“Yes.”
“Where’s your house?”
I couldn’t imagine that children like myself could live without a house.
Valek smiled in his habitual sad way and did not answer.
We avoided the steep landslides, for Valek knew a better path. Pushing through the reeds of a dry marsh and crossing a couple of little streams on narrow planks, we found ourselves on a flat at the foot of the hill.
Here we were forced to take leave of one another. I pressed my new friend’s hand and then held out mine to the little girl. She gave me her tiny paw affectionately and, looking up at me with her blue eyes, asked:
“Will you come again?”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. “I’ll surely come!”
“All right,” said Valek thoughtfully. “You might as well come, but only when our people are in town.”
“Who are your people?”
“Why our people: all of them, Tiburtsi and Lavrovski and Turkevich and the Professor—but perhaps he wouldn’t matter.”
“All right, I’ll watch for them, and when they’re in town, I’ll come. Good-bye!”
“Hi! Listen!” Valek called after me when I hadgone a few steps. “You won’t tell any one you’ve been here with us, will you?”
“No, not a soul!” I answered firmly.
“That’s good. And when those idiots of yours ask you what you saw say the Devil.”
“All right. I’ll say that.”
“Good-bye, then!”
“Good-bye!”
The thick shades of night were descending on Kniazh Gorodok as I approached our garden wall. A slender crescent moon was hanging over the castle and the sky was bright with stars. I was about to climb the wall when some one seized my arm.
“Vasia!” my runaway friend burst out in an excited whisper. “Is that you?”
“You know it is. And so you all ran away!”
He hung his head, but curiosity got the better of his confusion and he asked again:
“What did you see there?”
“What do you think I saw?” I answered in a voice that would not admit of a doubt; “devils, of course. And you are all cowards!”
Pushing my abashed companion aside, I climbed over the wall.
Fifteen minutes later I had sunk into a profound slumber, and was dreaming that I was watching real little devils merrily hopping up out of the hole in the chapel floor. Valek was chasing them aboutwith a birch twig, and Marusia, her eyes sparkling with pleasure, was laughing and clapping her hands.
MY ACQUAINTANCESHIP IS CONTINUED
From thenceforth I became entirely absorbed in my new acquaintances. At night as I went to bed and on rising in the morning I thought of nothing but my coming visit to the hill. I now wandered about the streets for the sole purpose of ascertaining whether the whole assemblage of what Yanush called the “bad company” was there or not. If Lavrovski was sprawling in the meadow and Turkevich and Tiburtsi were holding forth to their audiences, and if the rest of the suspicious characters were poking about the bazaar, I immediately ran off across the marsh and up the hill to the chapel, having first filled my pockets with apples, which I was allowed to pick in our garden, and with sweet-meats, which I always saved up for my new friends.
Valek, who was very serious, and whose grown-up ways inspired me with respect, would quietly accept these gifts and generally put them aside for his sister, but Marusia would clap her hands and her eyes would sparkle with unaffected pleasure. The child’s pale cheeks would glow with rosy colour andshe would laugh, and this laugh of our little friend’s always went straight to our hearts and rewarded us for the sweets we had sacrificed for her sake.
This pale, diminutive little creature reminded one of a flower that had blossomed without seeing the life-giving rays of the sun. Although she was four years old, she still walked weakly on her crooked little legs, swaying like a grass-blade as she moved. Her hands were transparent and thin, and her head nodded on her neck like a bluebell on its stalk, but her glance was, at times, so unchildlike and sad, and her smile reminded me so of my mother’s during her last days as she had sat at her open window with the breeze stirring her hair, that I would often grow sad myself at the sight of her little babyish face, and the tears would rise in my eyes.
I could not help comparing her to my sister who was the same age; the latter was as round as a dumpling and as buoyant as a rubber ball. Sonia ran so merrily when she was playing and laughed so ringingly, she wore such pretty dresses, and every day her nurse would braid a crimson ribbon into her dark hair.
But my little friend hardly ever ran and very seldom laughed; when she did her laughter sounded like the tiniest of silver bells that ten steps away is scarcely audible. Her dress was dirty and old, no ribbon decked her hair, which was much longer and thicker than Sonia’s. To my surprise, Valek knewhow to braid it very cleverly, and this he would do every morning.
I was a great madcap. People used to say of me: “That boy’s hands and feet are full of quicksilver.” I believed this myself, although I could not understand how and by whom the quicksilver could have been inserted. During the first days of our friendship I brought my high spirits into the company of my new companions, and I doubt if the echoes of the old chapel had ever repeated such deafening shrieks as they did whilst I was trying to rouse and amuse Valek and Marusia with my pranks. But in spite of them all I did not succeed. Valek would gaze seriously first at me and then at the little girl, and once when I was making her run a race with me, he said:
“Don’t do that, you’ll make her cry.”
And in fact, when I had teased Marusia into running, and when she heard my steps behind her, she suddenly turned round, raised her arms above her head as if to protect herself, looked at me with the helpless eyes of a trapped bird, and burst into tears. I was touched to the quick.
“There, you see,” said Valek. “She doesn’t like to play.”
He seated her on the grass and began picking flowers and tossing them to her. She stopped crying and began quietly to pick up the blossoms, whispering something to the golden butter-cups and raising theblue-bells to her lips. I grew quiet too, and lay down beside Valek and the little girl.
“Why is she like that?” I finally asked, motioning with my eyes toward Marusia.
“Why is she so quiet, you mean?” asked Valek. And then in a tone of absolute conviction, he continued: “You see, it is the grey stone.”
“Yes,” the child repeated like a feeble echo. “It is the grey stone.”
“Which grey stone?” I asked, not understanding what they meant.
“The grey stone has sucked her life away,” Valek explained, gazing at the sky as before. “Tiburtsi says so. Tiburtsi knows.”
“Yes,” the child once more echoed softly. “Tiburtsi knows everything.”
I understood nothing of the puzzling words which Valek had repeated after Tiburtsi, but the argument that Tiburtsi knew everything had its effect on me. I raised myself on one elbow and looked at Marusia. She was sitting in the same position in which Valek had placed her, and was still picking up the scattered flowers. The movements of her thin hands were slow, her eyes were like blue bruises in her pale face, and her long lashes were downcast. As I looked at that wee, pathetic figure I realised that in Tiburtsi’s words, although I could not understand them, there lay a bitter truth. Something was surely sucking away the life of this strange child that weptwhen other children would have laughed. But how could a grey stone do this thing?
There was a riddle more dreadful to me than all the ghosts in the old castle. Let the Turks pining under ground be never so terrible and the old count never so cruel, they all smacked of the fantastic horror of ancient legends. But here was something incredibly dreadful taking place under my very eyes. Something formless, pitiless, cruel, and heavy as a stone was hanging over this little being’s head, draining the colour from her cheeks, the brightness from her eyes, and the life out of her limbs. “It must be done at night,” I thought, and something wrung my heart until it ached.
I, too, subdued my boisterous ways under the influence of this feeling. Suiting our actions to our little lady’s quiet gravity, Valek and I would put her down somewhere upon the grass and collect flowers and little bright-hued pebbles for her, or else we would catch butterflies, or make her sparrow traps of bricks. Sometimes, stretched beside her on the grass, we would lie gazing at the sky and, as we watched the clouds sailing high above the chapel’s crumbling roof, we would tell Marusia stories or talk with one another.
These conversations cemented the friendship between Valek and me more firmly every day, and it grew steadily in spite of the sharp contrast that our characters presented. He opposed a sorrowfulgravity to my impulsive high spirits and won my respect by the masterly, independent way in which he spoke of grown-up people. He also told me much that was new to me, things of which I had never thought before. Noticing that he spoke of Tiburtsi as of a comrade I asked:
“Is Tiburtsi your father?”
“He must be,” he answered thoughtfully, as if the question had never before occurred to him.
“Does he love you?”
“Yes,” he answered much more decidedly this time. “He is always doing things for me, and sometimes, you know, he kisses me and cries.”
“He loves me and cries too!” Marusia chimed in, with a look of childish pride.
“My father doesn’t love me,” I said sadly. “He never kisses me. He is a horrid man.”
“No, no,” Valek objected. “You don’t understand. Tiburtsi says he isn’t. He says the Judge is the best man in the town, and that the town would have been ruined long ago if it had not been for your father and the Priest who has just gone into a monastery, and the Jewish Rabbi. Those three—”
“What have those three done?”
“The town hasn’t been ruined because they were there, so Tiburtsi says, because they look after the poor people. Your father, you know, once sentenced a count to punishment.”
“Yes, that’s so. The count was very angry.”
“There, you see! It’s no joke to sentence a count.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Valek repeated. “Because a count isn’t an ordinary person. A count does what he pleases and drives in a coach, and thenthatcount had money. He would have given money to any other judge, and the judge would have let him go and condemned a poor man.”
“Yes, that’s true. I heard the count shouting in our house: ‘I can buy and sell every one of you!’”
“And what did the Judge say?”
“My father said: ‘Get out of my sight!’”
“There, now, you see! And Tiburtsi says he isn’t afraid to drive a rich man away, but when old Ivanovna came to him with her rheumatism he had a chair brought for her. He’s like that! Even Turkevich has never raised a rumpus under his windows.”
That was true; when he was on his denunciatory expeditions Turkevich always passed by our windows in silence, and sometimes even took off his cap.
All this set me thinking deeply. Valek was showing me my father in a light in which I had never before seen him, and the boy’s words touched chords of filial pride in my heart. I was pleased to hear these praises of my father coming from Tiburtsi who “knew everything,” but there still quivered in my breast, with a pang of aching love, the bittercertainty that this man never could and never would love me as Tiburtsi loved his children.
AMONG THE “GREY STONES”
Several days passed. The “bad company” ceased to appear in town, and I wandered through the streets in vain, feeling sad and lonely, waiting for them to return so that I might hasten to the hill.
Only the Professor came down once with his sleepy walk; neither Tiburtsi nor Turkevich appeared. I was thoroughly unhappy, for not to see Valek and Marusia had come to be a great loss to me. But one day as I was walking down the street with hanging head Valek suddenly laid his hand upon my shoulder.
“Why don’t you come to see us any more?” he asked.
“I’m afraid to—I haven’t seen your people in town.”
“O—oh—and I never thought of telling you! Our people aren’t at home; you can come. And I thought it was something else!”
“What?”
“I thought you were tired of coming.”
“No, no! I’m coming at once; I even have the apples here with me.”
At mention of the apples Valek suddenly turned toward me as if he wanted to say something, but nothing came, and he only gave me an odd look.
“No matter, no matter,” he dismissed the question, seeing that I was looking expectantly at him. “Go along up the hill; I have something to do; I’ll catch you up on the way.”
I walked along, glancing back frequently, expecting to be overtaken by Valek, but I had climbed the hill and reached the chapel before he had appeared. I stopped in doubt as to what I ought to do. Before me lay the graveyard, desolate and hushed, without the faintest sign of human habitation. Only sparrows were twittering in the sunshine, and a thicket of wild cherry trees, honeysuckle, and lilac bushes that nestled close up under the southern wall of the chapel was softly whispering something with its dark, dense foliage.
I looked about. Where should I go next? Clearly, the only thing to do was to wait for Valek. So I began to wander among the graves, idly trying to decipher the epitaphs on the mossy tombstones. As I was roaming thus from grave to grave, I suddenly stumbled upon a large, half-ruined vault. The roof of this vault had been taken off or else had been torn away by storms, and was lying close at hand.The door was boarded up. Out of curiosity I propped an old cross against the wall, climbed up, and peered into the vault. It was empty, but a window with glass panes had been let into the centre of the floor, and under these panes there gaped the black void of a subterranean chamber.
While I was looking into this tomb and marvelling at the strange situation of the window, Valek came running, panting and tired, to the top of the hill. He was carrying a large loaf of Jewish bread in his arms, something was sticking out from under his coat, and the perspiration was streaming down his face.
“Oh!” he cried at sight of me. “There you are! If Tiburtsi should find you here, how angry he would be! But it’s too late to do anything now. I know you’re all right and won’t tell any one where we live. Let’s go in!”
“Go in where? Is it far?”
“You’ll see. Follow me.”
He pushed aside the twigs of the honeysuckle and lilac bushes and disappeared into the thicket beneath the chapel wall. I followed him, and found myself on a small trampled patch of earth which had been entirely concealed from me before by foliage. Between the stems of the cherry trees I saw a fairly large opening from which a flight of earthen steps led downward. Valek started down, bidding me follow him, and in a few seconds we found ourselves indarkness underground. Valek took my hand and led me through a narrow, damp passage, until, turning sharply to the right, we emerged into a spacious crypt.
I stopped at the entrance, amazed at this unexpected sight. Two beams of light fell sharply from overhead, painting two luminous bands across the darkness of the crypt. This light came from a couple of windows, one of which I had seen in the floor of the vault, and another, which lay beyond and which had evidently been constructed in the same way as the first. The rays of the sun did not fall directly upon these windows, but were reflected into them from the walls of the two old vaults. This light was diffused in the grey air underground, and fell upon the flag-stone floor, from which it was reflected once more, filling the crypt with a dusky shimmer. The walls were also of stone, and massive, thick columns, rising ponderously from the floor, spread their stone arches in all directions and at last firmly clasped the vaulted roof above.
Two figures were sitting in a patch of light on the floor. The old Professor, with bowed head and muttering something to himself, was cobbling his rags together with a needle. He did not even look up as we entered the crypt, and had it not been for the slight movement of his hands, his grey figure might easily have been mistaken for some grotesque piece of stone carving.
Under the other window sat Marusia by a little heap of flowers, sorting them over, as her custom was. A beam of light fell on her fair curls, bathing her in radiance from head to foot, but in spite of this she stood out a strange little misty speck against the grey stone background, looking as if she might melt and vanish at any moment. Whenever a cloud passed over the earth, dimming the sun’s brightness, this background seemed to slip away and disappear, swallowed up in darkness, but when the sun shone out anew, the cold, cruel stones stood out once more, clasping each other above the tiny figure of the child in an indissoluble embrace. I involuntarily remembered Valek’s saying about the “grey stone” that was draining Marusia’s merriment away, and a feeling of superstitious fear came stealing into my heart. I seemed to be aware of an invisible but terrible stony stare directed at her, rapacious and intent; I felt that the crypt was keenly eyeing its prey.
“Valek!” lisped Marusia gaily, as she caught sight of her brother. When she saw me with him a faint light shone in her eyes.
I gave her the apples I had brought, and Valek, breaking the loaf in two, gave her a piece and handed the rest to the Professor. That unhappy man of learning accepted the gift indifferently, and began munching without tearing himself away from his occupation. I shivered and moved uneasily, stifled,as it were, by the oppressive “stare” of those grey stones.
“Come! Come away from here——” I insisted, plucking at Valek’s sleeve. “Take her away!”
“Come, Marusia, let’s go upstairs,” Valek called to his sister.
And the three of us climbed up out of the crypt, but even out of doors I felt a sense of restlessness and strain. Valek was sadder and more silent than usual.
“Did you stay in town to buy that bread?” I asked.
“To buy it?” laughed Valek. “Where would I find the money?”
“How did you get it then? Did you ask for it?”
“Yes, that’s likely! Who would give it to me? No, brother, I nabbed it from Sarah the Jewess’ bread-tray at the bazaar. She didn’t see me.”
He said this in a matter-of-fact voice, sprawling on the grass with his hands under his head. I raised myself on my elbow and stared at him.
“So you stole it?”
“Yes, I did.”
I threw myself back on the grass and we lay for a minute in silence.
“It’s wicked to steal!” I burst out, full of the saddest perplexity.
“Our people were all away. Marusia was crying because she was hungry.”
“Yes, I was hungry,” repeated the child with pitiful simplicity.
I had not yet discovered what hunger was, but at the little one’s last words my breast heaved and I stared at my friends as if I were seeing them for the first time. Valek was lying on the grass as before, pensively watching a soaring sparrow-hawk, but he now no longer looked impressive. At the sight of Marusia holding her piece of bread in both hands my heart absolutely stopped beating.
“Why”—I asked with an effort—“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I wanted to tell you, and then I changed my mind. You have no money of your own.”
“Well, what difference does that make? I should have brought a loaf from home.”
“What, on the sly?”
“Yes-es——”
“Then you would have stolen it too.”
“I—it would have been from my father.”
“That’s worse!” said Valek decidedly. “I never rob my father.”
“Well, then, I should have asked for it. He would have given it to me.”
“Oh, he might have given it to you once—but how could he provide for all the beggars in town?”
“Are you—beggars?” I asked in a low voice.
“Yes, we are beggars,” answered Valek bluntly and gruffly.
I said nothing, and in a few minutes I rose to go.
“Are you going away already?” asked Valek.
“Yes.”
I was going because I could not, that day, play tranquilly with my friends as before. The pure, childish affection I had felt for them was sullied. Although the love I bore Valek and Marusia was not diminished, there was now mingled with it a sharp current of pity that turned it to a burning heartache. On reaching home I went to bed early because I did not know where to lay this new feeling of pain with which my whole soul was burning. I buried my head under my pillow and wept bitterly until kindly sleep at last came with her soft breath to blow away my grief.
TIBURTSI APPEARS ON THE SCENE
“Good morning! I thought you weren’t coming back any more!” this was Valek’s greeting to me when I appeared on the hill next day.
I understood why he had said this.
“No, I—I shall always come here,” I answered firmly, to put an end to that question forever.
Valek’s spirits rose perceptibly at this answer and we both felt more at ease.
“Well, and where are your people?” I asked. “Haven’t they come back yet?”
“Not yet. The Lord knows what has become of them.”
We went gaily to work to manufacture a cunning sparrow trap for which I had brought the string. This string we put into Marusia’s hand, and whenever a thoughtless sparrow came hopping carelessly into the snare, Marusia would pull the string, and the cover would slam down over the bird, which we would afterwards release.
Meanwhile, at noon, the sky had grown overcast. Dark clouds soon came rolling up, and we could hear the storm roaring between merry claps of thunder. I was very unwilling, at first, to go down into the crypt, but remembering that Valek and Marusia lived there always I overcame the unpleasant sensation, and went with them. All was dark and quiet there, but we could hear the muffled din of the thunder overhead rumbling exactly as if some one were driving an enormous wagon over a monstrous bridge. I soon grew more accustomed to the crypt, and we stood listening happily to the broad sheets of rain descending upon the earth, while the roar and crash of the incessant thunder-claps keyed up our nerves and woke in us an animation that demanded an outlet.
“Come, let’s play blind-man’s buff!” I suggested.
They tied a bandage over my eyes. Marusia’spitiful little laughter rang out as her languid feet stumbled across the stone floor, while I ran in pursuit, until I suddenly found myself bending over a wet form, and at the same moment felt some one seize my leg. A powerful arm raised me off the floor and held me upside down in the air. The bandage fell from my eyes.
Tiburtsi, angry and wet and more terrible than ever from being seen upside down, was holding me by the leg and wildly rolling his eyes.
“What is this, hey?” he asked sternly, glaring at Valek. “So you are passing the time gaily here! You have pleasant company, I see.”
“Let me go!” I cried, surprised that I was able to speak at all in such an unusual position, but Tiburtsi only held my leg the tighter.
“Responde!Answer!” he sternly commanded Valek, who was standing under these difficult circumstances with two fingers thrust into his mouth, as if to proclaim that he had absolutely nothing to say.
I could see, though, that he was watching my unhappy person swinging in space like a pendulum with sympathetic eyes and a great deal of compassion.
Tiburtsi raised me and looked into my face.
“Aha, this is little master Judge unless my eyes deceive me! Why does his honour favour us with a visit?”
“Let me go!” I cried stubbornly. “Let me go at once!”
And at this I instinctively made a movement as if I were stamping my foot on the ground, but the only result was the quivering of my body in mid-air.
Tiburtsi roared with laughter.
“Ha, ha, ha! My Lord the Judge is pleased to be annoyed! But come, you don’t know me yet.Ego Tiburtsi sum.And I am going to hold you over a fire, like this, and roast you like a little pig.”
I began to think that this would inevitably be my fate, especially as Valek’s despairing face seemed to foretell the possibility of such a sad ending, but fortunately Marusia came to my rescue.
“Don’t be frightened, Vasia! Don’t be frightened!” she admonished me, going right up to Tiburtsi’s legs. “He never roasts little boys over a fire. That isn’t true!”
Tiburtsi turned me right side up with a swift movement, and set me on my feet; at this I nearly fell down, for my head was swimming, but he supported me with his hand and then, sitting down on a log, stood me between his knees.
“And how did you get here?” he asked. “Have you been coming here long? You tell me!” he commanded, turning to Valek when he saw that I would not answer.
“A long time,” answered the boy.
“How long?”
“Six days.”
This answer seemed to please Tiburtsi.
“Aha, six days!” he said, turning me round so that I faced him. “Six days is a long time. And have you babbled to any one yet where you have been?”
“No, not to any one.”
“Is that true?”
“Not to any one.”
“Bene, that is excellent. The chances are that you will not henceforth babble. I always did think you were a decent little fellow from meeting you on the street. You’re a real little guttersnipe, even if you are a judge. Have you come here to try us, eh?”
He spoke kindly enough, but my feelings were deeply hurt, therefore I answered crossly:
“I’m not a judge. I’m Vasia.”
“The one doesn’t interfere with the other, and Vasia can be a judge too—not now, but later on. It’s an old story. For instance, I am Tiburtsi, he is Valek; I am a beggar, he is a beggar. In fact, to speak frankly, I steal and he will steal too. Your father tries me now; very well then, some day you will try Valek. There you have it!”
“I shan’t try Valek,” I answered gloomily. “That isn’t true.”
“He won’t try Valek,” Marusia spoke up for me, confidently dismissing such an atrocious supposition.
The little girl nestled confidingly against the legs of this monster, and he tenderly stroked her curls with his sinewy hand.
“Don’t say that too soon,” said the strange fellow pensively, turning to me and speaking as if I were a grown man. “Don’t say that,amice! It’s an old story; every man to his own,suum cuique; every one must go his own way, and who knows, perhaps it’s a good thing that your path has crossed ours. It’s a good thing for you,amice, because it’s a good thing to have a human heart in one’s breast and not a cold stone—do you understand?”
I understood nothing, but nevertheless I fixed my gaze on this queer person’s face. Tiburtsi’s eyes were looking deeply into mine, and there gleamed dimly in them something that seemed to pierce into my very soul.
“Of course you don’t understand, because you are still a child. Therefore let me tell you briefly that you may some day remember the words of the philosopher Tiburtsi. If you ever find yourself sitting in judgment upon that boy there, remember that even in the days when you were both silly little lads playing together, you were travelling upon the road where men walk well-clothed and well-fed, while he was running along, a ragged sans-culotte with anempty belly. And besides, until that happens, remember one thing well,” he added, sharply changing his tone. “If you whisper one word of what you have seen here to that Judge of yours, or even to a bird, as sure as my name is Tiburtsi Drab I’ll hang you up by the heels in that fireplace and make roast ham of you. You understand that, I hope?”
“I won’t tell any one—I—may I come again?”
“You may, I give you my permission—sum conditionem—but you’re stupid yet and don’t understand Latin. I have already told you about that ham—now remember!”
He let me go, and stretched himself wearily on a bench by the wall.
“Bring me that there,” he said to Valek, pointing to a large bag which he had left on the threshold as he came in. “And light the fire. We’re going to cook dinner to-day.”
He was now no longer the same man who had frightened me a short while ago by rolling his eyes, or the mountebank who was wont to amuse the public for pennies. He had taken his place as a host at the head of his family, and, like a man who has returned from his daily toil, he issued commands to his household.
He seemed very tired. His clothes were drenched with rain, his hair was clinging to his brow, and his whole expression was one of utter weariness. It was the first time I had seen that look on the faceof the jolly orator of the cafés, and this glimpse behind the scenes of an actor resting after playing a difficult and exhausting rôle on the stage of life, filled my heart with a feeling of pain and dread. It was another of those revelations with which the old chapel had been so rife for me.
Valek and I went quickly to work. Valek lit a little torch, and together we entered a dark passage adjoining the crypt. There, in a corner, lay some logs of half-decayed wood, bits of crosses, and old boards. We chose several pieces out of this store and, heaping them up in the fireplace, kindled a little fire. Then I had to stand aside while Valek with knowing hands went to work alone on the cooking.
Half an hour later some kind of a brew was already stewing in a pot over the fire, and while we were waiting for it to cook, Valek placed upon a rough three-legged table a frying pan in which some pieces of meat were steaming.
Tiburtsi rose.
“Is it ready?” he asked. “Well, that’s splendid. Sit down with us, boy, you have earned your dinner. Domine!”—he next shouted to the Professor. “Put down your needle and come to the table.”
“In a minute,” answered the Professor in a low voice. Such a sensible remark from him surprised me.
But the spark of consciousness that Tiburtsi’s voice had awakened in him did not reappear. Theold man thrust his needle into his rags and indifferently, with a dull look, took his seat on one of the logs that served as chairs in the crypt.
Tiburtsi held Marusia on his lap. She and Valek ate with an appetite that showed what a rare luxury meat was for them; Marusia even licked her greasy little fingers. Tiburtsi ate with frequent pauses, and, evidently obeying an irresistible impulse to talk, turned his conversation to the Professor. The poor man of letters grew surprisingly attentive whenever he did this, and bowed his head to listen, with a great air of intelligence as if he understood every word. Sometimes he even signified his assent by nodding and making soft little moans.
“You see, Domine, how little a man needs,” Tiburtsi said. “Am I not right? There! now our hunger is appeased, and all that now remains for us to do is to thank God—and the Roman Catholic Priest.”
“Aha, aha!” agreed the Professor.
“You agree with me, Domine, but you don’t know what the Priest has to do with it. I know you well. Nevertheless, if it weren’t for the Priest we shouldn’t be eating fried meat and other things now.”
“Did he give it to you?” I asked.
“This youngster has an inquiring mind, Domine,” Tiburtsi continued. “Of course his Reverence gave us this, although we did not ask him for it, and although not only his left hand knew not what hisright hand was doing, but neither hand had the slightest knowledge of the transaction. Eat, Domine!”
All I could understand from this strange, confused discourse was, that the method of obtaining our dinner had not been quite regular, and I could not refrain from asking another question.
“Did you—take this yourself?”
“The boy is not devoid of shrewdness,” Tiburtsi continued. “It is only a pity that he hasn’t seen the Priest. The Priest has a belly like a forty-gallon cask, and it’s no doubt very dangerous for him to indulge in greed. On the other hand all of us here suffer rather from an excess of leanness than from corpulence, therefore a certain amount of food does not come amiss. Am I right, Domine?”
“Aha, aha!” pensively moaned the Professor again.
“There, you see! You have expressed your meaning extremely successfully this time. I was beginning to think that this youngster here had more brains than some men of learning. However, to return to the Priest, I always think that a good lesson is worth the price, and in this case we can say that we bought these provisions from him. If he makes the doors of his store-house a little stronger in future we shall be quits. However,” he cried, suddenly turning to me, “you are stupid still and there is much you don’t understand. But she, there, willunderstand. Tell me, my Marusia, did I do right to bring you some meat?”
“Yes!” answered the child, her sapphire eyes shining softly, “Manya was hungry.”
At twilight that evening I turned homeward with a reeling brain. Tiburtsi’s strange sayings had not for a moment stilled the conviction in my breast that it was “wicked to steal.” On the contrary, the painful sensation that I had felt before had grown stronger than ever. They were beggars, thieves, they had no home! From every one around me I had long ago heard that contempt was always attached to such people. I felt all the poignancy of contempt rising from the bottom of my soul, but I instinctively shielded my affection from this bitter alloy, and did not allow the two feelings to mingle. As a result of these dark workings of my soul, my pity for Valek and Marusia grew greater and more acute, but my affection did not diminish. The formula that “it was wicked to steal” remained inviolate in my mind, but when I saw in imagination my small friend licking her greasy little fingers I rejoiced in her joy and in Valek’s.
Next evening, in one of our dark garden paths, I unexpectedly met my father. He was pacing up and down as usual, staring before him with his accustomed strange, vacant look. When I appeared beside him he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Where have you been?”
“I—I have been out walking.”
He looked at me sharply and seemed to want to say something, but his eyes soon grew abstracted again, and, with a motion of his hand, he walked away down the path. Even in those days I seemed to understand the meaning of that gesture. It said:
“Ah, what does it matter?Sheis not here!”
I had lied almost for the first time in my life.
I had always been afraid of my father, and I now feared him more than ever. I was harbouring in my breast a whole world of vague questions and sensations. Could he understand me? Could I confess anything to him without betraying my friends? I trembled at the thought that in due time he would hear of my acquaintance with that “bad company,” but, betray Valek and Marusia—no, that I could never do! There was a reason for my resolve: if I broke my word and betrayed them, I should never be able to raise my eyes to their faces again for shame.
AUTUMN
Autumn was drawing near. In the fields the harvest was being reaped; the leaves were turningyellow in the woods. With the approach of autumn Marusia’s health began to fail.
It was not that she complained of any pain, but she grew thinner every day; her face grew paler, her eyes grew larger and darker, and it was with difficulty that she could raise her drooping eyelids.
I could climb the hill now without caring whether the “bad company” was there or not. I had grown thoroughly accustomed to them, and felt absolutely at home in their abode.
“You’re a fine youngster, and you’ll be a great man some day,” Tiburtsi predicted.
The younger “suspicious persons” made me a bow and arrow out of elm wood; the tall, red-nosed Grenadier twirled me in the air like a leaf as he gave me gymnastic lessons. Only the Professor and Lavrovski always seemed to remain unconscious of my presence. The Professor was forever in the midst of some deep dream, while Lavrovski, when he was sober, by nature avoided all human intercourse, and preferred to crouch in a corner by himself.
All these people lived apart from Tiburtsi who, with his “family,” occupied the crypt I have already spoken of. They inhabited a crypt which was similar to ours but larger, and which was divided from it by two narrow halls. Here was less light and more dampness and gloom. In places along the walls stood wooden benches and the blocks which served as chairs. The benches were littered with heapsof rags, which had converted them into beds. In the middle of the crypt, under a ray of light, stood a joiner’s bench at which Tiburtsi and the others sometimes worked. The “bad company” included a cobbler and a basket maker, but all, with the exception of Tiburtsi, were either starvelings or triflers; men, I noticed, whose hands trembled too much for them to do any work successfully. The floor of this crypt was always strewn with chips and shavings and dirt, and disorder reigned supreme, even though Tiburtsi scolded the inmates furiously at times, and made one of them sweep the floor and put the gloomy abode in order if ever so little. I did not often visit them because I could not accustom myself to the foul air, and because, too, the sombre Lavrovski dwelt there when he was sober. He was generally either sitting on a bench with his head in his hands, his long hair streaming, or pacing up and down from corner to corner with swift strides. His whole person breathed an atmosphere of such depression and gloom that my nerves could not endure it. His fellow-unfortunates, however, had long since grown accustomed to his eccentric ways. “General Turkevich” would sometimes set him to work making fair copies of petitions and of quips and quirks which he himself had written for the townsfolk, or else he would make him write out the lampoons which he afterwards nailed to the lamp posts of the city. Lavrovski would then quietlytake his seat at a table in Tiburtsi’s room, and for hours at a time would sit forming, one after another, the beautiful, even letters of his exquisite handwriting. Twice I chanced to see him carried down stupefied with drink from above ground into the crypt. The unhappy man’s head was dangling and banging from side to side, his legs were trundling helplessly after him and bumping down the stone steps, his face wore a look of misery, and tears were trickling down his cheeks. Marusia and I, clinging tightly to one another, watched these scenes from a distant corner, but Valek mixed quite nonchalantly with the men, supporting now a hand, now a foot, now the head of the helpless Lavrovski.
Everything about these people that had amused and interested me like a Punch and Judy show when I saw it in the streets was revealed to me here, behind the scenes, in all its ugly nakedness, and the sight of it weighed heavily upon my childish spirits.
Here Tiburtsi held undisputed sway. It was he who had discovered the crypts, he who had taken possession of them, and all his band obeyed him implicitly. That is probably the reason why I do not remember one single occasion on which any one of those creatures, who had certainly lost all the semblance of human beings, ever came to me with an evil suggestion.
Having gained in knowledge from a prosaic experience of life, I know now that there must havebeen a certain amount of depravity, petty vice, and rottenness among them, but to-day, when those people and scenes rise in my memory wrapped in the mists of the past, I see before me only tragedy, poverty, and the profoundest sadness.
Oh, Childhood and Youth, what great fountainheads of idealism you are!
And now Autumn began to come into its own. The sky was more frequently overcast, the surrounding country sank into a misty crepuscule, torrents of rain swept noisily across the earth, and their thunder resounded monotonously and mournfully in the crypt.
I found it very hard to steal away from home in this weather, for my one desire was to get away unnoticed. When I came back drenched to the skin, I would hang up my clothes before the fire myself, and slip quietly into bed, there to endure philosophically the torrents of scolding that would invariably flow from the lips of the servants and my nurse.
Every time I visited my friends I noticed that Marusia’s health was failing more and more. She never went out into the fresh air now, and the grey stone—that unseen, silent monster of the crypt—did its dreadful work without interruption, sucking the life out of her little body. The child spent most of her time in bed, and Valek and I exhausted every means in our power to amuse andinterest her and to awaken the soft peals of her frail laughter.
Now that I had really become one of the “bad company” the child’s sad smile had grown almost as dear to me as my sister’s, but with Marusia I was not constantly reminded of my wickedness; here was no scolding nurse; on the contrary, I knew that each time I came my arrival would call the colour into Marusia’s cheeks. Valek embraced me like a brother, and even Tiburtsi would sometimes watch us three with a strange expression on his face and something very like tears glistening in his eyes.
Then one day the sky grew clear again. The last clouds blew away, and the sun shone out upon the earth for the last time before winter’s coming. We carried Marusia up into the sunlight, and there she seemed to revive. She gazed about her with wide eyes, and the colour came into her cheeks. It seemed as if the wind that was blowing over her with its cool, fresh breath were returning to her part of the life-blood stolen by the grey stones of the crypt. But alas! this did not last long.
And in the meanwhile clouds were beginning to gather over my head as well.
One morning as I was running down the garden path as usual I caught sight of my father and old Yanush of the castle. The old man was cringing and bowing and saying something to my father, and the latter was standing before him, gloomy and stern,with a frown of impatient anger between his eyes. At last my father stretched out his hand as if to push Yanush aside, and said:
“Go away! You are nothing but an old gossip!”
The old man blinked and, holding his hat in his hand, ran forward again and stood in my father’s path. My father’s eyes flashed with anger. Yanush was speaking in a low voice, and I could not hear what he was saying, but my father’s broken sentences fell upon my ears with the utmost distinctness, like the blows of a whip.
“I don’t believe a word of it—What do you want to persecute those people for?—I won’t listen to verbal accusations, and a written one you would be obliged to prove—Silence! that is my business—I won’t listen to you, I tell you.”
He finally pushed Yanush away so firmly that the latter did not dare to intrude upon him any longer. My father turned aside into another path, and I ran out through the gate.
I very much disliked this old owl of the castle, and I trembled now with a premonition of evil. I realised that the conversation I had overheard related to my friends and perhaps, also, to me.
When I told Tiburtsi what had happened he made a dreadful face.
“Whew, young one, what bad news that is! Oh, that accursed old fox!”
“My father drove him away,” I answered to console him.
“Your father, young man, is the best judge there has been since the days of Solomon, but do you know whatcurriculum vitæmeans? Of course you don’t. But you know what the Record of Service is, don’t you? Well,curriculum vitæis the Record of Service of a man who is not employed in the County Court, and if that old screech-owl has been able to ferret out anything and can show your father my record why—well, I swear to the Queen of Heaven I wouldn’t care to fall into the Judge’s clutches!”
“He’s not a cruel man, is he?” I asked, remembering what Valek had told me.
“No, no, my boy, God forbid that you should think that of your father! Your father has a good heart. Perhaps he already knows everything that Yanush has been able to tell him, and still holds his tongue. He doesn’t think it is necessary to pursue a toothless old lion into his last lair. But how can I explain it to you, my boy? Your father works for a gentleman whose name is Law. He has eyes and a heart only as long as Law is nicely tucked up in bed, but when that gentleman gets up and comes to your father and says: ‘Come on, Judge, sha’n’t we get on the trail of Tiburtsi Drab or whatever his name is?’ from that moment the Judge must lock up his heart, and his claws will become so sharp that the earth will turn upside down before Tiburtsi will escapeout of his clutches. Do you understand, my boy? And that’s why I, why we all, respect your father as we do, because he is a faithful servant of his master, and such men are rare. If all Law’s servants were like him, Law could sleep quietly in his bed and never wake up at all. My whole trouble is that I had a quarrel with Law a long time ago—ah yes, my boy, a very violent quarrel!”
As he said this Tiburtsi got up, took Marusia’s hand, and, leading her into a distant corner, began kissing her and pressing his rough head to her tiny breast. I stood motionless where I was under the spell of the impression created by the strange words of this strange man. In spite of the fantastic and unintelligible twists and turns of his speech I understood perfectly the substance of what Tiburtsi had said, and my father’s image loomed more imposing than ever in my imagination, invested with a halo of stern but lovable strength amounting almost to grandeur. But at the same time another and a bitterer feeling which I bore in my breast had increased in intensity. “That’s what he’s like!” I thought. “And he doesn’t love me!”
THE DOLL
The bright days soon passed, and Marusia began to grow worse again. She now gazed indifferently with her large, fixed, darkening eyes at all our cunning devices for her amusement, and it was long since we had heard her laughter. I began to bring my playthings to the crypt, but they only diverted her for a short time. I then decided to turn for help to my sister Sonia.
Sonia had a large doll with magnificent long hair and cheeks painted a brilliant red, a present from our mother. I had the greatest faith in the powers of this doll, and therefore, calling my sister into a distant part of the garden one day, I asked her to lend it to me. I begged so earnestly and described the little suffering girl who had no toys of her own so vividly that Sonia, who at first had only clasped the doll more tightly to her breast, handed it to me and promised to play with her other toys for two or three days and to forget the doll entirely.
The effect produced on Marusia by this gaily dressed young lady with the china face exceeded all my wildest hopes. The child, who had been fading like a flower in Autumn, suddenly seemed to revive again. How tightly she hugged me! How merrilyshe laughed as she chattered to her new acquaintance! The doll almost worked a miracle. Marusia, who had not left her bed for many days, began to toddle about, pulling her fair-haired daughter after her, and even ran a few steps, dragging her weak little feet across the floor as she had done in former days.
At the same time the doll gave me many an anxious moment. In the first place, on my way to the hill with my prize under my coat, I had met Yanush on the road, and the old man had followed me for a long time with his eyes, and shaken his head. Then, two days later, our old nurse had noticed the disappearance of the doll, and had begun poking her nose into every corner in search of it. Sonia tried to appease her, but the child’s artless assurances that she didn’t want the doll, that the doll had gone out for a walk and would soon come back, only served to create doubts in the minds of the servants, and to awaken their suspicions that this might not simply be a question of loss. My father knew nothing as yet, and though Yanush, who came to him again one day, was sent away even more angrily than before, my father stopped me that morning on the way to the garden gate and ordered me not to leave home. The same thing happened on the following day, and only on the fourth did I get up early and slip away over the fence while my father was still asleep.
Things were still going badly on the hill. Marusia was in bed again and was worse. Her face was strangely flushed, her fair curls were lying disheveled on her pillow, and she recognised no one. Beside her lay the disastrous doll with its pink cheeks and its stupid, staring eyes.
I told Valek of the danger I was running, and we both decided that undoubtedly I ought to take the doll home, especially as Marusia would not notice its absence. But we were mistaken! No sooner did I take the doll out of the arms of the unconscious child than she opened her eyes, stared vaguely about as if she did not see me and did not know what was happening to her, and then suddenly began to cry very, very softly, but oh, so piteously, while an expression of such deep sorrow swept across her features under the veil of her delirium that, panic-stricken, I immediately laid the doll back in its former place. The child smiled, drew the doll to her breast, and grew calm again. I realised that I had tried to deprive my little friend of the first and last pleasure of her short life.
Valek looked shyly at me.
“What shall we do now?” he asked sadly.
Tiburtsi, who was sitting on a bench with his head sunk dejectedly on his breast, also looked at me, with a question in his eyes. I therefore tried to look as careless as possible, and said:
“Never mind; nurse has probably forgotten all about it by now.”
But the old woman had not forgotten. When I reached home that day I again found Yanush at the garden gate. Sonia’s eyes were red with weeping and our nurse threw me an angry, icy glance and muttered something between her toothless gums.
My father asked me where I had been, and having listened attentively to my usual answer, confined himself to telling me not to leave the house without his permission under any circumstances whatsoever. This command was categorical and absolutely peremptory. I dared not disobey it, and at the same time I could not make up my mind to ask my father for leave to go to my friends.
Four weary days passed. I spent my time roaming dejectedly about the garden, gazing longingly in the direction of the hill, and waiting, too, for the storm which I felt was gathering over my head. I had no idea what the future might bring, but my heart was as heavy as lead. No one had ever punished me in my life; my father had never so much as laid a finger on me, and I had never heard a harsh word from his lips, but I was suffering now from an oppressive sense of coming misfortune.
At last my father summoned me to his study. I opened the door and stopped timidly on the threshold. The melancholy autumn sun was shining in through the windows. My father was sitting in anarm chair before a portrait of my mother, and did not turn to look at me as I came in. I could hear the anxious beating of my own heart.
At last my father turned round; I raised my eyes and instantly dropped them again. My father’s face looked terrible to me. Half a minute passed, and I could feel his stern, fixed, withering gaze riveted upon me.
“Did you take your sister’s doll?”
The words fell upon my ears so suddenly and sharply that I quivered.
“Yes,” I answered in a low voice.
“And do you know that that doll was a present from your mother, and that you ought to have preserved it as something sacred? Did you steal it?”
“No,” I answered, raising my head.
“How can you say no?” my father suddenly shouted. “You stole it and took it away. Whom did you take it to? Speak!”
He strode swiftly toward me, and laid a heavy hand upon my shoulder. I raised my head with an effort, and looked up. My father’s face was pale. The frown of pain which had lain between his brows since my mother’s death was still there, but now his eyes were flashing with sombre wrath. I shrank away. I seemed to see madness—or was it hatred?—glaring at me out of those eyes.
“Well, what did you do? Answer!” And the handwhich was holding my shoulder gripped it more tightly than before.
“I—I won’t tell you,” I answered in a low voice.
“Yes, you will tell me!” my father rapped out, and there was a threat in his voice.
“I won’t tell you,” I whispered lower still.
“You will, you will!”
He repeated these words in a muffled voice as if they had burst from him with a painful effort. I felt his hand trembling, and even seemed to hear the rage boiling in his breast. My head sank lower and lower, and tears began to drip slowly out of my eyes upon the floor, but I still kept repeating almost inaudibly:
“No, I won’t tell; I’ll never, never tell.”
It was my father’s son speaking in me. He could never have succeeded in extorting an answer from me, no, not by the fiercest tortures. There welled up in my breast in response to his threats the almost unconscious feeling of injury that comes to an ill-used child, and a sort of burning love for those whose betrayal my father was demanding.
My father drew a deep breath. I shrank away still farther, and the bitter tears scalded my cheeks. I waited.
It would be hard for me to describe my sensations at that moment. I knew that his breast was seething with rage, and that at any moment my body might be struggling helplessly in his strong, deliriousarms. What would he do to me? Would he hurl me from him? Would he crush me? But I did not seem to dread that now. I even loved the man in that moment of fear, but, at the same time, I felt instinctively that he was about to shatter this love with one mad effort, and that for ever and ever after I should carry the same little flame of hatred in my heart which I had seen gleaming in his eyes.
I had lost all sense of fear. Instead, there had begun to throb in my heart a feeling exasperating, bold, challenging; I seemed to be waiting, and longing for the catastrophe to come at last.
It would be better so—yes—better—better——
Once more my father sighed heavily. I was no longer looking at him. I only heard his sighs, long, deep, and convulsive, and I know not to this day whether he himself overcame the frenzy that possessed him or whether it failed to find an outlet owing to an unexpected occurrence. I only know that at that critical moment Tiburtsi suddenly shouted under the open window in his harsh voice:
“Hi, there, my poor little friend!”
“Tiburtsi is here!” flashed through my mind, but his coming made no other impression on me. I was all beside myself with suspense, and did not even heed the trembling of my father’s hand upon my shoulder, or realise that Tiburtsi’s appearance or any other external circumstance could come between my father and myself, or could avert that which Ibelieved to be inevitable, and which I was awaiting with such a flood of passionate anger.
Meanwhile Tiburtsi had quickly opened the door of the room, and now stood on the threshold embracing us both with his piercing, lynx-like glance. I can remember to this day the smallest details of the scene. For a moment a flash of cold, malevolent mockery gleamed in the greenish eyes and passed over the wide, uncouth face of this gutter orator, but it was only a flash. Then he shook his head, and there was more of sorrow than of his accustomed irony in his voice as he said:
“Oho, I see that my young friend is in an awkward situation.”
My father received him with a gloomy, threatening look, but Tiburtsi endured it calmly. He had grown serious now, and his mockery had ceased. There was a striking look of sadness in his eyes.
“My Lord Judge,” he said gently. “You are a just man; let the child go! The boy has been ‘in bad company,’ but God knows he has done no bad deeds, and if his little heart is drawn toward my unfortunate people, I swear to the Queen of Heaven that you may hang me if you wish, but I will not allow the boy to suffer for that. Here is your doll, my lad.”
He untied a little bundle, and took out the doll.
The hands that had been gripping my shoulder relaxed. My father looked surprised.
“What does this mean?” he asked at last.
“Let the boy go!” Tiburtsi repeated, stroking my bowed head lovingly with his broad palm. “You will get nothing out of him with your threats, and besides, I will gladly tell you everything you want to know. Come, Your Honour, let us go into another room.”
My father consented, with his eyes fixed in surprise on Tiburtsi’s face. They went out together, and I stayed rooted to the spot, overwhelmed with the emotions with which my heart was bursting. At that moment I was unconscious of what was going on around me, and if, in calling to mind the details of this scene, I remember that sparrows were twittering outside the window and that the rhythmic splash of the water-wheel came to me from the river, why that is only the mechanical action of my memory. Nothing external existed for me then; there existed only a little boy in whose breast two separate emotions were seething: anger and love; seething so fiercely that my heart was troubled as a glass of water is dimmed when two different liquids are poured into it at the same time. Such a little boy existed, and that boy was I; I was even sorry, in a way, for myself. There existed also two voices, that came to me from the next room in a confused but animated conversation.
I was still standing on the same spot when the study door opened, and both talkers came into theroom. Once more I felt a hand on my head, and trembled.
It was my father’s, and he was tenderly stroking my hair.
Tiburtsi took my hands, and set me upon his knees right in my father’s presence.
“Come and see us,” he said. “Your father will let you come and say good-bye to my little girl. She—she is dead.”
Tiburtsi’s voice trembled, and he winked his eyes queerly, but he at once rose quickly to his feet, set me down on the floor, pulled himself together, and left the room.
I raised my eyes inquiringly to my father’s face. Another man was standing before me now, and there was something lovable about him which I had sought in vain before. He was looking at me with his usual pensive gaze, but there was a shade of surprise in his eyes, and what might have been a question. The storm which had just passed over our heads seemed to have dispelled the heavy mist that had lain on my father’s soul and frozen the gentle, kind expression on his face. He now seemed to recognise in me the familiar features of his own son.
I took his hand trustfully, and said:
“I didn’t steal it. Sonia lent it to me herself.”
“Yes,” he answered thoughtfully. “I know; I am guilty before you, boy, but you will try to forget it sometime, won’t you?”
I seized his hand and kissed it. I knew that he would never again look at me with the dreadful eyes which I had seen only a few moments before, and my long pent-up love burst forth in a torrent. I did not fear him now.
“Will you let me go to the hill?” I suddenly asked, remembering Tiburtsi’s invitation.
“Ye-es—go, boy, and say good-bye,” he answered tenderly, but with still the same shade of hesitation in his voice. “No, wait a minute; wait a minute, boy, please.”
He went into his bed-room and came back in a minute with a few bills which he thrust into my hand.
“Give these to Tiburtsi. Tell him that I beg him—do you understand?—that I beg him to accept this money—from you. Do you understand? And say, too,” added my father, “say that if he knows any one called Feodorovich he had better tell that Feodorovich to leave this town. And now run along boy, quickly.”
Panting and incoherent, I overtook Tiburtsi on the hill and gave him my father’s message.
“My father begs you to——” I said, and pressed the money which I had received into his hand.
I did not look at his face. He took the money, and gloomily listened to my message concerning Feodorovich.
In the crypt, on a bench in a dark corner, I foundMarusia lying. The word death has little meaning for a child, but bitter tears choked me at the sight of her lifeless body. My little friend was lying there looking very serious and sad, and her tiny face was pitifully drawn. Her closed eyes were a little sunken and the blue circles around them were darker than before. Her little mouth was slightly open, and wore an expression of childish grief. This little grimace was Marusia’s answer to our tears.
The Professor was standing at her bedside, indifferently shaking his head. The Grenadier was hammering in a corner, making a coffin out of some old boards torn from the chapel roof. Lavrovski, sober and with a look of perfect understanding, was strewing Marusia’s body with autumn flowers which he himself had gathered. Valek was lying asleep in a corner, shuddering all over in his dreams, and crying out restlessly from time to time.