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. Stipan 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 Stipan 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.