that the measure of his felicity would be incomplete, unless I were present to be “best man” at the wedding, to spend a month with him on the estate, and to bid them good speed when they should start for their honeymoon trip across the Oural range, and seek a new home.
Ned tried very hard to tempt me. He described the capital sport which he could give me, since the game in the prince’s well-stocked forest was, during the lord’s absence, at the joint disposal of the German steward and English engineer. He urged that this was a capital chance of seeing something of a little-visited part of Russia, where the peasantry retained customs and quaint peculiarities which I could not find in the better-known parts. And he raised my curiosity on the subject of the pictures, statues, and thousand articles rich and rare, collected by the father of the present prince, and now left neglected and unseen at Batschuvatz, in a palace inhabited by servants alone.
All this was very attractive, but two considerations presented themselves on the other hand. First, would not the expense be too great for my slender purse? secondly, had I the time to spare? It so happened that both these problems were solved in a manner which I considered satisfactory. On repairing to the office of the Ingrian Extension railway company, I was informed that in consequence of the non-arrival of some plant and rolling stock from England, my services would not be required for some weeks, during which time I might draw my salary, but might dispose of my time as I pleased. And a consultation with an experienced resident to whom I had brought introductions, satisfied me that a very moderate sum would serve to convey my person and portmanteau, in that bright summer weather, from Moscow to the government of Mohilew, where Vaughan lived.
“You’ll find plenty of dust and flies, but the roads will be easy to traverse, and posting, except when deep snow or mud renders many horses needful, is cheap in Russia,” said my informant.
“However, Mr. Pearson, you had better keep your eyes open to what goes on around you. The people are in a state of strange ferment, quite unlike the old torpor that used to mark Russian society, and the prestige of Government is much impaired. I should hardly care, were I you, to sojourn over long in the ruder provinces at present.”
I could hardly help smiling at this well-meant caution; but to all such hints I had consistently turned a deaf ear for years, and so it was now.
“A pretty life I should have led,” muttered I to myself, “had I always been gobemouche enough to swallow the rawhead and bloodybones stories told me by honest alarmists. What have I to fear, whatever the papers may say of chronic insurrection and discontent? Pshaw! I am neither Muscovite noble nor police spy, to dread the popular vengeance. I will go.”
And I did go. First by railway to Moscow, then behind the swift Troika, with their merry music of chiming bells and clanging hoofs, along the dusty summer roads that led to Batschuvatz, a place situated on the banks of the Dnieper, less than a hundred versts from the city of Mohilew. It was just the time of year when summer is mellowing gradually into autumn, and the long continuance of warm and dry weather had wrought a change in the aspect of the country. The swamps were dried so as to afford a passage over quagmires, which in most seasons could support no human tread, and the morasses were bright with berries,—the cranberry, the bilberry, the strawberry,—while rare wild flowers blossomed unheeded among the peaty hillocks beside the rush-grown pools. The pine forests were fragrant with the peculiar aromatic scent which the millions of resin-bearing stems exhaled; the rye and barley, the red wheat and the root crops all flourished bravely, ripening under the genial sunshine, and I saw gloomy Russia look her best, as it were, in that bright weather.
But there were other alterations in the land which rather perplexed me. The bearing of the people was not what it had been when I travelled through the Northern provinces, in the time of the former Czar. Then I had seen a good deal of degradation, harshness, and oppression, certainly, but also a good deal of careless mirth and jollity. The people were accustomed to sing and revel like negroes on a holiday. Now I heard no songs, except the plaintive chant which my drover addressed to his active horses, after the fashion of Russian post-boys, and did not observe the blithe groups gathered round the door of some tavern where the vodka and quass were in high repute. Hats no longer flew off when my equipage halted to change horses, as once was the case, when the humblest voyager in European attire was regarded as a possible nobleman, or, at any rate, as a privileged member of that official legion, the Tchinn. And yet it was not that the population had become apathetic or indifferent. On the contrary, I had never seen such large numbers of persons out of doors, so many knots of men in eager converse, such voluble assemblages of female gossips, or such keen, inquisitive glances as were bestowed on me in town and hamlet.
But there was no longer the old abject deference, or the stare of half-brutish wonder, to be read in those dark Mongolian eyes that met mine wherever a party of mujiks lounged beside the forge, or at the end of one of those creaking wooden bridges that span the countless streams of Russia. There was curiosity, there was the restless brightness of a suddenly aroused intelligence, and something more—an uneasy, craving wistfulness, as of those who battened on hope, and were sick of waiting for its fulfilment—though the village authorities seemed sullen and low-spirited, and the postmasters, whom I recollected as rough autocrats in their own domains, looked as if they were afraid of their own grooms and drivers.
At last I reached the boundary of Prince Emindoff’s large estates, and driving rapidly through forest glades and green meadows, among fields whose scientific tillage announced Vaughan’s teaching, and through hamlets rather neater than most of those I had traversed, reached the village and palace of Batschuvatz. It was so in this instance. The palace itself was a huge
