Through Russia Part 39

"I have considered the matter, and know, at last, my mind. It is this: I hope some day to fall in with a good muzhik with whom to go in search of land. Probably land of the kind, I mean, is to be found in the neighbourhood of New Athos, [A monastery in the Caucasus, built on the reputed site of a cave tenanted by Simeon the Canaanite] for I have been there already, and know of a likely spot for the purpose. And there we shall set our place in order, and lay out a garden and an orchard, and prepare as much plough land as we may need for our working."

Her words are now firmer, more a.s.sured.

"And when we have put everything in order, other folk may join us; and then, as the oldest settlers in the place, we shall hold the position of honour. And thus things will continue until a new village, really a fine settlement, will have become formed--a settlement of which my husband will be selected the warden until such time as I shall have made of him a barin [Gentleman or squire] outright. Also, children may one day play in that garden, and a summer-house be built there. Ah, how delightful such a life appears!"

In fact, she has planned out the future so thoroughly that already she can describe the new establishment in as much detail as though she has long been a resident in it.

"Yes, I yearn indeed for a nice home!" she continues. "Oh that such a home could fall to my lot! But the first requisite, of course, is a muzhik."

Her gentle face and eyes peer into the waning night as though they aspire to caress everything upon which they may light.

And all the while I am feeling sorry for her--sorry almost to tears. To conceal the fact I murmur:

"Should I myself suit you?"

She gives a faint laugh.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because the ideas in your mind are different from mine."

"How do you know what my ideas are?"

She edges away from me a little, then says drily:

"Because I can see them in your eyes. To be plain, I could never consent."

With a finger tapping upon the mouldy, gnarled old oaken stump on which we are sitting, she adds:

"The Cossacks, for instance, live comfortably enough; yet I do not like them."

"What in them is it that displeases you?"

"Somehow they repel me. True, much of everything is theirs; yet also they have ways which alienate me."

Unable any longer to conceal from her my pity, I say gently:

"Never, I fear, will you discover what you are seeking."

She shakes her head protestingly.

"And never ought a woman to be discouraged," she retorts. "Woman's proper round is to wish for a child, and to nurse it, and, when it has been weaned, to get herself ready to have another one. That is how woman should live. She should live as pa.s.s spring and summer, autumn and winter."

I find it a pleasure to watch the play of the woman's intellectual features; and though, also, I long to take her in my arms, I feel that my better plan will be to seek once more the quiet, empty steppe, and, bearing in me the recollection of this woman, to resume my lonely journey towards the region where the silver wall of the mountains merges with the sky, and the dark ravines gape at the steppe with their chilly jaws. At the moment, however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks have temporarily deprived me of my pa.s.sport.

"What are you yourself seeking?" she asks suddenly as again she edges towards me.

"Simply nothing. My one desire is to observe how folk live."

"And are you travelling alone?"

"I am."

"Even as am I. Oh G.o.d, how many lonely people there are in the world!"

By this time the cattle are awakening from slumber, and, with their soft lowings, reminding one of a pipe which I used to hear played by a certain blind old man. Next, four times, with unsteady touch, the drowsy watchman strikes his gong--twice softly, once with a vigour that clangs the metal again, and a fourth time with a mere tap of the iron hammer against the copper plate.

"What sort of lives do the majority of folk lead?"

"Sorry lives."

"Yes, that is what I too have found."

A pause follows. Then the woman says quietly:

"See, dawn is breaking, yet never this night have my eyes closed. Often I am like that; often I keep thinking and thinking until I seem to be the only human being in the world, and the only human being destined to re-order it."

"Many folk live unworthy lives. They live them amid discord, abas.e.m.e.nt, and wrongs innumerable, wrongs born of want and stupidity."

And as the words leave my lips my mind loses itself in recollections of all the dark and harrowing and shameful scenes that I have beheld.

"Listen," I say. "You may approach a man with nothing but good in your heart, and be prepared to surrender both your freedom and your strength; yet still he may fail to understand you aright. And how shall he be blamed for this, seeing that never may he have been shown what is good?"

She lays a hand upon my shoulder, and looks straight into my eyes as she parts her comely lips.

"True," she rejoins--"But, dear friend, it is also true that goodness never bargains."

Together she and I seem to be drifting towards a vista which is coming to look, as it sloughs the shadow of night, ever clearer and clearer.

It is a vista of white huts, silvery trees, a red church, and dew-bespangled earth. And as the sun rises he reveals to us cl.u.s.tered, transparent clouds which, like thousands of snow-white birds, go gliding over our heads.

"Yes," she whispers again as gently she gives me a nudge. "As one pursues one's lonely way one thinks and thinks--but of what? Dear friend, you have said that no one really cares what is the matter. Ah, HOW true that is!"

Here she springs to her feet, and, pulling me up with her, glues herself to my breast with a vehemence which causes me momentarily to push her away. Upon this, bursting into tears, she tends towards me again, and kisses me with lips so dry as almost to cut me--she kisses me in a way which penetrates to my very soul.

"You have been oh, so good!" she whispers softly. As she speaks, the earth seems to be sinking under my feet.

Then she tears herself away, glances around the courtyard, and darts to a corner where, under a fence, a clump of herbage is sprouting.

"Go now," she adds in a whisper. "Yes, go."

Then, with a confused smile, as, crouching among the herbage as though it had been a small cave, she rearranges her hair, she adds:

"It has befallen so. Ah, me! May G.o.d grant unto me His pardon!"

Astonished, feeling that I must be dreaming, I gaze at her with grat.i.tude, for I sense an extraordinary lightness to be present in my breast, a radiant void through which joyous, intangible words and thoughts keep flying as swallows wheel across the firmament.

"Amid a great sorrow," she adds, "even a small joy becomes a great felicity."