CHAPTER XLIII
THE WOMAN FROM SIBERIA
At last there was a movement within. Halting footsteps approached thegates, and a man's voice, hoarse and weak, demanded: "Who is there?"
"It is Yossof," Anne exclaimed. "How comes he here alone? Where is mymother, Yossof?"
I started as I heard that. Her mother was alive, then, though Anne hadsaid she could not remember her, and Treherne had told me she died soonafter her arrest, more than twenty years back.
"She is within and safe; Natalya is with her," came Yossof's quaveringvoice, as he labored to unbar the gates. We heard him gasping andgroaning as if the task was beyond his strength, but he managed it atlast. The great doors swung open, and he stood leaning against one ofthem. In the chill morning light his face looked gray and drawn likethat of a corpse, just as it had looked that first time I saw him on thestaircase at Westminster. On the weed-grown path beside him lay arevolver, as if he had dropped it out of his hand when he started tounbar the gates.
"What has happened, Yossof?" Anne asked urgently.
"Nothing; all is well, Excellency," he answered. "I rode and gave theword as the order was, and when I reached the town the madness hadbegun, so I did not enter, but came on hither. My horse was spent, andI found another, but he fell and I left him and came on foot. I foundnone here save the Countess and Natalya; the others had fled, fearing anattack. So I closed the gates and kept guard."
"God reward thee, friend; thou hast done well, indeed," Anne said, andmoved on to the house.
I felt a twitch on my sleeve, and Mishka muttered in my ear.
"Count our men in and then see the gate barred. We shall be safer so. Iwill look after Yossof, and find also what food is in the house for usall. We need it sorely!"
So I sat in my saddle beside the gateway, waiting till the last of ourlaggards had come in. I saw Loris lift Anne from her horse and supporther up the short flight of wide stone steps that led up to the house.
An elderly peasant woman hurried out to meet them, and behind herappeared a weird unearthly figure; a tall woman, wearing a kind of loosewhite dressing-gown. Her gray hair was flying dishevelled about hershoulders; and her face, even seen from a distance as I saw it now,appeared like some horrible travesty of humanity. The wide open eyeswere sightless, covered with a white film; the nose was flattened anddistorted, the lips contracted, while the other features, forehead andcheeks and chin, were like a livid lined mask, grotesquely seamed andscarred.
The "Thing"--I could not think of it as a human being at thatmoment--flung out its hands, and shrieked in French, and in a voicethat, though shrill with anguish, was piercingly sweet and powerful.
"They have come,--but they shall never take me again; at least theyshall not take me alive. Anthony--Anthony! Where are you, my husband?Save me! do not let them take me!"
Anne hurried towards her, but with a scream she turned and sped backinto the house, and some one pushed the door to, so I saw no more; butfor some minutes those dreadful screams continued. They sounded almostlike the shrieks of Yossof's horse when the wolves were on him.
The men had all ridden in and were muttering to each other, crossingthemselves in superstitious fear. They seemed scared to approach thehouse; and I believe they'd have stampeded back into the forest if Ihadn't slammed the gates and barred them again.
"It is not good to be here, Excellency," stammered one. "This place ishaunted with ghosts and devils."
"Nonsense," I answered roughly. "Brave men you are indeed to befrightened of a poor mad lady who has suffered so cruelly!"
By judicious bullying I got them calmed down a bit; a Russian peasant isa difficult person to manage when he's in a superstitious funk. Mishkajoined me presently, and we marched our men round to the back of thehouse, and set them foraging for breakfast. Fortunately there was plentyof food; the place seemed provisioned for a siege. I stood about,watching and directing them. I didn't feel in the least hungry myself,only rather dazed.
A hand fell on my shoulder, and I found Loris beside me.
"Come and eat and sleep, my friend; we have done well so far. Mishkawill take charge here."
He looked almost as fresh and alert after that tremendous night we'dhad, as if he'd just come out of his bedroom at Zostrov, when we joinedhim in a big dilapidated dining-room, where he'd planked some food and acouple of bottles of wine on the great oaken table, though I was as biga scarecrow as Vassilitzi, who was as used up as if he hadn't been tobed for a week.
He had dropped his flippant manner, and was as cross and irritable as anover-tired woman.
"Think of these _canaille_ that we feed and clothe, and risk our livesfor!" he exclaimed half hysterically. "We left twenty of them here, whenAnna and I started for Zizscky yesterday,--twenty armed men. And yet atthe first rumor of danger they sneak away to the woods, and leave theircharge, that they had sworn to defend, so that we trusted them. And itis these swine, and others like them,--dastards all!--who clamor forwhat they call freedom, and think if they get their vote and their Duma,all will go well. Why should we throw our lives away for such as these?We are all fools together, you and I and Anna. And you," he turnedtowards me, "you are the biggest fool of us all, for you have not eventhe excuse that is ours! You have no stake in this accursed country andits people. _Nom du diable_, why do you act as if you had? You are--"
"Calm yourself, Stepan," Loris interposed. "Go and sleep; we all needthat. And as for your cowardly servants, forget all about them. They areworth no more. Go, as I bid you!"
His level voice, his authoritative manner, had their affect, andVassilitzi lurched away. He wasn't really drunk; but when a man isfamished and dead-tired, two or three glasses of wine will have animmense effect on him; though one glass will serve to pull him together,as it did me, to a certain extent anyhow. I was able to ask Loris aboutthat horrible apparition I had seen.
"Yes, she is the Countess Anna Pendennis, or all that remains of her,"he answered sternly and sadly. "You have only seen her at a distance,but that was sufficient to show you what Siberia may mean to adelicately nurtured woman. If she had only died--as was given out! Butshe did not die. She worked as a slave,--in the prison in winter, in thefields in summer. She had frost-bite; it destroyed her sight, her face;it made her a horror to look upon. Yet still she did not die, perhapsbecause her mind was gone, and strength lingers in mad creatures!
"Yossof told all this. He was her fellow prisoner, and he made hisescape two--no, three years or more, since. He made his way here, andAnna was good to him; as she is good to every creature in adversity.Until then she had always believed that her mother died at her birth;but when she learned the truth, she would have moved Heaven and earth todeliver her. It was accomplished at last; the Tzar was induced to signan order for the release of this mad and maimed woman. Just when allhope seemed lost the deliverance came; and the wreck that remains of theCountess Anna Pendennis was brought here,--less than three months ago;and--"
He broke off as the woman servant Yossof had spoken of as Natalyahurried into the room and unceremoniously beckoned him out. He rose atonce and followed her, but turned at the door.
"Get some sleep while you can," he said, nodding towards a great couchcovered with a bear-skin rug. "None will disturb you here for a fewhours; and we shall have either to fight or to travel again ere long."
I sat for a minute or two, trying to think over the long tragedy that hehad summed up in so few words, and wondering where Anthony Pendenniswas. Surely he should have been here with his wife and daughter; and yetno one had mentioned him, and I had had no opportunity of asking abouthim,--had, in fact, forgotten his very existence till these last fewminutes.
But consecutive thought was impossible, and I gave up the attempt, as Istumbled to the couch and fell fast asleep.
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