XXV
Rezánov | ||
25. XXV
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
As Rezánov, 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
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. Baránhov, 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 Rezánov could reach the chapel or even exchange salutations with Baránhov. 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
After the service Rezánov 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 Baránhov 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 Baránhov 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 Rezánov, 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 Rezánov 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."
Rezánov 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
"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."
Rezánov 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?"
Rezánov 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."
Baránhov 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
"You must make yourself more comfortable," said Rezánov 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 Baránhov of his proposed marriage with the daughter of Don José Argüello.
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
But Rezánov 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
"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 Rezánov 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. Rezánov 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
"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
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
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 Rezánov, 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. Rezánov felt himself
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
And here in Sitka it was doubtful if the work on the Avos proceeded at all. Baránhov was not in sympathy with the enterprise against the Japanese, fearing the consequences to himself in the event of
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? Rezánov, 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. Rezánov, despite Baránhov'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
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 Rezánov 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 Rezánov'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. Rezánov finally
It is possible that had Concha awaited Rezánov 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
XXV
Rezánov | ||