“Yes, I know. In Germany you are a German, in Russia a Slav, in Poland a Pole, and in England any thing the moment suggests.”
“Exactly so. But to return to you. You must trust to me in this matter. I know this country. I know what this League of Charity was. It was a bigger thing than any dream of. It was a power in Russia—the greatest of all—above Nihilism—above the Emperor himself. Ach Gott! It was a wonderful organization, spreading over this country like sunlight over a field. It would have made men of our poor peasants. It was God’s work. If there 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 exaltis—they give way to a morbid love of martyrdom: they think they can do no good to mankind unless they are uncomfortable.”