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A tearing, howling wind from the north--from the boundless snow-clad
plains of Russia that lie between the Neva and the Yellow Sea; a gray
sky washed over as with a huge brush dipped in dirty whitening; and the
plains of Tver a spotless, dazzling level of snow.
The snow was falling softly and steadily, falling, as it never falls in
England, in little more than fine powder, with a temperature forty
degrees below freezing-point. A drift--constant, restless, never
altering--sped over the level plain like the dust on a high-road before
a steady wind. This white scud--a flying scud of frozen water--was
singularly like the scud that is blown from the crest of the waves by a
cyclone in the China Seas. Any object that broke the wind--a stunted
pine, a broken tree-trunk, a Government road-post--had at its leeward
side a high, narrow snow-drift tailing off to the dead level of the
plain. Where the wind dropped the snow rose at once. But these objects
were few and far between. The deadly monotony of the scene--the
trackless level, the preposterous dimensions of the plain, the sense of
distance that is conveyed only by the steppe and the great desert of
Gobi when the snow lies on it--all these tell the same grim truth to all
who look on them: the old truth that man is but a small thing and his
life but as the flower of the grass.
Across the plain of Tver, before the north wind, a single sleigh was
tearing as fast as horse could lay hoof to ground--a sleigh driven by
Paul Howard Alexis, and the track of it was as a line drawn from point
to point across a map.
A striking feature of the winter of Northern Russia is the glorious
uncertainty of its snowfalls. At Tver the weather-wise had said:
"The snow has not all fallen yet. More is coming. It is yellow in the
sky, although March is nearly gone."
The landlord of the hotel (a good enough resting-place facing the broad
Volga) had urged upon M. le Prince the advisability of waiting, as is
the way of landlords all the world over. But Etta had shown a strange
restlessness, a petulant desire to hurry forward at all risks. She hated
Tver; the hotel was uncomfortable, there was an unhealthy smell about
the place.
Paul acceded readily enough to her wishes. He rather liked Tver. In a
way he was proud of this busy town--a centre of Russian civilization. He
would have liked Etta to be favorably impressed with it, as any
prejudice would naturally reflect upon Osterno, 140 miles across the
steppe. But with a characteristic silent patience he made the necessary
preparations for an immediate start.
The night express from St. Petersburg had deposited them on the platform
in the early morning. Steinmetz had preceded them. Closed sleighs from
Osterno were awaiting them. A luxurious breakfast was prepared at the
hotel. Relays of horses were posted along the road. The journey to
Osterno had been carefully planned and arranged by Steinmetz--a king
among organizers. The sleigh drive across the steppe was to be
accomplished in ten hours.
The snow had begun to fall as they clattered across the floating bridge
of Tver. It had fallen ever since, and the afternoon lowered gloomily.
In America such visitations are called "blizzards"; here in Russia it is
merely "the snow." The freezing wind is taken as a matter of course.
At a distance of one hundred miles from Tver, the driver of the sleigh
containing Etta, Maggie, and Paul had suddenly rolled off his perch. His
hands were frostbitten; a piteous blue face peered out at his master
through ice-laden eyebrows, mustache, and beard. In a moment Maggie was
out in the snow beside the two men, while Etta hastily closed the door.
"He is all right," said Paul; "it is only the cold. Pour some brandy
into his mouth while I hold the ice aside. _Don't_ take off your gloves.
The flask will stick to your fingers."
Maggie obeyed with her usual breezy readiness, turning to nod
reassurance to Etta, who, truth to tell, had pulled up the rime-covered
windows, shutting out the whole scene.
"He must come inside," said Maggie. "We are nice and warm with all the
hot-water cans."
Paul looked rather dubiously toward the sleigh.
"You can carry him, I suppose?" said the girl cheerfully. "He is not
very big--he is all fur coat."
Etta looked rather disgusted, but made no objection, while Paul lifted
the frozen man into the seat he had just vacated.
"When you are cold I will drive," cried Maggie, as Paul shut the door.
"I should love it."
Thus it came about that a single sleigh was speeding across the plain of
Tver.
Paul, with the composure that comes of a large experience, gathered the
reins in his two hands, driving with both and with extended arms, after
the manner of Russian yemschiks. For a man must accommodate himself to
circumstance, and fingerless gloves are not conducive to a finished
style of handling the ribbons.
This driver knew that the next station was twenty miles off; that at any
moment the horses might break down or plunge into a drift. He knew that
in the event of such emergencies it would be singularly easy for four
people to die of cold within a few miles of help. But he had faced such
possibilities a hundred times before in this vast country, where the
standard price of a human life is no great sum. He was not, therefore,
dismayed, but rather took delight in battling with the elements, as all
strong men should, and most of them, thank Heaven, do.
Moreover he battled successfully, and before the moon was well up drew
rein outside the village of Osterno, to accede at last to the
oft-repeated prayer of the driver that he might return to his task.
"It is not meet," the man had gruffly said, whenever a short halt was
made to change horses, "that a great prince should drive a yemschik."
"It is meet," answered Paul simply, "for one man to help another."
Then this man of deeds and not of words clambered into the sleigh and
drew up the windows, hiding his head as he drove through his own
village, where every man was dependent for life and being on his
charity.
They were silent, for the ladies were tired and cold.
"We shall soon be there," said Paul reassuringly. But he did not lower
the windows and look out, as any man might have wished to do on
returning to the place of his birth.
Maggie sat back, wrapped in her furs. She was meditating over the events
of the day, and more particularly over a certain skill, a quickness of
touch, a deft handling of stricken men which she had noted far out on
the snowy steppe a few hours earlier. Paul was a different man when he
had to deal with pain and sickness; he was quicker, brighter, full of
confidence in himself. For the great sympathy was his--that love of the
neighbor which is thrown like a mantle over the shoulders of some men,
making them different from their fellows, securing to them that love of
great and small which, perchance, follows some when they are dead to
that place where a human testimony may not be all in vain.
At the castle all was in readiness for the prince and princess, their
departure from Tver having been telegraphed. On the threshold of the
great house, before she had entered the magnificent hall, Etta's eyes
brightened, her fatigue vanished. She played her part before the crowd
of bowing servants with that forgetfulness of mere bodily fatigue which
is expected of princesses and other great ladies. She swept up the broad
staircase, leaning on Paul's arm, with a carriage, a presence, a
dazzling wealth of beauty, which did not fail to impress the onlookers.
Whatever Etta may have failed to bring to Paul Howard Alexis as a wife,
she made him a matchless princess.
He led her straight through the drawing-room to the suite of rooms which
were hers. These consisted of an ante-room, a small drawing-room, and
her private apartments beyond.
Paul stopped in the drawing-room, looking round with a simple
satisfaction in all that had been done by his orders for Etta's comfort.
"These," he said, "are your rooms."
He was no adept at turning a neat phrase--at reeling off a pretty
honeymoon welcome. Perhaps he expected her to express delight, to come
to him, possibly, and kiss him, as some women would have done.
She looked round critically.
"Yes," she said, "they are very nice."
She crossed the room and drew aside the curtain that covered the
double-latticed windows. The room was so warm that there was no rime on
the panes. She gave a little shudder, and he went to her side, putting
his strong, quiet arm around her.
Below them, stretching away beneath the brilliant moonlight, lay the
country that was his inheritance, an estate as large as a large English
county. Immediately beneath them, at the foot of the great rock upon
which the castle was built, nestled the village of Osterno--straggling,
squalid.
"Oh!" she said dully, "this is Siberia; this is terrible!"
It had never presented itself to him in that light, the wonderful
stretch of country over which they were looking.
"It is not so bad," he said, "in the daylight."
And that was all; for he had no persuasive tongue.
"That is the village," he went on, after a little pause. "Those are the
people who look to us to help them in their fight against terrible odds.
I hoped--that you would be interested in them."
She looked down curiously at the little wooden huts, half-buried in the
snow; the smoking chimneys; the twinkling, curtainless windows.
"What do you expect me to do?" she asked in a queer voice.
He looked at her in a sort of wonderment. Perhaps it seemed to him that
a woman should have no need to ask such a question.
"It is a long story," he said; "I will tell you about it another time.
You are tired now, after your journey."
His arm slipped from her waist. They stood side by side. And both were
conscious of a feeling of difference. They were not the same as they had
been in London. The atmosphere of Russia seemed to have had some subtle
effect upon them.
Etta turned and sat slowly down on a low chair before the fire. She had
thrown her furs aside, and they lay in a luxurious heap on the floor.
The maids, hearing that the prince and princess were together, waited
silently in the next room behind the closed door.
"I think I had better hear it now," said Etta.
"But you are tired," protested her husband. "You had better rest until
dinner-time."
"No; I am not tired."
He came toward her and stood with one elbow on the mantel-piece, looking
down at her--a quiet, strong man, who had already forgotten his feat of
endurance of a few hours earlier.
"These people," he said, "would die of starvation and cold and sickness
if we did not help them. It is simply impossible for them in the few
months that they can work the land to cultivate it so as to yield any
more than their taxes. They are overtaxed, and no one cares. The army
must be kept up and a huge Civil Service, and no one cares what happens
to the peasants. Some day the peasants _must_ turn, but not yet. It is a
question for all Russian land-owners to face, and nobody faces it. If
any one tries to improve the condition of his peasants--they were
happier a thousand times as serfs--the bureaucrats of Petersburg mark
him down and he is forced to leave the country. The whole fabric of this
Government is rotten, but every-one, except the peasants, would suffer
by its fall, and therefore it stands."
Etta was staring into the fire. It was impossible to say whether she
heard with comprehension or not. Paul went on:
"There is nothing left, therefore, but to go and do good by stealth. I
studied medicine with that view. Steinmetz has scraped and economized
the working of the estate for the same purpose. The Government will not
allow us to have a doctor; they prevent us from organizing relief and
education on anything like an adequate scale. They do it all by
underhand means. They have not the pluck to oppose us openly! For years
we have been doing what we can. We have almost eradicated cholera. They
do not die of starvation now. And they are learning--very slowly, but
still they are learning. We--I--thought you might be interested in your
people; you might want to help."
She gave a short little nod. There was a suggestion of suspense in her
whole being and attitude, as if she were waiting to hear something which
she knew could not be avoided.
"A few years ago," he went on, "a gigantic scheme was set on foot. I
told you a little about it--the Charity League."
Her lips moved, but no sound came from them, so she nodded a second
time. A tiny carriage-clock on the mantel-piece struck seven, and she
looked up in a startled way, as if the sound had frightened her. The
castle was quite still. Silence seemed to brood over the old walls.
"That fell through," he went on, "as I told you. It was betrayed. Stépan
Lanovitch was banished. He has escaped, however; Steinmetz has seen him.
He succeeded in destroying some of the papers before the place was
searched after the robbery--one paper in particular. If he had not
destroyed that, I should have been banished. I was one of the leaders of
the Charity League. Steinmetz and I got the thing up. It would have been
for the happiness of millions of peasants if it had not been betrayed.
In time--we shall find out who did it."
He paused. He did not say what he would do when he had found out.
Etta was staring into the fire. Her lips were dry. She hardly seemed to
be breathing.
"It is possible," he went on in his strong, quiet, inexorable voice,
"that Stépan Lanovitch knows now."
Etta did not move. She was staring into the fire--staring--staring.
Then she slowly fainted, rolling from the low chair to the fur
hearth-rug.
Paul picked her up like a child and carried her to the bedroom, where
the maids were waiting to dress her.
"Here," he said, "your mistress has fainted from the fatigue of the
journey."
And, with his practised medical knowledge, he himself tended her.