Rezanov | Page 4

there in a plague of scurvy and starvation only slightly miti- gated by
vodka. Down the coast then he sailed to the Spanish settlement for food
for the settlement. He comes to that place where in his vision he sees
arise that city of the future which we know now as San Francisco.
Masterful man that he is, he feels that here some great thing awaits him.
The Spaniards are wary of him. They will not trade with him, but they
receive him courteously and they are fascinated by his self-possessed,
well-poised but withal so gracious personality. The life there at the time
is a sort of lotus-eating existence. It is a piece of Spain translated to a
more luscious, a lovelier land, overlooking beautiful seas and peril- ous.
Into the dolce far niente Rezanov enters with some surrender to its
softening spell, but with the courtier's prudence.
And he meets the girl, Concha Arguello. He sees her in the setting of
burning and sweet Cas- tilian roses--a girl who has had the benefit of
edu- cation, who keeps the graces of old Madrid in this realm beyond
sea, a burgeoning bud of womanhood, daughter of the commandante.
The doom of both is upon them at once. They have drunk the pois-
oned cup. Rezanov resists the first approaches of the delightful
delirium, remembering Russia, his duty, his ambition, the poor starving
men of the Sitka factory. At a party he dances with Concha and they
both know that for each there is none other. So in that setting so wild,
so strange, so remote, so lovely for the old world grace that is made
native there by this bright, deep, fond girl, the high gods proceed to
have their will upon the two. The little community life pulses around
them the faster because they are there. Their love be- comes a motive in
the diplomatic drama which has for end, first, the securing of food for
those fam- ishing folk at Sitka, and beyond that, possibly the seizing of
the region for Russia, lest that new young power of the West, the
United States, pre- empt the rich domain. Concha would help the Rus-

sian to those ends immediate which he reveals to her, and succeeds. He
tells her of Russia and his mighty position there. He would have her for
his wife, his helper in the vast imperial affairs at the Russian capitol,
his princess in his palace, augment- ing his official and personal
distinction. She shares his vision, rising to all the heights it unfolds in a
splendid future. Child she is, but she is transformed into a woman by
the prospect not of her own pleas- ure, but of participation in splendid
achievement with this man so keen, so supple, yet so firm in high
purpose. And as the prospect opens to her desire and his there looms
the obstacle. They can- not marry, for Rezanov is a heretic. And now
the passion flames. This child woman will go with him. Ah, but the
church, the king of Spain, will they per- mit? And the Czar! Rezanov
will see to it that the Czar will clear the way for them through power
exercised at Rome and at Madrid. Conditioned upon this, the girl's
parents consent.
These lovers prate very little of love. Their desire runs too deep for
mere speech. It is a desire made up of as much spiritual as carnal fire. It
is fierce but steady in ecstacy and agony, indistinguish- able the one
from the other. Rezanov, man of the great world, it purifies. Concha it
strengthens and makes indomitable. They will abide delay. They will
endure in faith and hope--the faith and hope both dimmed by the vague
and unshakable intui- tion or premonition that fate has marked them for
derision. Nevertheless, they will endure.
There is a meeting on a path that overlooks where the white seas strike
their tents. It is a meeting of little action, of few words. It is tense with
the almost inexpressible, but at its end, confronting the doubtful future,
realizing that when Rezanov goes he may not return, this girl tells him:
"I will give myself to you forever, how much or little that may mean
here on earth. Forever!" And then that scene in the moonlight amid the
scent of the Cas- tilian roses, when Concha, as signal of her trust in her
lover, lifts the little wisps of hair that conceal her ears and shows them
to him--it throbs with passionate purity in memory yet.
Rezanov sails away to Sitka with provisions, thence to Siberia, and
then begins the long ride over endless versts of land, across streams in

icy flood, in rain and cold and snow towards the capitol and the Czar.
Delays, disasters