There is also the smell of vodka, which bottled curse is standing in tumblers all down the long table. The news has spread in Osterno that vodka is to be had for the asking at the kabak, where there is a meeting. Needless to say, the meeting is a large one. Foolishness and thirst are often found in the same head—a cranium which, by the way, is exceptionally liable to be turned by knowledge or drink.
If the drink at the kabak of Osterno was dangerous, the knowledge was no less so.
“I tell you, little fathers,” an orator was shouting, “that the day of the capitalist has gone. The rich men—the princes, the nobles, the great merchants, the monopolists, the tchinovniks—tremble. They know that the poor man is awakening at last from his long lethargy. What have we done in Germany? What have we done in America? What have we done in England and France?”
Whereupon he banged an unwashed fist upon the table with such emphasis that more than one of the audience clutched his glass of vodka in alarm, lest a drop of the precious liquor should be wasted.
No one seemed to know what had been done in Germany, in America, in England, or in France. The people’s orator is a man of many questions and much fist-banging. The moujiks of Osterno gazed at him beneath their shaggy brows. Half of them did not understand him. They were as yet uneducated to a comprehension of the street orator’s periods. A few of the more intelligent waited for him to answer his own questions, which he failed to do. A vague and ominous question carries as much weight with some people as a statement, and has the signal advantage of being less incriminating.
The speaker—a neckless, broad-shouldered ruffian of the type known in England as “unemployed”—looked round with triumphant head well thrown back. From his attitude it was obvious that he had been the salvation of the countries named, and had now come to Russia to do the same for her. He spoke with the throaty accent of the Pole. It was quite evident that his speech was a written one—probably a printed harangue issued to him and his compeers for circulation throughout the country. He delivered many of the longer words with a certain unctuous roll of the tongue, and an emphasis indicating the fact that he did not know their meaning.
“From afar,” he went on, “we have long been watching you. We have noted your difficulties and your hardships, your sickness, your starvation. These men of Tver,’ we have said, ‘are brave and true and steadfast. We will tell them of liberty.’ So I have come to you, and I am glad to see you. Alexander Alexandrovitch, pass the bottle down the table. You see, little fathers, I have not come begging for your money. No; keep your kopecks in your pocket. We do not want your money. We are no tchinovniks. We prove it by giving you vodka to keep your throats wet and your ears open. Fill up your glasses—fill up your glasses!”
The little fathers of Osterno understood this part of the harangue perfectly, and acted upon it.
The orator scratched his head reflectively. There was a certain business-like mouthing of his periods, showing that he had learnt all this by heart. He did not press all his points home in the manner of one speaking from his own brain.
“I see before me,” he went on, without an overplus of sequence, “men worthy to take their place among the rulers of the world—eh—er—rulers of the world, little fathers.”
He paused and drank half a tumbler of vodka. His last statement was so obviously inapplicable—what he actually did see was so very far removed from what he said he saw—that he decided to relinquish the point.
“I drink,” he cried, “to Liberty and Equality!”
Some of the little fathers also drank, to assuage an hereditary thirst.
“And now,” continued the orator, “let us get to business. I think we understand each other?”
He looked round with an engaging smile upon faces brutal enough to suit his purpose, but quite devoid of intelligence. There was not much understanding there.
“The poor man has one only way of making himself felt—force. We have worked for generations, we have toiled in silence, and we have gathered strength. The time has now come for us to put forth our strength. The time has gone by for merely asking for what we want. We asked, and they heard us not. We will now go and take!”
A few who had heard this speech or something like it before shouted their applause at this moment. Before the noise had subsided the door opened, and two or three men pushed their way into the already overcrowded room.
“Come in, come in!” cried the orator; “the more the better. You are all welcome. All we require, then, little fathers, is organization. There are nine hundred souls in Osterno; are you going to bow down before one man? All men are equal—moujik and barin, krestyanin and prince. Why do you not go up to the castle that frowns down upon the village, and tell the man there that you are starving, that he must feed you, that you are not going to work from dawn till eve while he sits on his velvet couch and smokes his gold-tipped cigarettes. Why do you not go and tell him that you are not going to starve and die while he eats caviare and peaches from gold plates and dishes?”
A resounding bang of the fist finished this fine oration, and again the questions were unanswered.
“They are all the same, these aristocrats,” the man thundered on. “Your prince is as the others, I make no doubt. Indeed, I know; for I have been told by our good friend Abramitch here. A clever man our friend Abramitch, and when you get your liberty—when you get your Mir—you must keep him in mind. Your prince, then—this Howard Alexis—treats you like the dirt beneath his feet. Is it not so? He will not listen to your cry of hunger. He will not give you a few crumbs of food from his gold dishes. He will not give you a few kopecks of the millions of rubles that he possesses. And where did he get those rubles? Ah! where did he get them—eh? Tell me that!”
Again the interrogative unwashed fist. As the orator’s wild and frenzied eye travelled round the room it lighted on a form near the door—a man standing a head and shoulders above any one in the room, a man enveloped in an old brown coat, with a woollen shawl round his throat, hiding half his face.
“Who is that?” cried the orator, with an unsteady, pointing finger. “He is no moujik. Is that a tchinovnik, little fathers? Has he come here to our meeting to spy upon us?”
“You may ask them who I am,” replied the giant. “They know; they will tell you. It is not the first time that I tell them they are fools. I tell them again now. They are fools and worse to listen to such windbags as you.”
“Who is it?” cried the paid agitator. “Who is this man?”
His eyes were red with anger and with vodka; his voice was unsteady. His outstretched hand shook.
“It is the Moscow doctor,” said a man beside him—“the Moscow doctor.”
“Then I say he is no doctor!” shouted the orator. “He is a spy—a Government spy, a tchinovnik! He has heard all we have said. He has seen you all. Brothers, that man must not leave this room alive. If he does, you are lost men!”
Some few of the more violent spirits rose and pressed tumultuously toward the door. The agitator shouted and screamed, urging them on, taking good care to remain in the safe background himself. Every man in the room rose to his feet. They were full of vodka and fury and ignorance. Spirit and tall talk, taken on an empty stomach, are dangerous stimulants.
Paul stood with his back to the door and never moved.
“Sit down, fools!” he cried. “Sit down! Listen to me. You dare not touch me; you know that.”
It seemed that he was right, for they stopped with staring, stupid eyes and idle hands.
“Will you listen to me, whom you have known for years, or to this talker from the town? Choose now. I am tired of you. I have been patient with you for years. You are sheep; are you fools also, to be dazzled by the words of an idle talker who promises all and gives nothing?”
There was a sullen silence. Paul had lost his power over them, and he knew it. He was quite cool and watchful. He knew that he was in danger. These men were wild and ignorant. They were mad with drink and the brave words of the agitator.
“Choose now!” he shouted, feeling for the handle of the door behind his back.
They made no sign, but watched the faces of their leaders.
“If I go now,” said Paul, “I never come again!”
He opened the door. The men whom he had nursed and clothed and fed, whose lives he had saved again and again, stood sullen and silent.
Paul passed slowly out and closed the door behind him. Without it was dark and still. There would be a moon presently, and in the meantime it was preparing to freeze harder than ever.
Paul walked slowly up the village street, while two men emerged separately from the darkness of by-lanes and followed him. He did not heed them. He was not aware that the thermometer stood somewhere below zero. He did not even trouble to draw on his fur gloves.
He felt like a man whose own dogs have turned against him. The place that these peasants had occupied in his heart had been precisely that vacancy which is filled by dogs and horses in the hearts of many men. There was in his feeling for them that knowledge of a complete dependence by which young children draw and hold a mother’s love.
Paul Howard Alexis was not a man to analyze his thoughts. Your strong man is usually ignorant of the existence of his own feelings. He is never conscious of them. Paul walked slowly through the village of Osterno, and realized, in his uncompromising honesty, that of the nine hundred men who lived therein there were not three upon whom he could rely. He had upheld his peasants for years against the cynic truths of Karl Steinmetz. He had resolutely refused to admit even to himself that they were as devoid of gratitude as they were of wisdom. And this was the end of all!
One of the men following him hurried on and caught him up.
“Excellency,” he gasped, breathless with his haste, “you must not come here alone any longer. I am afraid of them—I have no control.”
Paul paused, and suited his pace to the shorter legs of his companion.
“Starosta!” he said. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Excellency. I saw you go into the kabak, so I waited outside and watched. I did not dare to go inside. They will not allow me there. They are afraid that I should give information.”
“How long have these meetings been going on?”
“The last three nights, Excellency, in Osterno; but it is the same all over the estate.”
“Only on the estate?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
Paul walked on in silence for some paces. The third man followed them without catching them up.
“I do not understand, Excellency,” said the starosta anxiously. “It is not the Nihilists.”
“No; it is not the Nihilists.”
“And they do not want money, Excellency; that seems strange.”
“Very!” admitted Paul ironically.
“And they give vodka.”
This seemed to be the chief stumbling-block in the starosta’s road to a solution of the mystery.
“Find out for me,” said Paul, after a pause, “who this man is, where he comes from, and how much he is paid to open his mouth. We will pay him more to shut it. Find out as much as you can, and let me know to-morrow.”
“I will try, Excellency; but I have little hope of succeeding. They distrust me. They send the children to my shop for what they want, and the little ones have evidently been told not to chatter. The moujiks avoid me when they meet me. What can I do?”
“You can show them that you are not afraid of them,” answered Paul. “That goes a long way with the moujik.”
They walked on together through the lane of cottages, where furtive forms lurked in door-ways and behind curtains. And Paul had only one word of advice to give, upon which he harped continually: “Be thou very courageous—be thou very courageous.” Nothing new, for so it was written in the oldest book of all. The starosta was a timorous man, needing such strong support as his master gave him from time to time.
At the great gates of the park they paused, and Paul gave the mayor of Osterno a few last words of advice. While they were standing there the other man who had been following joined them.
“Is that you, Steinmetz?” asked Paul, his hand thrust with suspicious speed into his jacket pocket.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Watching you,” answered Karl Steinmetz, in his mild way. “It is no longer safe for either of us to go about alone. It was mere foolery your going to that kabak.”