During the days following Paul’s visit to the village the ladies did not see much male society. Paul and Steinmetz usually left the castle immediately after breakfast and did not return till nightfall.
“Is there any thing wrong?” Maggie asked Steinmetz on the evening of the second day.
Steinmetz had just come into the vast drawing-room dressed for dinner—stout, placid, and very clean-looking. They were alone in the room.
“Nothing, my dear young lady—yet,” he answered, coming forward and rubbing his broad palms slowly together.
Maggie was reading an English newspaper. She turned its pages without pausing to notice the black and sticky obliterations effected by the postal authorities before delivery. It was no new thing to her now to come upon the press censor’s handiwork in the columns of such periodicals and newspapers as Paul received from England.
“Because,” she said, “if there is you need not be afraid of telling me.”
“To have that fear would be to offer you an insult,” replied Steinmetz. “Paul and I are investigating matters, that is all. The plain truth, my dear young lady, is that we do not know ourselves what is in the wind. We only know there is something. You are a horsewoman—you know the feeling of a restive horse. One knows that he is only waiting for an excuse to shy or to kick or to rear. One feels it thrilling in him. Paul and I have that feeling in regard to the peasants. We are going the round of the outlying villages, steadily and carefully. We are seeking for the fly on the horse’s body—you understand?”
“Yes, I understand.”
She gave a little nod. She had not lost color, but there was an anxious look in her eyes.
“Some people would have sent to Tver for the soldiers,” Steinmetz went on. “But Paul is not that sort of man. He will not do it yet. You remember our conversation at the Charity Ball in London?”
“Yes.”
“I did not want you to come then. I am sorry you have come now.”
Maggie laid aside the newspaper with a little laugh.
“But, Herr Steinmetz,” she said, “I am not afraid. Please remember that. I have absolute faith in you—and in Paul.”
Steinmetz accepted this statement with his grave smile.
“There is only one thing I would recommend,” he said, “and that is a perfect discretion. Speak of this to no one, especially to no servants. You remember your own mutiny in India. Gott! what wonderful people you English are—men and women alike! You remember how the ladies kept up and brazened it out before the servants. You must do the same. I think I hear the rustle of the princess’s dress. Yes! And there is no news in the papers, you say?”
“None,” replied Maggie.
It may not have been entirely by chance that Claude de Chauxville drove over to Osterno to pay his respects the next day, and expressed himself desolated at hearing that the prince had gone out with Herr Steinmetz in a sleigh to a distant corner of the estate.
“My horses must rest,” said the Frenchman, calmly taking off his fur gloves. “Perhaps the princess will see me.”
A few minutes later he was shown into the morning-room.
“Did I see Mlle. Delafield on snow-shoes in the forest as I came along?” De Chauxville asked the servant in perfect Russian before the man left the room.
“Doubtless, Excellency. She went out on her snow-shoes half an hour ago.”
“That is all right,” said the Frenchman to himself when the door was closed.
He went to the fire and warmed his slim white fingers. There was an evil smile lurking beneath his mustache.
When Etta opened the door a minute later he bowed low, without speaking. There was a suggestion of triumph in his attitude.
“Well?” said the princess, without acknowledging his salutation.
De Chauxville raised his eyebrows with the resigned surprise of a man to whom no feminine humor is new. He brought forward a chair.
“Will you sit?” he said, with exaggerated courtesy. “I have much to say to you. Besides, we have all the time. Your husband and his German friend are miles away. I passed Miss Delafield in the forest. She is not quite at home on her snow-shoes yet. She cannot be back for at least half an hour.”
Etta bit her lip as she looked at the chair. She sat slowly down and drew in the folds of her rich dress.
“I have the good fortune to find you alone.”
“So you have informed me,” she replied coldly.
De Chauxville leaned against the mantel-piece and looked down at her thoughtfully.
“At the bear-hunt the other day,” he said, “I had the misfortune to—well, to fall out with the prince. We were not quite at one on a question of etiquette. He thought that I ought to have fired. I did not fire; I was not ready. It appears that the prince considered himself to be in danger. He was nervous—flurried.”
“You are not always artistic in your untruths,” interrupted Etta. “I know nothing of the incident to which you refer, but in lying you should always endeavor to be consistent. I am sure Paul was not nervous—or flurried.”
De Chauxville smiled imperturbably. His end was gained. Etta obviously knew nothing of his attempt to murder Paul at the bear-hunt.
“It was nothing,” he went on; “we did not come to words. But we have never been much in sympathy; the coldness is intensified, that is all. So I took the opportunity of calling when I knew he was away.”
“How did you know he was away?”
“Ah, madame, I know more than I am credited with.”
Etta gave a little laugh and shrugged her shoulders.
“You do not care for Osterno?” suggested De Chauxville.
“I hate it!”
“Precisely. And I am here to help you to get away from Russia once for all. Ah! you may shake your head. Some day, perhaps, I shall succeed in convincing you that I have only your interests at heart. I am here, princess, to make a little arrangement with you—a final arrangement, I hope.”
He paused, looking at her with a sudden gleam in his eyes.
“Not the last of all,” he added in a different tone. “That will make you my wife.”
Etta allowed this statement to pass unchallenged. Her courage and energy were not exhausted. She was learning to nurse her forces.
“Your husband,” went on De Chauxville, after he had sufficiently enjoyed the savor of his own words, “is a brave man. To frighten him it is necessary to resort to strong measures. The last and the strongest measure in the diplomat’s scale is the People. The People, madame, will take no denial. It is a game I have played before—a dangerous game, but I am not afraid.”
“You need not trouble to be theatrical with me,” put in Etta scornfully. She was sitting with a patch of color in either cheek. At times this man had the power of moving her, and she was afraid of allowing him to exercise it. She knew her own weakness—her inordinate vanity; for vanity is the weakness of strong women. She was ever open to flattery, and Claude de Chauxville flattered her in every word he spoke; for by act and speech he made it manifest that she was the motive power of his existence.
“A man who plays for a high stake,” went on the Frenchman, in a quieter voice, “must be content to throw his all on the table time after time. A week to-night—Thursday, the 5th of April—I will throw down my all on the turn of a card. For the People are like that. It is rouge or noir—one never knows. We only know that there is no third color, no compromise.”
Etta was listening now with ill-disguised interest. At last he had given her something definite—a date.
“On Thursday,” he went on, “the peasants will make a demonstration. You know as well as I do—as well as Prince Pavlo does, despite his imperturbable face—that the whole country is a volcano which may break forth at any moment. But the control is strong, and therefore there is never a large eruption—a grumble here, a gleam of fire there, a sullen heat everywhere! But it is held in check by the impossibility of communication. It seems strange, but Russia stands because she has no penny postage. The great crash will come, not by force of arms, but by ways of peace. The signal will be a postal system, the standard of the revolution will be a postage-stamp. All over this country there are millions waiting and burning to rise up and crush despotism, but they are held in check by the simple fact that they are far apart and they cannot write to each other. When, at last, they are brought together, there will be no fight at all, because they will overwhelm their enemies. That time, madame, has not come yet. We are only at the stage of tentative underground rumblings. But a little eruption is enough to wipe out one man if he be standing on the spot.”
“Go on,” said Etta quietly—too quietly, De Chauxville might have thought, had he been calmer.
“I want you,” he went on, “to assist me. We shall be ready on Thursday. I shall not appear in the matter at all; I have strong colleagues at my back. Starvation and misery, properly handled, are strong incentives.”
“And how do you propose to handle them?” asked Etta in the same quiet voice.
“The peasants will make a demonstration. The rest we must leave to—well, to the course of fortune. I have no doubt that our astute friend Karl Steinmetz will manage to hold them in check. But whatever the end of the demonstration, the outcome will be the impossibility of a longer residence in this country for the Prince Pavlo Alexis. A regiment of soldiers could hardly make it possible.”
“I do not understand,” said Etta, “what you describe as a demonstration—is it a rising?”
De Chauxville nodded, with a grin.
“In force, to take what they want by force?” asked the princess.
De Chauxville spread out his hands in his graceful Gallic way.
“That depends.”
“And what do you wish me to do?” asked Etta, with the same concentrated quiet.
“In the first place, to believe that no harm will come to you, either directly or indirectly. They would not dare to touch the prince; they will content themselves with breaking a few windows.”
“What do you want me to do?” repeated Etta.
De Chauxville paused.
“Merely,” he answered lightly, “to leave open a door—a side door. I understand that there is a door in the old portion of the castle leading up by a flight of stairs to the smoking-room, and thence to the new part of the building.”
Etta did not answer. De Chauxville glanced at his watch and walked to the window, where he stood looking out. He was too refined a person to whistle, but his attitude was suggestive of that mode of killing time.
“This door I wish you to unbar yourself before dinner on Thursday evening,” he said, turning round and slowly coming toward her.
“And I refuse to do it,” said Etta.
“Ah!”
Etta sprung to her feet and faced him—a beautiful woman, a very queen of anger. Her blazing eyes were on a level with his.
“Yes,” she cried, with clenched fists, standing her full height till she seemed to look down into his mean, fox-like face. “Yes; I refuse to betray my husband—”
“Stop! He is not your husband!”
Slowly the anger faded out of her eyes; her clenched fists relaxed. Her fingers were scraping nervously at the silk of her dress, like the fingers of a child seeking support. She seemed to lose several inches of her majestic stature.
“What do you mean?” she whispered. “What do you mean?”
“Sydney Bamborough is your husband,” said the Frenchman, without taking his dull eyes from her face.
“He is dead!” she hissed.
“Prove it!”
He walked past her and leaned against the mantelpiece in the pose of easy familiarity which he had maintained during the first portion of their interview.
“Prove it, madame!” he said again.
“He died at Tver,” she said; but there was no conviction in her voice. With her title and position to hold to, she could face the world. Without these, what was she?
“A local newspaper reports that the body of a man was discovered on the plains of Tver and duly buried in the pauper cemetery,” said De Chauxville indifferently. “Your husband—Sydney Bamborough, I mean—was, for reasons which need not be gone into here, in the neighborhood of Tver at the time. A police officer, who has since been transferred to Odessa, was of the opinion that the dead man was a foreigner. There are about twelve thousand foreigners in Tver—operatives in the manufactories. Your husband—Sydney Bamborough, bien entendu—left Tver to proceed eastward and cross Siberia to China in order to avoid the emissaries of the Charity League, who were looking out for him at the western frontier. He will be due at one of the treaty ports in China in about a month. Upon the supposition that the body discovered on the plains of Tver was that of your husband, you took the opportunity of becoming a princess. It was enterprising. I admire your spirit. But it was dangerous. I, madame, can suppress Sydney Bamborough when he turns up. I have two arrows in my quiver for him; one is the Charity League, the other the Russian Government, who want him. Your husband—I beg your pardon, the prince—would perhaps take a different view of the case. It is a pretty story. I will tell it to him unless I have your implicit obedience.”
Etta stood dry-lipped before him. She tried to speak, but no words came from her lips.
De Chauxville looked at her with a quiet smile of triumph, and she knew that he loved her. There is no defining love, nor telling when it merges into hatred.
“Thursday evening, before dinner,” said De Chauxville.
And he left her standing on the hearth-rug, her lips moving and framing no words.
“Have you spoken to the princess?” asked Steinmetz, without taking the cigar from his lips.
They were driving home through the forest that surrounded Osterno as the sea surrounds an island. They were alone in the sleigh. That which they had been doing had required no servant. Paul was driving, and consequently the three horses were going as hard as they could. The snow flew past their faces like the foam over the gunwale of a boat that is thrashing into a ten-knot breeze. Yet it was not all snow. There were flecks of foam from the horses’ mouths mingled with it.
“Yes,” answered Paul. His face was set and hard, his eyes stern. This trouble with the peasants was affecting him more keenly than he suspected. It was changing the man’s face—drawing lines about his lips, streaking his forehead with the marks of care. His position can hardly be realized by an Englishman unless it be compared to that of the captain of a great sinking ship full of human souls who have been placed under his care.
“And what did she say?” asked Steinmetz.
“That she would not leave unless we all went with her.”
Steinmetz drew the furs closer up round him.
“Yes,” he said, glancing at his companion’s face, and seeing little but the eyes, by reason of the sable collar of his coat, which met the fur of his cap; “yes, and why not?”
“I cannot leave them,” answered Paul. “I cannot go away now that there is trouble among them. What it is, goodness only knows! They would never have got like this by themselves. Somebody has been at them, and I don’t think it is the Nihilists. It is worse than that. Some devil has been stirring them up, and they know no better. He is still at it. They are getting worse day by day, and I cannot catch him. If I do, by God! Steinmetz, I’ll twist his neck.”
Steinmetz smiled grimly.
“Yes,” he answered, “you are capable of it. For me, I am getting tired of the moujik. He is an inveterate, incurable fool. If he is going to be a dangerous fool as well, I should almost be inclined to let him go to the devil in his own way.”
“I dare say; but you are not in my position.”
“No; that is true, Pavlo. They were not my father’s serfs. Generations of my ancestors have not saved generations of their ancestors from starvation. My fathers before me have not toiled and slaved and legislated for them. I have not learnt medicine that I might doctor them. I have not risked my health and life in their sties, where pigs would refuse to live. I have not given my whole heart and soul to their welfare, to receive no thanks, but only hatred. No, it is different for me. I owe them nothing, mein lieber; that is the difference.”
“If I agree to make a bolt for Petersburg to-morrow will you come?” retorted Paul.
“No,” answered the stout man.
“I thought not. Your cynicism is only a matter of words, Steinmetz, and not of deeds. There is no question of either of us leaving Osterno. We must stay and fight it right out here.”
“That is so,” answered Steinmetz, with the Teutonic stolidity of manner which sometimes came over him. “But the ladies—what of them?”
Paul did not answer. They were passing over the rise of a heavy drift. It was necessary to keep the horses up to their work, to prevent the runners of the sleigh sinking into the snow. With voice and whip Paul encouraged them. He was kind to animals, but never spared them—a strong man, who gave freely of his strength and expected an equal generosity.
“This is no place for Miss Delafield,” added Steinmetz, looking straight in front of him.
“I know that!” answered Paul sharply. “I wish to God she was not here!” he added in a lower tone, and the words were lost beneath the frozen mustache.
Steinmetz made no answer. They drove on through the gathering gloom. The sky was of a yellow gray, and the earth reflected the dismal hue of it. Presently it began to snow, driving in a fine haze from the north. The two men lapsed into silence. Steinmetz, buried in his furs like a great, cumbrous bear, appeared to be half asleep. They had had a long and wearisome day. The horses had covered their forty miles and more from village to village, where the two men had only gathered discouragement and foreboding. Some of the starostas were sullen; others openly scared. None of them were glad to see Steinmetz. Paul had never dared to betray his identity. With the gendarmes—the tchinovniks—they had not deemed it wise to hold communication.
“Stop!” cried Steinmetz suddenly, and Paul pulled the horses on to their haunches.
“I thought you were asleep,” he said.
There was no one in sight. They were driving along the new road now, the high-way Paul had constructed from Osterno to Tver. The road itself was, of course, indistinguishable, but the telegraph posts marked its course.
Steinmetz tumbled heavily out of his furs and went toward the nearest telegraph post.
“Where is the wire?” he shouted.
Paul followed him in the sleigh. Together they peered up into the darkness and the falling snow. The posts were there, but the wire was gone. A whole length of it had been removed. They were cut off from civilization by one hundred and forty miles of untrodden snow.
Steinmetz clambered back into the sleigh and drew up the fur apron. He gave a strange little laugh that had a ring of boyish excitement in it. This man had not always been stout and placid. He too had had his day, and those who knew him said that it had been a stirring one.
“That settles one question,” he said.
“Which question?” asked Paul.
He was driving as hard as the horses could lay hoof to ground, taken with a sudden misgiving and a great desire to reach Osterno before dark.
“The question of the ladies,” replied Steinmetz. “It is too late for them to go now.”
The village, nestling beneath the grim protection of Osterno, was deserted and forlorn. All the doors were closed, the meagre curtains drawn. It was very cold. There was a sense of relief in this great frost; for when Nature puts forth her strength men are usually cowed thereby.
At the castle all seemed to be in order. The groom, in his great sheepskin coat, was waiting in the doorway. The servants threw open the vast doors, and stood respectfully in the warm, brilliantly lighted hall while their master passed in.
“Where is the princess?” Steinmetz asked his valet, while he was removing the evidences of a long day in the open air.
“In her drawing-room, Excellency.”
“Then go and ask her if she will give me a cup of tea in a few minutes.”
And the man, a timorous German, went.
A few minutes later Steinmetz, presenting himself at the door of the little drawing-room attached to Etta’s suite of rooms, found the princess in a matchless tea-gown waiting beside a table laden with silver tea appliances. A dainty samovar, a tiny tea-pot, a spirit-lamp and the rest, all in the wonderful silver-work of the Slavonski Bazaar in Moscow.
“You see,” she said with a smile, for she always smiled on men, “I have obeyed your orders.”
Steinmetz bowed gravely. He was one of the few men who could see that smile and be strong. He closed the door carefully behind him. No mention was made of the fact that his message had implied, and she had understood, that he wished to see her alone. Etta was rather pale. There was an anxious look in her eyes—behind the smile, as it were. She was afraid of this man. She looked at the flame of the samovar, busying herself among the tea-things with pretty curving fingers and rustling sleeves. But the tea was never made.
“I begin to think,” said Steinmetz, coming to the point in his bluff way, “that you are a sort of beautiful Jonah, a graceful stormy petrel, a fair Wandering Jewess. There is always trouble where you go.”
She glanced at his broad face, and read nothing there.
“Go on,” she said. “What have I been doing now? How you do hate me, Herr Steinmetz!”
“Perhaps it is safer than loving you,” he answered, with his grim humor.
“I suppose,” she said, with a quaint little air of resignation which was very disarming, “that you have come here to scold me—you do not want any tea?”
“No; I do not want any tea.”
She turned the wick of the spirit-lamp, and the peaceful music of the samovar was still. In her clever eyes there was a little air of sidelong indecision. She could not make up her mind how to take him. Her chiefest method was so old as to be biblical. Yet she could not take him with her eyelids. She had tried.
“You are horribly grave,” she said.
“The situation,” he replied, “is horribly grave.”
Etta looked up at him as he stood before her, and the lamp-light, falling on the perfect oval of her face, showed it to be white and drawn.
“Princess,” said the man, “there are in the lives of some of us times when we cease to be men and women, and become mere human beings. There are times, I mean, when the thousand influences of sex die at one blow of fate. This is such a time. We must forget that you are a beautiful woman; I verily believe that there is none more beautiful in the world. I once knew one whom I admired more, but that was not because she was more beautiful. That, however, is my own story, and this”—he paused and looked round the little room, furnished, decorated for her comfort—“this is your story. We must forget that I am a man, and therefore subject to the influence of your beauty.”
She sat looking up into his strong, grave face, and during all that followed she never moved.
“I know you,” he said, “to be courageous, and must ask you to believe that I exaggerate nothing in what I am about to tell you. I tell it to you instead of leaving Paul to do so because I know his complete fearlessness, and his blind faith in a people who are unworthy of it. He does not realize the gravity of the situation. They are his own people. A sailor never believes that his own ship is unseaworthy.”
“Go on!” said Etta, for he had paused.
“This country,” he continued, “is unsettled. The people of the estate are on the brink of a revolt. You know what the Russian peasant is. It will be no Parisian imeute, half noise, half laughter. We cannot hope to hold this old place against them. We cannot get away from it. We cannot send for help because we have no one to send. Princess, this is no time for half-confidences. I know—for I know these people better even than Paul knows them—I am convinced that this is not the outcome of their own brains. They are being urged on by some one. There is some one at their backs. This is no revolt of the peasants, organized by the peasants. Princess, you must tell me all you know!”
“I—I,” she stammered, “I know nothing!”
And then suddenly she burst into tears, and buried her face in a tiny, useless handkerchief. It was so unlike her and so sudden that Steinmetz was startled.
He laid his great hand soothingly on her shoulder.
“I know,” he said quietly, “I know more than you think. I am no saint, princess, myself. I too have had my difficulties. I have had my temptations, and I have not always resisted. God knows it is difficult for men to do always the right thing. It is a thousand times more difficult for women. When we spoke together in Petersburg, and I offered you my poor friendship, I was not acting in the dark. I knew as much then as I do now. Princess, I knew about the Charity League papers. I knew more than any except Stipan Lanovitch, and it was he who told me.”
He was stroking her shoulder with the soothing movements that one uses toward a child in distress. His great hand, broad and thick, had a certain sense of quiet comfort and strength in it. Etta ceased sobbing, and sat with bowed head, looking through her tears into the gay wood fire. It is probable that she failed to realize the great charity of the man who was speaking to her. For the capacity for evil merges at some point or other into incapability for comprehending good.
“Is that all he knows?” she was wondering.
The suggestion that Sydney Bamborough was not dead had risen up to eclipse all other fear in her mind. In some part her thought reached him.
“I know so much,” he said, “that it is safest to tell me more. I offered you my friendship because I think that no woman could carry through your difficulties unaided. Princess, the admiration of Claude de Chauxville may be pleasant, but I venture to think that my friendship is essential.”
Etta raised her head a little. She was within an ace of handing over to Karl Steinmetz the rod of power held over her by the Frenchman. There was something in Steinmetz that appealed to her and softened her, something that reached a tender part of her heart through the coating of vanity, through the hardness of worldly experience.
“I have known De Chauxville twenty-five years,” he went on, and Etta deferred her confession. “We have never been good friends, I admit. I am no saint, princess, but De Chauxville is a villain. Some day you may discover, when it is too late, that it would have been for Paul’s happiness, for your happiness, for every one’s good to have nothing more to do with Claude de Chauxville, I want to save you that discovery. Will you act upon my advice? Will you make a stand now? Will you come to me and tell me all that De Chauxville knows about you that he could ever use against you? Will you give yourself into my hands—give me your battle to fight? You cannot do it alone. Only believe in my friendship, princess. That is all I ask.”
Etta shook her head.
“I think not,” she answered, in a voice too light, too superficial, too hopelessly shallow for the depth of the moment. She was thinking only of Sydney Bamborough, and of that dread secret. She fought with what arms she wielded best—the lightest, the quickest, the most baffling.
“As you will,” said Steinmetz.
A Russian village kabak, with a smoking lamp, of which the chimney is broken. The greasy curtains drawn across the small windows exclude the faintest possibility of a draught. The moujik does not like a draught; in fact, he hates the fresh air of heaven. Air that has been breathed three or four times over is the air for him; it is warmer. The atmosphere of this particular inn is not unlike that of every other inn in the White Empire, inasmuch as it is heavily seasoned with the scent of cabbage soup. The odor of this nourishing compound is only exceeded in unpleasantness by the taste of the same. Added to this warm smell there is the smoke of a score of the very cheapest cigarettes. The Russian peasant smokes his cigarette now. It is the first step, and it does not cost him much. It is the dawn of progress—the thin end of the wedge which will broaden out into anarchy. The poor man who smokes a cigarette is sure to pass on to socialistic opinions and troubles in the market-place. Witness the cigarette-smoking countries. Moreover, this same poor man is not a pleasant companion. He smokes a poor cigarette.
There is also the smell of vodka, which bottled curse is standing in tumblers all down the long table. The news has spread in Osterno that vodka is to be had for the asking at the kabak, where there is a meeting. Needless to say, the meeting is a large one. Foolishness and thirst are often found in the same head—a cranium which, by the way, is exceptionally liable to be turned by knowledge or drink.
If the drink at the kabak of Osterno was dangerous, the knowledge was no less so.
“I tell you, little fathers,” an orator was shouting, “that the day of the capitalist has gone. The rich men—the princes, the nobles, the great merchants, the monopolists, the tchinovniks—tremble. They know that the poor man is awakening at last from his long lethargy. What have we done in Germany? What have we done in America? What have we done in England and France?”
Whereupon he banged an unwashed fist upon the table with such emphasis that more than one of the audience clutched his glass of vodka in alarm, lest a drop of the precious liquor should be wasted.
No one seemed to know what had been done in Germany, in America, in England, or in France. The people’s orator is a man of many questions and much fist-banging. The moujiks of Osterno gazed at him beneath their shaggy brows. Half of them did not understand him. They were as yet uneducated to a comprehension of the street orator’s periods. A few of the more intelligent waited for him to answer his own questions, which he failed to do. A vague and ominous question carries as much weight with some people as a statement, and has the signal advantage of being less incriminating.
The speaker—a neckless, broad-shouldered ruffian of the type known in England as “unemployed”—looked round with triumphant head well thrown back. From his attitude it was obvious that he had been the salvation of the countries named, and had now come to Russia to do the same for her. He spoke with the throaty accent of the Pole. It was quite evident that his speech was a written one—probably a printed harangue issued to him and his compeers for circulation throughout the country. He delivered many of the longer words with a certain unctuous roll of the tongue, and an emphasis indicating the fact that he did not know their meaning.
“From afar,” he went on, “we have long been watching you. We have noted your difficulties and your hardships, your sickness, your starvation. These men of Tver,’ we have said, ‘are brave and true and steadfast. We will tell them of liberty.’ So I have come to you, and I am glad to see you. Alexander Alexandrovitch, pass the bottle down the table. You see, little fathers, I have not come begging for your money. No; keep your kopecks in your pocket. We do not want your money. We are no tchinovniks. We prove it by giving you vodka to keep your throats wet and your ears open. Fill up your glasses—fill up your glasses!”
The little fathers of Osterno understood this part of the harangue perfectly, and acted upon it.
The orator scratched his head reflectively. There was a certain business-like mouthing of his periods, showing that he had learnt all this by heart. He did not press all his points home in the manner of one speaking from his own brain.
“I see before me,” he went on, without an overplus of sequence, “men worthy to take their place among the rulers of the world—eh—er—rulers of the world, little fathers.”
He paused and drank half a tumbler of vodka. His last statement was so obviously inapplicable—what he actually did see was so very far removed from what he said he saw—that he decided to relinquish the point.
“I drink,” he cried, “to Liberty and Equality!”
Some of the little fathers also drank, to assuage an hereditary thirst.
“And now,” continued the orator, “let us get to business. I think we understand each other?”
He looked round with an engaging smile upon faces brutal enough to suit his purpose, but quite devoid of intelligence. There was not much understanding there.
“The poor man has one only way of making himself felt—force. We have worked for generations, we have toiled in silence, and we have gathered strength. The time has now come for us to put forth our strength. The time has gone by for merely asking for what we want. We asked, and they heard us not. We will now go and take!”
A few who had heard this speech or something like it before shouted their applause at this moment. Before the noise had subsided the door opened, and two or three men pushed their way into the already overcrowded room.
“Come in, come in!” cried the orator; “the more the better. You are all welcome. All we require, then, little fathers, is organization. There are nine hundred souls in Osterno; are you going to bow down before one man? All men are equal—moujik and barin, krestyanin and prince. Why do you not go up to the castle that frowns down upon the village, and tell the man there that you are starving, that he must feed you, that you are not going to work from dawn till eve while he sits on his velvet couch and smokes his gold-tipped cigarettes. Why do you not go and tell him that you are not going to starve and die while he eats caviare and peaches from gold plates and dishes?”
A resounding bang of the fist finished this fine oration, and again the questions were unanswered.
“They are all the same, these aristocrats,” the man thundered on. “Your prince is as the others, I make no doubt. Indeed, I know; for I have been told by our good friend Abramitch here. A clever man our friend Abramitch, and when you get your liberty—when you get your Mir—you must keep him in mind. Your prince, then—this Howard Alexis—treats you like the dirt beneath his feet. Is it not so? He will not listen to your cry of hunger. He will not give you a few crumbs of food from his gold dishes. He will not give you a few kopecks of the millions of rubles that he possesses. And where did he get those rubles? Ah! where did he get them—eh? Tell me that!”
Again the interrogative unwashed fist. As the orator’s wild and frenzied eye travelled round the room it lighted on a form near the door—a man standing a head and shoulders above any one in the room, a man enveloped in an old brown coat, with a woollen shawl round his throat, hiding half his face.
“Who is that?” cried the orator, with an unsteady, pointing finger. “He is no moujik. Is that a tchinovnik, little fathers? Has he come here to our meeting to spy upon us?”
“You may ask them who I am,” replied the giant. “They know; they will tell you. It is not the first time that I tell them they are fools. I tell them again now. They are fools and worse to listen to such windbags as you.”
“Who is it?” cried the paid agitator. “Who is this man?”
His eyes were red with anger and with vodka; his voice was unsteady. His outstretched hand shook.
“It is the Moscow doctor,” said a man beside him—“the Moscow doctor.”
“Then I say he is no doctor!” shouted the orator. “He is a spy—a Government spy, a tchinovnik! He has heard all we have said. He has seen you all. Brothers, that man must not leave this room alive. If he does, you are lost men!”
Some few of the more violent spirits rose and pressed tumultuously toward the door. The agitator shouted and screamed, urging them on, taking good care to remain in the safe background himself. Every man in the room rose to his feet. They were full of vodka and fury and ignorance. Spirit and tall talk, taken on an empty stomach, are dangerous stimulants.
Paul stood with his back to the door and never moved.
“Sit down, fools!” he cried. “Sit down! Listen to me. You dare not touch me; you know that.”
It seemed that he was right, for they stopped with staring, stupid eyes and idle hands.
“Will you listen to me, whom you have known for years, or to this talker from the town? Choose now. I am tired of you. I have been patient with you for years. You are sheep; are you fools also, to be dazzled by the words of an idle talker who promises all and gives nothing?”
There was a sullen silence. Paul had lost his power over them, and he knew it. He was quite cool and watchful. He knew that he was in danger. These men were wild and ignorant. They were mad with drink and the brave words of the agitator.
“Choose now!” he shouted, feeling for the handle of the door behind his back.
They made no sign, but watched the faces of their leaders.
“If I go now,” said Paul, “I never come again!”
He opened the door. The men whom he had nursed and clothed and fed, whose lives he had saved again and again, stood sullen and silent.
Paul passed slowly out and closed the door behind him. Without it was dark and still. There would be a moon presently, and in the meantime it was preparing to freeze harder than ever.
Paul walked slowly up the village street, while two men emerged separately from the darkness of by-lanes and followed him. He did not heed them. He was not aware that the thermometer stood somewhere below zero. He did not even trouble to draw on his fur gloves.
He felt like a man whose own dogs have turned against him. The place that these peasants had occupied in his heart had been precisely that vacancy which is filled by dogs and horses in the hearts of many men. There was in his feeling for them that knowledge of a complete dependence by which young children draw and hold a mother’s love.
Paul Howard Alexis was not a man to analyze his thoughts. Your strong man is usually ignorant of the existence of his own feelings. He is never conscious of them. Paul walked slowly through the village of Osterno, and realized, in his uncompromising honesty, that of the nine hundred men who lived therein there were not three upon whom he could rely. He had upheld his peasants for years against the cynic truths of Karl Steinmetz. He had resolutely refused to admit even to himself that they were as devoid of gratitude as they were of wisdom. And this was the end of all!
One of the men following him hurried on and caught him up.
“Excellency,” he gasped, breathless with his haste, “you must not come here alone any longer. I am afraid of them—I have no control.”
Paul paused, and suited his pace to the shorter legs of his companion.
“Starosta!” he said. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Excellency. I saw you go into the kabak, so I waited outside and watched. I did not dare to go inside. They will not allow me there. They are afraid that I should give information.”
“How long have these meetings been going on?”
“The last three nights, Excellency, in Osterno; but it is the same all over the estate.”
“Only on the estate?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
Paul walked on in silence for some paces. The third man followed them without catching them up.
“I do not understand, Excellency,” said the starosta anxiously. “It is not the Nihilists.”
“No; it is not the Nihilists.”
“And they do not want money, Excellency; that seems strange.”
“Very!” admitted Paul ironically.
“And they give vodka.”
This seemed to be the chief stumbling-block in the starosta’s road to a solution of the mystery.
“Find out for me,” said Paul, after a pause, “who this man is, where he comes from, and how much he is paid to open his mouth. We will pay him more to shut it. Find out as much as you can, and let me know to-morrow.”
“I will try, Excellency; but I have little hope of succeeding. They distrust me. They send the children to my shop for what they want, and the little ones have evidently been told not to chatter. The moujiks avoid me when they meet me. What can I do?”
“You can show them that you are not afraid of them,” answered Paul. “That goes a long way with the moujik.”
They walked on together through the lane of cottages, where furtive forms lurked in door-ways and behind curtains. And Paul had only one word of advice to give, upon which he harped continually: “Be thou very courageous—be thou very courageous.” Nothing new, for so it was written in the oldest book of all. The starosta was a timorous man, needing such strong support as his master gave him from time to time.
At the great gates of the park they paused, and Paul gave the mayor of Osterno a few last words of advice. While they were standing there the other man who had been following joined them.
“Is that you, Steinmetz?” asked Paul, his hand thrust with suspicious speed into his jacket pocket.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Watching you,” answered Karl Steinmetz, in his mild way. “It is no longer safe for either of us to go about alone. It was mere foolery your going to that kabak.”