A few who had heard this speech or something like it before shouted their applause at this moment. Before the noise had subsided the door opened, and two or three men pushed their way into the already overcrowded room.
“Come in, come in!” cried the orator; “the more the better. You are all welcome. All we require, then, little fathers, is organization. There are nine hundred souls in Osterno; are you going to bow down before one man? All men are equal—muzhik and barin, krestyanin and prince. Why do you not go up to the castle that frowns down upon the village, and tell the man there that you are starving, that he must feed you, that you are not going to work from dawn till eve while he sits on his velvet couch and smokes his gold-tipped cigarettes. Why do you not go and tell him that you are not going to starve and die while he eats caviar and peaches from gold plates and dishes?”
A resounding bang of the fist finished this fine oration, and again the questions were unanswered.
“They are all the same, these aristocrats,” the man thundered on. “Your prince is as the others, I make no doubt. Indeed, I know; for I have been told by our good friend Abramitch here. A clever man our friend Abramitch, and when you get your liberty—when you get your Mir—you must keep him in mind. Your prince, then—this Howard Alexis—treats you like the dirt beneath his feet. Is it not so? He will not listen to your cry of hunger. He will not give you a few crumbs of food from his gold dishes. He will not give you a few kopecks of the millions of rubles that he possesses. And where did he get those rubles? Ah! where did he get them—eh? Tell me that!”
Again the interrogative unwashed fist. As the orator’s wild and frenzied eye travelled round the room it lighted on a form near the door—a man standing a head and shoulders above anyone in the room, a man enveloped in an old brown coat, with a woollen shawl round his throat, hiding half his face.
“Who is that?” cried the orator, with an unsteady, pointing finger. “He is no muzhik. Is that a chinovnik, little fathers? Has he come here to our meeting to spy upon us?”
“You may ask them who I am,” replied the giant. “They know; they will tell you. It is not the first time that I tell them they are fools. I tell them again now. They are fools and worse to listen to such windbags as you.”
“Who is it?” cried the paid agitator. “Who is this man?”
His eyes were red with anger and with vodka; his voice was unsteady. His outstretched hand shook.
“It is the Moscow doctor,” said a man beside him—“the Moscow doctor.”
“Then I say he is no doctor!” shouted the orator. “He is a spy—a Government spy, a chinovnik! He has heard all we have said. He has seen you all. Brothers, that man must not leave this room alive. If he does, you are lost men!”
Some few of the more violent spirits rose and pressed tumultuously toward the door. The agitator shouted and screamed, urging them on, taking good care to remain in the safe background himself. Every man in the room rose to his feet. They were full of vodka and fury and ignorance. Spirit and tall talk, taken on an empty stomach, are dangerous stimulants.
Paul stood with his back to the door and never moved.
“Sit down, fools!” he cried. “Sit down! Listen to me. You dare not touch me; you know that.”
It seemed that he was right, for they stopped with staring, stupid eyes and idle hands.
“Will you listen to me, whom you have known for years, or to this talker from the town? Choose now. I am tired of you. I have been patient with you for years. You are sheep; are you fools also, to be dazzled by the words of an idle talker who promises all and gives nothing?”
There was a sullen silence. Paul had lost his power over them, and he knew it. He was quite cool and watchful. He knew that he was in danger. These men were wild and ignorant. They were mad with drink and the brave words of the agitator.
“Choose now!” he shouted, feeling for the handle of the door behind his back.
They made no sign, but watched the faces of their leaders.
“If I go now,” said Paul, “I never come again!”
He opened the door. The men whom he had nursed and clothed and fed, whose lives he had saved again and again, stood sullen and silent.
Paul passed slowly out and closed the door behind him. Without it was dark and still. There would be a moon presently, and in the meantime it was preparing to freeze harder than ever.
Paul walked slowly up the village street, while two men emerged separately from the darkness of by-lanes and followed him. He did not heed them. He was not aware that the thermometer stood somewhere below zero. He did not even trouble to draw on his fur gloves.
He felt like a man whose own dogs have turned against him. The place that these peasants had occupied in his heart had been precisely that vacancy which is filled by dogs and horses in the hearts of many men. There was in his feeling for them that knowledge of a complete dependence by which young children draw and hold a mother’s love.
Paul Howard Alexis was not a man to analyze his thoughts. Your strong man is usually ignorant of the existence of his own feelings. He is never conscious of them.
