Everything was ready: the peasant-carts stood heavily loaded with furniture for the country-house, boxes containing the kitchen utensils, and almost countless empty glass jars which were to be brought back in the autumn filled with all kinds of preserves. The peasants waited every morning for hours in the hall; but the order for leaving did not come. Father continued to write all the morning in his room, and disappeared at night. Finally, our stepmother interfered, her maid having ventured to report that the peasants were very anxious to return, as haymaking was near.
Next afternoon, Frol, the majordomo, and Mikhael Aliyev, the first violin, were called into father’s room. A sack containing the “food money”—that is, a few coppers a day—for each of the forty of fifty souls who were to accompany the household to Nikóskoye, was handed to Frol, with a list. All were enumerated in that list: the band in full; then the cooks and the under-cooks, the laundresses, the under-laundress who was blessed with a family of six mites, “Polka Squinting,” “Domna the Big One,” “Domna the Small One,” and the rest of them.
The first violin received an “order of march.” I knew it well, because father, seeing that he never would be ready, had called me to copy it into the book in which he used to copy all “outgoing papers:”—
“To my house servant, Mikhael Aliyev, from Prince Alexéi Petróvich Kropotkin, Colonel and Commander.
“Thou art ordered, on May 29th, at six a.m., to march out with my loads, from the city of Moscow, for my estate, situated in the government of Kaluga, district of Meschóvsk, on the river Siréna, representing a distance of one hundred and sixty miles from this house; to look after the good conduct of the men entrusted to thee, and if any one of them proves to be guilty of misconduct or of drunkenness or of insubordination, to bring the said man before the commander of the garrison detachment of the separate corps of the interior garrisons, with the enclosed circular letter, and to ask that he may be punished by flogging [the first violin knew who was meant], as an example to the others.
“Thou are ordered, moreover, to look especially after the integrity of the goods entrusted to thy care, and to march according to the following order: first day, stop at village So-and-So, to feed the horses; second day, spend the night at the town of Podólsk;” and so on for all the seven or eight days that the journey would last.
Next day, at ten instead of at six—punctuality is not a Russian virtue (“Thank God, we are not Germans,” true the Russians used to say)—the carts left the house. The servants had to make the journey on foot; only the children were accommodated with a seat in a bathtub or basket, on the top of a loaded cart, and some of the women might find an occasional resting-place on the rim of a cart. The others had to walk all the hundred and sixty miles. As long as they were marching through Moscow, discipline was maintained: It was peremptorily forbidden to wear top-boots, or to pass a belt over the coat. But when they were on the road, and we overtook them a couple of days later, and especially when it was known that father would stay a few days longer at Moscow, the men and women—dressed in all sorts of impossible coats, belted with cotton handkerchiefs, burned by the sun or dripping under the rain, and helping themselves along with sticks cut in the woods—certainly looked more like a wandering band of gypsies than the household of a wealthy landowner. Similar peregrinations were made by every household in those times, and when we saw a file of servants marching along one of our streets, we at once knew that the Apúkhtins or the Pryánishnikoffs were migrating.
The carts were gone, yet the family did not move. All of us were sick of waiting; but father still continued to write interminable orders to the managers of his estates, and I copied them diligently into the big “outgoing book.” At last the order to start was given. We were called downstairs. My father read aloud the order of march, addressed to “the Princess Kropotkin, wife of Prince Alexéi Petróvich Kropotkin, Colonel and Commander,” in which the halting-places during the five days’ journey were duly enumerated. True, the order was written for May 30, and the departure was fixed for nine a.m., though May was gone, and the departure took place in the afternoon: this upset all calculations. But, as is usual in military marching-orders, this circumstance had been foreseen, and was provided for in the following paragraph:—
“If, however, contrary to expectation, the departure of your highness does not take place at the said day and hour, you are requested to act according to the best of your understanding, in order to bring the said journey to its best issue.”
Then, all present, the family and the servants, sat down for a moment, signed themselves with the cross, and bade my father goodbye. “I entreat you Alexis, don’t go to the club,” our stepmother whispered to him. The great coach, drawn by four horses, with a postilion, stood at the door, with its little folding ladder to facilitate climbing in; the other coaches also were there. Our seats were enumerated in the marching-orders, but our stepmother had to exercise “the best of her understanding” even at that early stage of the proceedings, and we started to the great satisfaction of all.
The journey was an inexhaustible source of enjoyment for us children. The stages were short, and we stopped twice a day to feed the horses. As the ladies screamed at the slightest declivity of the road, it was found more convenient to alight each time the road went up or down hill, which it did continually, and we took advantage of this to have a peep into the woods by the roadside, or
