THE MOSCOW DOCTOR
"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 Señor 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 Stépan 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 bárin, 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.