Rezanov by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
XXVII
The snow rarely falls in Krasnoiarsk. It is a little oasis in thegreat winter desert of Siberia. Rezanov, his face turned to thewindow, could see the red banks on the opposite side of the river. Thesun transformed the gilded cupolas and crosses into dazzling points oflight, and the sky above the spires and towers, the stately square andnarrow dirty streets of the bustling little capital, was as blue andunflecked as that which arched so high above a land where Castilianroses grew, and one woman among a gay and thoughtless people dreamed,with all the passion of her splendid youth, of the man to whom she hadpledged an eternal troth. Rezanov's mind was clear in those lastmoments, but something of the serenity and the selfishness of death hadalready descended upon him. He heard with indifference the sobs ofJon, crouched at the foot of his bed. Tears and regrets were a part ofthe general futility of life, insignificant enough at the grandthreshold of death.
No doubt that his great schemes would die with him, and were heremembered at all it would be as a dreamer; or as a failure because hehad died before accomplishing what his brain and energy and enthusiasmalone could force to fruition. None realized better than he thepaucity of initiative and executive among the characteristics of theSlav. What mattered it? He had had glimpses more than once of theapparently illogical sequence of life, the vanity of human effort, thewanton cruelty of Nature. He had known men struck down before in thematurity of their usefulness, cities destroyed by earthquake orhurricane in the fairest and most promising of their days: public men,priests, parents, children, wantons, criminals, blotted out with equalimpartiality by a brutal force that would seem to have but a casual usefor the life she flung broadcast on her planets. Man was the helplessvictim of Nature, a calf in a tiger's paws. If she overlooked him, orswept him contemptuously into the class of her favorites, well andgood; otherwise he was her sport, the plaything of her idler moments.Those that cried "But why?" "What reason?" "What use?" were thosethat had never looked over the walls of their ego at the great dramaticmoments in the career of Nature, when she made immortal fame forherself at the expense of millions of pigmies.
And if his energies, his talents, his usefulness, were held of noaccount, at least he could look back upon a past when he would haveseemed to be one of the few supreme favorites of the forces that shapedman's life and destiny. Until he had started from Kronstadt four yearsbefore on a voyage that had humiliated his proud spirit more than once,and undermined as splendid a physique as ever was granted to even aRussian, he had rolled the world under his foot. With an appearanceand a personal magnetism, gifts of mind and manner and character thatwould have commanded attention amid the general flaccidity of his raceand conquered life without the great social advantages he inherited, hehad enjoyed power and pleasure to a degree that would have spoiled acoarser nature long since. True, the time had come when he had caredlittle for any of his endowments save as a means to great ends, whenall his energies had concentrated in the determination to live a lifeof the highest possible usefulness--without which man's span was butexistence--his ambitions had cohered and been driven steadily toward apermanent niche in history; then paled and dissolved for an hour in theglorious vision of human happiness.
And wholly as he might realize man's insignificance among the blindforces of nature, he could accept it philosophically and die with hissoul uncorroded by misanthropy, that final and uncompromising admissionof failure. The misanthrope was the supreme failure of life because hehad not the intelligence to realize, or could not reconcile himself to,the incomplete condition of human nature. Man was made up of littlequalities, and aspirations for great ones. Many yielded in thestruggle and sank into impotent discontent among the small materialthings of life, instead of uplifting themselves with the picture of theinevitable future when development had run its course, and indulgentlypitying the children of their own period who so often made life hatefulwith their greed, selfishness, snobbery--most potent obstacle to humanendeavor--and injustice. The bad judgment of the mass! How manycareers it had balked, if not ruined, with its poor ideals, its meanheroes, its instinctive avoidance of superior qualities foreign toitself, its contemptible desire to be identified with a fashion. Itwas this low standard of the crowd that induced misanthropy in manyotherwise brave spirits who lacked the insight to discern the divinespark underneath, the persistence, sure of reward, to fight their wayto this spark and reveal it to the gaze of astonished and flatteredhumanity. Rezanov's very arrogance had led him to regard the mass ofmankind as but one degree removed from the nursery; his good nature andphilosophical spirit to treat them with an indulgence that keptsourness out of his cynicism and inevitably recurring weariness anddisgust; his ardent imagination had consoled itself with the vision ofa future when man should live in a world made reasonable by the triumphof ideals that now lurked half ashamed in the high spaces of the humanmind.
He looked back in wonder at the moment of wild regret and protest--thebitterer in its silence--when they had told him he must die; when inthe last rally of the vital forces he had believed his will was stillstrong enough to command his ravaged body, to propel his brain, stillteeming with a vast and complicated future, his heart, still warm andinsistent with the image it cherished, on to the ultimates of ambitionand love. How brief it had been, that last cry of mortality, with itsaccompaniment of furious wonder at his unseemly and senseless cuttingoff. In the adjustment and readjustment of political and naturalforces the world ambled on philosophically, fulfilling its inevitabledestiny.
If he had not been beyond humor, he would have smiled at the idea thatin the face of all eternity it mattered what nation on one littleplanet eventually possessed a fragment called California. To him thatfair land was empty and purposeless save for one figure, and even ofher he thought with the terrible calm of dissolution. During theselast months of illness and isolation he had been less lonely than atany time of his life save during those few weeks in California, for hehad lived with her incessantly in spirit; and in that subtleimaginative communion had pressed close to a profound and complex soul,revealed before only in flashes to a vision astray in the confusion ofthe senses. He had felt that her response to his passion was far morevital and enduring than dwelt in the capacity of most women; he hadappreciated her gifts of mind, her piquant variousness that scotchedmonotony, the admirable characteristics that would give a man reposeand content in his leisure, and subtly advance his career. But inthose long reveries, at the head of his forlorn caravan or in thedesolate months of convalescence, he had arrived at an absoluteunderstanding of what she herself had divined while half comprehending.
Theirs was one of the few immortal loves that reveal the rarely soundeddeeps of the soul while in its frail tenement on earth; and he harborednot a doubt that their love was stronger than mortality and that theirultimate union was decreed. Meanwhile, she would suffer, no one but hecould dream how completely, but her strong soul would conquer, and shewould live the life she had visioned in moments of despair; not ofcloistered selfishness, but of incomparable usefulness to her littleworld; and far happier, in her eternal youthfulness of heart, in thatdivine life of the imagination where he must always be with her as shehad known him briefly at his best, than in the blunt commonplaceness ofdaily existence, the routine and disillusionment of the world.Perhaps--who knew?--he had, after all, given her the best that man canoffer to a woman of exalted nature; instead of taking again with hisleft hand what his right had bestowed; completed the great gift of lifewith the priceless beacon of death.
How unlike was life to the old Greek tragedies! He recalled hisprophetic sense of impending happiness, success, triumph, as he enteredCalifornia, the rejuvenescence of his spirit in the renewal of hiswasted forces even before he loved the woman. Every event of the pastyear, in spite of the obstacles that mortal must expect, had marchedwith his ambitions and desires, and straight toward a future that wouldhave given him the most coveted of all destinies, a station in history.There had not been a hint that his brain, so meaningl
His eyes wandered from the bright cross above the little cemetery wherehe was to lie, and contracted with an expression of wonder. Where hadJon found Castilian roses in this barren land? No man had ever beenmore blest in a servant, but could even he--here-- With the lasttriumph of will over matter he raised his head, his keen, searchinggaze noting every detail of the room, bare and unlovely save for itsaltar and ikons, its kneeling priests and nuns. His eyes expanded, hisnostrils quivered. As he sank down in the embrace of that finaldelusion, his unconquerably sanguine spirit flared high before a visionof eternal and unthinkable happiness.
So died Rezanov; and with him the hope of Russians and the hindrance ofAmericans in the west; and the mortal happiness and earthly dross ofthe saintliest of California's women.
Note: I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO
ii 13 unforgetable unforgettable ii 26 vizu- visu- vi 29 Krasnioarsk Krasnoiarsk 14 22 Arguella Arguello 15 28 Anna Ana 15 28 Gertrudes Gertrudis 16 6 Ignacia Ignacio 18 17 Dios de mi alma! _Dios de mi alma!_* 20 11 Madre de Dios!" _Madre de Dios!_"* 23 3 Ay yi! _Ay yi!* 23 4 Dios, Dios_,* 23 20 Propietario Proprietario 23 23 plebian plebeian 23 26 Madre de Dios! _Madre de Dios!_* 25 18 Dios mio! _Dios mio! 25 19 mio!" mio!_"* 33 17 embarassing embarrassing 33 24 Nadesha Nadeshda 40 10 commercal commercial 40 13 momentuous momentous 43 28 disintergrating disintegrating 51 5 He lover Her lover 55 4 Morga Moraga 71 22 Rafella Rafaella 72 3 straights straits 75 9 "You "Your 94 16 inexhautible inexhaustible 103 2 embarassed embarrassed 105 3 preciptate precipitate 106 28 Bueno Buena 111 8 Madre de Dios, _Madre de Dios_,* 117 30 prefer, prefer. 118 20 I "I 128 10 Arillaga Arrillaga 128 18 ride of rid of 133 8 Arillaga Arrillaga 133 22 Arillaga Arrillaga 135 10 Are "Are 137 28 Arrilaga Arrillaga 137 29 Nakasaki Nagasaki 146 21 refuse--' refuse--" 155 24 dumfounded dumbfounded 169 29 Moragas Moraga 171 7 twice--' twice--" 177 14 said said he said 178 16 phasis." phasis. 178 26 modoties modities 195 17 civilized that civilized than 200 27 gente de _gente de_* 201 1 razon _razon_* 201 21 silk silks 204 29 Duena duena 209 2 beneficient beneficent 211 13 Ay yi! _Ay yi!* 211 14 yi! yi!_* 212 22 Ay yi! _Ay yi!_* 213 3 ay yi! _ay yi!_*
I have also omitted the accents over proper names such as Rezanov,Baranhov, and Jose, and have omitted the umlaut over the u in Arguello.
* indicates that the italics were NOT used as emphasis, but merely asindicators of SOME of the non-English words, and were eventuallystripped of their italicism for easier reading.
The first words of each chapter were also capitalized on paper, asleast most of them. These have also been uncapitalized.