: The Sowers by Merriman Henry Seton - Russia Fiction

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CHAP.

XL. ST?PAN RETURNS

THE SOWERS

A WAIF ON THE STEPPE

"In this country charity covers no sins!"

The speaker finished his remark with a short laugh. He was a big, stout man; his name was Karl Steinmetz, and it is a name well known in the Government of Tver to this day. He spoke jerkily, as stout men do when they ride, and when he had laughed his good-natured, half-cynical laugh, he closed his lips beneath a huge gray mustache. So far as one could judge from the action of a square and deeply indented chin, his mouth was expressive at that time--and possibly at all times--of a humorous resignation. No reply was vouchsafed to him, and Karl Steinmetz bumped along on his little Cossack horse, which was stretched out at a gallop.

Evening was drawing on. It was late in October, and a cold wind was driving from the north-west across a plain which for sheer dismalness of aspect may give points to Sahara and beat that abode of mental depression without an effort. So far as the eye could reach there was no habitation to break the line of horizon. A few stunted fir-trees, standing in a position of permanent deprecation, with their backs turned, as it were, to the north, stood sparsely on the plain. The grass did not look good to eat, though the Cossack horses would no doubt have liked to try it. The road seemed to have been drawn by some Titan engineer with a ruler from horizon to horizon.

Away to the south there was a forest of the same stunted pines, where a few charcoal-burners and resin-tappers eked out a forlorn and obscure existence. There are a score of such settlements, such gloomy forests, dotted over this plain of Tver, which covers an area of nearly two hundred square miles. The remainder of it is pasture, where miserable cattle and a few horses, many sheep and countless pigs, seek their food pessimistically from God.

Steinmetz looked round over this cheerless prospect with a twinkle of amused resignation in his blue eyes, as if this creation were a little practical joke, which he, Karl Steinmetz, appreciated at its proper worth. The whole scene was suggestive of immense distance, of countless miles in all directions--a suggestion not conveyed by any scene in England, by few in Europe. In our crowded island we have no conception of a thousand miles. How can we? Few of us have travelled five hundred at a stretch. The land through which these men were riding is the home of great distances--Russia. They rode, moreover, as if they knew it--as if they had ridden for days and were aware of more days in front of them.

The companion of Karl Steinmetz looked like an Englishman. He was young and fair and quiet. He looked like a youthful athlete from Oxford or Cambridge--a simple-minded person who had jumped higher or run quicker than anybody else without conceit, taking himself, like St. Paul, as he found himself and giving the credit elsewhere. And one finds that, after all, in this world of deceit, we are most of us that which we look like. You, madam, look thirty-five to a day, although your figure is still youthful, your hair untouched by gray, your face unseamed by care. You may look in your mirror and note these accidents with satisfaction; you may feel young and indulge in the pastimes of youth without effort. But you are thirty-five. We know it. We who look at you can see it for ourselves, and, if you could only be brought to believe it, we think no worse of you on that account.

The man who rode beside Karl Steinmetz with gloomy eyes and a vague suggestion of flight in his whole demeanor was, like reader and writer, exactly what he seemed. He was the product of an English public school and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of athletic exercise. He had little education and highly developed muscles--that is to say, he was no scholar but essentially a gentleman--a good enough education in its way, and long may Britons seek it!

This young man's name was Paul Howard Alexis, and Fortune had made him a Russian prince. If, however, anyone, even Steinmetz, called him prince, he blushed and became confused. This terrible title had brooded over him while at Eton and Cambridge. But no one had found him out; he remained Paul Howard Alexis so far as England and his friends were concerned. In Russia, however, he was known as Prince Pavlo Alexis. This plain was his; half the Government of Tver was his; the great Volga rolled through his possessions; sixty miles behind him a grim stone castle bore his name, and a tract of land as vast as Yorkshire was peopled by humble-minded persons who cringed at the mention of his Excellency.

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