The Sowers | Page 5

Steinmetz gruffly. "I should not care to handle any stray moujik one finds dead about the roadside; unless, of course, you think there is more money about him. It would be a pity to leave that for the police."
Paul did not answer. He was examining the limp, dirty hands of the dead man. The fingers were covered with soil, the nails were broken. He had evidently clutched at the earth and at every tuft of grass, after his fall from the saddle.
"Look here, at these hands," said Paul suddenly. "This is an Englishman. You never see fingers this shape in Russia."
Steinmetz stooped down. He held out his own square-tipped fingers in comparison. Paul rubbed the dead hand with his sleeve as if it were a piece of statuary.
"Look here," he continued, "the dirt rubs off and leaves the hand quite a gentlemanly color. This"--he paused and lifted Steinmetz's handkerchief, dropping it again hurriedly over the mutilated face--"this thing was once a gentleman."
"It certainly has seen better days," admitted Steinmetz, with a grim humor which was sometimes his. "Come, let us drag him beneath that pine-tree and ride on to Tver. We shall do no good, my dear Alexis, wasting our time over the possible antecedents of a gentleman who, for reasons of his own, is silent on the subject."
Paul rose from the ground. His movements were those of a strong and supple man, one whose muscles had never had time to grow stiff. He was an active man, who never hurried. Standing thus upright he was very tall--nearly a giant. Only in St. Petersburg, of all the cities of the world, could he expect to pass unnoticed--the city of tall men and plain women. He rubbed his two hands together in a singularly professional manner which sat amiss on him.
"What do you propose doing?" he asked. "You know the laws of this country better than I do."
Steinmetz scratched his forehead with his forefinger.
"Our theatrical friends the police," he said, "are going to enjoy this. Suppose we prop him up sitting against that tree--no one will run away with him--and lead his horse into Tver. I will give notice to the police, but I will not do so until you are in the Petersburg train. I will, of course, give the ispravnik to understand that your princely mind could not be bothered by such details as this--that you have proceeded on your journey."
"I do not like leaving the poor beggar alone all night," said Paul. "There may be wolves--the crows in the early morning."
"Bah! that is because you are so soft-hearted. My dear fellow, what business is it of ours if the universal laws of nature are illustrated upon this unpleasant object? We all live on each other. The wolves and the crows have the last word. Tant mieux for the wolves and the crows! Come, let us carry him to that tree."
The moon was just rising over the line of the horizon. All around them the steppe lay in grim and lifeless silence. In such a scene, where life seemed rare and precious, death gained in its power of inspiring fear. It is different in crowded cities, where an excess of human life seems to vouch for the continuity of the race, where, in a teeming population, one life more or less seems of little value. The rosy hue of sunset was fading to a clear green, and in the midst of a cloudless sky, Jupiter--very near the earth at that time--shone intense, and brilliant like a lamp. It was an evening such as only Russia and the great North lands ever see, where the sunset is almost in the north and the sunrise holds it by the hand. Over the whole scene there hung a clear, transparent night, green and shimmering, which would never be darker than an English twilight.
The two living men carried the nameless, unrecognizable dead to a resting-place beneath a stunted pine a few paces removed from the road. They laid him decently at full length, crossing his soil-begrimed hands over his breast, tying the handkerchief down over his face.
Then they turned and left him, alone in that luminous night. A waif that had fallen by the great highway without a word, without a sign. A half-run race--a story cut off in the middle; for he was a young man still; his hair, all dusty, draggled, and bloodstained, had no streak of gray; his hands were smooth and youthful. There was a vague suspicion of sensual softness about his body, as if this might have been a man who loved comfort and ease, who had always chosen the primrose path, had never learned the salutary lesson of self-denial. The incipient stoutness of limb contrasted strangely with the drawn meagreness of his body, which was contracted by