“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 seqor 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 stipan 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 barin, 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.
