Tales of the Wilderness Part 18

"I must grease the double-barrel...."

Ivanov also bestirred himself. Because while tracking the cranes he would be seeing her, Arina's image now came vividly before him-- broad, strong, ardent, with soft sensual lips, and wearing a red handkerchief.

"Get the drosky out at dawn to-morrow," he ordered Ignat. "We will go to the Ratchinsky wood. I will go there now and have a look round."

II

The panelled walls and the stove with its cracked tiles were only faintly visible in the soft twilight which filled Ivanov's study. By the walls stood a sofa, and a desk whose green cloth was untidily bestrewn with the acc.u.mulated litter of years and copiously spotted with candle grease, reminiscent of the long, dreary nights Ivanov had spent--a prey to loneliness.

A heap of horse trappings--collars, straps, saddles, bridles--lay by the large, square, bare windows. During the winter nights wolves watched the gleam of yellow candlelight within them. Now outside was the tranquil, genial atmosphere of Spring with all its multi-coloured splendour. Against a deep-blue sky with an orange streak like a pencil line drawn across the horizon, showed the sharp, knotted twigs of the crotegus and the lilac beneath the windows.

Ivanov lighted a candle and commenced manufacturing cartridges to pa.s.s away the time. Lydia Constantinovna entered the room.

"Will you have tea here or in the dining-room?" she inquired.

Ivanov declined tea with a wave of his hand.

All through the years of the Revolution Lydia Constantinovna had lived in the Crimea, coming to Marin-Brod for a fortnight the previous summer, afterwards leaving for Moscow. Now she had returned for the Easter holidays, but not alone--the artist Mintz accompanied her. Ivanov had never heard of him before.

Mintz was clean-shaven and had long fair hair; he wore steel-rimmed pince-nez over his cold grey eyes which he often took off and put on again; when he did so his eyes changed, looking helpless and malicious without the gla.s.ses, like those of little owlets in daylight; his thin, shaven lips were closely compressed, and there was often an expression of mistrust and decrepitude in his face; his conversation and movements were noisy.

Lydia Constantinovna had arrived with Mintz the day before at dusk; Ivanov was not at home. They had gone for a walk in the evening, returning only at two o'clock when dawn was just about to break, and a cold mist hung over the earth like a soft grey veil. They were met by barking dogs which were quickly silenced by the lash of Ignat's whip.

Ivanov had come home earlier, at eleven o'clock, and sat by his study window alone, listening to the gentle sounds of night and the ceaseless hootings of the owls in the park. Lydia Constantinovna did not come to him, nor did he go in to her.

It was in the daytime that Ivanov first saw the artist. Mintz was sitting in the park on a dried turf-bench, and gazing intently at the river. Ivanov pa.s.sed him. The artist's shrunken ruffled figure had an air of desolation and abandonment.

The drawing-room was next to Ivanov's study. There still remained out of the ruin a carpet and some armchairs near the large, dirty windows, an old piano stood unmoved, and some portraits still hung on the walls.

Lydia Constantinovna and Mintz came in from the back-room. Lydia walked with her usual brisk, even tread, carrying herself with the smooth, elastic bearing and graceful swing of her beautiful body that Ivanov remembered so well.

She raised the piano-cover and began playing a dashing bravura that was strikingly out of place in the dismantled room, then she closed the piano-lid with a slam.

Aganka entered with the tea on a tray.

Mintz walked about the dim room, tapping his heels on the parquet floor, and though he spoke loudly, his voice held a note of yearning pain.

"I was in the park just now. That pond, those maple avenues-- disintegrating, dying, disappearing--drive me melancholy mad. The ice has already melted in the pond by the dam. Why can we not bring back the romantic eighteenth century, and sit in dressing-gowns, musing with delicious sadness over our pipes? Why are we not ill.u.s.trious lords?"

Lydia Constantinovna smiled as she answered: "Why not indeed! That is a poetic fancy. But the reality is very much worse. Marin-Brod has never been a country house, it is a forest manor, a forestry-office and nothing more ... nothing more.... I always feel an interloper here. This is only my second day and I am already depressed." Her tone was sad, yet it held just a perceptible note of anger.

"Reality and Fancy? Certainly I am an artist, for I always see the latter, the beautiful and spiritual side," Mintz declared; and added in an undertone: "Do you remember yesterday ... the park?"

"Oh, yes, the park," Lydia replied in a tired, subdued tone. "They hold the Twelfth Gospel Service to-day; when I was a young girl, how I used to love standing in church with a candle--I felt so good. And now I love nothing!"

It was already quite dark in the drawing room. A wavering, greenish- golden light streamed in through the windows and played on the dim walls. Ivanov came out of his study. He was wearing high boots and a leather jacket, and carried a rifle under his arm. He went silently to the door. Lydia Constantinovna stopped him.

"Are you going out again, Sergius? Is it to hunt?"

"Yes."

Ivanov stood still and Lydia went up to him. She had dark shadows under her eyes, and the hand of time--already bearing away her youth and beauty--lay upon her marvellously white skin, at her lips and on her cheeks, in faint, scarcely visible wrinkles. Ivanov noticed it distinctly.

"Does one hunt at night--in the dark? I did not know that," Lydia said, repeating "I did not know...."

"I am going to the wood."

"I have come back here after not having seen you for months, and we have not yet spoken a word...."

Ivanov did not reply, but went out. His footsteps echoed through the great house, finally dying away in the distance. The front-door slammed, shaking the whole mansion, which was old and falling to pieces.

Lydia Constantinovna remained in the middle of the room, her face turned to the door. Mintz approached, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.

"You must not take it to heart, Lit," he said softly and kindly.

She freed her hand and laid it on Mintz's shoulder.

"No, one should not take it to heart," she a.s.sented in a low voice, "One should not.... But listen, Mintz.... How strange it all is! Once he loved me very much, though I never loved him.... But my youth was spent here, and now I feel unhappy.... I remember all that happened in this drawing-room, it was the first time. If only I could have all over again! Perhaps I should act differently then. I feel sorry now for my youth and inexperience, though formerly I cursed them, and I am far from regretting all that followed afterwards. But I need a refuge now.... If you only knew how much he loved me in those days!..."

Lydia Constantinovna was silent a moment, her head bent, then flinging it back she gave a hollow sardonic laugh.

"Oh, what nonsense I talk! Well, we will be cheerful yet. I am tired, that is all. How stuffy it is in here!... Open the windows, Mintz ...

Now let down the blinds ... They live on milk and black bread here and are happy--but I have a bottle of brandy in my trunk. Get it out!

Light the chandelier."

Mintz opened the windows. From outside came a cool, refreshing breeze laden with the moist and fragrant perfumes of spring. Dusk had crept over the sky, which was flecked with warm vernal clouds.

III

The heavens were a glorious, triumphant, impenetrable blue; there was a faint glimmer of greenish light on the Western horizon over which brooded damp low clouds. The air was humid, soft, and redolent with the aroma of earth and melting snow. From all around came a faint medley of echoing sounds.... The wind fell completely, not a tree stirred; the ferns stood motionless with all the magic of the springtime among their roots. So calm and still was the night, the earth herself, it seemed, stopped turning in that wonderful stillness.

Ivanov lighted a cigarette, and as the match flared between his fingers, illuminating his black beard, his trembling hands were distinctly visible. His pointer Gek came out of the darkness and fawned round his legs.

Through the darkness of the windless night rang the church bell tolling for the last Gospel Service; it seemed to peal just outside the manor. The yard was silent, but once or twice Aganka's voice could be heard from the cattle-shed calling to the cows, and the sound of milk falling into her pail was faintly audible.

Ivanov listened to the church chimes and the subdued sounds of night round the manor, then noiselessly, well accustomed to the obscurity, he descended the steps; only Gek was at his side, the other dogs did not hear him.

Cold raindrops fell from the trees in tiny shining globules of iridescent light, close by him an owl fluttered in a tangle of branches, uttering its dreadful cry of joy as it flashed past.

Ivanov walked through the fields, descended by a chalky ribbon of a footpath to the ravine, crossed over it by a narrow shadow-dappled pathway hidden among a maze of trees, and made his way along its further ridge to a forest watch-house. It stood in a bare open s.p.a.ce, exposed to the swift rushing Dance of the Winds, and close to the naked trunks of three ancient pines that still reared their grim, s.h.a.ggy heads to the sky and spilled their pungent balsam perfumes into the air. Behind it loomed the faint grey shadow of an embankment.

A dog at the watch-house began to bark. Gek growled in return and suddenly disappeared. The dogs became silent. A man appeared on the step with a lantern.

"Who is there?" he asked quietly.

"It is I," said Ivanov.

"You, Sergius Mitrich?... Aha! But Arina is still at church ... went off there ... busy with her nonsense." The watchman paused. "Shall I go in and turn off the light? The express will soon be pa.s.sing. Will you come in? Arina will be back before long. The wife's at home."