Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [416]
He was so beautiful. He’s like an angel, she had thought as the sun caught his face. Despite his peasant’s dress, he was so obviously a noble from another world. He was educated. Surely he must know many things that her poor father could not possibly understand.
She knew that what he said about the land was true. But recently she had experienced another kind of oppression, as bad as any in the days of serfdom: that of Suvorin and his factories. That was where the peasant was truly enslaved. Already she had come to hate it: and as for Grigory, she knew that his loathing of Suvorin was almost an obsession. Is there really a new age dawning, she wondered, where we shall all be free? And if so, won’t the peasants in the factory benefit from this revolution too? If she could just ask young Nicolai.
It was just as she started along the path into the woods that she saw Popov.
He had gone for an early stroll. He was ambling along, wearing a wide-brimmed hat like an artist’s, and as she approached, he gave her quite a pleasant smile. Normally, she would not have spoken to him; for though she had nothing against Nicolai’s friend, she had always felt rather shy in his presence. However, encouraged by the smile, and anxious to find out, she asked him: ‘This revolution and the new age that Nicolai Mikhailovich spoke of – will it change things in the factories too?’
He smiled again. ‘Why, certainly.’
‘What will happen?’
‘The factories will all be given to the peasants,’ Popov promptly replied.
‘We wouldn’t have to work such long hours? And Suvorin would be kicked out?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I have a friend,’ she said hesitantly, ‘who would be interested to hear of this, Nicolai Mikhailovich. But he is at the factory.’
And now Popov looked at her with interest. ‘I shall be in Russka this afternoon,’ he said, ‘if your friend would like me to speak to him.’ And seeing a trace of doubt on her face, ‘I know somewhere very private.’
Nicolai did not go to work in the fields that day; but in the late afternoon, when he went down to the village and mounted the stool in front of the Romanov izba, he noticed that the crowd assembling was much bigger than it had been the day before. This pleased him. He had not really wanted to speak again so soon. Popov had deserted him to go into Russka for some reason, and he might have waited for another occasion to speak if his friend had not urged him on. ‘Courage, my friend. They’ve had time to think about what you said yesterday. You may have made more converts than you think. Go to it, Nicolai.’
Not only was the crowd bigger, it was excited. Several of the senior men were in the throng and the village elder himself was standing at the back. They had been waiting for him.
It had not occurred to Nicolai that the villagers were planning to arrest him. Indeed, some of the men had wanted to go and fetch the local police officer from Russka beforehand, but the elder, bearing in mind that this was the landowner’s son, had refused. ‘I’ll hear what he says myself before I take action,’ he had decided. And now, as Nicolai prepared to address them once again, the elder listened carefully.
‘Once again, my friends, I stand before you with good news. I stand before you at the dawn of a new age. For today, all over our beloved Russia, great events are occurring. I speak not of a few protests; not of a hundred riots; not even of a huge uprising such as we have seen in the past. I am speaking of something more joyful, and more profound. I am speaking of the revolution.’
As the crowd gave a little gasp of anticipation, Nicolai saw the village elder start. But he did not notice Arina, hurrying out of the village.
Yevgeny Popov gazed calmly into the agitated face of Peter Suvorin. What a kindly, sensitive face it was, despite the over-large nose.