some time during the night, we were afraid to make ourselves comfortable
even to the extent of unpacking sheets to cool off the velvet divans,
which filled two sides of our luxurious cabin. When we unbolted the
movable panels from the slatted door and front wall, to establish a
draft of fresh air from the window, a counter-draft was set up of
electric lights, supper clatter, cigarette smoke, and chatter, renewed
at every landing with the fresh arrivals. We resolved to avoid these
elegant mail steamers in the future, and patronize the half-merchandise
boats of the same line, which are not much slower, and possess the
advantage of staterooms opening on a corridor, not on the saloon, and
are fitted with skylights, so that one can have fresh air and quiet
sleep.
At four o'clock in the morning we landed. The local policeman, whose
duty it is to meet steamers, gazed at us with interest. The secret of
his meditations we learned later. He thought of offering us his
services. "They looked like strangers, but talked Russian," he said. The
combination was too much for him, and, seeing that we were progressing
well in our bargain for a conveyance, he withdrew, and probably solved
the riddle with the aid of the postboy.
The estate for which we were bound lay thirty-five versts distant; but
fearing that we might reach it too early if we were to start at once, I
ordered an equipage for six o'clock. I was under the impression that the
man from the posting-house had settled it for us that we required a pair
of horses, attached to whatever he thought fit, and that I had accepted
his dictation. The next thing to do, evidently, was to adopt the Russian
stop-gap of tea.
The wharfinger, who occupied a tiny tenement on one end of the dock,
supplied us with a bubbling _samovar_, sugar, and china, since we were
not traveling in strictly Russian style, with a fragile-nosed teapot and
glasses. We got out our tea, steeped and sipped it, nibbling at a bit of
bread, in that indifferent manner which one unconsciously acquires in
Russia. It is only by such experience that one comes to understand the
full--or rather scanty--significance of that puzzling and
oft-recurring phrase in Russian novels, "drinking tea."
As we were thus occupied in one of the cells, furnished with a table and
two hard stuffed benches, to accommodate waiting passengers, our postboy
thrust his head in at the door and began the subject of the carriage all
over again. I repeated my orders. He said, "_Kharasho_" (Good), and
disappeared. We dallied over our tea. We watched the wharfinger's boys
trying to drown themselves in a cranky boat, like the young male animals
of all lands; we listened to their shrill little songs; we counted the
ducks, gazed at the peasants assembled on the brow of the steep hill
above us, on which the town was situated, and speculated about the
immediate future, until the time fixed and three quarters of an hour
more had elapsed. The wharfinger's reply to my impatient questions was
an unvarying apathetic "We don't know," and, spurred to action by this,
I set out to find the posting-house.
It was not far away, but my repeated and vigorous knocks upon the door
of the _izba_ (cottage), ornamented with the imperial eagle and the
striped pole, received no response. I pushed open the big gate of the
courtyard alongside, and entered. Half the court was roofed over with
thatch. In the far corner, divorced wagon bodies, running-gear, and
harnesses lay heaped on the earth. A horse, which was hitched to
something unsubstantial among those fragments, came forward to welcome
me. A short row of wagon members which had escaped divorce, and were
united in wheeling order, stood along the high board fence. In one of
them, a rough wooden cart, shaped somewhat like a barrel sawed in two
lengthwise, pillowed on straw, but with his legs hanging down in an
uncomfortable attitude, lay my faithless postboy (he was about forty
years of age) fast asleep. The neighboring vehicle, which I divined to
be the one intended for us, was in possession of chickens. A new-laid
egg bore witness to their wakefulness and industry.
While I was engaged in an endeavor to rouse my should-be coachman, by
tugging at his sleeve and pushing his boots in the most painful manner I
could devise, a good-looking peasant woman made her tardy appearance at
the side door of the adjoining _izba_, and seemed to enjoy the situation
in an impartial, impersonal way. The horse thrust his muzzle gently into
his master's face and roused him for me, and, in return, was driven
away.
I demanded an explanation. Extracted by bits in conversational spirals,
it proved to be that he had decided that the carriage needed three
horses, which he had known all along; and, chiefly, that he had desired
to sleep upon a little scheme for exploiting the strangers. How long he
had intended to pursue his slumberous meditations it is impossible to
say.
He dragged me through all the mazes of that bargain once more.
Evidently, bargaining was of even stricter etiquette than my extensive
previous acquaintance had led me to suspect; and I had committed the
capital mistake of not complying with this ancestral custom in the
beginning. I agreed to three horses, and stipulated, on my side, that
fresh straw should replace the chickens' nest, and that we should set
out at once,--not _saytchas_ but sooner, "this very minute."
I turned to go. A fresh difficulty arose. He would not go unless I would
pay for three relays. He brought out the government regulations and
amendments,--all that had been issued during the century, I should
think. He stood over me while I read them, and convinced myself that his
"_Yay Bogu_" (God is my witness) was accurately placed. The price of
relays was, in reality, fixed by law; but though over-affirmation had
now aroused my suspicions, in my ignorance of the situation I could not
espy the loophole of trickery in which I was to be noosed, and I agreed
once more. More quibbling. He would not stir unless he were allowed to
drive the same horses the whole distance, though paid for three relays,
because all the horses would be away harvesting, and so forth and so on.
Goaded to assert myself in some manner, to put an end to these
interminable hagglings, I asserted what I did not know.
"Prince X. never pays for these relays," I declared boldly.
"Oh, no, he does n't," replied the man, with cheerful frankness. "But
you must, or I'll not go."
That settled it; I capitulated once more.
We had omitted to telegraph to our friends, partly in order to save them
the trouble of sending a carriage, partly because we were thirsting for
"experiences." It began to look as though our thirst was to be quenched
in some degree, since we were in this man's power as to a vehicle, and
it might be true that we should not be able to obtain any other in the
town, or any horses in the villages, if indeed there were any villages.
Fortified by another volley of "_Yay Bogu_" of triumphant fervor, we
survived a second wait. At last, near nine o'clock, we were able to pack
ourselves and our luggage.
The body of our _tarantas_, made, for the sake of lightness, of woven
elm withes, and varnished dark brown, was shaped not unlike a baby
carriage. Such a wagon body costs about eight dollars in Kazan, where
great numbers of them are made. It was set upon stout, unpainted
running-gear, guiltless of springs, in cat's-cradle fashion. The step
was a slender iron stirrup, which revolved in its ring with tantalizing
ease. It was called a _pletuschka,_ and the process of entering it
resembled vaulting on horseback.
Our larger luggage was tied on behind with ropes, in precarious fashion.
The rest we took inside and deposited at our feet. As there was no seat,
we flattened ourselves out on the clean hay, and practiced Delsartean
attitudes of languor. Our three horses were harnessed abreast. The reins
were made in part of rope; so were the traces. Our _yamtschik_ had
donned his regulation coat over his red shirt, and sat unblenchingly
through the heat. All preliminaries seemed to be settled at last. I
breathed a sigh of relief, as we halted at the posting-house to pay our
dues in advance, and I received several pounds of copper coin in change,
presumably that I might pay the non-existent relays.
The _troika_ set off with spirit, and we flattered ourselves that we
should not be long on the road. This being a county town, there were
some stone official buildings in addition to the cathedral, of which we
caught a glimpse in the distance. But our road lay through a suburb of
log cabins, through a large gate in the wattled town fence, and out upon
the plain.
For nearly five hours we drove through birch forests, over rolling
downs, through a boundless ocean of golden rye, diversified by small
patches of buckwheat, oats, millet, and wheat. But wheat thrives better
in the adjoining government, and many peasants, we are told, run away
from pressing work and good wages at hand to harvest where they will get
white bread to eat, and return penniless.
Here and there, the small, weather-beaten image of some saint, its face
often indistinguishable through stress of storms, and shielded by a
rough triangular penthouse, was elevated upon a pole, indicating the
spot where prayers are said for the success of the harvest.
Corn-flowers, larkspur, convolvulus, and many other flowers grew
profusely enough among the grain to come under the head of weeds.
The transparent air allowed us vast vistas of distant blue hills and
nearer green valleys, in which nestled villages under caps of thatch,
encircled by red-brown fences cleverly wattled of long boughs. In one
hollow we passed through a village of the Tchuvashi, a Turkish or
Finnish tribe, which was stranded all along the middle Volga in
unrecorded antiquity, during some of the race migrations from the
teeming plateaux of Asia. The village seemed deserted. Only a few small
children and grannies had been left at home by the harvesters, and they
gazed curiously at us, aroused to interest by the jingling harness with
its metal disks, and the bells clanging merrily from the apex of the
wooden arch which rose above the neck of our middle horse.
The grain closed in upon us. We plucked some ears as we passed, and
found them ripe and well filled. The plain seemed as trackless as a
forest, and our postboy suspected, from time to time, that he had lost
his way among the narrow roads. A few peasant men whom we encountered at
close quarters took off their hats, but without servility, and we
greeted them with the customary good wishes for a plentiful harvest,
"_Bog v pomozh_" (God help), or with a bow. The peasant women whom we
met rarely took other notice of us than to stare, and still more rarely
did they salute first. They gazed with instinctive distrust, as women of
higher rank are wont to do at a stranger of their own sex.
Although the grain was planted in what seemed to be a single vast field,
belonging to one estate, it was in reality the property of many
different peasants, as well as of some proprietors. Each peasant had
marked his plot with a cipher furrow when he plowed, and the outlines
had been preserved by the growing grain. The rich black soil of the
fallow land, and strips of turf separating sections, relieved the
monotony of this waving sea of gold.
The heat was intense. In our prone position, we found it extremely
fatiguing to hold umbrellas. We had recourse, therefore, to the device
practiced by the mountaineers of the Caucasus, who, in common with the
Spaniards, believe that what will keep out cold will also keep out heat.
We donned our heavy wadded pelisses. The experiment was a success. We
arrived cool and tranquil, in the fierce heat, at the estate of our
friends, and were greeted with fiery reproaches for not having allowed
them to send one of their fifteen or twenty carriages for us. But we did
not repent, since our conduct had secured for us that novel ride and a
touch of our coveted "experience," in spite of the strain of our thirty
hours' vigil and the jolts of the springless vehicle.
Then we discovered the exact extent of our _yamtschik's_ trick. He had
let us off on fairly easy terms, getting not quite half more than his
due. By the regular route, we might really have had three relays and
made better time, had we been permitted. By the short cut which our wily
friend had selected, but one change was possible. This left the price of
two changes to be credited to his financial ability (in addition to the
tea-money of gratitude, which came in at the end, all the same), and the
price of the one which he would not make. And, as I was so thoughtless
as not to hire him to carry away those pounds of "relay" copper, I
continued to be burdened with it until I contrived to expend it on
peasant manufactures. The postboy bore the reputation of being a very
honest fellow, I learned,--something after the pattern of the charming
cabby who drove us to Count Tolstoy's estate.
The village, like most Russian villages, was situated on a small river,
in a valley. It consisted of two streets: one running parallel with the
river, the other at right angles to it, on the opposite bank. The
connecting bridge had several large holes in it, on the day of our
arrival, which were mended, a few days later, with layers of straw and
manure mixed with earth. We continued, during the whole period of our
stay, to cross the bridge, instead of going round it, as we had been
advised to do with Russian bridges, by Russians, in the certainty that,
if we came near drowning through its fault, it would surely furnish us
with an abundance of straws to catch at.
In one corner of the settlement, a petty bourgeois,--there is no other
word to define him,--the son of a former serf, and himself born a
serf, had made a mill-pond and erected cloth-mills. His "European"
clothes (long trousers, sack coat, Derby hat) suited him as ill as his
wife's gaudy silk gown, and Sunday bonnet in place of the kerchief usual
with the lower classes, suited her face and bearing. He was a quiet,
unassuming man, but he was making over for himself a handsome house,
formerly the residence of a noble. Probably the money wherewith he had
set up in business had been wrung out of his fellow-peasants in the
profession of a _kulak_, or "fist," as the people expressively term
peasant usurers.
On the other side of the river stood the church, white-walled,
green-roofed, with golden cross, like the average country church, with
some weather stains, and here and there a paling missing from the fence.
Near at hand was the new schoolhouse, with accommodations for the
master, recently erected by our host. Beyond this began the inclosure
surrounding the manor house, and including the cottages of the coachmen
and the steward with their hemp and garden plots, the stables and
carriage houses, the rickyard with its steam threshing machine and
driers, and a vast abandoned garden, as well as the gardens in use. The
large brick mansion, with projecting wings, had its drawing-rooms at the
back, where a spacious veranda opened upon a flower-bordered lawn,
terminating in shady acacia walks, and a grove which screened from sight
the peasant cottages on the opposite bank of the river. A hedge
concealed the vegetable garden, where the village urchins were in the
habit of pilfering their beloved cucumbers with perfect impunity, since
a wholesome spanking, even though administered by the Elder of the
Commune, might result in the spanker's exile to Siberia. Another
instance of the manner in which the peasants are protected by the law,
in their wrongs as well as their rights, may be illustrated by the case
of a load of hay belonging to the owner of the estate, which, entering
the village in goodly proportions, is reduced to a few petty armfuls by
the time it reaches the barn, because of the handfuls snatched in
passing by every man, woman, and child in the place.
No sound of the village reached us in our retreat except the choral
songs of the maidens on holiday evenings. We tempted them to the lawn
one night, and overcame their bashfulness by money for nuts and apples.
The airs which they sang were charming, but their voices were undeniably
shrill and nasal, and not always in harmony. We found them as reluctant
to dance as had been the peasants at Count Tolstoy's village. Here we
established ourselves for the harvest-tide.
II.
Our life at Prince X.'s estate on the Volga flowed on in a
semi-monotonous, wholly delightful state of lotus-eating idleness,
though it assuredly was not a case which came under the witty
description once launched by Turgeneff broadside at his countrymen: "The
Russian country proprietor comes to revel and simmer in his ennui like a
mushroom frying in sour cream." Ennui shunned that happy valley. We
passed the hot mornings at work on the veranda or in the well-filled
library, varying them by drives to neighboring estates and villages, or
by trips to the fields to watch the progress of the harvest, now in full
swing. Such a visit we paid when all the able-bodied men and women in
the village were ranged across the landscape in interminable lines,
armed with their reaping-hooks, and forming a brilliant picture in
contrast with the yellow grain, in their blue and scarlet raiment. They
were fulfilling the contract which bound them to three days' labor for
their landlord, in return for the pasturage furnished by him for their
cattle. A gay kerchief and a single clinging garment, generally made of
red and blue in equal portions, constituted the costume of the women.
The scanty garments were faded and worn, for harvesting is terribly hard
work, and they cannot use their good clothes, as at the haying, which is
mere sport in comparison. Most of the men had their heads protected only
by their long hair, whose sunburnt outer layer fell over their faces, as
they stooped and reaped the grain artistically close to the ground.
Their shirts were of faded red cotton; their full trousers, of
blue-and-red-striped home-made linen, were confined by a strip of coarse
crash swathed around the feet and legs to the knee, and cross-gartered
with ropes. The feet of men and women alike were shod with low shoes of
plaited linden bark over these cloths.
They smiled indulgently at our attempts to reap and make girdles for the
sheaves,--the sickles seemed to grow dull and back-handed at our
touch,--chatting with the dignified ease which characterizes the
Russian peasant. The small children had been left behind in the village,
in charge of the grandams and the women unfit for field labor. Baby had
been brought to the scene of action, and installed in luxury. The
cradle, a cloth distended by poles, like that of Peter the Great, which
is preserved in the museum of the Kremlin at Moscow, was suspended from
the upturned shafts of a _telyega_ by a stiff spiral spring of iron,
similar to the springs used on bird-cages. The curtain was made of the
mother's spare gown, her _sarafan_. Baby's milk-bottle consisted of a
cow's horn, over the tip of which a cow's teat was fastened. I had
already seen these dried teats for sale in pairs, in the popular
markets, but had declined to place implicit faith in the venders' solemn
statements as to their use.
It was the season which the peasants call by the expressive title
_strada_ (suffering). Nearly all the summer work must be done together,
and, with their primitive appliances, suffering is the inevitable
result. They set out for the fields before sunrise, and return at
indefinite hours, but never early. Sometimes they pass the night in the
fields, under the shelter of a cart or of the grain sheaves. Men and
women work equally and unweariedly; and the women receive less pay than
the men for the same work, in the bad old fashion which is, unhappily,
not yet unknown in other lands and ranks of life. Eating and sleeping
join the number of the lost arts. The poor, brave people have but little
to eat in any case,--not enough to induce thought or anxiety to return
home. Last year's store has, in all probability, been nearly exhausted.
They must wait until the grain which they are reaping has been threshed
and ground before they can have their fill.
One holiday they observe, partly perforce, partly from choice, though it
is not one of the great festivals of the church calendar,--St. Ilya's
Day. St. Ilya is the Christian representative of the old Slavic god of
Thunder, Perun, as well as of the prophet Elijah. On or near his name
day, July 20 (Old Style), he never fails to dash wildly athwart the sky
in his chariot of fire; in other words, there is a terrific
thunderstorm. Such is the belief; such, in my experience, is the fact,
also.
Sundays were kept so far as the field work permitted, and the church was
thronged. Even our choir of ill-trained village youths and boys could
not spoil the ever-exquisite music. There were usually two or three
women who expected to become mothers before the week was out, and who
came forward to take the communion for the last time, after the newborn
babes and tiny children had been taken up by their mothers to receive
it.
Every one was quiet, clean, reverent. The cloth-mill girls had
discovered our (happily) obsolete magenta, and made themselves hideous
in flounced petticoats and sacks of that dreadful hue. The sister of our
Lukerya, the maid who had been assigned to us, thus attired, felt
distinctly superior. Lukerya would have had the bad taste to follow her
example, had she been permitted, so fast are evil fashions destroying
the beautiful and practical national costumes. Little did Lukerya dream
that she, in her peasant garb, with her thick nose and rather unformed
face, was a hundred times prettier than Annushka, with far finer
features and "fashionable" dress.
Independent and "fashionable" as many of these villagers were, they were
ready enough to appeal to their former owners in case of illness or
need; and they were always welcomed. Like most Russian women who spend
any time on their estates, our hostess knew a good deal about medicine,
which was necessitated by the circumstance that the district doctor
lived eight miles away, and had such a wide circuit assigned to him that
he could not be called in except for serious cases. Many of the remedies
available or approved by the peasants were primitive, not to say heroic.
For example, one man, who had exhausted all other remedies for
rheumatism, was advised to go to the forest, thrust the ailing foot and
leg into one of the huge ant-hills which abounded there, and allow the
ants to sting him as long as he could bear the pain, for the sake of the
formic acid which would thus be injected into the suffering limb. I
confess that I should have liked to be present at this bit of--
surgery, shall I call it? It would have been an opportunity for
observing the Russian peasant's stoicism and love of suffering as a
thing good in itself.