The Sowers | Page 3

is a God--bien entendu--which some young men deny, because
God fails to recognize their importance, I imagine. And now it is all
done. It is crumbled up by the scurrilous treachery of some miscreant.
Ach! I should like to have him out here on the plain. I would choke him.
For money, too! The devil--it must have been the devil--to sell that
secret to the Government!"
"I can't see what the Government wanted it for," growled Alexis
moodily.
"No, but I can. It is not the Emperor; he is a gentleman, 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 exaltés--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