The village of Osterno, lying, or rather scrambling, along the banks of the river Oster, is at no time an exhilarating spot. It is a large village, numbering over nine hundred souls, as the board affixed to its first house testifieth in incomprehensible Russian figures.
A “soul,” be it known, is a different object in the land of the Czars to that vague protoplasm about which our young persons think such mighty thoughts, our old men write such famous big books. A soul is namely a man—in Russia the women have not yet begun to seek their rights and lose their privileges. A man is therefore a “soul” in Russia, and as such enjoys the doubtful privilege of contributing to the land-tax and to every other tax. In compensation for the first-named impost he is apportioned his share of the common land of the village, and by the cultivation of this ekes out an existence which would be valueless if he were a teetotaller. It is melancholy to have to record this fact in the pages of a respectable volume like the present; but facts—as the orator who deals in fiction is ever ready to announce—facts cannot be ignored. And any man who has lived in Russia, has dabbled in Russian humanity, and noted the singular unattractiveness of Russian life—any such man can scarcely deny the fact that if one deprives the moujik of his privilege of getting gloriously and frequently intoxicated, one takes away from that same moujik the one happiness of his existence.
That the Russian peasant is by nature one of the cheeriest, the noisiest, and lightest-hearted of men is only another proof of the Creator’s power; for this dimly lighted “soul” has nothing to cheer him on his forlorn way but the memory of the last indulgence in strong drink and the hope of more to come. He is harassed by a ruthless tax-collector; he is shut off from the world by enormous distances over impracticable roads. When the famine comes, and come it assuredly will, the moujik has no alternative but to stay where he is and starve. Since Alexander II. of philanthropic memory made the Russian serf a free man, the blessings of freedom have been found to resolve themselves chiefly into a perfect liberty to die of starvation, of cold, or of dire disease. When he was a serf this man was of some small value to some one; now he is of no consequence to any one whatsoever except himself, and, with considerable intelligence, he sets but small store upon his own existence. Freedom, in fact, came to him before he was ready for it; and, hampered as he has been by petty departmental tyranny, governmental neglect, and a natural stupidity, he has made very small progress toward a mental independence. All that he has learnt to do is to hate his tyrants. When famine urges him, he goes blindly, helplessly, dumbly, and tries to take by force that which is denied by force.
With us in England the poor man raises up his voice and cries aloud when he wants something. He always wants something—never work, by the way—and therefore his voice pervades the atmosphere. He has his evening newspaper, which is dear at the moderate sum of a halfpenny. He has his professional organizers, and his Trafalgar Square. He even has his members of Parliament. He does no work, and he does not starve. In his generation the poor man thinks himself wise. In Russia, however, things are managed differently. The poor man is under the heel of the rich. Some day there will be in Russia a Terror, but not yet. Some day the moujik will erect unto himself a rough sort of a guillotine, but not in our day. Perhaps some of us who are young men now may dimly read in our dotage of a great upheaval beside which the Terror of France will be tame and uneventful. Who can tell? When a country begins to grow, its mental development is often startlingly rapid.
But we have to do with Russia of to-day, and the village of Osterno in the Government of Tver. Not a “famine” Government, mind you! For these are the Volga Provinces—Samara, Pensa, Voronish, Vintka, and a dozen others. No! Tver the civilized, the prosperous, the manufacturing centre.
Osterno is built of wood. Should it once fairly catch alight in a high wind, all that will be left of this town will be a few charred timbers and some dazed human beings. The inhabitants know their own danger, and endeavor to meet it in their fatalistic manner. Each village has its fire organization. Each “soul” has his appointed place, his appointed duty, and his special contribution—be it bucket or rope or ladder—to bring to the conflagration. But no one ever dreams of being sober and vigilant at the right time, so the organization, like many larger such, is a broken reed.
The street, bounded on either side by low wooden houses, is, singularly enough, well paved. This, the traveller is told, by the tyrant Prince Pavlo, who made the road because he did not like driving over ruts and through puddles—the usual Russian rural thoroughfare. Not because Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to save them from starvation—not at all, although, in the gratification of his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely because he was a great “barin”—a prince who could have any thing he desired. Had not the other barin—Steinmetz by name—superintended the work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they never see. Ask the “starost”—the mayor of the village. He knows the barins, and hates them.
Michael Roon, the starosta or elder of Osterno, president of the Mir, or village council, principal shopkeeper, mayor and only intelligent soul of the nine hundred, probably had Tartar blood in his veins. To this strain may be attributed the narrow Tartar face, the keen black eyes, the short, spare figure which many remember to this day, although Michael Roon has been dead these many years.
Removed far above the majority of his fellow-villagers in intelligence and energy, this man administered the law of his own will to his colleagues on the village council.
It was late in the autumn, one evening remembered by many for its death-roll, that the starosta was standing at the door of his small shop. He was apparently idle. He never sold vodka, and the majority of the villagers were in one of the three thriving “kabaks” which drove a famous trade in strong drink and weak tea. It was a very hot evening. The sun had set in a pink haze which was now turning to an unhealthy gray, and spreading over the face of the western sky like the shadow of death across the human countenance.
The starosta shook his head forebodingly. It was cholera weather. Cholera had come to Osterno. Had come, the starosta thought, to stay. It had settled down in Osterno, and nothing but the winter frosts would kill it, when hunger-typhus would undoubtedly succeed it.
Therefore the starosta shook his head at the sunset, and forgot to regret the badness of the times from a commercial point of view. He had done all he could. He had notified to the Zemstvo the condition of his village. He had made the usual appeal for help, which had been forwarded in the usual way to Tver, where it had apparently been received with the usual philosophic silence.
But Michael Roon had also telegraphed to Karl Steinmetz, and since the despatch of this message had the starosta dropped into the habit of standing at his doorway in the evening, with his hands clasped behind his back and his beady black eyes bent westward along the prince’s high-road.
On the particular evening with which we have to do the beady eyes looked not in vain; for presently, far along the road, appeared a black speck like an insect crawling over the face of a map.
“Ah!” said the starosta. “Ah! he never fails.”
Presently a neighbor dropped in to buy some of the dried leaf which the starosta, honest tradesman, called tea. He found the purveyor of Cathay’s produce at the door.
“Ah!” he said, in a voice thick with vodka. “You see something on the road?”
“Yes.”
“A cart?”
“No, a carriage. It moves too quickly.”
A strange expression came over the peasant’s face, at no time a pleasing physiognomy. The bloodshot eyes flared up suddenly like a smouldering flame in brown paper. The unsteady, drink-sodden lips twitched. The man threw up his shaggy head, upon which hair and beard mingled in unkempt confusion. He glared along the road with eyes and face aglow with a sullen, beast-like hatred.
“A carriage! Then it is for the castle.”
“Possibly,” answered the starosta.
“The prince—curse him, curse his mother’s soul, curse his wife’s offspring!”
“Yes,” said the starosta quietly. “Yes, curse him and all his works. What is it you want, little father—tea?”
He turned into the shop and served his customer, duly inscribing the debt among others in a rough, cheap book.
The word soon spread that a carriage was coming along the road from Tver. All the villagers came to the doors of their dilapidated wooden huts. Even the kabaks were emptied for a time. As the vehicle approached it became apparent that the horses were going at a great pace; not only was the loose horse galloping, but also the pair in the shafts. The carriage was an open one, an ordinary North Russian travelling carriage, not unlike the vehicle we call the victoria, set on high wheels.
Beside the driver on the box sat another servant. In the open carriage sat one man only, Karl Steinmetz.
As he passed through the village a murmur of many voices followed him, not quite drowned by the rattle of his wheels, the clatter of the horses’ feet. The murmur was a curse. Karl Steinmetz heard it distinctly. It made him smile with a queer expression beneath his great gray mustache.
The starosta, standing in his door-way, saw the smile. He raised his voice with his neighbors and cursed. As Steinmetz passed him he gave a little jerk of the head toward the castle. The jerk of the head might have been due to an inequality of the road, but it might also convey an appointment. The keen, haggard face of Michael Roon showed no sign of mutual understanding. And the carriage rattled on through the stricken village.
Two hours later, when it was quite dark, a closed carriage, with two bright lamps flaring into the night, passed through the village toward the castle at a gallop.
“It is the prince,” the peasants said, crouching in their low door-ways. “It is the prince. We know his bells—they are of silver—and we shall starve during the winter. Curse him—curse him!”
They raised their heads and listened to the galloping feet with the patient, dumb despair which is the curse of the Slavonic race. Some of them crept to their doors, and, looking up, saw that the castle windows were ablaze with light. If Paul Howard Alexis was a plain English gentleman in London, he was also a great prince in his country, keeping up a princely state, enjoying the gilded solitude that belongs to the high-born. His English education had educed a strict sense of discipline, and as in England, and, indeed, all through his life, so in Russia did he attempt to do his duty.
The carriage rattled up to the brilliantly lighted door, which stood open, and within, on either side of the broad entrance-hall, the servants stood to welcome their master. A strange, picturesque, motley crew: the majordomo, in his black coat, and beside him the other house-servants—tall, upright fellows, in their bright livery. Beyond them the stable-men and keepers, a little army, in red cloth tunics, with wide trousers tucked into high boots, all holding their fur caps in their hands, standing stiffly at attention, clean, honest, and not too intelligent.
The castle of Osterno is built on the lines of many Russian country seats, and not a few palaces in Moscow. The Royal Palace in the Kremlin is an example. A broad entrance-hall, at the back of which a staircase as broad stretches up to a gallery, around which the dwelling-rooms are situated. At the head of the staircase, directly facing the entrance-hall, high folding doors disclose the drawing-room, which is almost a throne room. All gorgeous, lofty, spacious, as only Russian houses are. Truly this northern empire, this great white land, is a country in which it is good to be an emperor, a prince, a noble, but not a poor man.
Paul passed through the ranks of his retainers, himself a head taller than the tallest footman, a few inches broader than the sturdiest keeper. He acknowledged the low bows by a quick nod, and passed up the staircase. Steinmetz—in evening dress, wearing the insignia of one or two orders which he had won in the more active days of his earlier diplomatic life—was waiting for him at the head of the stairs.
The two men bowed gravely to each other. Steinmetz threw open the door of the great room and stood aside. The prince passed on, and the German followed him, each playing his part gravely, as men in high places are called to do. When the door was closed behind them and they were alone, there was no relaxation, no smile of covert derision. These men knew the Russian character thoroughly. There is, be it known, no more impressionable man on the face of God’s earth. Paul and Steinmetz had played their parts so long that these came to be natural to them as soon as they passed the Volga. We are all so in a minor degree. In each house, to each of our friends, we are unconsciously different in some particular. One man holds us in awe, and we unconsciously instil that feeling. Another considers us a buffoon, and, lo! we are exceedingly funny.
Paul and Steinmetz knew that the people around them in Osterno were somewhat like the dumb and driven beast. These peasants required overawing by a careful display of pomp—an unrelaxed dignity. The line of demarcation between the noble and the peasant is so marked in the land of the Czar that it is difficult for Englishmen to realize or believe it. It is like the line that is drawn between us and our dogs. If we suppose it possible that dogs could be taught to act and think for themselves; if we take such a development as practicable, and consider the possibilities of social upheaval lying behind such an education, we can in a minute degree realize the problem which Prince Pavlo Alexis and all his fellow-nobles will be called upon to solve within the lifetime of men already born.
“Colossal!” exclaimed Steinmetz, beneath his breath. With a little trick of the tongue he transferred his cigar from the right-hand to the left-hand corner of his mouth. “Colossal—l!” he repeated.
For a moment Paul looked up from the papers spread out on the table before him—looked with the preoccupied air of a man who is adding up something in his mind. Then he returned to his occupation. He had been at this work for four hours without a break. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning. Since dinner Karl Steinmetz had consumed no less than five cigars, while he had not spoken five words. These two men, locked in a small room in the middle of the castle of Osterno—a room with no window, but which gained its light from the clear heaven by a shaft and a skylight on the roof—locked in thus they had been engaged in the addition of an enormous mass of figures. Each sheet had been carefully annotated and added by Steinmetz, and as each was finished he handed it to his companion.
“Is that fool never coming?” asked Paul, with an impatient glance at the clock.
“Our very dear friend the starosta,” replied Steinmetz, “is no slave to time. He is late.”
The room had the appearance of an office. There were two safes—square chests such as we learn to associate with the name of Griffiths in this country. There was a huge writing-table—a double table—at which Paul and Steinmetz were seated. There were sundry stationery cases and an almanac or so suspended on the walls, which were oaken panels. A large white stove—common to all Russian rooms—stood against the wall. The room had no less than three doors, with a handle on no one of them. Each door opened with a key, like a cupboard.
Steinmetz had apparently finished his work. He was sitting back in his chair, contemplating his companion with a little smile. It apparently tickled some obtuse Teutonic sense of humor to see this prince doing work which is usually assigned to clerks—working out statistics and abstruse calculations as to how much food is required to keep body and soul together.
The silence of the room was almost oppressive. A Russian village after nightfall is the quietest human habitation on earth. For the moujik—the native of a country which will some day supply the universe with petroleum—cannot afford to light up his humble abode, and therefore sits in darkness. Had the village of Osterno possessed the liveliness of a Spanish hamlet, the sound of voices and laughter could not have reached the castle perched high up on the rock above.
But Osterno was asleep: the castle servants had long gone to rest, and the great silence of Russia wrapped its wings over all. “When, therefore, the clear, coughing bark of a wolf was heard, both occupants of the little room looked up. The sound was repeated, and Steinmetz slowly rose from his seat.
“I can quite believe that our friend is able to call a wolf or a lynx to him,” he said. “He does it uncannily well.”
“I have seen him do so,” said Paul, without looking up. “But it is a common enough accomplishment among the keepers.”
Steinmetz had left the room before he finished speaking. One of the doors of this little room communicated with a large apartment used as a secretary’s office, and through this by a small staircase with a side entrance to the castle. By this side entrance the stewards of the different outlying estates were conducted to the presence of the resident secretary—a German selected and overawed by Karl Steinmetz—a mere calculating machine of a man, with whom we have no affairs to transact.
Before many minutes had elapsed Steinmetz came back, closely followed by the starosta, whose black eyes twinkled and gleamed in the sudden light of the lamp. He dropped on his knees when he saw Paul—suddenly, abjectly, like an animal, in his dumb attitude of deprecation.
With a jerk of his head Paul bade him rise, which the man did, standing back against the panelled wall, placing as great a distance between himself and the prince as the size of the room would allow.
“Well,” said Paul curtly, almost roughly, “I hear you are in trouble in the village.”
“The cholera has come, Excellency.”
“Many deaths?”
“To-day—eleven.”
Paul looked up sharply.
“And the doctor?”
“He has not come yet, Excellency. I sent for him—a fortnight ago. The cholera is at Oseff, at Dolja, at Kalisheffa. It is everywhere. He has forty thousand souls under his care. He has to obey the Zemstvo, to go where they tell him. He takes no notice of me.”
“Yes,” interrupted Paul, “I know. And the people themselves, do they attempt to understand it—to follow out my instructions?”
The starosta spread out his thin hands in deprecation. He cringed a little as he stood. He had Jewish blood in his veins, which, while it raised him above his fellows in Osterno, carried with it the usual tendency to cringe. It is in the blood; it is part of what the people who stood without Pilate’s palace took upon themselves and upon their children.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “knows what they are. It is slow. They make no progress. For them one disease is as another. ‘Bog dal e Bog vzial,’ they say. ‘God gave and God took!’”
He paused, his black eyes flashing from one face to the other.
“Only the Moscow doctor, Excellency,” he said significantly, “can manage them.”
Paul shrugged his shoulders. He rose from his seat, glancing at Steinmetz, who was looking on in silence, with his queer, mocking smile.
“I will go with you now,” he said. “It is late enough already.”
The starosta bowed very low, but he said nothing.
Paul went to a cupboard and took from it an old fur coat, dragged at the seams, stained about the cuffs a dull brown—doctors know the color. Such stains have hanged a man before now, for they are the marks of blood. Paul put on this coat. He took a long, soft silken scarf such as Russians wear in winter, and wrapped it round his throat, quite concealing the lower part of his face. He crammed a fur cap down over his ears.
“Come,” he said.
Karl Steinmetz accompanied them down stairs, carrying a lamp in one hand. He closed the door behind them, but did not lock it. Then he went upstairs again to the quiet little room, where he sat down in a deep chair. He looked at the open door of the cupboard from which Paul Alexis had taken his simple disguise, with a large, tolerant humor.
“El Seqor Don Quixote de la Mancha,” he said sleepily.
It is said that to a doctor nothing is shocking and nothing is disgusting. But doctors are, after all, only men of stomach like the rest of us, and it is to be presumed that what nauseates one will nauseate the other. When the starosta unceremoniously threw open the door of the miserable cabin belonging to Vasilli Tula, Paul gave a little gasp. The foul air pouring out of the noisome den was such that it seemed impossible that human lungs could assimilate it. This Vasilli Tula was a notorious drunkard, a discontent, a braggart. The Nihilist propaganda had in the early days of that mistaken mission reached him and unsettled his discontented mind. Misfortune seemed to pursue him. In higher grades of life than his there are men who, like Tula, make a profession of misfortune.
Paul stumbled down two steps. The cottage was dark. The starosta had apparently trodden on a chicken, which screamed shrilly and fluttered about in the dark with that complete abandon which belongs to chickens, sheep, and some women.
“Have you no light?” cried the starosta.
Paul retreated to the top step, where he had a short-lived struggle with a well-grown calf which had been living in the room with the family, and evinced a very creditable desire for fresh air.
“Yes, yes, we have a little petroleum,” said a voice. “But we have no matches.”
The starosta struck a light.
“I have brought the Moscow doctor to see you.”
“The Moscow doctor!” cried several voices. “Sbogom—sbogom! God be with you!”
In the dim light the whole of the floor seemed to get up and shake itself. There were at least seven persons sleeping in the hut. Two of them did not get up. One was dead. The other was dying of cholera.
A heavily built man reached down from the top of the brick stove a cheap tin paraffin lamp, which he handed to the starosta. By the light of this Paul came again into the hut. The floor was filthy, as may be imagined, for beasts and human beings lived here together.
The man—Vasilli Tula—threw himself down on his knees, clawing at Paul’s coat with great unwashed hands, whining out a tale of sorrow and misfortune. In a moment they were all on their knees, clinging to him, crying to him for help: Tula himself, a wild-looking Slav of fifty or thereabouts; his wife, haggard, emaciated, horrible to look upon, for she was toothless and almost blind; two women and a loutish boy of sixteen.
Paul pushed his way, not unkindly, toward the corner where the two motionless forms lay half concealed by a mass of ragged sheepskin.
“Here,” he said, “this woman is dead. Take her out. When will you learn to be clean? This boy may live—with care. Bring the light closer, little mother. So, it is well. He will live. Come, don’t sit crying. Take all these rags out and burn them. All of you go out. It is a fine night. You are better in the cart-shed than here. Here, you, Tula, go round with the starosta to his store. He will give you clean blankets.”
They obeyed him blindly. Tula and one of the young women (his daughters) dragged the dead body, which was that of a very old woman, out into the night. The starosta had retired to the door-way when the lamp was lighted, his courage having failed him. The air was foul with the reek of smoke and filth and infection.
“Come, Vasilli Tula,” the village elder said, with suspicious eagerness. “Come with me, I will give you what the good doctor says. Though you owe me money, and you never try to pay me.”
But Tula was kissing and mumbling over the hem of Paul’s coat. Paul took no notice of him.
“We are starving, Excellency,” the man was saying. “I can get no work. I had to sell my horse in the winter, and I cannot plough my little piece of land. The Government will not help us. The Prince—curse him!—does nothing for us. He lives in Petersburg, where he spends all his money, and has food and wine more than he wants. The Count Stipan Lanovitch used to assist us—God be with him! But he has been sent to Siberia because he helped the peasants. He was like you; he was a great barin, a great noble, and yet he helped the peasants.”
Paul turned round sharply and shook the man off.
“Go,” he said, “with the starosta and get what I tell you. A great, strong fellow like you has no business on his knees to any man! I will not help you unless you help yourself. You are a lazy good-for-nothing. Get out!”
He pushed him out of the hut, and kicked after him a few rags of clothing which were lying about on the floor, all filthy and slimy.
“Good God!” muttered he under his breath, in English, “that a place like this should exist beneath the very walls of Osterno!”
From hut to hut he went all through that night on his mission of mercy—without enthusiasm, without high-flown notions respecting mankind, but with the simple sense of duty that was his. These people were his things—his dumb and driven beasts. In his heart there may have existed a grudge against the Almighty for placing him in a position which was not only intensely disagreeable, but also somewhat ridiculous. For he did not dare to tell his friends of these things. He had spoken of them to no man except Karl Steinmetz, who was in a sense his dependent. English public school and university had instilled into him the intensely British feeling of shame respecting good works. He could take chaff as well as any man, for he was grave by habit, and a grave man receives the most chaff most good-humoredly. But he had a nervous dread of being found out. He had made a sort of religion of suppressing the fact that he was a prince; the holy of holies of this cult was the fact that he was a prince who sought to do good to his neighbor—a prince in whom one might repose trust.
This was not the first time by any number that he had gone down into his own village insisting in a rough-and-ready way on cleanliness and purity.
“The Moscow doctor”—the peasants would say in the kabak over their vodka and their tea—“the Moscow doctor comes in and kicks our beds out of the door. He comes in and throws our furniture into the street But afterward he gives us new beds and new furniture.”
It was a joke that always obtained in the kabak. It flavored the vodka, and with that fiery poison served to raise a laugh.
The Moscow doctor was looked upon in Osterno and in many neighboring villages as second only to God. In fact, many of the peasants placed him before their Creator. They were stupid, vodka-soddened, hapless men. The Moscow doctor they could see for themselves. He came in, a very tangible thing of flesh and blood, built on a large and manly scale; he took them by the shoulders and bundled them out of their own houses, kicking their bedding after them. He scolded them, he rated them and abused them. He brought them food and medicine. He understood the diseases which from time to time swept over their villages. No cold was too intense for him to brave should they be in distress. He asked no money, and he gave none. But they lived on his charity, and they were wise enough to know it.
What wonder if these poor wretches loved the man whom they could see and hear above the God who manifested himself to them in no way! The orthodox priests of their villages had no money to spend on their parishioners. On the contrary, they asked for money to keep the churches in repair. What wonder, then, if these poor ignorant, helpless peasants would listen to no priest; for the priest could not explain to them why it was that God sent a four-month-long winter which cut them off from the rest of the world behind impassable barriers of snow; that God sent them droughts in the summer so that there was no crop of rye; that God scourged them with dread and horrible disease!
It is almost impossible for us to realize, in these days of a lamentably cheap press and a cheaper literature, the mental condition of men and women who have no education, no newspaper, no news of the world, no communication with the universe. To them the mystery of the Moscow doctor was as incomprehensible as to us is the Deity. They were so near to the animals that Paul could not succeed in teaching them that disease and death followed on the heels of dirt and neglect. They were too ignorant to reason, too low down the animal scale to comprehend things which some of the dumb animals undoubtedly recognize.
Paul Alexis, half Russian, half English, understood these people very thoroughly. He took advantage of their ignorance, their simplicity, their unfathomable superstition. He governed as no other could have ruled them, by fear and kindness at once. He mastered them by his vitality, the wholesome strength of his nature, his infinite superiority. He avoided the terrible mistake of the Nihilists by treating them as children to whom education must be given little by little instead of throwing down before them a mass of dangerous knowledge which their minds, unaccustomed to such strong food, are incapable of digesting.
A British coldness of blood damped as it were the Russian quixotism which would desire to see result follow upon action—to see the world make quicker progress than its Creator has decreed. With very unsatisfactory material Paul was setting in motion a great rock which will roll down into the ages unconnected with his name, clearing a path through a very thick forest of ignorance and tyranny.
The man who carries a deceit, however innocent, with him through life is apt to be somewhat handicapped in that unfair competition. He is like a ship at sea with a “sprung” mainmast. A side breeze may arise at any moment which throws him all aback and upon his beam-ends. He runs illegitimate risks, which are things much given to dragging at a man’s mind, handicapping his thoughts.
Paul suffered in this way. It was a distinct burthen to him to play a double part, although each was innocent enough in itself. At school, and later on at the ‘Varsity, he had consistently and steadily suppressed a truth from friend and foe alike—namely, that he was in his own country a prince. No great crime on the face of it; but a constant suppression of a very small truth is as burdensome as any suggestion of falsehood. It makes one afraid of contemptible foes, and doubtful of the value of one’s own friendship.
Paul was a simple-minded man. He was not afraid of the Russian Government. Indeed, he cultivated a fine contempt for that august body. But he was distinctly afraid of being found out, for that discovery could only mean an incontinent cessation of the good work which rendered his life happy.
The fear of being deprived of this interest in existence should certainly have been lessened, if not quite allayed, by the fact that a greater interest had been brought into his life in the pleasant form of a prospective wife. When he was in London with Etta Sydney Bamborough he did not, however, forget Osterno. He only longed for the time when he could take Etta freely into his confidence and engage her interest in the object of his ambition—namely, to make the huge Osterno estate into that lump of leaven which might in time leaven the whole of the empire.
That a man is capable of sustaining two absorbing interests at once is a matter of every-day illustration. Are we not surrounded by men who do their work well in life, and love their wives well at home, without allowing the one to interfere with the other? That women are capable of the same seems exceedingly probable. But we are a race of sheep who run after each other, guided for the moment by a catchword which will not bear investigation, or an erroneous deduction set in alliterative verse which clings to the mind and sways it. Thus we all think that woman’s whole existence is, and is only capable of, love, because a poet, in the trickiness of his trade, once said so.
Now, Paul held a different opinion. He thought that Etta could manage to love him well, as she said she did, and yet take an interest in that which was in reality the object of his life. He intended to take the earliest opportunity of telling her all about the work he was endeavoring to carry out at Osterno, and the knowledge that he was withholding something from her was a constant burden to an upright and honest nature.
“I think,” he said one morning to Steinmetz, “that I will write and tell Mrs. Sydney Bamborough all about this place.”
“I should not do that,” replied Steinmetz with a leisurely promptitude.
They were alone in a great smoking-room of which the walls were hung all round with hunting trophies. Paul was smoking a post-prandial cigar. Steinmetz reflected gravely over a pipe. They were both reading Russian newspapers—periodicals chiefly remarkable for that which they leave unsaid.
“Why not?” asked Paul.
“On principle. Never tell a woman that which is not interesting enough to magnify into a secret.”
Paul turned over his newspaper. He began reading again. Then, suddenly, he looked up.
“We are engaged to be married,” he observed pointedly.
Steinmetz took his pipe from his lips slowly and imperturbably. He was a man to whom it was no satisfaction to impart news. He either knew it before or did not take much interest in the matter.
“That makes it worse,” he said. “A woman only conceals what is bad about her husband. If she knows anything that is likely to make other women think that their husbands are inferior, she will tell it.”
Paul laughed.
“But this is not good,” he argued. “We have kept it so confoundedly quiet that I am beginning to feel as if it is a crime.”
Steinmetz uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, and then spoke after mature reflection:
“As I understand the law of libel, a man is punished, not for telling a lie, but for telling either the truth or a lie with malicious intent. I imagine the Almighty will take the intent into consideration, if human justice finds it expedient to do so!”
Paul shrugged his shoulders. Argument was not his strong point, and, like most men who cannot argue, he was almost impervious to the arguments of others. He recognized the necessity for secrecy—the absolute need of a thousand little secretive precautions and disguises which were intensely disagreeable to him. But he also grumbled at them freely, and whenever he made such objection Karl Steinmetz grew uneasy, as if the question which he disposed of with facile philosophy or humorous resignation had behind it a possibility and an importance of which he was fully aware. It was on these rare occasions that he might have conveyed to a keen observer the impression that he was playing a very dangerous game with a smiling countenance.
“All that we do,” pursued Steinmetz, “is to bow to a lamentable necessity for deceit. I have bowed to it all my life. It has been my trade, perhaps. It is not our fault that we are placed in charge of four or five thousand human beings who are no more capable of helping themselves than are sheep. It is not our fault that the forefathers of these sheep cut down the forests and omitted to plant more, so that the flocks with whom we have to deal have no fuel. It is not our fault that a most terrific winter annually renders the land unproductive for four months. It is not our fault that the government to which we are forced to bow—the Czar whose name lifts our hats from our heads—it is not our fault that progress and education are taboo, and that all who endeavor to forward the cause of humanity are promptly put away in a safe place where they are at liberty to forward their own salvation and nothing else. Nothing is our fault, mein lieber, in this country. We have to make the best of adverse circumstances. We are not breaking any human law, and in doing nothing we should be breaking a divine command.”
Paul flicked the ash off his cigar. He had heard all this before. Karl Steinmetz’s words were usually more remarkable for solid thoughtfulness than for brilliancy of conception or any great novelty of expression.
“Oh!” said Paul quietly, “I am not going to leave off. You need not fear that. Only I shall have to tell my wife. Surely a woman could help us in a thousand ways. There is such a lot that only a woman understands.”
“Yes!” grunted Steinmetz; “and only the right sort of woman.”
Paul looked up sharply.
“You must leave that to me,” he said.
“My very dear friend, I leave every thing to you.”
Paul smiled.
There was no positive proof that this was not strictly true. There was no saying that Karl Steinmetz did not leave every thing to every-body. But wise people thought differently.
“You don’t know Etta,” he said, half shyly. “She is full of sympathy and pity for these people.”
Steinmetz bowed gravely.
“I have no doubt of it.”
“And yet you say that she must not be told.”
“Certainly not. A secret is considerably strained if it be divided between two people. Stretching it to three will probably break it. You can tell her when you are married. Does she consent to live in Osterno?”
“Oh, yes. I think so.”
“Um—m!”
“What did you say?”
“Um—m,” repeated Steinmetz, and the conversation somewhat naturally showed signs of collapse.
At this moment the door was opened, and a servant in bright livery, with powdered wig, silk stockings, and a countenance which might have been of wood, brought in a letter on a silver tray.
Paul took the square envelope and turned it over, displaying as he did so a coronet in black and gold on the corner, like a stamp.
Karl Steinmetz saw the coronet. He never took his quiet, unobtrusive glance from Paul’s face while he opened the letter and read it.
“A fresh difficulty,” said Paul, throwing the note across to his companion.
Steinmetz looked grave while he unfolded the thick stationery.
“Dear Paul [the letter ran]: I hear you are at Osterno and that the Moscow doctor is in your country. We are in great distress at Thors—cholera, I fear. The fame of your doctor has spread to my people, and they are clamoring for him. Can you bring or send him over? You know your room here is always in readiness. Come soon with the great doctor, and also Herr Steinmetz. In doing so you will give more than pleasure to your old friend,”
Catrina Lanovitch.
“P.S. Mother is afraid to go out of doors for fear of infection. She thinks she has a little cold.”
Steinmetz folded the letter very carefully, pressing the seam of it reflectively with his stout forefinger and thumb.
“I always think of the lie first,” he said. “It’s my nature or my misfortune. We can easily write and say that the Moscow doctor has left.”
He paused, scratching his brow pensively with his curved forefinger. It is to be feared that he was seeking not so much the truth as the most convenient perversion of the same.
“But then,” he went on, “by doing that we leave these poor devils to die in their—styes. Catrina cannot manage them. They are worse than our people.”
“Whatever is the best lie to tell,” burst in Paul—“as we seem to live in an atmosphere of them—I must go to Thors; that is quite certain.”
“There is no must in the case,” put in Steinmetz quietly, as a parenthesis. “No man is compelled to throw himself in the way of infection. But I know you will go, whatever I say.”
“I suppose I shall,” admitted Paul.
“And Catrina will find you out at once.”
“Why?”
Steinmetz drew in his feet. He leant forward and knocked his pipe on one of the logs that lay ready to light in the great open fire-place.
“Because she loves you,” he said shortly. “There is no coming the Moscow doctor over her, mien lieber.”
Paul laughed rather awkwardly. He was one of the few men—daily growing fewer—who hold that a woman’s love is not a thing to be tossed lightly about in conversation.
“Then—” he began, speaking rather quickly, as if afraid that Steinmetz was going to say more. “If,” he amended, “you think she will find out, she must not see me, that is all.”
Steinmetz reflected again. He was unusually grave over this matter. One would scarcely have taken this stout German for a person of any sentiment whatever. Nevertheless he would have liked Paul to marry Catrina Lanovitch in preference to Etta Sydney Bamborough, merely because he thought that the former loved him, while he felt sure that the latter did not. So much for the sentimental point of view—a starting-point, by the way, which usually makes all the difference in a man’s life. For a man needs to be loved as much as a woman needs it. From the practical point of view, Karl Steinmetz knew too much about Etta to place entire reliance on the goodness of her motives. He keenly suspected that she was marrying Paul for his money—for the position he could give her in the world.
“We must be careful,” he said. “We must place clearly before ourselves the risks that we are running before we come to any decision. For you the risk is simply that of unofficial banishment. They can hardly send you to Siberia because you are half an Englishman; and that impertinent country has a habit of getting up and shouting when her sons are interfered with. But they can easily make Russia impossible for you. They can do you more harm than you think. They can do these poor devils of peasants of yours more harm than we can comfortably contemplate. As for me,” he paused and shrugged his great shoulders, “it means Siberia. Already I am a suspect—a persona non grata.”
“I do not see how we can refuse to help Catrina,” said Paul, in a voice which Steinmetz seemed to know, for he suddenly gave in.
“As you will,” he said.
He sat up, and, drawing a small table toward him, took up a pen reflectively. Paul watched him in silence.
When the letter was finished, Steinmetz read it aloud:
“My Dear Catrina:
“The Moscow doctor and your obedient servant will be (D.V.) in Thors by seven o’clock to-night. We propose spending about an hour in the village, if you will kindly advise the starosta to be ready for us. As our time is limited, and we are much needed in Osterno, we shall have to deprive ourselves of the pleasure of calling at the castle. The prince sends kind remembrances, and proposes riding over to Thors to avail himself of your proffered hospitality in a day or two. With salutations to the countess,
“Your old friend,
“Karl Steinmetz.”
Steinmetz waited with the letter in his hand for Paul’s approval. “You see,” he explained, “you are notoriously indifferent to the welfare of the peasants. It would be unnatural if you suddenly displayed so much interest as to induce you to go to Thors on a mission of charity.”
Paul nodded. “All right,” he said. “Yes, I see; though I confess I sometimes forget what the deuce Iamsupposed to be.”
Steinmetz laughed pleasantly as he folded the letter. He rose and went to the door.
“I will send it off,” he said. He paused on the threshold and looked back gravely. “Do not forget,” he added, “that Catrina Lanovitch loves you.”