Part 6

“Don’t you see,” I continued, “how happy and contented he is all the day long? He does not work as hard at his knitting as you do in hunting for the flower; and although you get half your summer’s wages, and he nothing, he will be richer than you in the fall. He will have a small piece of gold, and it won’t change into a leaf. Besides, when a boy is contented and happy he has gold and diamonds. Would you rather be rich and miserable, or poor and happy?”

This was a subject upon which Hans had evidently not reflected. He looked puzzled. He was so accustomed to think that money embraced everything else that was desirable, that he could not imagine it possible for a rich man to be miserable. But I told him of some rich men whom I knew, and of others of whom I had heard, and at last bade him think of the prosperous brewer in the town below, who had so much trouble in his family, and who walked the streets with his head hanging down.

I saw that Hans was not a bad boy; he was simply restless, impatient, and perhaps a little inclined to envy those in better circumstances. This lonely life on the mountains was not good for a boy of his nature, and I knew it would be difficult for him to change his habits of thinking and wishing. But, after a long talk, he promised me he would try, and that was as much as I expected.

Now, you may want to know whether he _did_ try; and I am sorry that I cannot tell you. I left the place soon afterwards, and have never been there since. Let us all hope, however, that he found the real key-flower.

V The Young Serf

I

It was towards the close of a September day. Old Gregor and his grandson Sasha were returning home through the forest with their bundles of wood, the old man stooping low under the weight of the heavier sticks he carried, while the boy dragged his great bunch of twigs and splints by a rope drawn over his shoulder. Where the trees grew thick, the air was already quite gloomy, but in the open spaces they could see the sky and tell how near it was to sunset.

Both were silent, for they were tired, and it is not easy to talk and carry a heavy load at the same time. But presently something gray appeared through the trees, at the foot of a low hill; it was the rock where they always rested on the way home. Old Gregor laid down his bundle there, and wiped his face on the sleeve of his brown jacket, but Sasha sprang upon the rock and began to balance himself upon one foot, as was his habit whenever he tried to think about anything.

“Grandfather,” he said, at last, “why should all the forest belong to the Baron, and none of it to you?”

Gregor looked at him sharply for a moment before he answered.

“It was his father’s and his grandfather’s; it has been the property of the family for many a hundred years, and we have never had any.”

“I know that,” said Sasha. “But why did it come so _first_?”

Gregor shook his head. “You might as well ask how the world was made.” Then, seeing that the boy looked troubled, he added in a kinder tone, “What put such a thought in your head?”

“Why, the forest itself!” Sasha cried. “The Baron lets us have the top branches and little twigs, but he always takes the logs and sells them for money. I know all the trees, and he doesn’t; I can find my way in the woods anywhere, and there’s many a tree that would say to me, if it could talk, ‘I’d rather belong to you, Sasha, because I know you.’”

“Aye, and the moon would say the same to you, boy, and the sun and stars, maybe. You might as well want to own them,—and _you_ don’t even belong to yourself.”

Gregor’s words seemed harsh and fierce, but his voice was very sad. Sasha looked at him and knew not what to say, but he felt that his heart was beating violently. All at once he heard a rustling among the dead leaves, and a sound like steps approaching. The old man took hold of his grandson’s arm and made a sign to him to be silent. The sound came nearer, and nearer, and presently they could distinguish some dusky object moving towards them through the trees.

“Is it a robber?” whispered Sasha.

“It is not a man unless he uses his knees for hind feet. I see his head; it is a bear. Keep quiet, boy! make no noise; take this tough stick, but hold it at your side, as I do with mine. Look him in the face, if he comes close; and if I tell you to strike, hit him on the end of the nose!”

It was, indeed a full-grown bear, marching slowly on his great flat feet. He was not more than thirty yards distant, when he saw them, and stopped. Both kept their eyes fixed upon his head, but did not move. Then he came a few paces nearer, and Sasha tried hard not to show that he was trembling inwardly, more from excitement than fear. The bear gazed steadily at them for what seemed a long time: there was an expression of anger, but also of stupid bewilderment, in his eyes. Finally he gave a sniff and a grunt, tossed up his nose, and slowly walked on, stopping once or twice to turn and look back, before he disappeared from view. Sasha lifted his stick and shook it towards him; he felt that he should never again be much afraid of bears.

“Now, boy,” said Gregor, “you have learned how to face danger. I have been as near to a loaded cannon as to that bear, and the wind of the ball threw me on my face; but I was up the next minute, and then the gunner went down! Our colonel saw it, and I remember what he said—ay, every word! He would have kept his promise, but we carried him from the field the next day, and that was the end of the matter. It was in France.”

“Grandfather,” Sasha suddenly asked, “are there forests in France?—and do they belong to the barons?”

“Pick up your fagot, boy, and come along! It will be dark before we get to the village and the potatoes are cooked by this time.”

The mention of the potatoes revived all Sasha’s forgotten hunger, and he obeyed in silence. After walking for a mile as rapidly as their loads would permit, they issued from the forest, and saw the wooden houses of the village on a green knoll, in the last gleams of sunset. The church, with its three little copper-covered domes, stood on the highest point; next to it the priest’s house and garden; then began the broad street, lined with square log-cabins and adjoining stables, sloping down to a large pond, at the foot of which was a mill. Beyond the water there was a great stretch of grazing meadow, then long, rolling fields of rye and barley, extending to the woods which bounded the view in every direction. The village was situated within a few miles of the great main highway running from Warsaw to Moscow, and the waters of the pond fed the stream which flowed into one of the branches of the river Dnieper.

The whole region including the village and nearly all the people in it, belonged to the estate of Baron Popoff, the roofs of whose residence were just visible to the southward, on a hill overlooking the road to Moscow. The former castle had been entirely destroyed during the retreat of Napoleon’s army, and the Baron’s grandfather suffered so many losses at the time that he was only able to build a large and very plain modern house; but the people always called it “the Castle,” or “the Palace,” just as before. Although the Baron sold every year great quantities of timber, grain, hemp, and wool from his estates, he always seemed to be in want of money. The servants who went with him every winter to St. Petersburg were very discreet, and said little about their master’s habits of life; but the people understood, somehow, that he often lost large sums by gambling. This gave them a good deal of uneasiness, for if he should be obliged to part with the estate, they would all be transferred with it to a new owner—and this might be one who had other estates in other parts of Russia, to which he could send them if he were so minded.

At the time of which I am writing, twenty-two millions of the Russian people were _serfs_. Their labor, even their property, belonged to the owner of the land upon which they lived. The latter had not the power to sell them to another, as was formerly the case with slaves in the South, but he could remove them from one estate to another if he had several. Baron Popoff was a haughty and indifferent master, but not a cruel one; the people of the village had belonged to his family for several generations, and were accustomed to their condition. At least, they saw no way of changing it, except by a change of masters, which was more likely to be a misfortune than a benefit.

It was nearly dark when old Gregor and Sasha threw down their loads, and entered the house. Their supper was already waiting, for Sasha’s sister, little Minka, had been up to the church door to see whether they were coming. In one corner of the room a tiny lamp was burning before a picture of the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus, all covered with gilded brass except the hands and faces, which were nearly black, partly from the smoke, and partly because the common Russian people imagine that the Hebrews were a very dark-skinned race. Sasha’s father, Ivan, had also lighted a long pine-splint, and the room looked very cheerful. The boiled potatoes were smoking in a great wooden bowl, beside which stood a dish of salt, another of melted fat, and a loaf of black bread. They had neither plates, knives nor forks; only some coarse wooden spoons, and all ate out of the bowl, after the salt had been sprinkled and the fat poured over the potatoes. For drink there was an earthen pitcher of _quass_, a kind of thin and rather sour beer.

Old Gregor sat on one side of the table, and his son Ivan with Anna, his wife, opposite. There were five children, the oldest being Alexander (whom we know by his nickname “Sasha,” which is the Russian for “Aleck” or “Sandy”), then Minka, Peter, Waska, and Sergius. Sasha was about thirteen years old, rather small for his age, and hardly to be called a handsome boy. Only there was something very pleasant in his large gray eyes, and his long, thick, flaxen hair shone almost like silver when the sun fell upon it. However, he never thought about his looks. When he went to the village bath-house, on a Saturday evening, to take his steam-bath with the rest, the men would sometimes say, after examining his joints and muscles, “You are going to be strong, Sasha!”—and that was as much as he cared to know about himself.

The boy was burning with desire to tell the adventure with the bear, but he did not like to speak before his grandfather, and there was something in the latter’s eye which made him feel that he was watching him. Gregor first lighted his pipe, and then, in the coolest possible manner—as if it were something that happened every day—related the story. “Pity I hadn’t your gun with me, Ivan,” he said at the close; “what with the meat, the fat and the skin, we should have had thirty roubles.”

The children were quite noisy with excitement. Little Peter said: “What for did you let him go, Sasha? _I’d_ have killed him and carried him home!” Then all laughed so heartily that Peter began to cry and was soon packed into a box in the corner, where he slept with Waska and Sergius.

“Take the gun with you to-morrow, father,” said Ivan.

“It’s too much, with my load of wood,” Gregor answered; “the old hunting-knife is all I want. Sasha will stand by me with a club; he’ll not be afraid, the next time.”

Sasha was about to exclaim: “I wasn’t afraid the first time!” but before he spoke, it flashed across his mind that he _did_ tremble a little—just a very little.

By this time it was dark outside. Two pine-splints had burned out, one after the other, and only the little lamp before the shrine enabled them dimly to see each other. The older people went to bed in their narrow rooms, which were hardly better than closets; and Sasha, spreading a coarse sack of straw on the floor, lay down, covered himself with his sheep-skin coat, and in five minutes was so sound asleep that he might have been dragged about by the heels without being awakened.

II

The next day, in the forest, old Gregor worked more rapidly than usual. He spoke very little, in spite of Sasha’s eagerness to talk, and kept the boy so busy that all the wood was gathered together and the bundles made up two or three hours before the usual time.

They were in a partially cleared spot, near the top of some rising ground. The old man looked at the sky, nodded his head, and said with a satisfied air: “We have plenty of time left for ourselves, Sasha; come with me, and I’ll show you something.”

He set out in a direction opposite from home, and the boy, who expected nothing less than the finding of another bear, seized a tough, straight club, and followed him. They went for nearly a mile over rolling ground, through the forest, and then descended into a narrow glen, at the foot of which ran a rapid stream. Very soon, rocks began to appear on either side, and the glen became a chasm where there was barely room to walk. It was a cold, gloomy, strange place; Sasha had never seen anything like it. He felt a singular creeping of the flesh, but not for the world would he have turned back.

The path ceased, and there was a waterfall in front, filling up the whole chasm. Gregor pulled off his boots and stepped into the stream, which reached nearly to his knees: he gave his hand to Sasha, who could hardly have walked alone against the force of the current. They reached the foot of the fall, the spray of which was whirled into their faces. Then Gregor turned suddenly to the left, passed through the thin edge of the falling water, and Sasha, pulled after him, found himself in a low, arched vault of rock, into which the light shone down from another opening. They crawled upwards on hands and feet, and came out into a great, circular hole, like a kettle, through the middle of which ran the stream. There was no other way of getting into it, for the rocks leaned inward as they rose, making the bottom considerably broader than the top.

On one side, under the middle of the rocky arch, stood a square black stone, about five feet high, with a circle of seven smaller stones resembling seats around it. Sasha was dumb with surprise at finding himself in such a wonderful spot.

But old Gregor made the sign of the cross, and muttered something which seemed to be a prayer. Then he went to the black stone, and put his hand upon it.

“Sasha,” he said, “this is one of the places where the old Russian people came, many thousand years ago, before ever the name of Christ was heard of. They were dreadful heathen in those days, and this was what they had in place of a church. A black stone had to be the altar, because they had a black god, who was never satisfied unless they fed him with human blood.”

“Where is he now?” Sasha asked.

“They say he turned into an evil spirit, and is hiding somewhere in the wilderness; but I don’t know whether it’s true. His name was Perun. Most men do not dare to say it, but I have the courage, because I’ve been a soldier and have an honest conscience. Are you afraid to stand here?”

“Not if you are not, grandfather,” said Sasha.

“If your heart were bad and false, you might well be afraid. Come here to me.”

Sasha obeyed. The old man opened the boy’s coarse shirt and laid his hand upon his heart; then he made him do the same to himself, so that the heart of each beat directly against the hand of the other.

“Now, boy,” he then said, “I am going to trust you, and if you say a word you do not mean, or think otherwise than you speak, I shall feel it in the motion of your heart. Do you know the difference between a serf and a free man? Would you rather live like your father, without anything he can call his own, or like the Baron, with houses and forests that nobody could take away from you—unless it might be the Emperor?”

Sasha’s heart gave a great thump, before he opened his mouth. The old man smiled, and he said to himself: “I was right.” Then he continued: “I should be a free man now, if our colonel had lived. Your father had not wit and courage enough to try, but _you_ can do it, Sasha, if you think of nothing else and work for nothing else. I will help you all I can; but you must begin at once. Will you?”

“Yes! yes!” cried Sasha, eagerly.

“Promise me that you will say nothing to any living soul; that you will obey me and remember all I say to you while I live, and be none the less faithful to the purpose when I am dead!”

Sasha promised everything, at once. After a moment’s silence, Gregor took his hand from the boy’s breast, and said: “Yes, you truly mean it. The old people used to say that if anybody broke a promise made before this stone, the black heathen god would have power over him.”

“Perhaps the bear was the black god,” Sasha suggested.

“Perhaps he was. Look him in the face, as you did yesterday, remember your promise, and he can’t harm you.”

As they walked slowly back through the forest, Gregor began to talk, and the boy kept close beside him, listening eagerly to every word.

“The first thing,” he said, “is to get knowledge. You must learn, somehow, to read and write, and count figures. I must tell you all I know, about everything in the world, but that’s very little; and it’s so mixed up in my head, that I don’t rightly know where to begin. It’s a blessing that I’ve not forgotten much; what I picked up I held on to, and now I see the reason why. There’s nothing you can’t use, if you wait long enough.”

“Tell me about France!” Sasha cried.

“France and Germany, too! I was two or three years, off and on, in those foreign parts, and I could talk smartly in the speech of both—_Allez! Sortez! Donnez-moi du vin!_”

Gregor stopped and straightened his bent back, his eyes flashed, and he laughed long and heartily.

“_Allez! Sortez! Donnez-moi du vin!_” repeated Sasha.

Gregor caught up the boy in his arms, and kissed him. “The very thing!” he cried: “I’ll teach you both tongues,—and all about the strange habits of the people, and their houses and churches, and which way the battle went, and what queer harness they have on their horses, and a talking bird I once saw, and a man that kept a bottle full of lightning in his room——.”

So his tongue ran on. It was a great delight to him to recall his memories of more than thirty years and he was constantly surprised to find how many little things that seemed forgotten came back to his mind. Sasha’s breath came quick, as he listened; his whole body felt warm and nimble, and it suddenly seemed to him possible to learn anything and everything. Before reaching home, he had fixed twenty or thirty French words in his memory. There they were, hard and tight; he knew he should never forget them.

From that day began a new life for both. Old Gregor’s method of instruction would simply have confused a pupil less ignorant and less eager to be taught; but Sasha was so sure that knowledge would in some way help him to become a free man that he seized upon everything he heard. In a few months he knew as much German and French as his grandfather, and when they were alone they always spoke, as much as possible, in one or the other language. But the boy’s greatest desire was to learn how to read. During the following winter he made himself useful to the priest in various ways, and finally succeeded in getting from him the letters of the alphabet and learning how to put them together. Of course, he could not keep secret all that he did; it was enough that no one guessed his object in doing it.

One day, in the spring, just after the Baron had returned with his wife from St. Petersburg, Sasha was sent on an errand to the castle. He was bareheaded and barefooted; his shirt and wide trousers were very coarse, but clean, and his hair floated over his shoulders like a mass of shining silk. When he reached the castle, the Baron and Baroness, with a strange lady, were sitting on the balcony. The latter said, in French, “There’s a nice-looking boy!”

Sasha was so glad to find that he understood, and so delighted with the remark, that he looked up suddenly and blushed.

“I really believe he understands what I said,” the lady exclaimed.

The Baron laughed. “Do you suppose my young serfs are educated like princes?” he asked. “If he were so intelligent as that, how long could I keep him?”

Sasha bent down his head, and kicked the loose pebbles with his feet, to hide his excitement. The blood was humming in his ears; the Baron had said the same thing as his grandfather—to get knowledge was the only way to get freedom!

III

The summer passed away, and the second autumn came. Gregor had told all he knew; told it twice, three times; and Sasha, more eager than ever, began to grow impatient for something more. He had secured a little reading-book, such as is used for children, and studied it until he knew the exact place of every letter in it, but there was none to give the poor boy another volume, or to teach him anything further.

One afternoon, as he was returning alone from a neighboring village by a country road which branched off from the main highway, he saw three men sitting on the bank, under the edge of a thicket. They were strangers, and they seemed to him to be foreigners. Two were of middle age, with harsh, evil faces; the third was young, and had an anxious, frightened look. They were talking earnestly, but before he could distinguish the words, one of them saw him, made a sign to the others, and then he was very sure that they suddenly changed their language; for it was German he now heard.

He felt proud of his own knowledge, and his first thought was to say “Good-day!” in German. Then he remembered his grandfather’s command, “Never show your knowledge until there’s good reason for it!” and gave his greeting in Russian. The young man nodded in return; the others took no notice of him. But in passing he understood these sentences:

“He will bring a great deal of money.... There’s no danger—he will be alone.... Grain and hemp both sold to-day.... It will be already dark.”

Just beyond the thicket the road made a sharp turn and entered the woods. Sasha never afterwards could explain the impulse which led him to dart under the trees as soon as he was out of sight, to get in the rear of the thicket, crawl silently nearer on his hands and knees, and then lie down flat within hearing of the men’s voices. For a moment, he was overcome with a horrible fear. They were silent, and his heart beat so loudly that he thought they could no more help noticing it than a blacksmith’s hammer.

Presently one of them spoke,—this time in Russian. “There’s a hill from which you can see both roads,” he said; “but he’ll hardly take the highway.”

“Are you sure his groom was not in the town?” asked another.

“It’s all as I say—rely upon that!” was the answer. “For all his title he’s no more than another man, and we are three!”

In talking further, they mentioned the name of the town; it was the place only a few miles distant, where the grain, hemp, and other products of the estate were sold to traders—and this was the day of the sale! The plot of the robbers flashed into Sasha’s mind; and if he had had any remaining doubts they were soon dissipated by his hearing the Baron’s name. The latter was to be waylaid—plundered—killed, if he resisted. Then the oldest of the three men said, as he got up from the bank where they were sitting:

“We must be on our way. Better be too early than too late.”

“But it’s a terrible thing,” the youngest remarked.

“You can’t turn back now!” the other cried.