Tales of the Wilderness Part 12

He did not sleep, but let his wing hang down as though he were thrusting it from him. And in the morning he was hardly able to use it when he flew off after his prey.

His mate forsook him.

She flew away from the nest at dusk one evening in early spring.

He sought for her all through the night--at dawn he found her with another male, young and strong, who croaked tenderly round her. Then the old bird felt life was over: he had lost all that made it beautiful. He flew to fight his younger rival, but his attack was weak and wavering. The young one rushed at him violently and pa.s.sionately, tore his body, and croaked menacingly. The female watched the fray with indifference, as she had done many years before.

The old bird was beaten.

Fluttered, blood-stained, with one eye swollen, he flew back to his nest and painfully perched himself on the end of a root. Something within him told him his life was at an end. He had lived in order to eat and to breed. Now he had only to die. Instinct told him that. For two days he sat perched above the steep, quiet, immovable, his head sunk deep into his shoulders.

Then, calmly, unperceivingly, he died. He fell down from the steep and lay with his legs crooked and turned upward.

This was during the night. The stars were brilliant. Birds were crying in the woods and over the river. Somewhere owls hooted.

The male-bird lay at the bottom of the ravine for five days. His body was already decaying, and emitted a bitter, offensive odour.

A wolf came and devoured it.

ALWAYS ON DETACHMENT

Alexander Alexandrovitch Agrenev, engineer, spent all day in the quarry, laying and exploding dynamite. In the village below was a factory, its chimneys belching smoke; and creaking wagonettes sped backwards and forwards from the parapet. Above on the cliff stood huge sappy pines. All day the sky was grey and cloudy, and the smoke from the chimneys spread like a low pall over the earth. The dynamite exploded with a great detonation and expulsion of smoke.

The autumn darkness, with its sharp, acid, sweet tang, was already falling as Agrenev proceeded homeward with the head-miner, Eduardovich Bitska, a Lithuanian, and the lights from the engine- house shone brightly in the distance.

The engineer's quarters lay in a forest-clearing on the further side of the valley; the cement structures of its small buildings stood out in monotonous uniformity; the blue light of its torches flared and hissed, throwing back dark shadows from the trunks and branches of the pine-trees, which laced, interlaced, and glided dusky and intangible between the tall straight stems, finally melting amidst the foliage.

His skin jacket was sticking to Agrenev's back, as, no doubt, Bitska's was also.

"My missus will soon be home," Bitska said cheerfully--he had recently been married. He spoke in broken Russian, with a foreign accent.

In Agrenev's house it was dark. The warm glow from the torches outside fell on the window-ledges and illuminated them, but inside the only light was that visible through the crevices of his wife's tightly closed door: his beloved wife--so aloof--so strange. The rain had started, and its drip on the roof was like the sound of water- falls: he changed, washed, took up a newspaper. The maid entered and announced that tea was ready.

His wife--tall, slim, beautiful, and strange--was standing by the window, her back to him, a book in her hand; a tumbler was on the window-sill close beside her. She did not turn round as he entered, merely murmuring: "Have some tea."

The electric light gave a brilliant glow. The freshly varnished woodwork smelt of polish. She did not say another word, but returned to her book, her delicate fingers turning over the leaves as, standing with bent head, she read.

"Are you going out this evening, Anna?" he asked.

"Eh? No, I am staying in."

"Is there anyone coming?"

"Eh? No, n.o.body. Are _you_ going out?"

"I am not sure. I am going to-morrow on Detachment duty for a week."

"Eh? Oh yes, on Detachment."

Always the same! No interest in him; indifferent, absorbed in other things. How he longed to stay and talk to her, on and on, of everything; of the utter impossibility of life without love or sympathy, of the intensity of his own love, and the melancholy of his evenings. But he was silent.

"Is Asya asleep?" he inquired at last.

"Yes, she is asleep."

A nickel tea-pot and a solitary tumbler stood on the table with its white cloth falling in straight folds. The ticking of the clock sounded monotonously.

"She does not deceive, nor betray, nor leave me," he thought; "but she is strange, strange--and a mother!"

II

At last the earth was cloaked in darkness, the torches hung like gleaming b.a.l.l.s of fire, the pattering of the rain echoed dismally, and above it, drowning all other sounds, was the dreary roar of the factory.

He sauntered through the straight-cut avenues of the park towards his club, but near the school turned aside and went in to see Nina. They had known each other from childhood, attending the same school, Nina his faithful comrade and devoted slave--and ever since he had remained for her the one and only man, for she was of those who love but once. Since then she had been flung about Russia, striven to retain her honour, vainly tilting against the windmills of poverty and temptation--had failed, been broken, and now had crept back that she might live near him.

He walked through the school's dark corridors and knocked.

"Come in."

Alone, in a grey dress, plain-featured, her cheek red where it had rested against the palm of her hand, she sat beside a little table in the bare, simple room, a book on her lap. With a pang, Agrenev noted her sunken eyes. But at sight of him they brightened instantly, and she rose from her seat, putting the book aside.

"You darling? Welcome! Is it raining?"

"Greeting! Nina. I have just come in for a moment."

"Take off your coat," she urged. "You will have some tea?" Her eyes and outstretched hands both said: "Thank you, thank you." "How are you doing?" she asked him anxiously.

"I am bored. I can do nothing. I am utterly bored."

She placed the tea-urn on the table in her tiny kitchen, laid some pots of jam by her copy-book, seated him in the solitary armchair, and bustled round, all smiles, her cheeks flushing--the spot where she had rested her hand all the long evening still showing red,--all- loving, all-surrendering, yet undesired.

"You musn't wait on me like this, Nina," Agrenev protested;"... Sit down and let us talk."

Their hands touched caressingly, and she sat down beside him.

"What is it, my dear?" She stroked his hand and its touch warmed her!

"What is it?"

At times indignation overcame her at the thought of life; she wrung her hands, spoke with hatred, and her eyes darkened in anger. At times she fell on her knees in tears and supplication; but with Alexander Alexandrovitch she was always tender, with the tenderness of unrequited love.

"What is it, darling?"

"I am bored, Nina. She ... Anna ... does not love me; she does not leave me, nor deceive me, but neither does she love me. I know you love ..."

At home four walls ... Coldness ... The miner, Bitska, making jokes all day in the rain ... the fuse to be lighted in the quarry, the slow igniting to be watched. Thirty years had been lived ... five- tenths of his life ... a half ... ten-twentieths. It was like a blank cartridge ... no kindness ... a life without feeling ... all blank ...