Exquisitely polished in manners, and very handsome in face and bearing,
there was nothing of the Tartar anywhere visible about Baron Niaz. He
had been brought up in Paris, at a fashionable Lycée, and he spoke
French with perfect fluency, as well as with some native sparkle and
genuine cleverness. His taste in music was unimpeachable: even Madame
Davidoff, _née_ Freytag, candidly admitted that his performances upon
the violin were singularly brilliant, profound, and appreciative. Moreover, though a Buriat chief, he was a most undoubted nobleman: at
the Governor's parties he took rank, by patent of the Emperor Nicholas,
as a real Russian baron of the first water. To be sure, he was nominally
a Tartar; but what of that? His mother and his grandmother, he declared,
had both been Russian ladies; and you had only to look at him to see
that there was scarcely a drop of Tartar blood still remaining anywhere
in him. If the half-caste negro is a brown mulatto, the quarter-caste a
light quadroon, and the next remove a practically white octoroon, surely
Baron Niaz, in spite of his remote Buriat great-grandfathers, might well
pass for an ordinary everyday civilized Russian. Olga Davidoff was fairly fascinated by the accomplished young baron. She
met him everywhere, and he paid her always the most marked and
flattering attention. He was a Buriat, to be sure: but at Tobolsk, you
know----. Well, one mustn't be too particular about these little
questions of origin in an Asiatic city. It was at the Governor's dance, just before Christmas, that the Baron
got his first good chance of talking with her for ten minutes alone
among the fan palms and yuccas in the big conservatory. There was a seat
in the far corner beside the flowering oleander, where the Baron led her
after the fourth waltz, and leant over her respectfully as she played
with her Chinese fan, half trembling at the declaration she knew he was
on the point of making to her. "Mademoiselle Davidoff," the Baron began in French, with a lingering
cadence as he pronounced her name, and a faint tremor in his voice that
thrilled responsively through her inmost being; "Mademoiselle Davidoff,
I have been waiting long for this opportunity of speaking to you alone,
because I have something of some importance--to me at least,
mademoiselle--about which I wish to confer with you. Mademoiselle, will
you do me the honour to listen to me patiently a minute or two? The
matter about which I wish to speak to you is one that may concern
yourself, too, more closely than you at first imagine." What a funny way to begin proposing to one! Olga Davidoff's heart beat
violently as she answered as unconcernedly as possible, "I shall be
glad, M. le Baron, I'm sure, to listen to any communication that you may
wish to make to me." "Mademoiselle," the young man went on almost timidly--how handsome he
looked as he stood there bending over her in his semi-barbaric Tartar
uniform!--"mademoiselle, the village where I live in our own country is
a lonely one among the high mountains. You do not know the Buriat
country--it is wild, savage, rugged, pine-clad, snow-clad, solitary,
inaccessible, but very beautiful. Even the Russians do not love it; but
we love it, we others, who are to the manner born. We breathe there the
air of liberty, and we prefer our own brawling streams and sheer
precipices to all the artificial stifling civilization of Paris and St. Petersburg." Olga looked at him and smiled quietly. She saw at once how he wished to
break it to her, and held her peace like a wise maiden. "Yes, mademoiselle," the young man went on, flooding her each moment
with the flashing light from his great luminous eyes; "my village in the
Buriat country lies high up beside the eternal snows. But though we live
alone there, so far from civilization that we seldom see even a passing
traveller, our life is not devoid of its own delights and its own
interests. I have my own people all around me; I live in my village as a
little prince among his own subjects. My people are few, but they are
very faithful. Mademoiselle has been educated in England, I believe?" "Yes," Olga answered. "In London, M. le Baron. I am of English
parentage, and my father sent me there to keep up the connection with
his old fatherland, where one branch of our House is still established." "Then, mademoiselle, you will doubtless have read the tales of Walter
Scott?" Olga smiled curiously. "Yes," she said, amused at his _naïveté_, "I have
certainly read them." She began to think that after all the handsome
young Buriat couldn't mean really to propose to her. "Well, you know, in that case, what was the life of a Highland chieftain
in Scotland, when the Highland chieftains were still practically all but
independent. That, mademoiselle, is exactly the life of a modern Buriat
nobleman under the Russian empire. He has his own little territory and
his own little people; he lives among them in his own little antiquated
fortress; he acknowledges nominally the sovereignty of the most orthodox
Czar, and even perhaps exchanges for a Russian title the Tartar
chieftainship handed down to him in unbroken succession from his
earliest forefathers. But in all the rest he still remains essentially
independent. He rules over a little principality of his own, and cares
not a fig in his own heart for czar, or governor, or general, or
minister." "This is rather treasonable talk for the Governor's palace," Olga put
in, smiling quietly. "If we were not already in Tobolsk we might both,
perhaps, imagine we should be sent to Siberia." The Baron laughed, and showed his two rows of pearly white teeth to the
best advantage. "They might send me to the mines," he said, "for aught I
care, mademoiselle. I could get away easily enough from village to
village to my own country; and once there, it would be easier for the
Czar to take Constantinople and Bagdad and Calcutta than to track and
dislodge Alexander Niaz in his mountain fortress." Alexander Niaz! Olga noted the name to herself hurriedly. He was
converted then! he was an orthodox Christian! That at least was a good
thing, for so many of these Buriats are still nothing more than the most
degraded Schamanists and heathens! "But, mademoiselle," the young man went on again, playing more nervously
now than ever with the jewelled hilt of his dress sword, "there is one
thing still wanting to my happiness among our beautiful Siberian
mountains. I have no lovely châtelaine to help me guard my little feudal
castle. Mademoiselle, the Buriat women are not fit allies for a man who
has been brought up among the civilization and the learning of the great
Western cities. He needs a companion who can sympathize with his higher
tastes: who can speak with him of books, of life, of art, of music. Our
Buriat women are mere household drudges; to marry one of them would be
utterly impossible.