The street, bounded on either side by low wooden houses, is, singularly enough, well paved. This, the traveller is told, by the tyrant Prince Pavlo, who made the road because he did not like driving over ruts and through puddles—the usual Russian rural thoroughfare. Not because Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to save them from starvation—not at all, although, in the gratification of his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely because he was a great “barin”—a prince who could have any thing he desired. Had not the other barin—Steinmetz by name—superintended the work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they never see. Ask the “starost”—the mayor of the village. He knows the barins, and hates them.
Michael Roon, the starosta or elder of Osterno, president of the Mir, or village council, principal shopkeeper, mayor and only intelligent soul of the nine hundred, probably had Tartar blood in his veins. To this strain may be attributed the narrow Tartar face, the keen black eyes, the short, spare figure which many remember to this day, although Michael Roon has been dead these many years.
Removed far above the majority of his fellow-villagers in intelligence and energy, this man administered the law of his own will to his colleagues on the village council.
It was late in the autumn, one evening remembered by many for its death-roll, that the starosta was standing at the door of his small shop. He was apparently idle. He never sold vodka, and the majority of the villagers were in one of the three thriving “kabaks” which drove a famous trade in strong drink and weak tea. It was a very hot evening. The sun had set in a pink haze which was now turning to an unhealthy gray, and spreading over the face of the western sky like the shadow of death across the human countenance.
The starosta shook his head forebodingly. It was cholera weather. Cholera had come to Osterno. Had come, the starosta thought, to stay. It had settled down in Osterno, and nothing but the winter frosts would kill it, when hunger-typhus would undoubtedly succeed it.
Therefore the starosta shook his head at the sunset, and forgot to regret the badness of the times from a commercial point of view. He had done all he could. He had notified to the Zemstvo the condition of his village. He had made the usual appeal for help, which had been forwarded in the usual way to Tver, where it had apparently been received with the usual philosophic silence.
But Michael Roon had also telegraphed to Karl Steinmetz, and since the despatch of this message had the starosta dropped into the habit of standing at his doorway in the evening, with his hands clasped behind his back and his beady black eyes bent westward along the prince’s high-road.
On the particular evening with which we have to do the beady eyes looked not in vain; for presently, far along the road, appeared a black speck like an insect crawling over the face of a map.
“Ah!” said the starosta. “Ah! he never fails.”
Presently a neighbor dropped in to buy some of the dried leaf which the starosta, honest tradesman, called tea. He found the purveyor of Cathay’s produce at the door.