“I dare say; but you are not in my position.”
“No; that is true, Pavlo. They were not my father’s serfs. Generations of my ancestors have not saved generations of their ancestors from starvation. My fathers before me have not toiled and slaved and legislated for them. I have not learnt medicine that I might doctor them. I have not risked my health and life in their sties, where pigs would refuse to live. I have not given my whole heart and soul to their welfare, to receive no thanks, but only hatred. No, it is different for me. I owe them nothing, mein lieber; that is the difference.”
“If I agree to make a bolt for Petersburg tomorrow will you come?” retorted Paul.
“No,” answered the stout man.
“I thought not. Your cynicism is only a matter of words, Steinmetz, and not of deeds. There is no question of either of us leaving Osterno. We must stay and fight it right out here.”
“That is so,” answered Steinmetz, with the Teutonic stolidity of manner which sometimes came over him. “But the ladies—what of them?”
Paul did not answer. They were passing over the rise of a heavy drift. It was necessary to keep the horses up to their work, to prevent the runners of the sleigh sinking into the snow. With voice and whip Paul encouraged them. He was kind to animals, but never spared them—a strong man, who gave freely of his strength and expected an equal generosity.
“This is no place for Miss Delafield,” added Steinmetz, looking straight in front of him.
“I know that!” answered Paul sharply. “I wish to God she was not here!” he added in a lower tone, and the words were lost beneath the frozen mustache.
Steinmetz made no answer. They drove on through the gathering gloom. The sky was of a yellow gray, and the earth reflected the dismal hue of it. Presently it began to snow, driving in a fine haze from the north. The two men lapsed into silence. Steinmetz, buried in his furs like a great, cumbrous bear, appeared to be half asleep. They had had a long and wearisome day. The horses had covered their forty miles and more from village to village, where the two men had only gathered discouragement and foreboding. Some of the starostas were sullen; others openly scared. None of them were glad to see Steinmetz. Paul had never dared to betray his identity. With the gendarmes—the chinovniks—they had not deemed it wise to hold communication.
“Stop!” cried Steinmetz suddenly, and Paul pulled the horses on to their haunches.
“I thought you were asleep,” he said.
There was no one in sight. They were driving along the new road now, the highway Paul had constructed from Osterno to Tver. The road itself was, of course, indistinguishable, but the telegraph posts marked its course.
Steinmetz tumbled heavily out of his furs and went toward the nearest telegraph post.
“Where is the wire?” he shouted.
Paul followed him in the sleigh. Together they peered up into the darkness and the falling snow. The posts were there, but the wire was gone. A whole length of it had been removed. They were cut off from civilization by one hundred and forty miles of untrodden snow.
Steinmetz clambered back into the sleigh and drew up the fur apron. He gave a strange little laugh that had a ring of boyish excitement in it. This man had not always been stout and placid. He too had had his day, and those who knew him said that it had been a stirring one.
“That settles one question,” he said.
“Which question?” asked Paul.
He was driving as hard as the horses could lay hoof to ground, taken with a sudden misgiving and a great desire to reach Osterno before dark.
“The question of the ladies,” replied Steinmetz. “It is too late for them to go now.”
The village, nestling beneath the grim protection of Osterno, was deserted and forlorn. All the doors were closed, the meagre curtains drawn. It was very cold. There was a sense of relief in this great frost; for when Nature puts forth her strength men are usually cowed thereby.
At the castle all seemed to be in order. The groom, in his great sheepskin coat, was waiting in the doorway. The servants threw open the vast doors, and stood respectfully in the warm, brilliantly lighted hall while their master passed in.
“Where is the princess?” Steinmetz asked his valet, while he was removing the evidences of a long day in the open air.
“In her drawing-room, Excellency.”
“Then go and ask her if she will give me a cup of tea in a few minutes.”
And the man, a timorous German, went.
A few minutes later Steinmetz, presenting himself at the door of the little drawing-room attached to Etta’s suite of rooms, found the princess in a matchless tea-gown waiting beside a table laden with silver tea appliances. A dainty samovar, a tiny teapot, a spirit-lamp and the rest, all in the wonderful silver-work of the Slavonski Bazaar in Moscow.
“You see,” she said with a smile, for she always smiled on men, “I have obeyed your orders.”
Steinmetz bowed gravely. He was one of the few men who could see that smile and be strong. He closed the door carefully behind him. No mention was made of the fact that his message had implied, and she had understood, that he wished to see her alone. Etta was rather pale. There was an anxious look in her eyes—behind the smile, as it were. She was afraid of this man. She looked at the flame of the samovar, busying herself among the tea-things with pretty curving fingers and rustling sleeves. But the tea was never made.
“I begin to think,” said Steinmetz, coming to the point in his bluff way, “that you are a sort of beautiful Jonah, a graceful stormy petrel, a fair Wandering Jewess. There is always trouble where you go.”
She glanced at his broad face, and read
