A Reckless Character, and Other Stories Part 34

And now, at last, she returned, and traversing the whole length of the room with her light footsteps, she seated herself at the table.

Her face had grown pale and animated; swiftly, with merry confusion, her lowered eyes, which seemed to have grown smaller, darted about in all directions.

She caught sight of the rose, seized it, glanced at its crumpled petals, glanced at me--and her eyes, coming to a sudden halt, glittered with tears.

"What are you weeping about?" I asked.

"Why, here, about this rose. Look what has happened to it."

At this point I took it into my head to display profundity of thought.

"Your tears will wash away the mire," I said with a significant expression.

"Tears do not wash, tears scorch," she replied, and, turning toward the fireplace, she tossed the flower into the expiring flame.

"The fire will scorch it still better than tears," she exclaimed, not without audacity,--and her beautiful eyes, still sparkling with tears, laughed boldly and happily.

I understood that she had been scorched also.

April, 1878.

IN MEMORY OF J. P. VReVSKY

In the mire, on damp, stinking straw, under the pent-house of an old carriage-house which had been hastily converted into a field military hospital in a ruined Bulgarian hamlet, she had been for more than a fortnight dying of typhus fever.

She was unconscious--and not a single physician had even glanced at her; the sick soldiers whom she had nursed as long as she could keep on her feet rose by turns from their infected lairs, in order to raise to her parched lips a few drops of water in a fragment of a broken jug.

She was young, handsome; high society knew her; even dignitaries inquired about her. The ladies envied her, the men courted her ... two or three men loved her secretly and profoundly. Life smiled upon her; but there are smiles which are worse than tears,

A tender, gentle heart ... and such strength, such a thirst for sacrifice! To help those who needed help ... she knew no other happiness ... she knew no other and she tasted no other. Every other happiness pa.s.sed her by. But she had long since become reconciled to that, and all flaming with the fire of inextinguishable faith, she dedicated herself to the service of her fellow-men. What sacred treasures she held hidden there, in the depths of her soul, in her own secret recesses, no one ever knew--and now no one will ever know.

And to what end? The sacrifice has been made ... the deed is done.

But it is sorrowful to think that no one said "thank you" even to her corpse, although she herself was ashamed of and shunned all thanks.

May her dear shade be not offended by this tardy blossom, which I venture to lay upon her grave!

September, 1878.

THE LAST MEETING

We were once close, intimate friends.... But there came an evil moment and we parted like enemies.

Many years pa.s.sed.... And lo! on entering the town where he lived I learned that he was hopelessly ill, and wished to see me.

I went to him, I entered his chamber.... Our glances met.

I hardly recognised him. O G.o.d! How disease had changed him!

Yellow, shrivelled, with his head completely bald, and a narrow, grey beard, he was sitting in nothing but a shirt, cut out expressly.... He could not bear the pressure of the lightest garment. Abruptly he extended to me his frightfully-thin hand, which looked as though it had been gnawed away, with an effort whispered several incomprehensible words--whether of welcome or of reproach, who knows? His exhausted chest heaved; over the contracted pupils of his small, inflamed eyes two scanty tears of martyrdom flowed down.

My heart sank within me.... I sat down on a chair beside him, and involuntarily dropping my eyes in the presence of that horror and deformity, I also put out my hand.

But it seemed to me that it was not his hand which grasped mine.

It seemed to me as though there were sitting between us a tall, quiet, white woman. A long veil enveloped her from head to foot. Her deep, pale eyes gazed nowhere; her pale, stern lips uttered no sound....

That woman joined our hands.... She reconciled us forever.

Yes.... It was Death who had reconciled us....

April, 1878.

THE VISIT

I was sitting at the open window ... in the morning, early in the morning, on the first of May.

The flush of dawn had not yet begun; but the dark, warm night was already paling, already growing chill.

No fog had risen, no breeze was straying, everything was of one hue and silent ... but one could scent the approach of the awakening, and in the rarefied air the scent of the dew's harsh dampness was abroad.

Suddenly, into my chamber, through the open window, flew a large bird, lightly tinkling and rustling.

I started, looked more intently.... It was not a bird: it was a tiny, winged woman, clad in a long, close-fitting robe which billowed out at the bottom.

She was all grey, the hue of mother-of-pearl; only the inner side of her wings glowed with a tender flush of scarlet, like a rose bursting into blossom; a garland of lilies-of-the-valley confined the scattered curls of her small, round head,--and two peac.o.c.k feathers quivered amusingly, like the feelers of a b.u.t.terfly, above the fair, rounded little forehead.

She floated past a couple of times close to the ceiling: her tiny face was laughing; laughing also were her huge, black, luminous eyes. The merry playfulness of her capricious flight shivered their diamond rays.

She held in her hand a long frond of a steppe flower--"Imperial sceptre"[72] the Russian folk call it; and it does, indeed, resemble a sceptre.

As she flew rapidly above me she touched my head with that flower.

I darted toward her.... But she had already fluttered through the window, and away she flew headlong....

In the garden, in the wilderness of the lilac-bushes, a turtle-dove greeted her with its first cooing; and at the spot where she had vanished the milky-white sky flushed a soft crimson.