The Sowers | Page 6

want of food. Paul Alexis was right. This man had died of starvation, within ten miles of the great Volga, within nine miles of the outskirts of Tver, a city second to Moscow, and once her rival. Therefore it could only be that he had purposely avoided the dwellings of men; that he was a fugitive of some sort or another. Paul's theory that this was an Englishman had not been received with enthusiasm by Steinmetz; but that philosopher had stooped to inspect the narrow, tell-tale fingers. Steinmetz, be it noted, had an infinite capacity for holding his tongue.
They mounted their horses and rode away without looking back. But they did not speak, as if each were deep in his own thoughts. Material had indeed been afforded them, for who could tell who this featureless man might be? They were left in a state of hopeless curiosity, as who, having picked up a page with "Finis" written upon it, falls to wondering what the story may have been.
Steinmetz had thrown the bridle of the straying horse over his arm, and the animal trotted obediently by the side of the fidgety little Cossacks.
"That was bad luck," exclaimed the elder man at length, "d--d bad luck! In this country the less you find, the less you see, the less you understand, the simpler is your existence. Those Nihilists, with their mysterious ways and their reprehensible love of explosives, have made honest men's lives a burden to them."
"Their motives were originally good," put in Paul.
"That is possible; but a good motive is no excuse for a bad means. They wanted to get along too quickly. They are pig-headed, exalted, unpractical to a man. I do not mention the women, because when women meddle in politics they make fools of themselves, even in England. These Nihilists would have been all very well if they had been content to sow for posterity. But they wanted to see the fruits of their labors in one generation. Education does not grow like that. It requires a couple of generations to germinate. It has to be manured by the brains of fools before it is of any use. In England it has reached this stage; here in Russia the sowing has only begun. Now, we were doing some good. The Charity League was the thing. It began by training their starved bodies to be ready for the education when it came. And very little of it would have come in our time. If you educate a hungry man, you set a devil loose upon the world. Fill their stomachs before you feed their brains, or you will give them mental indigestion; and a man with mental indigestion raises hell or cuts his own throat."
"That is just what I want to do--fill their stomachs. I don't care about the rest. I'm not responsible for the progress of the world or the good of humanity," said Paul.
He rode on in silence; then he burst out again in the curt phraseology of a man whose feeling is stronger than he cares to admit.
"I've got no grand ideas about the human race," he said. "A very little contents me. A little piece of Tver, a few thousand peasants, are good enough for me. It seems rather hard that a fellow can't give away of his surplus money in charity if he is such a fool as to want to."
Steinmetz was riding stubbornly along. Suddenly he gave a little chuckle--a guttural sound expressive of a somewhat Germanic satisfaction.
"I don't see how they can stop us," he said. "The League, of course, is done; it will crumble away in sheer panic. But here, in Tver, they cannot stop us."
He clapped his great hand on his thigh with more glee than one would have expected him to feel; for this man posed as a cynic--a despiser of men, a scoffer at charity.
"They'll find it very difficult to stop me," muttered Paul Alexis.
It was now dark--as dark as ever it would be. Steinmetz peered through the gloom toward him with a little laugh--half tolerance, half admiration.
The country was here a little more broken. Long, low hills, like vast waves, rose and fell beneath the horses' feet. Ages ago the Volga may have been here, and, slowly narrowing, must have left these hills in deposit. From the crest of an incline the horsemen looked down over a vast rolling tableland, and far ahead of them a great white streak bounded the horizon.
"The Volga!" said Steinmetz. "We are almost there. And there, to the right, is the Tversha. It is like a great catapult. Gott! what a wonderful night! No wonder these Russians are romantic. What a night for a pipe and a long chair! This horse of mine is tired. He shakes me most abominably."
"Like to change?"