The Price of Power Part 28

His Majesty might tell him.

If so, what then?

CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE LAND OF NO RETURN.

The day had been grey and dispiriting, the open windswept landscape a great limitless expanse of newly-fallen snow of dazzling whiteness--the same cheerless wintry tundra over which I had been travelling by sledge for the past four weary weeks to that everlasting jingle of harness-bells.

My companion, the police-agent Petrakoff, a smart, alert young man, wrapped to the tip of his nose in reindeer furs, was asleep by my side; and I, too, had been dozing, worn out by that fifteen hundred miles of road since leaving the railway at Ekaterinburg.

Suddenly I was awakened by Vasilli, our yams.h.i.+ck, a burly, bearded, unkempt ruffian in shabby furs, who, pointing with his whip to the grey far-off horizon, shouted:

"Tomsk! Tomsk! Look, Excellency!"

Straining my tired eyes, I discerned upon the far skyline a quant.i.ty of low, snow-covered, wood-built houses from which rose the pointed cupolas of several churches.

Yonder was the end of the first stage of my long journey. So I awoke Petrakoff, and for the next half-hour we sat with eyes fixed eagerly upon our goal, where we hoped to revel in the luxury of a hotel after a month of those filthy stancias or povarnias, the vermin-infested rests for travellers on the Great Post Road of Siberia.

The first sod of the great Trans-Siberian railway had already been cut by the Tzarevitch at Tcheliabyisk, but no portion of the line was at that time complete. Therefore all traffic across Asia, both travellers and merchandise, including the tea-caravans from China, pa.s.sed along that great highway, the longest in the world.

Six weeks had elapsed since I had left the Emperor's presence, and I had accomplished by rail and road a distance of two thousand four hundred miles.

Since I had left the railway at Ekaterinburg I had only rested for a single night on two occasions, at Tiumen and at Tobolsk.

At the former place I made my first acquaintance with the inhuman exile system, for moored in the river Obi I saw several of those enormous floating gaols, in which the victims of Russia's true oppressor were transported _en route_ to the penal settlements of the Far East--great double-decked barges, three hundred feet long, with a lower hold below the main deck. Along two-thirds of the barge's length ran an iron cage, reaching from the lower to the upper deck-cover, and having the appearance of a great two-storied tiger's cage. Eight of them were moored alongside the landing-stage. Five of them were crowded by wretched prisoners, each barge containing from four to five hundred persons of both s.e.xes and the Cossack guards--a terrible sight indeed.

Provided as I was with an Imperial permit and a doubly-stamped road-pa.s.sport that directed all keepers of post-stations to provide me with the mail horses, and give me the right of way on the Post Road, I had set forth again after a day's rest towards Tobolsk.

The first snow had fallen on the third day after leaving Tiumen, and the country, covered by its white mantle, presented always a dreary aspect, rendered drearier and more dispiriting by the gangs of wretched exiles which we constantly overtook.

Men, women, and children in companies from a hundred to three hundred, having left the barges, were marching forward to that far-off bourne whence none would ever return. They, indeed, presented a woeful spectacle, mostly of the criminal cla.s.ses, all their heads being half, or clean-shaven. The majority of the men were in chains, and many were linked together. Not a few of the women marched among the men as prisoners, while the rest trudged along into voluntary exile, holding the hands of their husbands, brothers, lovers or children. Some of the sick, aged and young were in springless carts, but all the others toiled onward through the snow like droves of cattle, bent to the icy blast, a grey-clad, silent crowd, guarded by a dozen Cossacks, with an officer taking his ease in a taranta.s.s in the rear.

Once we met a family of Jews--husband, wife and two children--in a taranta.s.s, with a Cossack with bayonet fixed alongside. We stopped to change horses with them, as we were then midway between post-stations.

The man, a bright, intelligent, middle-aged fellow, addressed us in French, and said he had been a wealthy fur merchant in Nijni Novgorod, but was exiled to the Yenisei country simply because he was a Jew. His eyes were clouded with regret at the bitter consciousness of his captivity. Four thousand of his townsmen had, he said, emigrated to England and America, and then pointing to his pretty, delicate wife and two chubby children, the tears rolled down his cheeks, as he faltered out: "Siberie!" Poor fellow!

That word had all the import of a h.e.l.l to many--many more than him.

The distance between relays on the Great Post Road was, we found, from sixteen to thirty versts, and the speed of fresh horses about ten versts an hour.

Vasilli, the ugly bearded yams.h.i.+ck who had lost one eye, we had engaged in Tiumen, and he had contracted to drive me during the whole of my journey. He was a sullen fellow, who said little, but on finding that I was travelling with an Imperial permit, his chief delight was to hustle up the master of each post-station and threaten to report to the Governor of the province if I, the Excellency, were kept waiting for a single instant.

Usually, changing operations at the stations occupied anything from forty minutes to two hours, according to the temper or trickishness of the post-horse keeper and his grooms, for they were about the meanest set of knaves and rogues on the face of Asia. Yet sight of my permit caused them all to tremble and cringe and hustle, and I certainly could not complain of any undue delay.

We had set out in a taranta.s.s from Tiumen--the town from which the Imperial courier had despatched the order to the various Governors--but as soon as the snow came I purchased a big sledge, and in this we managed to travel with far greater comfort over the snow than by cart over the deeply-rutted road.

None can know the terrible monotony of Siberian travel save those who have endured it.

Nowadays one can cover Siberia from the frontier to far Vladivostock in fifteen days in a luxurious drawing-room car, with restaurant and sleeping-berth, a bath-room and a piano, the line running for the most part near the Old Post Road. But leave the railway and strike north or south, and the same terrible greyness and monotony will grip your senses and depress you as perhaps no other journey in the world can do.

It was dusk when at last we sped, our runners hissing over the frozen snow, into the wood-built town of Tomsk, and alighted at the Hotel Million, a dismal place with corridors long and dark, and bedroom doors fastened by big iron padlocks and hasps! The full-bearded proprietor wandered along with an enormous bunch of keys, opening the doors and exhibiting his uninviting apartments; and at first I actually believed that Vasilli had mistaken my order and driven to a Siberian prison instead of conducting me to a hotel.

Upstairs, however, the rooms were much better. But there were no was.h.i.+ng arrangements whatever, or mattresses or bedding; for every traveller in Siberia is expected to carry his own pillows and bedclothes. Here, however, we put up and ate our evening meal in true Siberian style--a single tough beefsteak--simply that and nothing more.

Afterwards I drove through the snowy, unlighted streets to the Governor's palace, a long, log-built place, and on giving my name to the Cossack sentry at the door he at once saluted. Apparently he had been warned of my coming. So had the servants, for with much bowing and grave ceremony I was shown along a corridor lit by petroleum lamps to a small reception-room at the farther end.

The furniture was of the cheap, gaudy character which in England would speak mutely of the hire-system. But it had, no doubt, come from Petersburg at enormous cost of transit, and was perhaps the best and most luxurious furniture--it was covered with red embossed velvet--in all Siberia.

Scarcely was I afforded time to look round the close, overheated place with its treble windows, when General Tschernaieff, a rather short, white-haired, pleasant-featured man in a green uniform, with the Cross of St Anne at his throat, entered, greeting me warmly and expressing a hope that I had had a pleasant journey.

"I received word of your coming. Mr Trewinnard, some weeks ago," His Excellency said rather pompously. "I am commanded to treat you as a guest of my Imperial Master. Therefore you will, I hope, be my guest here in the palace."

I told him that I already had quarters at the Hotel Million, whereupon he laughed, saying:

"I fear that you will find it very rough and uncouth after hotels in Petersburg or in your own London."

I replied that as a constant traveller, and one who had knocked about in all corners of the world, I was used to roughing it. Then, after he had offered me a cigarette, and a lean manservant, who, I afterwards learned, was an ex-convict, had brought us each a gla.s.s of champagne, I explained to him the object of my visit.

"Madame Marya de Rosen and her daughter Luba de Rosen, politicals,"

repeated His Excellency, as though speaking to himself. "Of course, sir, as you know, all prisoners, both criminal or political, pa.s.s through the forwarding-prison here. It is myself who decides to which settlement they shall be sent. But--well, there are so many that the Chief of the Police puts the lists before me and I sign them away to Nerchinsk, to Yakutsk, to Sredne Kolimsk, to Verkhoiansk, to Udinsk, or wherever it may be. Their names, I fear, I never notice. I have sent some politicals recently up to Parotovsk, fifty versts north of Yakutsk.

The two prisoners may have been among them."

"Here, I suppose, they lose their ident.i.ty, do they not?" I asked, looking at the white-headed official who governed that great Asiatic province. He was sixty-five, he had told me, and had served twenty-seven years in Siberia.

"Yes. Only across the road in the archives of the forwarding-prison are their names kept. When they leave Tomsk they are known in future--until their death, indeed--only by a registered number."

Then, rising, the white-headed Governor rang a bell, and on his secretary, a young Cossack captain, entering, he gave him certain instructions to go across to the prison and obtain the registers of prisoners during the previous month.

Afterwards, he stretched himself out in his long chair, smoking and asking me questions concerning myself and the object of my journey.

As soon as he learned that I was a British diplomat and personal friend of His Majesty, his manner became much more cordial, and he declared himself ready to do everything in his power to bring my mission to a successful issue.

Presently the secretary returned, carrying two large registers and accompanied by a tall, dark-bearded man in uniform and wearing a decoration, who I learned was the governor of the prison.

He saluted His Excellency on entering the room, and said in Russian:

"Your Excellency is, I believe, inquiring regarding the prisoner Marya de Rosen, widow, of Petersburg, deported by administrative order?"

"Yes," said the General. "Where has she been sent, and what is her number?"

"She was the woman about whom we received special instructions from the Ministry of Police in Petersburg, Your Excellency will remember,"

replied the prison governor.

"Special instructions!" I echoed, interrupting. "What were they?"

But His Excellency, after a moment's reflection, said: "Ah! I now remember! Of course. There was a note upon the papers in General Markoff's own handwriting to the effect that she was a dangerous person."

"Yes. She was one of those when your Excellency sent to Parotovsk,"