The return

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

The Return

By H. de Vere Stacpoole

THE stars sparkle like burning salt, and from the woods comes the bark of a wolf—the bark of a dog wolf answered by the howl of his mate.

The same old woods, the same sky, the same night, but across the arch of the sky to-night, of all nights that ever shone on this world of snow and wrong and regret and exile, there is written in letters of fire, leaping like the stars, the words, "Russia is free! Russia is free!" The chains of the people are broken, and God has come to rule.

I have been six years in exile; or is it seven? I was forty when I came here, but now feel sixty, and the hands that were the hands of a journalist and man of letters are the claws of a beast; but my soul is still the soul of a man.

I have no hate left. It burned itself out long ago and left me in peace; there is not an old scar on my body that has not ceased to cry out against the ruler that made it, for I have recognized that he was a condition, not a man.

Well, well, it is easy to pride oneself. It was not I that told myself that, but the wind and the sun and the stars and the silence; for this is the country of silence and the country of signs. Here the stars beckon, and all nature talks to the heart in the alphabet of the deaf and dumb.

All things go forward, pressed by a tide that has its ebb and flow. It is useless to hate the ebb or love the flow; and look, if you doubt, out of the silence, which is the world beyond this silence, a hand has reached and written those words across the sky, "Russia is free!" Yet the wolf howls on the same.

We are free; we have been free a long time, yet we did not know. This little post is so far, so far, that the news forgot us. How long have we been free? Six months, eight months? I do not know. The messenger said, "Oh, a long time." Perhaps he was ashamed, perhaps he himself did not know; his very coming was an accident. That is Siberia.

He was a fat man in furs, with the face of a Mongol, and he sat in the warmth of the main hut, with his hands crossed on his big belly, half drowsy, resting before he went on. He seemed to care about nothing but that he and his horses were fed, and the number of versts between here and Berizov. He showed the guards papers; he told us we were free, that we could go back. How he did not say; where he did not say. "You can go back." We did not ask; we knew, and I sat for a long time, when he was gone, walking in the streets of Moscow. Moscow! with all things realized, and the past a bad dream.

Then comes the moment of grief: but why have my brothers forgotten me? And the answer. How could they know? I was moved here a year ago, the archives of the old Government may have been destroyed, they were busy completing that which I long ago lent my hand to, and the best men are men, and men are small. The wind has told that.

Then I woke to hear the others. The guards were one with us, as though they had been plotting revolution all their lives. Eight words dropped by the messenger had broken everything for them that had to do with the past: "The people are living in the Winter Palace."

 

There are fifteen of us here, which, with the guards, makes twenty-two; yet when I woke from my reverie there might have been a hundred men talking. I have come to believe that there were forty-four men here, not twenty-two, each man being double; for, now when I heard them talking, each man was a different man from what he had been only an hour before. Truly the word "revolution" has its meaning, for here were men brooding who had been careless and laughing, and men laughing who had been brooding, and Chicherin, my friend and confidant, idealist, dreamer, was talking like a drunken man about women!

I had seen much, but this was the most extraordinary thing I had ever seen. Here was a man with one burning ideal, freedom; in a moment it had been realized, and, -behold! in the next he was talking like an animal! It was as though the idealist had completed its cycle of existence and died; just as a butterfly completes its existence and dies.

Oppression made Chicherin great, made him even renounce those women whom he evidently loved so much, risk all, lose all. And now that oppression has vanished—

They say a business man, when he retires, deteriorates; relieved of hard work, he dies. Hard work, oppression, the things that seem to destroy the mind and soul, after all, may they not contain the true food of the mind and soul?

And yet, again, there is Katkoff, another friend of mine, and a relative of him who once edited the Moscow "Gazette." Exile and brooding had made him seem like an animal; one would swear that he had forgotten all things. Food was his great concern, and, behold! now he was sitting with head raised and the light that had vanished returned upon his face like the dawn of the new world.

And I myself? In my reverie I was walking the streets of Moscow with Sonia, whose dreams never rose above the level of millinery, but whose eyes were of the deepest, strangest blue. A little type-writer girl, she was the first thing that came to me out of the new world. Man is man.

Katkoff, here, has always been nicknamed the Dog. Not out of derision or contempt, but fondness. He has the look of a faithful dog, and his mind is instinctive. That is perhaps why he is higher than us all.

 

I have said that we are a small post, so far, so far; yet we are only fifty versts south of Berizov, the town of birch-trees—Berizov, beneath whose snows lie buried the flower of the Russian court and army; Berizov, where Menzikofif, prince and courtier, found his tomb; exiles all. Has the trumpet of the Revolution found these? What would they say? How could they believe, "The people are living in the Winter Palace"?

 

Boom! boom! boom! The drum that rouses us to work or brings us to meals is beating; Chicherin is the drummer, and we are huddled together, making our last preparations for departure. Guards, exiles, all of us, are off, taking everything. For Berizov? Never. West.

The sun is rising in the west, which has so long risen in the east. Across the Urals and beyond, on foot, on our hands and knees, anyhow; beyond.

Sledges packed with provisions, the axes we have laid to trees, the rifles that have been leveled at our hearts—everything goes with us but the agricultural implements we have used and shall use no more. We shall fish no more in the Obi, nor send our logs down in rafts in summer, nor take furs in winter. The black fox, the lynx, sable, marmot, marten, squirrel, are free of us!. Boom! boom! boom!

We have become different since last night. Then every man was thinking differently from his neighbor; now we are all thinking the same. Free men in a free world, we are not free; an imperative magnetism draws us, a whirlwind drives us, we move as a train moves on its metals. West.

Then, close together as if for company, and ever looking back at the log houses we shall not see again, across the snow in the early spring dawn, at the birch-trees and the firs marking the line of the Obi, we move off.

One thing small stands out—the drum which Chicherin flung away and is lying there near the door of the general hut. It will never beat again. The drummer has gone west, and the noise of his drumming fills the world from the far sea to the Urals and beyond. We follow his call to freedom across the Urals and beyond. Boom! boom! boom!

 

The snow is covered with the tracks of beasts, wolf and fox, and the spoor of reindeer who went north in the night. There is not a cloud in the sky. We notice that now for the first time, though the sky has been cloudless for many days. The sun is shining. We notice that now for the first time since exile took us; the wind is blowing, our hearts are beating, we have faces and hands and arms and legs.

Men fight with one another to pull on the sledges, laughing all the time. Chicherin, suddenly running backward before us with arms outspread, cries:

"Brothers, we can go east or west, north or south; it is only bur will that matters."

"We can say what we want," cries another. "Curse the Romanoffs!"

"And have what we want," cries another. "The world is ours."

And the wind blows in our faces like the breath of God.

We reach the great fir forest, which is two, being divided by a street of snow half a verst broad. It goes due west. We have no compass. Katkoff, the Dog, is our compass. He has the instinct of an animal for direction.

Here, suddenly, distance rises up before me and appals me, the distance to be covered on foot, and I say to myself, "We are surely mad."

At noon we halt to rest and eat, the forest still on each side, and on the wind that stirs the branches comes a voice, "They are surely mad." No one hears it but me.

We have gone one inch on our journey. While I am eating I am thinking. There are seven passes across the Urals, and that from Perm to Yekaterinburg would be the best for us, but that is far south. Could we cross there and continue south, we would find the railway at Ufa or even Samara. We must find the railway.

But what made us start like this in such a small band? Why did we not make for Berizov, where we could have joined a party bound for Russia, better supplied, better led? I think it was Katkoff.

He wanted to get "there," and "there" lay west, and Berizov north, and he said he knew the way and would lead us. We scarcely heard him before we had agreed.

Two years ago he escaped, crossed the mountains and reached Ust Woina, where he was captured.

Then, breaking silence, I speak about the railway. Katkoff answers:

"Which railway?"

I reply:

"The Transiberian."

He laughs at me, pointing out that to reach that we should have to march across Russia.

Even to reach the railway from Perm to Solvitchegod would be useless. No, our destination is Archangel, and from there by rail to Moscow. It would be only three hundred and fifty versts. Once we had crossed the Petchora River, it would be easy.

He draws a map on the snow, kneeling with the sun upon him, his cap off, and his hair hanging over his eyes.

The others all agree. The railway from Archangel to Moscow, what could be better? There would be no fares to pay. Returned exiles, and the railways in the hands of the people.

I suddenly see a Pullman dining-car that took me six years ago from Moscow to Spask, the food on the table before me, the bottle of wine. Then it vanishes, leaving nothing but the snow and the fir-trees and Katkoff rising up and brushing his knees.

The sledges go on again, and now the forest breaks up, and now before us lies the Sosva River, frozen, and the great plain beyond, and away, far away in the blue sky, a summit—Toll Poss. The Urals!

"See! see!" cries Chicherin, moving his arm from north to south, where the dazzling sun shows a line of ridges, the Urals, cut as if with a graver's tool, unspeakably distant.

We could never see them from the post. The rising ground and the forest hid them; but they are there, standing forever, heedless of all things; barriers once, but barriers no more.

And the great summit is not of these, but beyond them. He is in Europe, we are in Asia. He is in Russia, we are in Siberia, and he beckons us home.

"Two days' tramp," says Katkoff.

Away, far away, to the northwest, things are moving on the dazzling plain. Reindeer, making north, and overhead a great bird is flying toward the mountains. The birds have always been free.

Away to the north, there, lies Munkeshsk on its bit of river, sixty versts or so away. Then we go on.

We are under the mountains making a bit north for the way through them that Katkoff knows. Munkeshsk lies to east of us. This is the third day out.

 

Up a long valley, always rising, then from rock to rock, hauling and lifting the light sledges and their loads. It would be nothing of a climb without them; with them it is terriiic. Granite rock and snow, higher up limestone and quartz; yet the mind passes over them like a bird to beyond.

"It is right," says Katkoff; "we have to pay something for our freedom. Remember what our brothers have paid, what they have been paying all those months while we were there doing nothing."

Not only have we to carry our provisions, but the furs in which we sleep, the old half-outworn furs we wear, and winter furs that would have been taken to Berizov in a month's time, and which we have sewn together hurriedly to make bags, into which we get at night like the Arctic men, only here it is not cold as there. The spring has come mild, and the frost does not do more than hold the snow from melting.

But up here it is colder. Looking back, we can see the plains of Asia, and we are going easier now, for there is a true path, though blocked at times by boulders.

Katkoff says it is the eighth pass of the Urals, that a few men who know the hills use it, but mostly foxes and wolves.

Now the summit of Toll Poss shows clearly away to the south; we are on the top.

A vast rock, which we climb in turn, gives us a view of Europe. There is no plain here to see, but forests and hills. The wind has died away, and the silence is terrific. Great ravens come up from the valleys below, rise, sink, and vanish.

Yes, we have gone more than an inch on our journey now. There is Russia, the first mighty versts of the land of everything but freedom yesterday, today the land of everything.

Looking, I hear the others below crying out, "A man." I come down.

Here is the man. Coming along the path between two rocks, muffled and carrying a pack. A man! It is a scarecrow. He shouts when he sees us, and comes on; the beard on his face sticks out like a brush, his eyes are bright as the eyes of a bird, and his call is like the call of a bird. Then we see by the last rags of uniform, hidden and peeping through other rags, and by something indefinable, that he is a soldier. We shout and surround him.

"Where from?"

"Tannenberg." He shows us a scarred arm.

"But that was years ago."

"Which?"

"Tannenberg."

"I do not know."

"We heard of the battle years ago. Is the war still going on?"

"It still goes on."

"And the army, how is it?"

"There is no army."

Then we know that he is mad.

"Where are you going to?"

"Tomsk."

Katkoff places his hand on his shoulder; he pushes him away. Something black is dangling from his girdle; it is a dead crow.

The atmosphere has become pestiferous. We let him pass. He goes on as though we had never met.

"There goes the Russian Army," some one says and laughs. Chicherin shades his eyes after the man.

"The war has blown him here," says Chicherin. "What a war! Brothers, let us remember this."

He lasts us the whole day, that man and the picture of him, and we push on, thinking and talking of him. He has come across western Russia and Great Russia, through time. His figures should be eternal, beside Napoleon.

Boom! boom! boom! The old drum lying on the snow seems beating again, the drummer a skeleton with a dead crow tied to its middle; it summons up the glories of the past.

 

We are over the Urals and among the foot-hills, and seven men are dead, killed by the man from Tannenberg. He had with him some disease and left it with us, burning fever, delirium, death. I alone, with Katkoff, escaped whole.

We are in a land of trees, a land of hills; we are close to the Urals, but cannot see them. How different this side from the other!

The stricken ones have all recovered except the dead, but are wrecks, and our going is slow.

Birch-woods, fir-woods, all preparing for the change of spring, and a little tree we passed to-day covered with a mist of green. It looked confused, finding itself there, confessing its faith in God before the others.

The trees believe in His goodness, else they would not put out their leaves. Were the trees to turn atheists, there would be no spring.

Spring is coming to the world of things as well as to the world of men, and I fancy as I go all these woods refusing to believe and trust and love, all but that little tree. It is a weird thought.

We are across the Petchora River, and ten versts to the north lies Koshva. I am in a herdsman's house alone with him and Katkoff, who is nursing me. The rest have gone on, leaving us, but leaving with us food.

I thought I had escaped, but the burning fever has taken me. Every man left me to my fate, but the Dog was faithful.

The man from Tannenberg is standing at the door, holding up the dead crow and inviting me to go with him. I rise and follow; we walk together like ghosts through the woods, ever making east. I burn like fire. He tells me that all Russia is burning, but that it will be cooler on the Urals. I ask him where he is leading me, and he answers, "Tomsk."

I ask him, "What of the army?" He answers, "It is gone."

I ask him, "What of the war?" and he answers, "It still goes on."

Now we are on the Urals, on a peak higher than Toll Poss, and the plains of Asia lie before us under the sapphire sky of spring. Then he goes on and leaves me and, as I watch him going, a voice cries, "There goes the Russian Army," and I am lying on the straw again, with Katkoff putting food to my mouth.

When we go on it is through lands green with spring. Since leaving the post I have passed through space and time, from Asia to Europe, from winter's end to full spring, great distances. I am like the man from Tannenberg.

What is the matter with Katkoff? It seems that during my illness he went to Koshva for drugs, but could not get them. Since then he has been gloomy.

 

West, always west. On leaving the post, we each took a second pair of boots from the store. It was as well.

When they deserted me, they left my second pair with the provisions. It was as well. I shall soon want them. What has-become of our companions, those others? Who knows?

It has rained, and the rain has passed, leaving behind it sunshine and a thousand perfumes; the very earth smells sweet. All things are new.

Passing through a wood, in a path we see a man. He is a long way off, and as he comes toward us, Katkoff says:

"There is a man at last. For two days we have met no one."

He is a priest, but in rags.

He has lost an eye, and his face is scarred as if by brambles.

We ask him what news, and he answers:

"The Revolution still goes on."

"Against whom?"

"God."

He is mad, and he leaves us, waving his arms and singing, and the trees take him, and we go on.

 

The Timan Mountains lie far behind us, and before us now a great plain. The gods of distance walk with us, touching all things with their wands and making them great. Katkoff flings himself on his face upon the ground before the plain as before an idol.

"I cannot go on."

I sit beside him, and a great bird wheels over our heads and cries. The desolation surrounds us. Then we go on. For an hour I walk with the Urals before me, beckoning me to freedom. They vanish, and there is only the plain: the sun is sinking before us, and its light is on our faces.

Katkoff, who has been strange for many days, says to me:

"Have you thought that we are walking toward the sunset, not the dawn?"

I sit beside him as the stars come out, and the gods of distance sit beside us. I say:

"It is a long journey to meet our brothers," and Katkoff replies:

"It is as though we were walking toward the stars." He points to the stars on the horizon, which we can see, but never reach.

I say that, and he replies:

"I will reach them."

We sleep, lying on the ground, and when the dawn awakens me, I turn to Katkoff. He is still sleeping. I try to rouse him; he will not move. He is dead.

He has reached the stars. I try to dig him a grave with my hands, but the ground is hard, and I can do nothing. Then I sit beside him, and the wind blows the dust around us. I talk to him. Far better to lie out under the sky of God than to lie in the dark beneath the ground.

Then I go on, taking what food there is left. I have no compass, but the Dog is leading me. He walks beside me, though I cannot see him,

A thousand willow-trees are waving in the wind before me, silver gray in the wind and bordering the Washka River.

Every tree speaks a tongue of its own, and the silver-gray willows tell to me what has to be whispered. Out from among them comes a girl as joyous as spring herself; before her rises a gate, and behind her lies a garden. She stands at the gate; she is waiting for me, and as I approach, she fades away, leaving only the willow-trees. She died years before I knew Sonia. That is youth. She returns a sadness and a ghost. That is love. The Washka, flowing to the white sea, murmurs her name as I sit by the bank, and then the willows speak to the wind with the voice of those pine-trees beyond the Urals. "Surely they are mad!"

Love has called up other loved ones, and I see the faithful Katkoff kneeling on the snow, drawing his map, so many versts to "there." I see Chicherin and the rest. How has it fared with them? Have they, too, reached the stars, or are they wandering like me in a land where the people are dumb?

For the few peasants I meet are dumb, with scarcely a word for a wanderer like me. I would starve but for the Dog, who still leads me, always to somewhere where I can get bread.

O Russia, what a wilderness! So great that your heart is above the heart of man, and I am a stranger in the land that is my home. You cast me coldly into exile, and as coldly you receive me. It is the fault of your size, and the space that lies between man and man; only in the cities is there warmth.

 

The Dvina lies before me so broad that I can never cross. But the Dog is still with me. A boat is coming down the stream, and in it a girl. It passes so close that she sees my face and hears my voice, crying for help.

1 am in the boat, and she is telling me that her father has been killed, that every one has been killed she loved. I ask, "By whom?" She does not know.

I have come so far that thought lies behind me, tattered and mangled, a bit on the Urals, a bit here and there, like the rags of a man who has passed through brambles. I drift with the boat.

She is so young that she knows nothing, only fear. Her hands are white, and her face good to look upon but for that in her eyes; and the whole day passes, and the night, while we steer the boat so that she may not drift on the banks.

Then we leave her, for we have no more bread.

 

A misty night with the stars scarcely showing, and a railway track before us. We walk along it hand in hand.

From far away the words of Katkoff come to me, "The railway from Archangel to Moscow." The Dog is still faithful, though his body lies there on the plain. We reach a siding where there are trucks, open trucks. I have a loaf of bread, and we have drunk from a stream. I help her into one of the trucks, and hand her the bread, then I follow, and we lie on the floor of the empty truck, close together for warmth, with the misty stars above us.

I tell her that when men come in the morning all will be right and that we shall be taken to Moscow. She makes no reply, but shivers.

I listen, and in the night I hear nothing but the wind, like the wind on the plain where Katkoff lies. Then I hear the wind speak as it spoke in the fir-trees beyond the Urals, only the words are different, one word is different: "Surely you are mad."

I shiver till the girl who has dropped asleep awakes.

"I am mad."

To hide it from her, I stop shivering, clenching my fingers and toes.

I reason with myself. I have seen real things and things unreal, the man of the Urals, the priest, Katkoff lying on the plain, my journey in the boat. These I feel to be unreal; and then the Dvina. How did I reach the Dvina? I have no recollection of my journey there from the Washka. And the story of the girl about her murdered father—unreal. Then I forget.

I am awakened from sleep by a blow. A train has attached itself to the trucks, and as I wake, the words that followed me into sleep repeat themselves:

"I am mad."

I rise and stand up by the sleeping girl, who has not been roused, and the railway men, seeing me, come running to the truck and ask me what I am doing there, and I explain.

I tell them of my journey, speaking slowly, and leaving out all those things that are unreal. They find the girl, and, waking her, examine her hands. Then they question me, but I will say nothing, only repeating that I am an old revolutionary with friends in Moscow, where I wish to go.

They will not listen to me. They ask again about the girl, and why I am hiding with her. Then they bind my hands, and fling me into the darkness of a van half filled with sacks, and I hear the screaming of the girl; but I know that to be unreal.

I am mad, and they have discovered it. I must not speak again, nor do I wish to; I desire only sleep. I who have walked from the Urals and beyond desire only sleep, sleep, sleep.

They wake me sometimes and give me a handful of bread, and I eat it; some water and I drink it; and then I sleep and dream.

 

I walk again that journey that never ends, and I meet again the forms and phantoms I have met. Days and nights and years seem to pass, and then I am in the station at Moscow. It is night, and I am taken away by two men, still bound; but I say no word, nor ask where they are taking me.

I am in a cell surrounded with madmen. We are huddled together; the air I cannot breathe. One oil-lamp lights it so dimly that I cannot see. I hear men sighing and whispering together, and then I hear a voice I know suddenly raised. It is the voice of Chicherin.

Forgetting my fear of speech, forgetting my madness, forgetting all things, I say:

"Chicherin, is that your voice?"

He answers:

"What! Sacha! Surely that is your voice."

Then I know Chicherin is here, and the remembrance of my madness comes to me as a shock. Is he, too, mad? He has reached me and is embracing me.

"What of Katkoff?" he cries.

Then a light brighter than stars breaks before me at the name of the Dog, and I cry:

"Chicherin, what is this place?"

"A prison."

"A prison!"

"The Boobarkie prison; but what of Katkoff?"

"He is dead. But, oh, answer me, am I mad? Are you, too, mad?"

"No, there is only one madman here, and he is dumb; but they who have prisoned us are surely mad."

"Chicherin, answer me; did we meet a man on the Urals?"

"From Tannenberg?"

"Oh, God, I thank Thee! I am sane. But the girl—then her cries were real."

"What girl?"

"I do not know; and the priest, the priest was real."

"What priest?"

"One I met, torn and with one eye, who was mad, and who cried out that the Revolution warred against God."

"He was sane."

Then from all quarters of the cell come murmurs:

"He was sane, he was sane," and I see again the priest, and he vanishes, and I see again the girl.

 

As I stand in silence Chicherin speaks.

"Do you, then, not believe us? Friends, make answer to this man. What is God?"

Then comes a voice from a corner of the cell:

"He is mercy"; and another, "He is love"; and another, "He is compassion"; and an old man's voice speaks and says, "He is a little child"; and another, "He is all things innocent." And the voice of Chicherin:

"He was the army that is dead, and whose corpse, moving with the life that is in maggots, has crossed the Urals to poison the East." And again, "He was myself in exile; He is now myself in prison. Friend, forgive me that I left you on your bed of straw and sickness; unknown to myself, I was hurrying to find Him. Seeking freedom and ease and the love of women, I found the love of God here among His martyrs."

"But who are these you call the martyrs?" I ask him, and he replies:

"Criminals. Speak, brothers, and tell this man of your crimes."

Then comes a voice:

"My name is Boris Nesvitsky, my crime was faith. I was an officer, and fought for the God of Russia and our allies. He was betrayed. I rebelled. I am here."

And another:

"My crime was hope. I was a Revolutionary in the cause of freedom. I rebelled against oppression. I am here."

And another:

"My name is Ivan Gerkow. I am little and old; if you saw me in the daylight, you would laugh. My crime was charity. I gave shelter to the oppressed. I am here."

And a voice:

"I was held to watch my son sawn asunder by demons. My name is grief."

And another:

"I have forgotten."

 

I listen for more, and hear only the sighs of the unfortunate; through the odors of the lamp and the cess-pit comes the memory of the wind across the Obi, there where men laughed and their souls were free.

I ask of Chicherin:

"But what man has done these things?" And the voices of twenty men answer with a shout:

"He is nameless."

"But numbered," comes a voice more terrible than any voice that has spoken yet. It comes from the floor, from a bundle, that was once a man, lying against the wall.

A man beside me whispers:

"The madman has spoken," and Chicherin answers, "Who knows?" and the voice goes on: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name.

"Here is wisdom: let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred three score and six.

"And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshiped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone."

Many days pass, and scarcely living, I am taken from the cell. I stand in a room before a man who sits at a table, a man bald, wrinkled, laughing at times, who questions me.

"Where have you come from?"

I answer:

"I have clothes that are rags, and a pocket that is empty; I have neither faith nor hope, nor heart to hold charity, nor am I innocent, nor a little child. They tell me I am free."

Free!