ROMANCE OF GENERAL TREPOFF'S DAUGHTER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 213, 17 December 1910, Page 10

ROMANCE OF GENERAL TREPOFF'S DAUGHTER

SENT BY HER FATHER TO SIBERIA. LOVER'S LONG QUEST ROUND THE WORLD. Baron Kruedener, a noble and ex-offi-cer of the Russian Army, tells to the New York World the following remarkable story of his troubled courtship with the beautiful daughter of the late remorseless Reactionist, General Trepoff, the outstanding figure of the "Black Sunday" massacre, and of that dramatic and extraordinary reunion which followed upon the young couple's great trials. My meeting with my long-lost fiancee, 'Maria Trepoff, at South Beach, New York, was the climax of a life drama, such as no playwright could devise in his most inspired moments. For here was a drama written by Fate—Providence— God! In time it covered four years of alternate joy and agony. In settings it encircled the globe. The first act was laid four years ago at a Court ball in St. Petersburg. No pen can do justice to the scene of magnificence in which we two moved together, Maria Trepoff, daughter of the later General Trepoff, who paid the price of all too loyal service to the White Czar of all the Russias; and I, in my glittering uniform, both part and parcel ff th~ gorgeous scene. It was not the first t.'me we had met; but it was the night on which we realised that we belonged for all time to each other. Little did we dream of a dark shadow creeping; forward to separate us. And that shadow was my beloved's political views. Little by little she had absorbed the revolutionary spirit. Her father was carrying out th« cruel reactionary policy of his ruler, and she had grown to loathe it. At first she kept her beliefs in the innermost recesses o£ her soul, but once or twice, under great stress, she became bolder, and argued with her father against his views and methods. It was after such an argument that she started on a fatal trip to Moscow. Upon her arrival, with the intention of visiting friends, she found the revolutionary spirit rampant. A great demonstration was in progress, and Maria, losing all sense of discretion, forgetting her father's position, fell into the procession bound for the house of the Governor-General, a.n.l shouted, "Down with the tyrants'" BENT TO PRISON BY HER OWN FATHER. The Chief of Police recognised the beautiful girl of refined breeding in the precession, and sent a despatch to her father in St. Petersburg. Back came a formal message. Maria was arrested as a menace to good government, like any other revolutionist. Her father never saw her again, and, in fact, himself passed the sentence which led her, broken in health, but not in spirit, to Irkutsky, wkere she built among the convicts a small log cabin. There she settled down into the life of horror which only those •who have been exiled to Siberia can apprsciate. Perhaps, you ask, where was her be-1 Iot«J all this time? ' In Russia one does not read all that I happens in the papers next day, as you J do. It was weeks and weeks before I learned of Maria's fate. RELATIVES IMPRISON THE DISTRACTED LOVER. But at last the news permeated through Court and military circles. The daughter of the cruel Trepoff had been sentenced to Siberia. For hours my brain was in a whirl. Then slowly ideas cleared, and my duty was plain. I i would resign from the army and follow the woman of my heart to the land of banishment. When my relatives heard of this they set afoot intrigues such as only Russia can produce. I found myself thrown into prison, without explanation. Later —you may be sure I knew nothing of this at the time—l learned that my uncle had sent to Maria a telegram purporting to be signed by me, stating that I was about to marry a rich girl of foreign birth, and because of her —Maria's—revolutionary tendencies, she must never communicate With me again. While this despatch was doing" its deadly work in the already bitter life of my beloved one, I languished in prison, for political reasons, I was told. When, after many dreary weeks, I was released, the Chief of Police told me a plausible story that they had arrested the wrong man—a not uncommon thing in Russia. A DISAPPEARANCE FROM SIBERIA. Finally, having succeeded in quitting the army, I made the hard journev to Siberia, only to meet bitter disappointment. Maria had disappeared. I traced tker to Vladivostock, where she began pawning her jewellery on which Russian refugees of family often live for years. With the thousand roubles secured on a ring, which I recognised at once, she had fled to Japan. From Japan I traced daer to San Francisco and then eastward, and at last I landed in New York. Bnt I could get no trace of the woman I loved. My four years' search was msginning to tell on mind, body and purse —and yet I felt that all was not lost. The came that great day, the 17th of August. I was walking out, not knowing what to do or where to go, when a man with an automobile to hire caught my attention. I, had not thought of motoring, but he answered my signal and pulled up to the kerb. "Where to?" he asked. "Anywhere—make a run to Staten Island," I replied, haphazard. Without further instructions, the driver made a circuit of the island, and as I 'watched the bathers on the beach, I thought a plunge in the surf would be vary comforting indeed. SHE CAME TO ME FROM THE WAVES. Suddenly I seemed to feel, as if in a dream, a hand touch my arm and bid me to stop. We were at South Beach. I told the chauffeur to take me to the | i bathing pavilion, and hastily I donned a suit and plunged into the water. Suddenly I felt what seemed to be a warm human hand placed on my shoulder—yet no one was near me. I smiled bitterly. How often had I felt the touch of her hand in my imagination. Then, suddenly, the same mysterious power seemed to be turning my physical body around. Just ahead was the figure of a woman floating on the waves and swimming close to her was a fine big dog. They made an interesting couple, and when they rode it on a wave and the two of them fell to playing on the sand, I drew near. Then I knew it had not all been a dream, and the face of her I loveu and j had sought for so long. She came to me like Venus Aphrodite,' out of the sea! Neither of us can recall just what was said at this moment. One can never describe the crisis of his life. It is over so quickly. We called each other by name, but neither offered to move nearer. It was as if we dreaded to break the illusion. Not until the dog, noticing how closely I was regarding his mistress, began to bark at me, did we both wake up to reality. Such a moment as this cannot be described in mere words. It was as if two souls, long wedded and then parted, had met to heat as one. When we came to our senses we were clasped in each other's arms, dripping salt water, the cynosure of all eyes, with a delighted dog barking round us, in circles. Naturally, we fled to the bathr houses, donned our street clothes, and the same chauffeur who had brought, me to this joyful reunion now carried the womas of my 'heart beside me to the

numble cottage where she had been living with friends since her arrival. How utterly she had been cut off from her own country and people you will understand when'l say that I had to break to her the news of her father's death by poison, and how his last words were of iher—a cry for her forgiveness. He had tried to make restitution, as far as he could, by making her heiress of his estate, though it is well-nigh impossible for a Russian of revolutionary beliefs ever to secure possession of a Russian inheritance. Those were sad moments, yet gloriously happy, as we exchanged the story of our separate privations and sufferings. The future looked radiant to us, despite poverty and exile, and we shall start afresh in the new life of the far West.