several small deer, and a large “bag” of the dark-furred summer hares. But I was greatly disappointed at not having the chance of killing a bear, since I found that in the warm weather these animals are seldom to be found, since they retire to remote nooks in the tangled forest. Several boating trips down the Dnieper, and one or two picnics, served to pass away the time pleasantly, and as I saw more of Emma Murray, I felt less surprised at Vaughan’s attachment. She was not very pretty, to be sure, but was of a most unselfish and tender nature, with a temper and disposition that nothing seemed able to spoil. She had been educated at one of the most famous of those St. Petersburg schools where Russian girls acquire a varnish of Parisian accomplishments at great expense, but her innate simplicity and worth had triumphed even over that ordeal. She had been very glad to get back from the brilliant capital to her old father and the home of her youth, such as it was. And yet she must have had but a dull life of it at Batschuvatz, before Vaughan’s arrival, since she had no companions of her own age, the young Wohlers being considerably her juniors, while the people around her were divided from her in character and feeling as by a yawning gulf.
It is not easy in a country district of Russia to be the friend of the poor. It may be said that there are no poor. Every one has enough coarse food to eat, and rather too much brandy to drink. There is a dead level of rude plenty, above which the serf cannot easily rise, and below which, before the emancipation, he could not sink; and the people neither lacked alms, nor counsel, nor instruction. The gentle English girl could not win affection or confidence from the peasantry of Prince Emindoff’s estate. They took her presents willingly, but they never comprehended her interest in their welfare.
I must hurry on. The prince’s foresters and keepers were an exception to the general rule of the sullen demeanour of the peasantry. These well-clad fellows, in their neat sylvan garb, with their master’s badge in silver on their caps, were perfectly respectful, willing, and obedient. The explanation of this was simple—they received regular wages, and knew that their living depended on the prince’s retention of his property, whereas a kind of illogical communism was rampant among the tillers of the soil. Among the foresters was a young man, Paul Gregovitch by name, whom I had seen before, and who was grateful to me for a service done him in former times. It was not a great service, it had cost me nothing, but the marvel was that a Muscovite should have remembered it in the hour of need. Paul, then quite a lad, had been permitted to accompany his father to St. Petersburg, to work on the obrok system, paying tribute to his owner out of his wages; he had ignorantly transgressed some of the stringent police regulations, and I had interceded with an officer in his behalf, thus saving him from a severe application of the “stick.” Paul brightened up wonderfully at seeing me again, and was as fawningly attentive as a spaniel, poor fellow; for a Russian generally exaggerates every sentiment of hatred or liking; and in the hunting expeditions he constituted himself my special guide and attendant, addressed me as “count,” and never spoke to me without first pulling off his fur cap.
And yet I thought there were times when Paul’s sly dark eyes—he had the true Mongolian cast of features of his swarthy and flat-faced countrymen —were fixed on me with a mournful scrutiny not wholly reassuring, while I could not make out the cause of his curiosity as to the date of my departure.
“Are you in such a hurry to see the last of me, Paul?” I asked, one day, laughing, “that you are always hinting at my return to St. Petersburg?”
But Paul merely bowed, and begged pardon if he had offended me, saying that he was proud to wait on me, but that if he were “a great foreign lord like me, instead of a mujik,” he should travel in the fine countries far away, and not linger in poor Black Russia, that was all.
And now my stay at Batschuvatz really began to draw to a close, and the wedding-day came nearer and nearer, and constant preparations were made for the young couple’s journey to their new home in Asia. The Asiatic estates of the prince, once neglected, seemed now likely to afford his main source of revenue, since his European property, with the exception of some mines, paid nothing whatever. This was no isolated case. Far and near the same practical confiscation of property prevailed. Scarcely a rouble could be wrung from the peasants, nor could labour be exacted by even the most adroit steward. Absentee proprietors, far off in the gay cities of South Europe, received with dismay the tidings of ruin which came instead of the plentiful remittances of former days. Some owners of land, happy in the possession of capital and energy, gave up to the freed serfs the soil they claimed, and undertook to create new sources of profit for themselves by draining swamps, felling woods, and carving out fresh farms from the uncultivated portions of their domains. Others besieged the government with petitions for loans, with demands for some new law that should enforce their just dues, or with calls for compensation.
Stormy meetings of the nobility took place, and violent debates ensued, not that any one wished or hoped to turn back the resistless flood of progress, but that the whole class of landed proprietors felt their condition one of anarchy and ruin. And then came the grim rejoinder of the excited people to the cautious delays of government and the murmurs of the boyards—the incendiary fires.
Far and near over the vast empire the madness spread, like an epidemic, and in city and country, north and south, the torch was used unsparingly. Rumours of frightful conflagrations reached us from every quarter, and the efforts of the alarmed authorities failed utterly to discover the perpetrator. Martial law was proclaimed in many places, and troops were continually in motion; but as yet no mischief had been done in Prince Emindoff’s estate.
One day—it was the very day before that fixed for the wedding—we had some excitement at