, but to inflict upon it such punishment as I find it in my power to compass. It was my intention to build a flotilla here, but owing to the diseased condition and reduced numbers of the employees, that was impossible, and I shall be obliged to content myself with the Juno and the Avos, whose keel, as you know, was laid in November, and is no doubt finished long since. These I shall fit with armaments in Okhotsk. I shall place the enterprise I have spoken of in your charge, sailing with you from Sitka five days hence. From Okhotsk I desire that you proceed to the Japanese settlements in the lower Kurile Islands, take possession of them and bring all stores and as many of the inhabitants as the vessels will accommodate, to Sitka, where Baranhov will see that they are comfortably established on that large island in the harbor—which we shall call Japonsky—and converted into good servants of the Company. The excuse for this enterprise is that those islands were formally taken possession of by Shelikov; and although abandoned later, the fact remains that the Russian flag was the first to float over them. The stores captured may not be worth much and the islands are of no particular use to us, but it is wise that Japan should have a taste of Russian power; and the consequences may be salutary in more ways than one. I hope you will do me this great favor, for there is no one of your tried probity and skill to whom I can trust so delicate an enterprise. I am doing it wholly upon my own responsibility, for although I wrote tentatively to the Tsar on this subject before I sailed for California, it is not yet time for a reply. However, I take the consequences upon my own shoulders. You shall not suffer in any way, for your orders are to obey mine while you remain in these waters."
He paused a moment, and then suddenly smiled into the unresponsive faces before him. He held out his hand and shook their limp ones warmly.
"Let me thank you here for all your inestimable services in the past, and particularly during our late hazardous voyages. Be sure that whether you succeed in this enterprise or not, your rewards shall be no less for what you have already done. I shall make it a personal matter with the Tsar. You shall have promotion and a substantial increase in pay, besides the orders and Imperial thanks you so richly deserve. Lest anything happen to me on my homeward journey, I shall write to St. Petersburg before I leave."
The lieutenants, overcome as ever when he chose to put forth his full powers, assured him of their fidelity and, if with misgivings, vowed to mete out vengeance to the Japanese. And although their misgivings were not unfounded, and they paid a high price in suffering and mortification, they accomplished their object and in due course received the rewards the Chamberlain had promised them.
They did not retire, and Rezanov, noting their sudden hesitation and embarrassment, felt an instant thrill of apprehension.
"What is it?" he demanded. "What has happened?"
"Life has moved slowly in Sitka during your absence, Excellency," replied Davidov. "There has been little work done on the Avos. It will not be finished for a month or six weeks."
Then, had the young men been possessed by a not infrequent mood, they would have glowed with a sense of just satisfaction. Rezanov felt himself turn so white that he wheeled about and left the tent. A month or six weeks! And the speed and safety of his journey across Siberia depended upon his making the greater part of it before the heavy autumn rains swelled the rivers and flooded the swamps. Winter or summer the journey from Okhotsk to St. Petersburg might be made in four months; with the wealth and influence at his command, possibly in less; but in the deluge between he was liable to detentions lasting nearly as long again, to say nothing of illness caused by inevitable exposure.
He stood staring at the palisades for many minutes. The separation must be long enough, the dangers numerous enough if he started within the week, but at least he had in a measure accustomed himself to the idea of not seeing Concha again for "the best part of two years," and the sanguineness of his temperament had led him to hope that the time might be reduced to eighteen months. If he delayed too long, only by means of an unprecedented run of good fortune would he reach St. Petersburg but a month behind his calculations. And the chances were in favor of four, or three at the best! Never since the morning that the real nature of his feeling for Concha had declared itself had he yearned toward her as at that moment; never since the dictum of what she called their "tribunal" had he so rebelled against the long delay. And yet he hesitated. To leave Japan unpunished for the senseless humiliations to which it had subjected Russia in his person was not to be thought of, and yet did he leave without seeing the Avos finished, the two boats supplied with armaments at Okhotsk, and under way before he started across Siberia, he knew it was doubtful if the expedition took place before his return; in that case might never take place, for these two young men might have drifted elsewhere, and he knew no one else to whom he could entrust such a commission. In spite of their idiosyncrasies he could rely upon them implicitly—up to a certain point. That point involved keeping them in sight until exactly the right moment and leaving nothing to their executive which could be certainly accomplished by himself alone. Did he sail five days hence on the Juno one of the officers would be exposed for an indeterminate time to the temptations of Okhotsk, the ship, perhaps, at the mercy of some sudden requirement of the Company. His authority was absolute when enforced in person, but it was a proverb west of the Ural: "God reigns and the Tsar is far away." If the Juno were wanted the manager of Okhotsk would argue that two years was a period in which an ardent servant of the Company would find many an excuse to justify its seizure.
And here in Sitka it was doubtful if the work on the Avos proceeded at all. Baranhov was not in sympathy with the enterprise against the Japanese, fearing the consequences to himself in the event of the Tsar's disapproval, and resenting the impressment of the promuschleniki into a service that deprived him of their legitimate work. Moreover, although he loved Rezanov personally, he had enjoyed supreme power in the wilderness too long not to chafe under even the temporary assumption of authority by his high-handed superior. With the best of intentions Davidov could make little headway against the passive resistance of the Chief-Manager, and those intentions would be weakened by the consolidations the Company so generously afforded.
The result was hardly open to doubt. If he left Sitka before the completion of the Avos, Russia would go unavenged for the present. Or himself? Rezanov, sanguine and imaginative as he was, even to the point of creating premises to rhyme with ends, was very honest fundamentally. He turned abruptly on his heel, and calling to the officers that he would announce his decision on the morrow, ordered the sentry to open the gate and passed out of the enclosure.
He crossed the clearing and entered the forest. The warlike tribes themselves had trodden paths through the dense undergrowth of young trees and ferns. Rezanov, despite Baranhov's warning, had tramped the forest many times. It was the one thing that reconciled him to Sitka, for there are few woods more beautiful. In spite or because of the incessant rains, it is pervaded by a rich golden gloom, the result of the constant rotting of the brown and yellow bark, not only of the prostrate trees, but of the many killed by crowding and unable to seek the earth with the natural instinct of death. And above, the green of hemlock and spruce was perennially fresh and young, glistening and fragrant. Here and there was a small clearing where the clans had erected their ingenious and hideous totem poles, out of place in the ancient beauty of the wood.
The ferns brushed his waist, the roar of the river came to his ears, the forest had never looked more primeval, more wooing to a man burdened with civilization, but Rezanov gave it less heed than usual, although he had turned to it instinctively. He was occupied with a question to which nature would turn an aloof disdainful ear. Was his own wounded vanity at the root of his desire to humiliate Japan? Russia was too powerful, too occupied, for the present at least, greatly to care that her overtures and presents had been scorned. Upon her ambassador had fallen the full brunt of that wearisome and incomparably mortifying experience, and unfortunately the ambassador happened to be one of the proudest and most autocratic men in her empire. No man of Rezanov's caliber but accommodates that sort of personal vanity that tenaciously resents a blow to the pride of which it is a part, to the love of power it feeds. As well expect a lover without passion, a state without corruption. Rezanov finally shrugged his shoulders and admitted the impeachment, but at the same time he recognized that the desire for vengeance still held, and that the tenacity of his nature, a tenacity that had been no mean factor in the remodeling of himself from a voluptuous young sprig of nobility into one of the most successful business men and subjugator of other men that the Russian Empire could show, was not likely to weaken when its very roots had been stiff with purpose for fifteen months. Power had been Rezanov's ruling passion for many years before he met Concha Arguello, and, although it might mate very comfortably with love, it was not to be expected that it would remain submerged beyond the first enthusiasm, nor even assume the position of the "party of the second part." Rezanov was Rezanov. He was also in that interval between youth and age when the brain rules if it is ever to rule at all. That the ardor of his nature had awakened refreshed after a long sleep was but just proved, as well as the revival of his early ideals and capacity for genuine love; but the complexities, the manifold interests and desires of the ego had been growing and developing these many years; and no mere mortal that has given up his life for a considerable period to the thirst for dominance can ever, save in a brief exaltation, sacrifice it to anything so normal as the demands of sex and spirit. For good or ill, the man who has burned with ambition, exulted in the exercise of power, bitterly resented the temporary victories of rivals and enemies, fought with all the resources of brain and character against failure, is in a class apart from humanity in the mass. Rezanov loved Concha Arguello to the very depths of his soul, but he had lived beyond the time when even she could engage successfully with the ruthless forces that had molded into immutable shape the Rezanov she knew. Her place was second, and it is probable that she would have loved him less had it been otherwise; she, in spite of her fine intellect and strong will, being all woman, as he, despite his depth of intuition, was all man. Equality is possible in no relation or condition of life. When woman subjugates man the conquered will enjoy a sense of revenge proportionate to the meanness of his state.
It is possible that had Concha awaited Rezanov in St. Petersburg her attraction would have focused his desires irresistibly; but his mind had resigned itself to the prospect of separation for a definite period, and while it had not relegated her image to the background, her part in his life had been settled there among many future possibilities, and all the foreground was crowded with the impatient symbols of the intervening time. Moreover, he well knew that the savor would be gone from his happiness with the woman were the taste of another failure acrid in his mouth.
As he realized that the die was cast, the sanguineness of his temperament rushed to do battle against apprehension and self-accusing. After all, he was rarely balked of his way, accustomed to ride down obstacles, to the amiable cooperation of fate. He could arrive in Okhotsk late in September or early in October. Captain D'Wolf, who had been detained at Sitka during his absence by the same indifference that had operated against the completion of the Avos, would precede him and order that all be in readiness at Okhotsk both for the ships and his journey to Yakutsk. He could proceed at once; and, no doubt, with twice the number or horses needed, would make the first and most difficult stage of the journey in the usual time, and with no great embarrassment from the rains. From Yakutsk to Irkutsk the greater part of the travel was by water in any case, and after that the land was flat for the most part and bridges were more numerous. The governor of every town in Siberia would be his obsequious servant, the entire resources of the country would be at his disposal. He was sound in health again, as resistant against hardships as when he had sailed from Kronstadt. And God knew, he thought with a sigh, his will and purpose had never been stronger.
Rezanov disembarked from the Juno at Okhotsk during the first days of October. Had it not been for a touch of fever that had returned in the filth and warm dampness of Sitka, he would have felt almost as buoyant in mind and body as in those days when California had gone to his head. The Juno had touched at Kadiak, Oonalaska, and others of the more important settlements, and he had found his schools and libraries in good condition, seals and otters rapidly increasing, in their immunity from indiscriminate slaughter, new and stronger forts threatening the nefarious Bostonian and Briton. At Okhotsk he learned that the embassy of Count Golofkin to China had failed as signally as his own, and this alone would have put him in the best of tempers even had he not found his armament and caravan awaiting him, facilitating his immediate departure. He wrote a gay letter to Concha, giving her the painful story of the naturalist attached to the Golofkin embassy, Dr. Redovsky, who had remained in the East animated by the same scientific enthusiasm as that of his colleague, the good Langsdorff; parted some time since from his too exacting master. Rezanov had written Concha many letters during his detention in Sitka, and left them with Baranhov to send at the first opportunity. The Chief-Manager, deeply interested in the romance of the mighty Chamberlain with whom he alone dared to take a liberty, vowed to guard all that came to his care and sooner or later to send them to California. Rezanov had also written comprehensively to the Tsar and the directors of the Russian-American Company, adroitly placing his marriage in the light of a diplomatic maneuver, and painting California in colors the more vivid and enticing for the sullen clouds and roaring winds, the dripping forests and eternal snows of that derelict corner of Earth where he had been stranded so long. He had also, when Langsdorff announced his intention to start upon a difficult journey in the interest of science, provided him not only with letters of recommendation, but with all the comforts procurable in a land where the word comfort was the stock in trade of the local satirist. But Langsdorff, although punctiliously acknowledging the favors, never quite forgave the indifference of a mere ambassador and chamberlain, rejoicing in the dignity of an honorary membership in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, to the supreme division of natural history.
The first stage of the journey—from Okhotsk to Yakutsk—was about six hundred and fifty English miles, not as the crow flew, but over the Stanovoi mountains in a southwesterly direction to the Maya, by this river's wavering course to the Youdoma, then northwest to the Aldan, and south beside the Lena. The beaten track lay entirely alongside the rivers at this season, upon their surface in winter; and in addition to these great streams there were many too unimportant for the map, but as erratic in course and as irresistible in energy after the first rains of autumn.
Captain D'Wolf had proved himself capable and faithful, and a caravan of forty horses had been in Okhotsk a week; twenty for immediate use, twenty for relief, or substitutes in almost certain emergency. As there were but one or two stations of any importance between Okhotsk and Yakutsk, and as a week might pass without the shelter of so much as a hut, it was necessary to take tents and bearskin beds for the Chamberlain, his Cossack guard, valet-de-chambre, cook and other servants, one set of fine blankets and linen, cooking utensils, axes, arms, tinder-boxes, provisions for the entire trip, besides a great quantity of personal luggage.
Rezanov lost no time. He had changed his original plan and dispatched Davidov on the Avos from Oonalaska. Guns and provisions awaited the Juno at Okhotsk, and in less than a week after his arrival Rezanov was able to start on his long journey with a mind at rest. Although the almost extravagant delight that his body had taken in the comforts of his manager's home, after ten weeks on the Juno, warned him that he might be in a better condition to begin a journey of ten thousand versts, he hearkened neither to the hint nor to the insistence of his host. His impatient energy and stern will, combined with the passionate wish to accomplish the double object of his journey, returning in the least possible time to California with his treaty and the consent of the Pope and King to his marriage, would have carried him out of Okhotsk in forty-eight hours had disease declared itself. Nor were there any inducements aside from a comfortable bed and refined fare, in the flat, unhealthy town with its everlasting rattle of chains, and the hideous physiognomies of criminals always at work to the rumbling accompaniment of Cossack oaths.
For the first week the exercise he loved best and the long days in the crisp open air renewed his vigor, and he even looked forward to the four months of what was then the severest traveling in the world, in a boyish spirit of adventure. He reflected that he might as well give his brain a relief from the constant revolving of schemes and plans for the advancement of his country, his company, and himself, and let his thoughts have their carnival of anticipation with the unparalleled happiness and success that awaited him in the future. There was no possible doubt of the acquiescence and assistance of the Tsar, and no man ever looked down a fairer perspective than he, as he galloped over the ugly country, often far ahead of his caravan, splashing through bogs and streams, fording rivers without ferries, camping at night in forests so dense the cold never escaped their embrace, muffled to the eyes in furs as he made his way past valleys whose eternal ice fields chilled the country for miles about; sometimes able to procure a little fresh milk and butter, oftener not; occasionally passing a caravan returning for furs, generally seeing nothing but a stray reindeer for hours together, once meeting the post and finding much for himself that in nowise dampened his spirit.
But on the eighth day the rains began: a fine steady mist, then in torrents as endless. Wrapped in bearskins at night within the shelter of a tent or of some wayside hut, and closely covered by day, Rezanov at first merely cursed the inconvenience of the rain; but while crossing the river Allach Juni, his guides without consulting him having taken him miles out of his way in order to avoid the hamlet of the same name where the small-pox was raging, but where there was a government ferry, his horse lost his footing in the rapid, swollen current and fell. Rezanov managed to retain his seat, and pulled the frightened, plunging beast to its feet while his Cossacks were still shouting their consternation. But he was soaked to the skin, his personal luggage was in the same condition, and they did not reach a hut where a fire could be made until nine hours later. It was then that the seeds of malaria, accumulated during the last three years in unsanitary ports and sown deep by exceptional hardships, but which he believed had taken themselves off during his six weeks in California, stirred more vigorously than in Sitka or Okhotsk. He rode on the next day in a burning fever. Jon, minding Langsdorff's instructions, doctored him—not without difficulty—from the medicine chest, and for a day or two the fever seemed broken. But Jon, sick with apprehension, implored him to turn back. He might as well have implored the sky to turn blue.
"How do you think men accomplish things in this world?" asked Rezanov angrily. "By turning back and going to bed every time they have a migraine?"
"No, Excellency," said the man humbly. "But health is necessary to the accomplishment of everything, and if the body is eaten up with fever—"
"What are drugs for? Give me the whole damned pharmacopeia if you choose, but don't talk to me about turning back."
"Very well, Excellency," said Jon, with a sigh.
The next day he and one of the Cossack guard caught him as he fell from his horse unconscious. A Yakhut hut, miserable as it was, offered in the persistent downpour a better shelter than the tent. They carried him into it, and his bedding at least was almost as luxurious as had he been in St. Petersburg. Jon, at his wits' end, remembered the' practice of Langsdorff in similar cases, and used the lancet, a heroic treatment he would never have accomplished had his master been conscious. The fever ebbed, and in a few days Rezanov was able to continue the journey by shorter stages, although heavy with an intolerable lassitude. But his will sustained him until he reached Yakutsk, not at the end of twenty-two days, but of thirty-three. Here he succumbed immediately, and although his sickbed was in the comfortable home of the agent of the Company, and he had medical attendance of a sort, his fever and convalescence lasted for eight weeks. Then, in spite of the supplications of his friends, chief among whom was his faithful Jon, and the prohibition of the doctor, he began the second stage of his journey.
The road from Yakutsk to Irkutsk, some two thousand six hundred versts, or fifteen hundred and fifty English miles, lay for the most part alternately on and along the river Lena in a southeasterly direction; there being no attempt to cross Siberia at any point in a straight line. By this time the river was frozen, and the only concession Rezanov would make to his enfeebled frame was an arrangement to cover the entire journey by private sledge instead of employing the swifter course of post sledge on the long stretches and horseback on the shorter cuts.
The weather was now intensely cold, the river winding, the delays many, but there were adequate stations for the benefit and accommodation of travelers every hundred versts or less. Rezanov felt so invigorated by the long hours in the open after the barbarous closeness of his sick room, that at the end of a fortnight he was again possessed with all his old ardor of desire to reach the end of his journey. He vowed he was well again, abandoned his comfortable sledge, and pushed on in the common manner. In the wretched post sledges he was often exposed to the full violence of a Siberian winter, and although the horseback exercise stirred his blood and refreshed him for the moment, he suffered in reaction and was several times forced to remain two nights instead of one at a station. But he was muffled in sables to his very eyes, and the road was diverting, often beautiful, with its Gothic mountains, its white plains set with villages and farms, the high thin crosses above the open or swelling domes of the little churches. Sometimes the Lena narrowed until its frozen surface looked like a mass of ice that had ground its way between perpendicular walls or overhanging masses of rock that awaited the next convulsion of nature to close the pass altogether. Then the dogs trotted past caves and grottos, left the abrupt and craggy banks, crossed level plains once more; where herds of cattle grazed in the summertime, now a vast uncheckered expanse of white. The Government and Company agents fawned upon him, the best of horses and beds, food and wine, were eagerly placed at the disposal of the favorite of the Tsar. Rezanov's spirit, always of the finest temper, suffered no eclipse for many days. He reveled in the belief that his sorely tried body was regenerating its old vigors.
From Wercholensk to Katschuk the journey was so winding by river that it consumed more than twice the time of the land route, which although only thirty versts in extent was one of the most difficult in Siberia. Rezanov chose the latter without hesitation, and would listen to no discussion from the Commissary of the little town or from his distracted Jon: the journey from Yakutsk had now lasted five weeks and the servant's watchful eye noted signs of exhaustion.
The hills were very high and very steep, the roads but a name in summer. Had not the snow been soft and thin, the horses could not have made the ascent at all; and, as it was, the riders were forced to walk the greater part of the way and drag their unwilling steeds behind them. They were twelve hours covering the thirty versts, and at Katschuk Rezanov succumbed for two days, while Jon scoured the country in search of a telega; as sometimes happened there was a long stretch of country without snow, and sledges, by far the most comfortable method of travel in Siberia, could not be used. The rest of the journey, but one hundred and ninety-six versts, must be made by land. Rezanov admitted that he was too weary to ride, and refused to travel in the post carriage. On the third day the servant managed to hire a telega from a superior farmer and they started immediately, the heavy luggage having been consigned to a merchant vessel at Yakutsk.
Rezanov stood the telega exactly half a day. Little larger than an armchair and far lighter, it was drawn by horses that galloped up and down hill and across the intervening valleys with no change of gait, and over a road so rough that the little vehicle seemed to be propelled by a succession of earthquakes. Rezanov, in a fever which he attributed to rage, dismissed the telega at a village and awaited the coming of Jon, who followed on horseback with the personal luggage.
It was a village of wooden houses built in the Russian fashion, and inhabited by a dignified tribe wearing long white garments bordered with fur. They spoke Russian, a language little heard farther north and east in Siberia, and when Rezanov declined their hospitality they dispatched a courier at once to the Governor-General of Irkutsk acquainting him with the condition of the Chamberlain and of his imminent arrival. In consequence, when Rezanov drew rein two days later and looked down upon the city of Irkutsk with its pleasant squares and great stone buildings beside the shining river, the gilded domes and crosses of its thirty churches and convents glittering in the sun, the whole picture beckoning to the delirious brain of the traveler like some mirage of the desert, his appearance was the signal for a salute from the fort; and the Governor-General, privy counselor and senator de Pestel, accompanied by the civil governor, the commandant, the archbishop, and a military escort, sallied forth and led the guest, with the formality of officials and the compassionate tenderness of men, into the capital.
For three weeks longer Rezanov lay in the palace of the Governor. Between fever and lassitude, his iron will seemed alternately to melt in the fiery furnace of his body, then, a cooling but still viscous and formless mass, sink to the utmost depths of his being. But here he had the best of nursing and attendance, rallied finally and insisted upon continuing his journey. His doctor made the less demur as the traveling was far smoother now, in the early days of March, than it would be a month hence, when the snow was thinner and the sledges were no longer possible. Nevertheless, he announced his intention to accompany him as far as Krasnoiarsk, where the Chamberlain could lodge in the house of the principal magistrate of the place, Counselor Keller, and, if necessary, be able to command fair nursing and medical attendance; and to this Rezanov indifferently assented.
The prospect of continuing his journey and the bustle of preparation raised the spirits of the invalid and gave him a fictitious energy. He had fought depression and despair in all his conscious moments, never admitted that the devastation in his body was mortal. With but a remnant of his former superb strength, and emaciated beyond recognition, he attended a banquet on the night preceding his departure, and on the following morning stood up in his sledge and acknowledged the God-speed of the population of Irkutsk assembled in the square before the palace of the Governor. All his life he had excited interest wherever he went, but never to such a degree as on that last journey when he made his desperate fight for life and happiness.