A drag upon the hand and brain,
A chain of gold is still a chain.
A huge rack of cloud was driving across the sky at a speed that
frayed out long rags from its bellying sails, and trailed them
heavily along the tops of the dark pine forest. The earth, but
recently freed from the weight of the snow-mantle that for month
after month had hidden it from sight, was brown and oozy, dotted with
pools and ponds and spontaneous brooks and rivulets engendered by
that appalling infliction, a Russian spring break-up.
Hard to bear, even in Moscow or Petersburg, this manifestation of
nature becomes in the open country an actual calamity; for it is no
small trial to wade from liquid mud to liquid mud, from spongy road
to spongier path, while the great wind-storms that precede and follow
the breaking of the ice, gurgle and howl and hoot like an army of
drunken banshees beneath the arch of deluge overhead.
The solemn ceremonies announcing the formal ending of winter had
already taken place. In the presence of the Czar, his Court, and his
hierarchy, the cannon rending the hard-glittering surface of the Neva
had done its work, and, therefore, officially speaking, spring was
born to the Muscovite people. But how dour and morose was this infant
season that particular year, shivering and cowering in the cold rain!
Indeed, it had not as yet unfolded its very faintest green banner,
and continued to sulk away the days and the nights, hiding from all
the expectant eyes so impatiently awaiting its advent.
The Province of Tvernovna was being especially ill-treated, and
coarse brutality might justly have been laid at the door of the
storm-powers responsible for its evil case. There, rivers that had
usually been content with flowing like slightly ruffled mill-ponds
when once debarrassed of their winter coatings, now turned themselves
into raging torrents, demolishing their banks with, so to speak, a
wrathful heaving of the shoulder, and spreading out over the steppe
in billowing waves, foam-slavered and yellow, sufficient to carry a
house off its feet among the débris of trees and bushes that seemed
but a smaller edition of the Sargasso Sea.
As a matter of fact the loosed waters had for days been encroaching
on the outskirts of the village of Tverna, and already stretched
broad tongues and ribbons of wetness toward the base of the slope
whereon it nestled below the Castle, until it seemed stranded like a
peninsula in a lagoon, and the dark soil floated up by the unpleasing
tide spread in an ever-increasing stain over the drowned turf.
The lanes separating the _isbas_ into a very unconventional imitation
of blocks was well-nigh impassable, save where logs and lengths of
rough board had been precariously anchored by stones, so as to allow
the inhabitants at least to reach the _kabàk_--or drinking-shop--this
indispensable adjunct of any human habitation, especially in the
North, wherever that North may befind itself. It is a populous
village, numbering twelve hundred “souls,” as is plainly testified
in orthodox characters by a painted sign at the entrance of the
chief thoroughfare. Also its _kabàk_ is of a better class than is
usually found in such villages, for upon its once whitewashed walls
are tacked highly inflamed pictures of many saints and sinners
(mostly obtained from wandering peddlers), and the short curtains
of the square windows are of heavy red material, large enough to be
drawn straight across the double glass of an evening, when “lights
out” should be the order of the hour. Of course the atmosphere of
the place is neither better nor worse than is to be encountered in
similar places the Empire over. An unhappy mixture of _vòdka_,
_kwàss_, red-cabbage soup--wherein clots of sour milk are wont to
lurk--stale tobacco, and the odor of humanity clad in thick woolens
and greasy sheepskins gives it its unfragrant character during the
day, while at night these amiable factors are overtoned by the
smoking kerosene-lamps which an all-wise Providence has been
powerless to spare to the _mujiks_ in this their era of progress.
Tverna has the fortune to be situated in one of Russia’s most
prosperous provinces. Unlike Sámàrâ, Vintkà, and many others, it
does not belong to a famine government, also the cholera is seldom
heard of there, but, nevertheless, it has its drawbacks; for as it is
of great agrarian and political importance, it is visited more
frequently than is wholesome for it by professional agitators, who,
daring the might of Prince Basil Palitzin, invade its purlieus
whenever that kindly lord ventures to absent himself. It is well
known that when the “presence flag” waves its silken folds above the
Castle, peace and quiet abide in Tverna; but the minute it is hauled
down and the tröika bearing him away has disappeared from view, the
trouble-makers are once more at their evil work.
All day it had been raining densely, and a disheartening evening was
setting in, with no prospect whatsoever of better things for the
morrow. In the _kabàk_ were assembled the more important members of
the village council, the _staròstá_--a gigantic man, blond as ripe
corn, pink-faced, and with a pair of prominent eyes--so beautifully
blue that it is a pity to have to call them stupid--and a dozen or so
of less illustrious persons, content with sitting in corners and
listening to the pow-wow.
Seated sidewise on the massive table was a man of entirely different
breed and aspect. To begin with, he wore an ordinary suit of mixed
goods, such as any other inhabitants of the world at large might have
sported; a scarlet tie--stained and crumpled--showed above his garish
waistcoat, and a watch-chain of extreme thickness and brassiness
dangled across his lean stomach. Quick, active, alert, lamentably
unwashed as to neck and hands, he created at first glance the
impression of believing himself to be somebody--a belief that since
the morning two or three weeks before, when he had been, as he put
it, “marooned” by the swollen waters of the Tvernovo, he had
studiously endeavored to popularize.
In spite of his unrecherché appearance and regrettable vulgarity of
apparel, he had money--not in great quantities, perhaps, but much
more than the few _kopeks_ the others there could afford to carry
abroad with them.
During his “enforced” sojourn he had constantly posed for the
well-informed person who has traveled much, who reads the “leaves”
(newspapers), and he had always in his pocket some disgustingly
thumbed brochure of an eminently provocative nature, embellished with
prints which should never have seen the light of day--or night,
either, for the matter of that--but which he displayed with much
pride on every possible occasion. So far, it may as well be admitted,
he had not shown himself aggressive, nor had he given any one the
right to consider him a revolutionary agent, but mayhap he was only a
little cleverer than those who had preceded him, or he was merely
biding a favorable moment for a declaration of principles. Be this as
it might, to-night he seemed more loquacious than heretofore, and
began to engage the _staròstá_ in an animated conversation--the
animation being, of course, all on his side, for the other was a man
of a really bovine stolidity.
“What’ll you do if the water rises any higher?” the visitor
demanded of that worthy. His accent was not pure, and belonged to no
district of Russia. Indeed, it had a vague Teuton flavor, too slight,
however, to be noticed by his illiterate audience; also his sentences
did not conform precisely to the idiom of a native-born Muscovite.
“Do?” The _staròstá_ removed his pipe from between his thick lips,
cast a speculative glance at the dingy ceiling, and brought it slowly
down again to the level of his interlocutor. “Why, we have already
advised the _tchinòvnik_. What more can we do? It is his affair to
help us when we’re in trouble.” He replaced his pipe in its natural
receptacle, pushed back his fur cap, and fell silent again, as though
the point was settled once and for all.
“The _tchinòvnik_!” mocked the other. “Can he make the river go back
to bed? And what about your tyrant? Why don’t you advise _him_ of
the muddle you’re in here? Perhaps he’d be cleverer at that game
than the _tchinòvnik_, and it’s his duty to protect you from harm,
anyhow, isn’t it?”
“The Prince?” put in an elder who was lounging by the stove and now
raised himself on one elbow. He looked the patriarch to the life,
with his long white beard, and snowy locks falling benignantly around
his finely wrinkled face. His eyes were still singularly bright under
their shaggy eyebrows. “The Prince is far away, and does not know
what occurs here.”
“He should know!” asserted the man who had given his name as Gregor
Lukitch. “What’s the use of a tyrant if he’s not here when for
once in a way he should be--tell me that? Eh?”
The elder pondered for a moment before answering this curious
question.
“Well,” he said at last, “the Prince is good to us. We have no cause
for complaint. His father was the same before him. All of them were
always fine _Barines_. There are not many like them.”
Gregor Lukitch sneered. “Oh, you ancients!” he pronounced. “To listen
to you one would think you had never been serfs, slaves, wretched
creatures crushed by oppressors, victims of a tyrannical system that
rested like a curse upon you, and still bears its bitter fruits. Good
_Barines_ say you? Ach! You make me sick.”
This lofty flight of words was rather lost upon the audience, but a
few vague murmurs of approbation were heard to proceed from the
corner where the younger men had congregated to smoke vile
cigarettes--like kerosene-lamps, cigarettes are modern “luxuries”
among the Russian peoples. Indeed, to indulge in “paper pipes”--as
they are called--is looked upon as a sign of independence and
enlightenment. Unfortunately those obtainable there by the masses are
beyond all description offensive, and even the speaker’s nostrils,
accustomed as they were to the terrible savor of public gatherings,
began to quiver queerly.
“_Gott verdamm!_” he swore in a most un-Russian way, but happily
quite under his breath. “Why do you little fathers persist in rotting
the atmosphere with your beastly cigarettes? Here, have some
decentish cigars. At any rate, they’ll not poison us!” Which was
not strictly true, since the packet of “Perfectos” he pulled from a
capacious pocket were, to say the best one could for them, rolled
from nicotine-soaked cabbage-leaf, and dangerous-looking at that. The
_mujik_ is not particular, however, and cigars are to him the
absolute complement of wealth and luxury; so with immense gratitude
were the “delicacies” accepted and retained, excepting by the
_staròstá_ and the elder, who knew better than to be tempted.
“If I were you,” the irrepressible Gregor now went on, “I would
speedily put myself in a position to live on the fat of the land, eat
my fill, drink something better than government _vòdka_, and enjoy
life while I’ve got it to enjoy.”
“What’s the matter with government _vòdka_?” asked a tall,
upstanding chap, blond and blue and pink as the _staròstá_ was, but
with less of that worthy person’s dullness. “It’s strong and
cheap, isn’t it? Much cheaper than when we had to buy it from the
Jew innkeepers.”
Gregor brought his shoulders to a level with the top of his small,
flat, lobeless ears.
“You make me sweat!” he said, with ineffable contempt. “You’d be
satisfied with anything, as long as you can burn your foolish throats
with strong alcohol. Why, I tell you”--and here he beat one dirty
fist into a grimier palm, the better to emphasize his point--“the
government is getting millions out of you, jackasses that you are;
and what do you get in return? Why, stuff not fit to wash horses’
feet with. Cheap! No! A thousand times no, not at the price your guts
pay for it. Then, also, it stupefies your brains that, by G--,
don’t need it! And that’s just what the government wants--to make
you more imbecile than you already are. When you had to sell your
harvests before they were out of the ground, in order to buy enough
to get drunk as often as you could, sometimes you stopped to think.
Now, with your nasty little cheap bottlefuls of ‘destroyer’ that
you stow in all your pockets, and guzzle from morning till night,
it’s much worse. You’re never sober. Oh, you can look at me! I
don’t care. I’m speaking the truth. And who have you to thank for
all this? Why, your ‘good _Barines_,’ of course, your high lords
who make the laws and keep you idiots under their thumbs. Government
monopoly! Yah! Perhaps you were thinking that was all arranged for
your benefit. But you are sheep, nothing else but sheep, grazing
where you chance to be put, whether the grass is long or short, dry
or juicy, never once dreaming of seeking new pastures to fill your
bellies full.”
He paused, expelled a generous cloud of smoke from his well-trained
lungs, and glanced triumphantly about him. The listeners were
becoming interested, as was testified by varied and guttural grunts.
The _staròstá_ alone did not seem to relish the joke.
“You might talk more politely of my _vòdka_, you there!” he
commented, raising his ponderous bulk from the bench near the stove.
“I don’t get it for nothing, if I do sell it cheap! The government
doesn’t make me a present of it, does it?”
The man opened his displeasing mouth wide, and laughed from the
tonsils forward, his small, red-rimmed eyes disappearing almost
completely in his bilious, moon-shaped face.
“Ah, well!” he chuckled. “You’ll always be the same shiftless
good-for-naughts. I’ve told you so before, little fathers. I say so
again!” He went on licking his cigar to reattach a ragged edge of
pseudo-tobacco. “See, you! Your tyrant married a little while ago.
Did he perhaps wed a dame of his own rank, even of his people--of
ours, I mean?” he hastily corrected. “No, he’s taken a wife from
among strangers, from an island you don’t know anything about, nor
even where it is; but I do. It’s called England, and they are all
merchants there, and--as you’re so devout--you might just as well
know that they have another God than we in Holy Russia. Their priests
are no priests at all; they dress like you and me--that is,” he
interpolated, “like me, for they, of course, don’t wear your
_touloupe_ or your _kaftán_!” He granted an approving tap to his
eminently reproachable trousers and coat, which, according to him,
were models of Anglican fashion, and once more glanced about him.
“Not of our religion!” chorused the audience. “Do you say that her
new Highness is not of our religion?”
Gregor saw that he had scored a point, and gave instant attention to
driving it home.
“They made her take some vows, of course,” he explained,
unsatisfactorily. “I’ve read something of the kind in the
news-sheets, but can you make a black heifer white by mumbling words
over her? Can you change one from the south into one of us
northerners? You can’t, eh? Well, neither can the Archimandrite
change a foreign woman into a Russian lady fit to rule you as you
seem to like being ruled.”
Marzof, the elder, rose to his full height. “You’re talking great
foolishness, my son,” he calmly stated. “Why do you come and speak
against strangers to us, who have known the grandmother of our
Prince? She came from foreign parts, too, and she was an angel
straight out of heaven, I’ll swear it. We gave her a name here, for
we couldn’t say right the one she bore; that was too difficult for
our stiff tongues, and the name we gave her was ‘Raïssa’ (the
Heaven-sent). We were serfs then still--slaves, as you say--but she
cared for us as if we’d been her own children. When the great
sickness [cholera] came, she went from house to house, never afraid,
helping us, feeding us, touching us with her tiny white hands.” The
old man lifted his fur cap and reverently went on. “May God keep
fresh the memory of Princess Raïssa, the blessed grandmother of our
present Prince, and the mother of our late master, who, too, was kind
to his people, and may He rest their souls in His Paradise!” He sat
heavily down again, and Gregor Lukitch slipped from the table to the
sanded floor.
“I abandon you--I leave you to your fate!” he clamored, spreading
wide his arms, as one who lets drop a burden too heavy for his
strength. “I leave you, I say, to your ignorance and your sloth. You
will not see the truth when it’s shown to you dear as day. What
more can I do!”
“You can speak less, in any case!” came witheringly from the corner
near the stove, and a burst of laughter greeted old Marzof’s
repartee. Plainly these people--save half a dozen hotheads or so who
always drank in every word Gregor pronounced--were not ready yet to
swallow his preachings whole; but he was no fool, and knew well that
at a given moment in Russia a mere handful of powder will set a
province on fire. Where, therefore, was the use of flurry or haste?
And as by now his own throat was dust-dry, he helped himself to a few
deep swigs of that _vòdka_ he had so harshly condemned--and looked
the better for it.
Tverna was, in its way, not a bad village, where it lay spread out
like a handful of grain carelessly scattered at the foot of the great
Castle. There were not many rowdies there--not at least considering
its comparatively large population. A few lazy, leisure-loving
individuals, over-fond of drink and carousing, who, if improperly
led, might give trouble, but that was all so far.
Indeed, here, more than on any other of Basil’s estates, Laurence
would find her opportunity for good, if she wished to take it. As has
just been seen, her husband’s grandmother had been literally
worshiped at Tverna (her favorite abode), and well-beloved wherever
her lord’s dominions extended; although she had, like Laurence,
never set her foot on Russian soil before her marriage. She had
learned the prickly language of her adopted country with an ease
perhaps due to the difficulty of her own native Breton, and had
adapted herself so rapidly to the customs and modes of the land she
had learned to love that the remembrance of her was living, and very
vividly so, where once she had reigned as a beneficent queen.
At the beginning of their wedded life Basil had been convinced that
Laurence, too, would become the adored of his people. Her beauty, her
grace, were factors in this task that no Slav--those passionate
admirers of pretty women--would overlook. She would be pleased by
their reverence, he had decided, pleased and flattered by their
natural and instinctive deference of attitude; and whenever he had
thought thus of the future--which was often--he had represented her
to himself riding by his side on the forest roads or wrapped in the
furs of her sleigh gliding over the snowy plains, or driving across
the _steppe_ in the golden days of summer on errands of kindness and
mercy; for if Basil had a serious fault, it was to idealize, almost
to the point of rendering it unrecognizable, every object of his love
or affection.
That Laurence had not married him, as she so unsweetly expressed it,
to go and “bury herself” in Russia, had never for a second entered
his brain in those days. She had taken him for better or for
worse--and certainly in his mind the latter clause could not be
considered to mean the delightful accomplishment of simple duties
under the most fortunate and agreeable of circumstances. She was a
Russian Princess now, full-fledged and accredited--not one of the
many make-believes who adopt the title as they would a new fashion as
soon as they are out of the Muscovite dominions, because in the rest
of Europe Russian Princes are the mode, and mere Counts and Countesses
quite out of it, as it were. It followed, therefore, that she would
behave in accordance with her rank--“with her heart,” he had mentally
added; and so, even when some doubts had obtruded themselves upon
him, when the Paris winter season began to draw to a close he did not
hesitate to make all preparations for a long sojourn at Tverna.
Laurence did not openly oppose this plan. She intimated once or
twice, it is true, that she would prefer to spend the spring in
Paris--in fact, to remain there until the _Grand Prix_; but as yet
not rough-shod enough to adventure herself on what she saw would be
slippery ground, she ended by consenting to a speedy departure,
albeit with no very good grace.
One thing only pleased her in this complete separation from her
present haunts, and that was the impossibility it would bring about
of any further intimacy with the Plenhöels. During the past few
months she had actually succeeded in persuading herself that she
really had reasons to be jealous of the “Gamin”--and jealous she had
indeed become, but it was not on Basil’s account. There had been
several encounters between her and her husband on the subject. Not
very acrimonious ones, nor very violent, but yet quite sufficiently
unpleasant to make him dread meeting his relatives when Laurence was
present, for her very real hatred of Marguerite made her seize any
occasion to vituperate against her. When alone Basil rarely accorded
himself the joy of visiting at the Hôtel de Plenhöel, for this joy
was beginning to appear to him a dangerous one. Indeed, he had by
this curious course of conduct ended by arousing a sort of pained
surprise in Marguerite, and a great deal of speculative astonishment
in “Antinoüs,” who was gradually but surely becoming hurt and angry
at his kinsman’s altered behavior and apparent coldness.
“_Cette pie-grièche le rend assomant!_” he pondered, which may be
approximately Englished as “That sour-minded magpie is transforming
him into a regular bore”--and wouldn’t Laurence have loved
“Antinoüs” for this interpretation of her influence over his
favorite cousin! but, ignorant of the curious inside workings of this
family dissension, she rejoiced at her cleverness in estranging them
from one another, little guessing what it would result in ultimately.
“Leave well enough alone” is a sentence she might have called to mind
with infinite profit to herself, but, unfortunately, her narrow,
plotting little brain had no room for that thought for the morrow
which often results so conveniently in the fruition of time.