white pile in the Italian style, with marble columns and portico, and a vast frontage, where the glittering windows looked out upon a small park stocked with tame deer, a series of costly gardens, and the village. Those gardens were a study in themselves. The Jardin Anglais, so called, with its shrubbery, lawn, and wilderness, was the creation of the present lord of the soil; the French garden, with gleaming statues, fountains, clipped hedges, and formal terraces, was the fancy of the late prince, while a still older proprietor had indulged a whim for a Dutch garden, now much neglected. There were orangeries and hothouses, however, that must have cost an immense sum, and the stables were enormous. As for the village, it was a collection of wooden houses and turf huts, with a bath of handsome dimensions, and a church in the usual Byzantine style.
Besides these, there was a monstrous erection, the cotton factory, with its tall chimney, its many windows, and the long ranges of sheds about it, and at the angle of the park wall appeared what seemed to me a section of a Parisian street that had strayed somehow to these Muscovite solitudes. Three or four gaunt stone houses, shouldering one another, and contrasting oddly with the Oriental air of church and village.
The postilion pointed with his whip to this block of dwellings, and curtly informed me that the “foreign employés” lived there. A few moments more, and the horses whirled the light carriage up to the door of one of the houses, out of which came Vaughan, sunburnt and healthy of aspect, to bid me heartily welcome. I was inducted into a spacious suite of apartments, only half furnished, to be sure, but large enough to accommodate a numerous family.
“Choose your own rooms, George,” said my host, laughing; “for my part, I live in a corner of this big mansion, like a mouse in a cheese. It was a whim of Emindoff’s to lodge his staff in this exuberant fashion, but I have something more English here.”
And opening a door, he showed me a small, snug sitting-room, whose Turkey carpet and plain mahogany furniture possessed an air of neatness and comfort quite alien to the dusty splendours of the other apartments. At the other end of the passage were two other chambers, the door of one of which Vaughan jerked open, revealing as neat and cheery a bedroom as a bachelor could wish for.
“Can you make shift with these quarters, old fellow?—I thought so.—Ivan, put the portmanteau down, so.—I sleep opposite, and in general we leave the chief apartments to the undisturbed possession of the spiders.—I dare say you will not be sorry to dine in half an hour’s time.”
After dinner my friend took me to the superintendent’s house, and introduced me to Mr. Murray and his daughter. The latter I found to be a gentle, amiable girl enough, pretty perhaps, with her soft brown eyes and glossy brown hair, but not beautiful, nor, as far as I could judge, remarkably clever. Her father was a tall and stately old man, a little bowed with years, and with hair that was fast getting grey, but with a fine intelligent face. He had been very long a resident in Russia, by no means a healthy country for foreigners; but he was still vigorous and active, and I was not surprised when Vaughan informed me in a whisper that the old man’s strength had once been almost gigantic, and that no peasant in the province could match him in feats of force or address. I took a great fancy to old Mr. Murray. Shrewd as he looked, there was a kindly smile hovering about his firm lips, and no one could talk to him without entertaining respect for him.
A very different sentiment was inspired by the appearance and conversation of Herr Wohler, the German steward, who, with his wife and children, were taking a neighbourly cup of tea with the Murrays, on the occasion of my introduction to Vaughan’s future wife and father-in-law. One glance at this man’s fat yellow face was enough to inspire dislike, while his oily voice, and language of fulsome compliment, matched well enough with the falseness of his smile, and the restlessness of his cold eyes. Vaughan had warned me that I should not like Herr Wohler, who was one of those dishonest sycophants not uncommon in Russia, and who ground the poor as sedulously as they flattered the rich. He was no friend to Mr. Murray, having a jealous aversion to all who stood high in the prince’s esteem, but his bearing was bland enough, and the two families were on coldly civil terms. As for the Frau Wohler, she was one of those stolid housewives which Germany produces in such plenty, with very few ideas beyond scrubbing and cookery, and perfectly content to pass a life in silent knitting over a coffee-cup. She said little, and that little consisted in laments over the slovenliness of Russian servants, by whom her patience had been tested for fifteen years, and in regrets for her distant Rhineland.
“Ach, himmel! when shall I ever see it again!” said the poor woman with a sigh.
“Sooner than you dream of, perhaps, Lotchen,” returned her husband, in a moody tone.
Madame Wohler, who was evidently under great fear of her consort, turned her dull wondering eyes upon him, and I saw a gleam of hope steal over her heavy features. Poor thing! the sojourn in Russia had been a dreary banishment to her, far from the calm gossip, and tidy respectability, and cheap pleasures, of the Fatherland.
But Wohler said never a word more. He seemed to forget that the remark which had so affected his wife had been uttered at all, but sat with his eyes fixed in an abstracted way on the tall brass samovar, from the ornamented top of which the steam was lazily escaping, and let his tea cool unregarded for awhile, busy with his own thoughts. Then he abruptly rose, took leave of Mr. and Miss Murray, saying as little as might be, and departed with his obedient wife and pale children. We all seemed to breathe more freely when Wohler’s presence had been withdrawn.
“What is the matter with the steward, I wonder;” said Vaughan, carelessly; “he has been subject to these odd changes of mood, off and on, for months. Is it ill health, or is the old rogue’s remorse for past wrongs beginning to awake, and will he surprise the prince by sending