It was drawing towards evening, and once more Trirodov was alone, tormented by his unceasing sadness. His mind was in a whirl. He was in a half-somnolent state, which was like the foreboding of a nightmare. His half-dreams and half-illusions were full of the day’s impressions, full of burning, cruel reveries.
It had just grown dark. A fire was visible on a height near the town. The town boys were making merry. They had lit a bonfire, and were throwing the brands into the air; as they rose swiftly, the burning brands appeared like skyrockets against the blue sky. And these beautiful flights of fire in the darkness gave joy and sadness.
Kirsha, silent as always, came to his father. He placed himself at the window and looked out with his dark, sad eyes upon the distant fires of St. John’s Eve. Trirodov went up to him. Kirsha turned quietly towards his father:
“This will be a terrible night.”
Trirodov answered as quietly:
“There will be nothing terrible. Don’t be afraid, Kirsha. You had better go to sleep, my boy, it is time.”
As if he had not heard his father, Kirsha went on:
“The dead will soon rise from their graves.”
“The dead are already rising from their graves,” replied Trirodov.
A strange feeling of astonishment stirred within him, why did he speak of this? Or was it due to the urgency of the questioner’s desire? Quietly, ever so quietly, half questioning, half relating, Kirsha persisted:
“The dead will walk on the Navii15footpath, the dead will speak Navii words.”
And again, as though submitting to a strange will, not his own, Trirodov replied:
“The dead have already risen, they are already walking upon the Navii footpath, towards the Navii town, they are already speaking Navii words about Navii affairs.”
And Kirsha asked:
“Are you going?”
“I am going,” said Trirodov after a brief silence.
“I am going with you,” said Kirsha resolutely.
“You had better not go, dear Kirsha,” said his father tenderly.
But Kirsha persistently repeated:
“I will spend this night with you there, at the Navii footpath. I will see and I will hear. I will look into dead eyes.”
Trirodov said sternly:
“I do not wish to take you with me—you ought to remain here.”
There was entreaty in Kirsha’s voice:
“Perhaps mother will come by.”
Trirodov, falling into deep thought, said finally:
“Very well, come with me.”
The evening dragged on slowly and sadly. The father and son waited. It grew quite dark by the time they went.
They walked through the garden, past the closed greenhouse with its mysteriously glittering window-panes. The quiet children were not yet asleep. Quietly they swung in the garden upon their swings. Quietly clinked the swing rings, quietly creaked the wooden seats. Upon the swings sat the quiet children, lit up by the dead moon and cooled by the night breeze, and they swung softly and sang their songs. The night listened to their quiet songs, and the full, clear, dead moon also. Kirsha, lowering his voice so that the quiet children might not hear, asked:
“Why don’t they sleep? They swing on their swings neither upward nor downward, but evenly. Why do they do this?”
“They must not sleep to-night,” answered Trirodov, also in a whisper. “They cannot sleep until the dawn grows rosy, until the dawn begins to laugh. There is really no reason why they should sleep. They can sleep as well by day.”
Again Kirsha asked:
“Will they go with us? They want to go.”
“No, Kirsha, they don’t want anything.”
“Don’t want anything?” repeated Kirsha sadly.
“They ought not to go with us unless we call them.”
“Shall we call them?” asked Kirsha joyously.
“We shall call one. Which one would you like?”
Kirsha, after some thought, said:
“Grisha.”
“Very well, we’ll call Grisha,” said Trirodov.
He turned in the direction of the swings, and called out:
“Grisha!”
A boy, who resembled the sad-faced Nadezhda, quietly jumped down from his swing, and walked behind them, without approaching too closely. The other quiet children looked tranquilly after him, and continued to swing and to sing as before.
Trirodov opened the gate, and was followed by Kirsha and Grisha. The night hovered all around them, and the forgotten Navii footpath stretched in a black strip through the darkness.
Kirsha shivered—he felt the cold, heavy earth under his bare feet; the cold air pressed against his bare knees, the cold moist freshness of the night blew against his half-bared breast. He heard his father ask in a low voice:
“Kirsha, are you not afraid?”
“No,” whispered Kirsha, as he breathed in the fresh aroma of the dew and the light mist.
The light of the moon was seductive with mystery. She smiled with her lifeless, tranquil face, and appeared to be saying:
“What was will be again. What was will happen more than once.”
The night was peaceful and clear. They walked a long time—Trirodov and Kirsha, and some distance behind them the quiet Grisha followed. At last there appeared, quite near, peering through the mist, the low white cemetery wall. Another road cut across theirs. Quite narrow, its worn cobblestones gleamed dimly in the moonlight. The road of the living and the road of the dead crossed each other at the entrance of the cemetery. In the field near the crossing several mounds were visible—they were the unmarked graves of suicides and convicts.
The whole neighbourhood, bewitched with mystery and fear, seemed oppressed. The flat field stretched far—all enveloped in a light mist. Far to the left, the town fires showed their vague glimmers through the mist—and marked off by the wall of mist, the town seemed to be very distant, and to be guarding jealously from the fields of night the tumultuous voices of life.
An old witch, grey, and all bent, appeared from somewhere; she swung a crutch and stumbled on in haste. She was mumbling angrily:
“It doesn’t smell of our spirit. Strangers have come! Why have they come? What can strangers want here? What are they seeking? They’ll find what they don’t want to find. Ours will see them, and will tear them to pieces, and will scatter the pieces before all the winds.”
Suddenly there was a weird rustle, there rose all about them the squeak of piping little voices, and the sounds of a confused scampering. At the crosspaths there darted in all directions, as thick as dust, countless hordes of grey sprites and evil spirits. Their running was so impetuous that they could have borne along with them every living, weak-willed soul. And it could already be seen that running in their midst were the pitiful souls of little people. Kirsha whispered in a voice full of fear:
“Quicker, quicker into the ring! They will bear us away if we don’t mark ourselves in.”
Trirodov called quietly:
“Come here, come here, quiet boy, draw a circle around us with your nocturnal little stick.”
They no sooner had succeeded in marking themselves in with the magic line than the dead began to pass down the Navii path. The throng of the dead, submitting to some evil malediction, walked towards the town. The spectres walked in the nocturnal silence and the traces they left behind them were light, curious, and hardly distinguishable. Whispered conversations were heard—lifeless words. The dead walked at random, without any defined order. At the beginning the voices merged into a general drone, and only afterwards, by straining one’s ears, it was possible to distinguish separate words and whole phrases.
“Be good yourself, that’s the chief thing.”
“For mercy’s sake—what perversion, what immorality!”
“Plenty of food and plenty of clothes—what more can one want?”
“I haven’t sinned much.”
“That’s what they deserve. Kisses are not for them.”
In the beginning all the dead fused into one dark, grey mass. But gradually, if one looked intently one could distinguish the separate corpses.
One nobleman who passed by had a cap with a red band on his head; he was saying with calm and deliberation:
“The divine right of ownership should be inviolable. We and our ancestors have built up the Russian land.”
Another of the same class, who walked beside him, remarked:
“My motto—autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality. My credo—a strong redeeming power.”
A priest in a black vestment swung a censer, and cried in a tenor voice:
“Every soul should submit to sovereign dominion. The hand that gives will not grow poorer.”
A wise muzhik passed by muttering:
“We know everything, but are not saying anything just yet. When you don’t know anything they leave you alone. Only you can’t cover up your mouth with a handkerchief.”
Several soldiers walked past together. They bawled their indecorous songs. Their faces were grey-red in colour. They stank of sweat, putrescence, bad tobacco, and vodka.
“I have laid down my stomach for my faith, my Tsar, and my Fatherland,” a smart young colonel was saying.
After him came a thin man with the face of a Jesuit and cried out loudly:
“Russia for the Russians!”
A stout merchant kept on repeating:
“If you don’t cheat you can’t sell your goods. Even a fur coat might be turned inside out. Your penny makes you well thought of anywhere.”
An austere, freckled woman was saying:
“Beat me, seeing that I’m your woman, but there’s no law that’ll let you tie up with a girl so long as you’ve got a wife living.”
A muzhik walked at her side, a dirty, ill-smelling fellow, who said nothing and hiccuped.
Once more there was a nobleman, large, stout, bristling, savage-looking. He ranted:
“Hang them! Flog them!”
Trirodov turned to Kirsha:
“Don’t be afraid, Kirsha—these are dead words.”
Kirsha silently nodded his head.
A mistress and her servant-maid walked together and exchanged quarrelsome words.
“God didn’t make all the trees in the forest alike. I am a white bone, you are a black bone. I am a gentlewoman, you are a peasant-woman.”
“You may be a gentlewoman, yet trash.”
“Maybe trash, but still from the gentry.”
Quite close to the magic line there was an apparent effort on the part of an elegantly dressed woman and a young man of the breed of dandies to emerge from the general throng. They had been only recently buried, and they exhaled the odour of fresh corpses. The woman coquettishly moved her half-putrefied lips and complained in a hoarse, creaking voice:
“They’ve forced us to walk with all theseKhams.16They might have let us walk separately from all this common folk.”
The dandy suddenly complained in a squeaking voice:
“Be careful, there, muzhik, don’t nudge. What a dirty fellow!”
The muzhik had evidently only just jumped out of his grave; he was barely awake, and he had not yet realized himself or understood his condition. He was all dishevelled and in rags. His eyes were turbid. Curses and indecent words issued from his dead lips. He was angry because he had been disturbed, and he bawled:
“By what right? You are lying there and not doing any one any harm, and are roused and made to walk along. What new rules have they got for us—disturbing the dead! You’ve only just found your earth—when up you must be and moving.”
Unsteady on his feet, the muzhik continued to pour out his coarse abuse; when he saw Trirodov he opened his eyes wide and went straight to him. He was blindly conscious of being in the presence of a stranger and an enemy and he wished to destroy him. Kirsha trembled and grew pale. He clung to his father in fear. The quiet boy, retaining his tranquil sadness, stood at their side, like an angel on guard.
The muzhik touched the enchanted line. Pain and terror transpierced him. He stared with his dead eyes, but quickly lowered them; as he was unable to withstand the look of the living, he fell with his forehead to the ground just beyond the line and begged for mercy.
“Go!” said Trirodov.
The muzhik rose to his feet and scampered away. But he soon paused, and again burst out into abuse; then ran farther.
Two lean, poorly dressed boys, with green faces, walked by. The rags which bound their feet hung loosely. One of them said:
“Do you understand? They tormented me, tyrannized over me. I ran away and they caught me again—I had no strength left. I went to the garret and strangled myself. I don’t know what I shall get for it now.”
The other green boy replied:
“As for me, I was beaten with salted rods. My hands are quite clean.”
“Yes, you are lucky,” said the first boy enviously. “You will get a little golden wreath, but what will happen to me?”
“I will entreat the angels, the archangels, the cherubim and the seraphim for you—give me but your full name and address.”
“My sin is quite a big one, and my name is Mitka Sosipatrov, from Nizhniya Kolotilovka.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said the birched boy. “As soon as they let me in to the upper chambers, I will at once fall at the feet of the Virgin Mary until you are forgiven.”
“Yes, do me this great favour.”
Kirsha stood pale. His eyes sparkled. He trembled from head to foot and kept on repeating:
“Mamma, come to me! Mamma, come to me!”
A radiant apparition suddenly appeared in the throng, and Kirsha throbbed with joy. Kirsha’s mother passed by—all white, all lovely, all gentle. She turned her tranquil eyes upon her dear ones and whispered:
“I will come.”
Kirsha, transported with a quiet joy, stood motionless. His eyes gleamed like the eyes of the quiet angel who stood there on guard.
Again the dead throng moved on. A governor passed by. All his figure breathed might and majesty. Yet hardly awake, he grumbled:
“Make way for the Russian Governor! I’ll have no patience with you. I will not permit it! You cannot frighten me. What! Feed the hungry, you say?”
He appeared, as it were, to awaken at these words; he looked around him and said in great astonishment, as he shrugged his shoulders:
“What a strange disorder! How did I get into this crowd? Where is the police?”
Then he suddenly bawled out:
“Let the Cossacks come!”
In response to the Governor’s cry a detachment of Cossacks came flying. Without noticing Trirodov and the children, they swept along past them and savagely flourished theirnagaikas.17The dead, pressed from behind by the Cossacks’ horses, became a confused, wavering mass, and answered with malignant laughter to the blows of thenagaikasupon their lifeless bodies.
The grey witch sat down on a near-by stone and shook with her hideous, creaking laughter.
Elisaveta dressed herself up as a boy. She loved to do this and she did it quite often; so tedious is the monotony of our lives that even a change of dress furnishes a diversion!
Elisaveta put on a white sailor-jacket with a blue collar, and blue knee-breeches which revealed the beauty and grace of her sunburnt lower limbs; she put on a cap, took a fishing-rod and went to the river. Elisaveta looked like a rather tall stripling of fourteen in this dress.
It was quiet and bright on the river’s bank. Elisaveta sat down on a stone at the edge, lowered her feet into the water, and watched the float. A rowing-boat appeared. Elisaveta looked intently and saw that it contained Stchemilov. The latter called out:
“I say, my lad, if you belong here, can you tell me if....”
Then he paused because Elisaveta was laughing.
“Well, who would have thought it—comrade Elisaveta?”
“You didn’t recognize me, comrade?” asked Elisaveta with a merry laugh, as she approached the landing-place where Stchemilov was already fastening his boat.
“I must confess that I didn’t know you at once,” he replied, as he pressed her hand warmly. “I have come for you. To-night we are to hold our mass meeting.”
“Is it really to-night?” asked Elisaveta.
She grew cold from agitation and confusion as she recalled that she had promised to speak that evening.
“Yes, to-night,” said Stchemilov; “I hope you haven’t changed your mind. You will speak, eh?”
“I thought it was to be to-morrow,” she replied. “Just wait a moment. I’ll get a small bundle of clothes. I will change at your place.”
She quickly and gaily tripped up the bank. Stchemilov whistled as he sat waiting in the boat. Elisaveta soon reappeared, and deftly jumped into the boat.
It was necessary to row past the whole length of the town. No one on either bank recognized Elisaveta in her boy’s attire. Stchemilov’s house, a cabin in the middle of a vegetable garden, stood on a steep bank of the river, just along the edge of the town.
No one had yet arrived at the house. Elisaveta picked up a periodical which lay on the table and asked:
“Tell me, comrade, how do you like these verses?”
Stchemilov looked at the periodical, open at a page which contained Trirodov’s verses. He smiled and said:
“What shall I say? His revolutionary poems are not bad. Nowadays, however, everybody writes them. As for his other works, they are not written about us. Noblemen’s delights are not for us.”
“It’s a long time since I’ve been here,” said Elisaveta. “What a mess you’ve got here.”
“A house without a mistress,” answered Stchemilov, rather confused.
Elisaveta began to put things in order and to clean and to scrub. She moved about with agile grace. Stchemilov admired her graceful limbs; it was fascinating to watch the play of the muscles under the brown skin of her calves. He exclaimed in a clear, almost ecstatic voice:
“How graceful you are, Elisaveta! Like a statue! I never saw such arms and legs.”
“I feel embarrassed, comrade Aleksei. You praise me to my eyes as if I were a charming piece of property.”
Stchemilov suddenly flushed with embarrassment; his habitual self-assurance appeared to have left him unexpectedly. He breathed heavily and stammered out in confusion:
“Comrade Elisaveta, you are a fine person. Don’t be offended at my words. I love you. I know that for you social inequality is a silly thing; and you know that for me your money is of no account. Now if I am not repugnant to you....”
Elisaveta stood before him calm and yet sad, and as she dried her hands, grown red from the cold water, with a towel, she said quietly:
“Forgive me, comrade Aleksei—you are right about my views, but I love another.”
She herself did not know how these words came to be spoken. Love another! So unexpectedly the secret of her heart revealed itself in superficial words. But did he love her, that other one?
They were both flustered. Stchemilov strove heroically to control his agitation. As he looked with his confused eyes into her clear blue ones he said:
“Forgive me, Elisaveta, and forget what I have said. I didn’t guess right that time and did the wrong thing. I didn’t think that you’d love him. Don’t be angry at me and don’t despise me.”
“Enough, Aleksei,” said Elisaveta tenderly. “You know how I respect you. We are friends. Give me your hand.”
Stchemilov gave her hand a tight, comradely pressure, then bent down and kissed it. Elisaveta drew nearer to him and kissed his lips with a tranquil, innocent, delicious kiss, such as a sister gives a brother. Then she snatched up her bundle and ran into the passage, one of the doors of which led to a small storeroom where the literature was kept in a trunk under the floor.
She ran into Kiril on the way.
“Is Aleksei home, my lad?”
“Yes,” said Elisaveta; “enter, comrade Kiril.”
When Kiril heard the familiar voice and, lifting his eyes, saw plaits of hair wound around the lad’s head, he was astonished. He was very much embarrassed upon recognizing Elisaveta. She hid herself behind the door of the storeroom, while Kiril blundered for a long time in the dark hall, unable in his confusion to find the door.
Others began to come in: there was the school-instructor Bodeyev, instructor Voronok of the town school, and the imported orator, who came accompanied by Alkina.
Elisaveta was attired by now in a simple dark blue dress.
“It’s time to start,” said Stchemilov.
Once seated in the rowing-boat, the members of the party became silent and slightly nervous. Only the new-comer was perfectly calm—he was used to it. Near-sighted, he looked indifferently out of his spectacles, now one side, now the other, and told bits of news while smoking one cigarette after another. He was young, tall, and flat-chested. He had a lean face, long, smooth, chestnut-coloured hair, and a scant beard. His flat round cap, reddish in the sun, gave him the look of an artisan.
It had begun to grow dark by the time they disembarked at the appointed place. There was still a half-verst to go through the wood on foot. The evening twilight seemed oppressed under the eternal vaults of the wood; it hummed and rustled with barely audible noises and the sad whisperings of stealthy beings.
They gathered at last in a large glade in the midst of a tall, dense wood. The moon was already high in the sky, and the black shadows of the trees crept across half of the glade. The trees were intensely still and pensive, as if they wished to listen to the words of these people who had collected at their feet. But they really did not care to listen—they had their own life and were indifferent to all these people. And they suffered neither joy nor sadness at sheltering in their dark shade many young girls who were in love with the dream of liberation—among them Elisaveta, who was also in love with this dream, and who created for it a temple of young passion and embroidered into this dream’s design the image of a living man in a mysterious house. She was deliciously in love and painfully agitated by the sudden acknowledgment she made of her love in her poignantly sweet words, “I love another.”
In the dark shade of the trees were red glimmering cigarettes and pipes. The odour of tobacco mingled with the fresh, nocturnal coolness and gave it a sweet piquancy. Piquant also, in the nocturnal stillness, were the sounds of the young, eager voices. And these people had no concern with the mystery of the wood made audible in the silence. The people behaved as if they were at home. They sat about and walked and met each other and chatted. Sometimes, when the din of talk grew too loud, the leaders of the meeting uttered their warnings. Then the voices were lowered.
There were about three hundred people of all kinds—labouring men, young people from schools, young Jews, and very many girls. All the young Jews and Jewesses of the town had come. They were agitated more than the rest and their speech nearly always passed into a violent commotion. They awaited so much, they hoped so passionately! They were so painfully in love with the dream of liberation!
Some of the instructresses from Trirodov’s colony were also here, among them the sad Nadezhda and the ecstatic Maria. There were quite a number of schoolboys and schoolgirls present. These tried to act at ease, to show that it was not their first occasion of the sort. There were also many college students, both men and women. The young were burning with joyous unrest. But all who had gathered were intensely agitated. It was the sweet agitation of their dream of liberation; how tenderly and how passionately they were in love with it! And in more than one young heart virginal passion flowed together with the dream of liberation; young passionate love flamed with a great fire in the joy of liberation, making one of liberation and love, of revolt and sacrifice, of wine and blood—what delicious mystery in love thirsting and yielding! And more than one pair of eyes sparkled at the sight of a beloved image, and more than one pair of lips whispered:
“And he’s here!”
“And she’s here!”
In the shade, under the trees, where indiscreet glances could not penetrate, impatient lips met in a quick, timid kiss. And the first words were:
“I’m not late, comrade?”
“No, comrade Natalya, you are in time.”
“Let us go over there, comrade Valentine.”
The names were pronounced tenderly. A man in a cap, black shirt,18and high boots, walked up to Elisaveta. He had a small black beard and moustache, and his face, which was both familiar and unfamiliar, had something in it that stirred her. He exclaimed:
“Elisaveta, you don’t recognize me?”
She recognized him at once by his voice. A warmth suffused her. She laughed and said joyously:
“I knew you by your voice alone. Your beard and moustache make you wholly unrecognizable.”
“They are glued on,” explained Trirodov.
They conversed. He heard some one whisper behind his back:
“That is comrade Elisaveta. She’s considered the first beauty in our town.”
Trirodov was for some reason overjoyed at these words, partly because Elisaveta heard them and blushed so furiously that even the dim moonlight could not hide her blushes.
A few detectives had also managed to find their way here, and there was even one provocateur. These chattels alone knew that the police had information about the meeting and that the wood would shortly be encircled by the Cossacks.
Conversations were kept up among small groups for some time before the meeting opened. The agitators discussed matters with labouring men who were not in the party. The more interesting people were introduced to the invited speaker.
Stchemilov’s loud voice rang out:
“Comrades, attention. I propose comrade Abram as chairman.”
“Agreed, agreed,” came suppressed voices from every side.
Comrade Abram took his place on a high stump of a hewn-down tree. The speeches began. Elisaveta was nervous until it came her turn to speak. She was troubled with pain and fear because she knew that Trirodov would hear her.
Proud, brave watchwords and bold instructions were heard. The provocateur also made a speech. He urged them to an immediate armed revolt. Some one’s voice called out:
“Comrades—this man’s a provocateur!”
There was a commotion. The provocateur shouted something in his defence. He was promptly jostled out.
Then Stchemilov spoke; he was followed by the invited orator. Elisaveta’s agitation grew.
But when the chairman said, “Comrade Elisaveta, the word belongs to you,” she suddenly became calm and, having ascended the high stump that served as the platform, began to speak. Her deep, measured voice carried far. Some one seemed to echo it in the wood—it was like a fantastic, restless din. A being beloved by her and near to her sat there and listened; her beloved, near comrades also listened. Hundreds of attentive eyes followed her, and the dear friendly looks, converging like lances under a shield, held her very high in the pure atmosphere of happiness.
The sweet moments of joy passed by like a short dream. She ended her speech and came down among the audience, where she was received with flattering comments and strong pressures of the hand—sometimes, it must be confessed, a little over-strong.
“I say, comrade, you’ll break my hand. How strong you are!”
And his face would also break into a joyous smile.
The speeches ended. The songs began. The wood re-echoed with proud, brave words, with a song of freedom and revolt. Suddenly the song stopped short, a confused murmur ran through the crowd. Some one shouted:
“The Cossacks!”
Some one shouted:
“Run, comrades!”
Some one ran. Some one shouted:
“Be calm, comrades!”
The Cossacks had hid themselves in the wood a couple of versts from the meeting. Many of them had managed to take several drinks. As they sat around their bonfires they began to sing a gay, noisy, indecent song, but their officers enjoined silence.
A spy came running; he whispered something to the colonel. Soon a command was given. The Cossacks jumped quickly on their horses and rode away, leaving the half-consumed bonfire behind them. The dry faggots and the grass smouldered a long time. The forest caught fire.19
“What’s the matter?” asked Elisaveta.
Some one whispered quickly:
“Do you hear, it’s the Cossacks! I wonder which side they are coming from. It’s hard to tell which way to run.”
“They are coming from town,” said some one. “The only thing to do is to go towards Opalikha.”
The leaders began to give orders:
“Comrades, be calm. Scatter as quickly as possible. Don’t jostle. The road to Dubky is clear.”
A number of horses’ heads suddenly appeared from among the trees quiet close to Elisaveta, and their dumb but good eyes looked on incomprehensibly. The crowd of young people began to run, and carried Elisaveta along with them. She was seized by a feeling of stupor. She thought:
“What’s the use of running? They’ll overtake us and drive us wherever they will.”
But she had not enough strength to pause. They were all running, and she with them. Another detachment of Cossacks appeared in front of them. Cries and wails went up from the crowd, which began to scatter in all directions. The Cossacks came on, as it were, in a broad chain.
Many managed to break through, some with blood-stained faces and torn clothes. The others were driven forward from the rear and the sides and gradually became a compact mass. It was evident that the Cossacks were trying to get the crowd into the middle of the glade. Those who had broken through the ring at the very beginning had some hope of escape. There were about a hundred people in the ring. They were driven towards the town, and those who tried to escape were lashed with thenagaika.
A few shots resounded in the distance. The provocateur fired the first shot—into the air. This aroused the anger of the Cossacks, who began to shoot at those who ran.
Elisaveta and Alkina managed to escape the first ring together. But they could hear all around them the cries of the Cossacks. They paused and pressed close to an old oak, not knowing which way to turn. They were joined by Trirodov.
“Follow me,” he said to them; “I think I can find a less dangerous place.”
“What has become of our invited speaker?” asked Alkina.
“Don’t worry about that,” was the impatient reply; “he was the first to be attended to. He’s out of danger now. You’d better go on quickly.”
He walked confidently through the bushes and they followed him.
The sounds made by the patrols of Cossacks were heard on every side. Suddenly the runners were confronted by the figure of a Cossack who stepped out from the bushes. He aimed hisnagaikaat Elisaveta, but she, falling headlong, escaped the brunt of the blow. The Cossack bent down, caught Elisaveta by her plait of hair, and began to drag her after him. Elisaveta cried out from pain. Trirodov pulled out a revolver and shot him almost without taking aim. The Cossack cried out and let his victim go. All three then made their way through the bushes. A deep hollow cut their progress short.
“Well, we are almost out of danger here,” said Trirodov.
They lowered themselves, almost rolled down to the bottom of the hollow. Their faces and hands bore scratches and their clothes were torn. On one of the sloping sides of the hollow they found a deep recess made by the rains, and now obscured by the bushes; and here they hid themselves.
“Presently we’ll make for the river-bank,” said Trirodov. “We are quite close to it.”
Suddenly they heard the crackle of breaking twigs above them, followed by a revolver-shot and outcries. A running figure defined itself in the dark.
“Kiril!” called Elisaveta in a whisper, “come here.”
Kiril heard her, and threw himself through the bushes in the direction of the hiding-place. Elisaveta could now see, quite close to her, his fatigued, desperate eyes. There was a loud, near report of a revolver. Kiril reeled; there was the sound of breaking twigs as he fell heavily and rolled down the hollow.
Presently a running Cossack came down precipitately from above. He brushed so closely past them that a twig caught by his body struck Alkina’s shoulder. But Alkina did not stir; pale, slender, and calm, she stood tightly pressing her body against the almost perpendicular wall of their refuge. The Cossack bent over Kiril, examined him attentively, then muttered as he straightened himself:
“Well, there’s no breath left in him. You’re done for, my clever chap.”
Then he turned to climb back again. When the rustle of the parted bushes ceased Trirodov said:
“Now we must walk carefully along this hollow until we come to the river. There is a bend in the river here in the direction of the town—we are bound to get somewhere almost across from my place. Then we must find our way to the other side somehow or other.”
Slowly and cautiously they made their way through the thick growths of the hollow. They walked in the dark—Trirodov and the two with him, his chance one and his fated one, sent him by the two Moirae, Aisa and Ananke.20
The bushes became moist and a fresh breeze blew from the river. Then Alkina came close to Trirodov and whispered to him:
“If you are glad that she loves you, tell me, and I will share your gladness.”
Trirodov pressed her hand warmly.
The quiet, dim river lay before them. Beyond it the labours and dangers of life created by the dream of liberation awaited them.
Soon the mist would rise above the river under the cold and witching moon—soon the misty veil of fantasy would lighten the tedious and commonplace life, and behind the veil of mist there would rise in dim outlines another kind of life, creative and unattainable.
That night the streets of Skorodozh were alive with noises—which gradually died away. The frightened townsmen sprang from their warm beds, and peering through the half-opened blinds into the dark streets saw those who had been caught in the woods led away in the custody of the Cossacks. Then when the stamp of horses’ hoofs and the hum of human voices subsided, the residents quietly went back to their beds, and were soon asleep. Lady Godiva would have been highly pleased with such modest people: they looked, yet did not show themselves, and did not hinder.
They went to bed again, and muttered something to their wives. The freedom-loving bourgeois grumbled:
“They won’t let you sleep. The horses’ hoofs make such a noise. They might employ bicycles instead of horses.”
The night passed like a nightmare for many. It seemed to grip all life with a cold apprehensiveness, and burdened one’s soul with a hate towards the earthly life which suffered agony from its bondage to the flaming, exultant Dragon. Why did he exult? Was it because we beings of the earth are evil and cruel, and love to torment, to see drops of blood and tears?
Our dark, earthly nature is suffused with a cruel voluptuousness. Such is the imperfection of the human breed that a single human vessel contains all the deepest ecstasies of love and all the lowest delights of lust, and the mixture is poisoned with shame and with pain—and with the desire for shame and pain. From one fountain come both the gladdening raptures and the gladdening lusts of the passions. We torment others only because it gives us joy.
After the agonies on the way from the wood, after a search had been made, many of the prisoners were dispatched to prison. Others were set free.
A restless, sluggish, and unfriendly morning rose over the city. From the wood, just beyond the town, came the half-pleasant, half-disagreeable odour of a forest fire.
The news about the two dead victims, Kiril and another workman, Kliukin, a family man, soon spread. Their comrades were excited.
The corpses had been taken to the mortuary of the town hospital. A large crowd, grave, silent, and resolute in mood, had gathered quite early near the mortuary. It mostly consisted of labouring men, and their wives and children. The large square in front of the hospital, with its dirty, unpaved spots, its trampled grass, its grey, gloomy little shops, appeared oppressed by an atmosphere of early morning fatigue. The slant rays of the rising Dragon, veiled with a light mist, fell upon the scowling faces of the crowd as indifferently as upon the fence or the closed gates. The Ancient Dragon is not our sun.
The faces of those who stood near the closed gates were scowling. No one was permitted to enter the hospital. Within, preparations were going on for a secret burial of the victims. Tumultuous voices of anger rose in the crowd.
A detachment of Cossacks soon appeared on the scene. They came on quickly, and paused near the crowd. The beautiful smooth horses trembled sensitively. The riders were handsome, sun-burnt, black-eyed, and black-browed; their black hair, not cut in the military fashion, was visible from under their high hats. The women in the crowd looked at them now and then with involuntary admiration.
The tumult increased, the crowd continued to grow. The whole square was alive with people. There seemed to be imminent danger of a bloody collision.
Trirodov went that morning to the chief of the rural police and to the officer of the gendarmerie. He wished to convince them that a secret burial would only add to the workers’ excitement. The chief listened to him in a dull way, and kept on repeating:
“Impossible. I can’t....”
He gazed down persistently. This caused his neck to look tight, poured out like copper. And he kept on turning his ring round his finger as if it were a talisman protecting him from hostile calumny.
The colonel of the gendarmes proved easier to deal with. In the end Trirodov succeeded in obtaining an order for the surrender of the bodies of the dead men to their families.
The chief of the rural police arrived in the square. The crowd greeted him with discordant and angry cries. He stood up in his trap and motioned with his hand. Every one grew silent. He addressed them:
“Would you like to bury them yourselves? Very well, you shall have them. Only be careful that nothing happens which shouldn’t happen. In any case, the Cossacks will be present, in an emergency. And now I will see that the bodies of your comrades are delivered to you.”