The Sowers | Page 3

although he has the misfortune to wear the purple. No, it is those about him. They want to stop education; they want to crush the peasant. They are afraid of being found out; they live in their grand houses, and support their grand names on the money they crush out of the starving peasant."
"So do I, so far as that goes."
"Of course you do! And I am your steward--your crusher. We do not deny it, we boast of it, but we exchange a wink with the angels--eh?"
Alexis rode on in silence for a few moments. He sat his horse as English foxhunters do--not prettily--and the little animal with erect head and scraggy neck was evidently worried by the unusual grip on his ribs. For Russians sit back, with a short stirrup and a loose seat, when they are travelling. One must not form one's idea of Russian horsemanship from the erect carriage affected in the Newski Prospect.
"I wish," he said abruptly, "that I had never attempted to do any good; doing good to mankind doesn't pay. Here I am running away from my own home as if I were afraid of the police! The position is impossible."
Steinmetz shook his shaggy head.
"No. No position is impossible in this country--except the Czar's--if one only keeps cool. For men such as you and I any position is quite easy. But these Russians are too romantic--too exalt��s--they give way to a morbid love of martyrdom: they think they can do no good to mankind unless they are uncomfortable."
Alexis turned in his saddle and looked keenly into his companion's face.
"Do you know," he said, "I believe you founded the Charity League?"
Steinmetz laughed in his easy, stout way.
"It founded itself," he said; "the angels founded it in heaven. I hope a committee of them will attend to the eternal misery of the dog who betrayed it."
"I trust they will, but in the meantime I stick to my opinion that it is unnecessary for me to leave the country. What have I done? I do not belong to the League; it is composed entirely of Russian nobles; I don't admit that I am a Russian noble."
"But," persisted Steinmetz quietly, "you subscribe to the League. Four hundred thousand rubles--they do not grow at the roadside."
"But the rubles have not my name on them."
"That may be, but we all--_they all_--know where they are likely to come from. My dear Paul, you cannot keep up the farce any longer. You are not an English gentleman who comes across here for sporting purposes; you do not live in the old Castle of Osterno three months in the year because you have a taste for mediaeval fortresses. You are a Russian prince, and your estates are the happiest, the most enlightened in the empire. That alone is suspicious. You collect your rents yourself. You have no German agents--no German vampires about you. There are a thousand things suspicious about Prince Pavlo Alexis if those that be in high places only come to think about it. They have not come to think about it--thanks to our care and to your English independence. But that is only another reason why we should redouble our care. You must not be in Russia when the Charity League is picked to pieces. There will be trouble--half the nobility in Russia will be in it. There will be confiscations and degradations: there will be imprisonment and Siberia for some. You are better out of it, for you are not an Englishman; you have not even a Foreign Office passport. Your passport is your patent of nobility, and that is Russian. No, you are better out of it."
"And you--what about you?" asked Paul, with a little laugh--the laugh that one brave man gives when he sees another do a plucky thing.
"I! Oh, I am all right! I am nobody; I am hated of all the peasants because I am your steward and so hard--so cruel. That is my certificate of harmlessness with those that are about the Emperor."
Paul made no answer. He was not of an argumentative mind, being a large man, and consequently inclined to the sins of omission rather than to the active form of doing wrong. He had an enormous faith in Karl Steinmetz, and, indeed, no man knew Russia better than this cosmopolitan adventurer. Steinmetz it was who pricked forward with all speed, wearing his hardy little horse to a drooping semblance of its former self. Steinmetz it was who had recommended quitting the travelling carriage and taking to the saddle, although his own bulk led him to prefer the slower and more comfortable method of covering space. It would almost seem that he doubted his own ascendency over his companion and master, which semblance was further increased by a subtle ring of anxiety in