Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/124

116 him “conscience money,” as folks in England do to the Chancellor of the Exchequer?”

“That would be a good round sum, if all tales be true,” observed Mr. Murray, shaking his head incredulously. “I’m thinking the man jalouses Russia’s fast growing no longer the Russia for him, and that he’d best be off home with his savings, instead of stopping to feather his nest further.”

A long and desultory conversation ensued, in the course of which I learned that Wohler was presumed to be very well off indeed; having for eleven years been steward of the immense estate on which we then were, and whose owner was an absentee.

“I’ve nought but good to say of my employer, the young Prince Emindoff, who’s a brave, generous boy, and a promising boy, considering he’s a Russian,” said the old Scotchman; “but I fear he’s ganging the way to bring his noble to ninepence. He lives far away, in Rome, Paris, Baden, all about, and people stare at his fine horses and carriages, and think what a grand thing it must be to be a boyard of Muscovy, and spend gold as if it came out of Fortunatus’s purse. But I fear the gold’s fairy gold, sirs, and fast turnin’ to ivy leaves. The peasants won’t work, won’t pay obrok, nor rent, and the supplies are stopped.”

“Do you mean, Mr. Murray,” said I, much puzzled, “that the Prince receives nothing from this great estate? I had heard rumours of such things at St. Petersburg, but believed them to be exaggerated and absurd. Why, surely, if the serfs are set free, the land is still his.”

“Indeed, Mr. Pearson, if you can persuade the peasants of that fact, you’ll render our employer a very valuable service,” said Mr. Murray, taking snuff. “They’ve got a notion obstinately rooted in their heads, that the land is theirs. They say their bodies belonged to the Prince, but now their dear Papa Czar has set them free, and given them the soil too: or, rather, confirmed them in their right to it, and even Wohler can’t screw a copeck out of them.”

I asked if there were no legal remedy. Vaughan answered in the negative. The judges were distracted, and of various opinions, the inferior magistrates frightened, and to enforce a debt, except by the pressure of military execution, all but impossible. At the best of times, the tricky, evasive character of the Muscovite had rendered it difficult for a proprietor to get his exact due, though his subordinates often took much more, and now that the stimulus of the stick had been withdrawn, there was no remedy.

“This is no longer the Russia you remember, sir;” said old Mr. Murray; “no longer the Russia in which I’ve striven to guide my way honestly, without fear or favour, these forty years. The old system is dead—the Crimean war killed it outright. It was a bad system, but we haven’t got much beyond chaos in its place. The peasant has no self-respect, and it will take years before he learns to give another his due, merely because it’s owing. Fear was his mainspring, and now it’s snapped.”

I listened to this and other remarks with respect, but without conviction. Like most of my countrymen, I had heard with pleasure of the destruction of that system of serfage which bound the people to the soil, and held back Russia in the race of nations. And I was reluctant to believe that there could be a darker side to the fair picture of millions set free from a degrading bondage. But when I strolled next day with Vaughan through the village, and across a portion of the property, I saw cause to rejoice inwardly, that my lines had not fallen in Russia. There was a strange look on the faces of the people, not exactly defiant, not exactly disrespectful, or hostile, but discontented and uneasy. It was evident that they were beginning to think, and that their thoughts were not wholly pleasant. Perhaps, too, I missed the old lip-service, the homage which every mujik once paid to the traveller from the West, or still more to those who exercised authority in the name of his lord. If I were silly enough to be vexed at this, I was wrong. Far better that the freed peasants should pass at once from Oriental subserviency to American bluntness of bearing, than they should remain on the level of the brutes, and out of the excess of their own servility, confer on a plain English wayfarer the titles of excellency and baron.

Still they had an air which hardly pleased me. Their manner did not denote bluff independence so much as restless discontent, and they stood on their thresholds gazing at us with lowering looks, and made short and ungracious answers to Ned’s frank greeting.

“I’m not sorry to be moving eastwards,” said my friend with a sigh, as we crossed the meadows on our way back, “since I am told that the Tartars are teachable enough, and an ugly change has come over our mujiks here. And yet, poor creatures, it’s not their fault. They have been treated like beasts of burden for so long a time, that it is hardly wonderful that arguments meant for men fail to touch them. Come and see the cotton-mill; Murray has a right to be proud of it.”

The cotton-mill was indeed a very handsome factory, neat and well-organised, thanks to the keen vigilance of the Scottish manager, and the awe which the peasantry entertained for his acute and firm, yet rigidly honest character.

“And yet they don’t love him or understand him,” said Vaughan, sadly; “though he has been their best friend, since he has stood many a time between them and Wohler, when the steward wanted to defraud them of half their due. Many a mill is closed, since forced labour stops, and this brings in little profit; but it goes on, because the serfs trust Murray to pay them fairly for their work, and they own the mill is not theirs, as they fancy the fields are. But, oddly enough, ill as Wohler has served them, I imagine they like him better than my father-in-law that is to be—they can understand his character, and, in his place, would have put the screw on as he has done. But enough of this. Shall we have a day in the forest?”

We had not one, but several days of capital sport, killing quantities of feathered game, with