Dream Tales and Prose Poems Part 25

THE FIRST WORKMAN. You're right there. We'll have a try for it, mate.

_April 1878._

THE ROSE

The last days of August.... Autumn was already at hand.

The sun was setting. A sudden downpour of rain, without thunder or lightning, had just pa.s.sed rapidly over our wide plain.

The garden in front of the house glowed and steamed, all filled with the fire of the sunset and the deluge of rain.

She was sitting at a table in the drawing-room, and, with persistent dreaminess, gazing through the half-open door into the garden.

I knew what was pa.s.sing at that moment in her soul; I knew that, after a brief but agonising struggle, she was at that instant giving herself up to a feeling she could no longer master.

All at once she got up, went quickly out into the garden, and disappeared.

An hour pa.s.sed ... a second; she had not returned.

Then I got up, and, getting out of the house, I turned along the walk by which--of that I had no doubt--she had gone.

All was darkness about me; the night had already fallen. But on the damp sand of the path a roundish object could be discerned--bright red even through the mist.

I stooped down. It was a fresh, new-blown rose. Two hours before I had seen this very rose on her bosom.

I carefully picked up the flower that had fallen in the mud, and, going back to the drawing-room, laid it on the table before her chair.

And now at last she came back, and with light footsteps, crossing the whole room, sat down at the table.

Her face was both paler and more vivid; her downcast eyes, that looked somehow smaller, strayed rapidly in happy confusion from side to side.

She saw the rose, s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, glanced at its crushed, muddy petals, glanced at me, and her eyes, brought suddenly to a standstill, were bright with tears.

'What are you crying for?' I asked.

'Why, see this rose. Look what has happened to it.'

Then I thought fit to utter a profound remark.

'Your tears will wash away the mud,' I p.r.o.nounced with a significant expression.

'Tears do not wash, they burn,' she answered. And turning to the hearth she flung the rose into the dying flame.

'Fire burns even better than tears,' she cried with spirit; and her lovely eyes, still bright with tears, laughed boldly and happily.

I saw that she too had been in the fire.

_April 1878._

TO THE MEMORY OF U. P. VREVSKY

On dirt, on stinking wet straw under the shelter of a tumble-down barn, turned in haste into a camp hospital, in a ruined Bulgarian village, for over a fortnight she lay dying of typhus.

She was unconscious, and not one doctor even looked at her; the sick soldiers, whom she had tended as long as she could keep on her legs, in their turn got up from their pestilent litters to lift a few drops of water in the hollow of a broken pot to her parched lips.

She was young and beautiful; the great world knew her; even the highest dignitaries had been interested in her. Ladies had envied her, men had paid her court ... two or three had loved her secretly and truly. Life had smiled on her; but there are smiles that are worse than tears.

A soft, tender heart ... and such force, such eagerness for sacrifice! To help those who needed help ... she knew of no other happiness ... knew not of it, and had never once known it. Every other happiness pa.s.sed her by.

But she had long made up her mind to that; and all aglow with the fire of unquenchable faith, she gave herself to the service of her neighbours.

What hidden treasure she buried there in the depth of her heart, in her most secret soul, no one ever knew; and now, of course, no one will ever know.

Ay, and what need? Her sacrifice is made ... her work is done.

But grievous it is to think that no one said thanks even to her dead body, though she herself was shy and shrank from all thanks.

May her dear shade pardon this belated blossom, which I make bold to lay upon her grave!

_September 1878._

THE LAST MEETING

We had once been close and warm friends.... But an unlucky moment came ...

and we parted as enemies.

Many years pa.s.sed by.... And coming to the town where he lived, I learnt that he was helplessly ill, and wished to see me.

I made my way to him, went into his room.... Our eyes met.

I hardly knew him. G.o.d! what sickness had done to him!

Yellow, wrinkled, completely bald, with a scanty grey beard, he sat clothed in nothing but a shirt purposely slit open.... He could not bear the weight of even the lightest clothes. Jerkily he stretched out to me his fearfully thin hand that looked as if it were gnawed away, with an effort muttered a few indistinct words--whether of welcome or reproach, who can tell? His emaciated chest heaved, and over the dwindled pupils of his kindling eyes rolled two hard-wrung tears of suffering.

My heart sank.... I sat down on a chair beside him, and involuntarily dropping my eyes before the horror and hideousness of it, I too held out my hand.

But it seemed to me that it was not his hand that took hold of me.