The shrieks stuck to Yevsey, to the back of his neck, like leeches. They
filled him with insane horror, and drove him on, on, and on. Behind him
a crowd of people were gathering, it seemed to him, noiselessly, their
feet never touching the ground. They ran after him stretching out scores
of long clutching hands, which reached his neck, and touched his hair.
They played with him, mocked him, disappearing and reappearing. He took
cabs, rode for a while, jumped out, ran along the streets, and rode
again. For the crowd was near him all the time unseen, yet so much the
more horrible.
He felt more at ease when he saw before him the dark patterned wall of
bare boughs, which stretched to meet him. He dived into the thicket of
trees, and walked in between them, strangely moving his hands behind his
back, as if to draw the trees together more compactly behind him. He
descended into a ravine, seated himself on the cold soil, and rose
again. Then he walked the length of the ravine, breathing heavily,
perspiring, drunk with fear. Soon he saw an opening between the trees.
He listened carefully, noiselessly advanced a few steps further, and
looked. In front of him stretched the earthwork of a railroad, beyond
which rose more trees. These were small and far-between. Through the
network of their branches shone the grey roof of a building.
He walked back quickly up the channel of the ravine, to where the woods
were thicker and darker.
"They'll catch me," the cold assurance pushed him on. "They'll catch
me--they must be looking for me already--they're running."
A soft ringing sound strayed through the woods. It came from anear, and
shook the thin branches, which swayed in the dusk of the ravine, filling
the air with their rustle. Under his feet crackled thin ice, which
covered the grey dried-out little pits of the bed of a stream with white
skin.
Klimkov sat down, bent over, and put a piece of ice in his mouth. The
next instant he jumped to his feet, and clambered up the steep slope of
the ravine. Here he removed his belt and suspenders, and began to tie
them together, at the same time carefully examining the branches over
his head.
"I don't have to take my overcoat off," he reflected without self-pity.
"The heavier, the quicker."
He was in a hurry, his fingers trembled, and his shoulders involuntarily
rose, as if to conceal his neck. In his head a timorous thought kept
knocking.
"I won't have time. I'll be too late."
A train passed along the edge of the woods. The trees hummed in
displeasure, and the ground quivered. The white vapor threaded its way
between the branches. It stole through the air, and melted away, as
though to get a look at this man, and then disappear from his eyes.
Titmice came flying and whistling boldly. They gleamed in the dark nets
of the branches, and their quick bustle hastened the movements of
Yevsey's cold and disobedient fingers.
He made a slipknot in the strap, threw it over a branch, and tugged at
it. It was firm. Then, just as hurriedly, he began to make a slipknot in
his suspenders, which he had twisted into a braid. When everything was
ready, he heaved a sigh.
"Now I ought to say my prayers."
But no prayer came to him. He thought for a few seconds. The words
flashed up, but were instantly extinguished, without forming themselves
into a prayer.
"Rayisa knew my fate," he recalled unexpectedly.
Thrusting his head into the noose, he said quietly, simply, and without
a quiver in his breast:
"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--"
He pushed the ground with his feet, and jumped into the air, doubling
his legs under him. There was a painful tug at his ears, a strange
inward blow hit his head, and stunned him. He fell. His entire body
struck the hard earth, turned over, and rolled down the declivity. His
arms caught in the roots of trees, his head knocked against trunks. He
lost consciousness.
When he recovered his senses, he found himself sitting at the bottom of
the ravine, the torn suspenders dangling over his breast. His trousers
were burst, his scratched, blood-stained knees looked through the cloth
pitifully. His body was a mass of pain, especially his neck; and the
cold seemed to be flaying his skin. Throwing himself on his back Yevsey
looked up the incline. There under a white birch branch the strap swung
in the air like a thin serpent, and lured him to itself.
"I can't," he said to himself in despair. "I can't--nothing--I don't
know how."
He began to cry fine tears of impotence and insult. He lay with his back
on the ground, and through his tears saw over him the one-toned dim sky,
streaked by the dry designs of the dark branches.
He lay for a long time muffled in his overcoat, suffering from cold and
pain. Without his willing it, his strange senseless life passed before
him like a chain of smoke-dark rings. It passed by him impetuously. It
trampled pitilessly upon his half-dead soul, crushing it finally with
heavy blows, which prevented one spark of hope from glimmering in his
heart. It pressed him to the ground.
A dismal chord hummed and trembled brokenly in his breast. Its
lugubrious song spread through his bones. His little dry body, quivering
with a sickly tremor, shrivelled up in the cold of the twilight into a
shelterless heap, pressed itself more and more closely to the ground, so
firm and so powerful.
Trains passed the woods several times, filling it with a creaking and
rumbling, with clouds of steam and rays of light. The rays glided by the
trunks of the trees, as if feeling them, as if in search of somebody
there. Then they hastily disappeared, quick, trembling, and cold.
When they found Yevsey and touched him, he raised himself to his feet
with difficulty, and plunged into the obscurity of the woods in pursuit
of them. He stopped at the edge, and leaned against a tree, waiting and
listening to the distant angry hum of the city. It was already evening,
the sky had grown purple. Over the city quietly flared a dim red. The
lights were being kindled to meet the night.
From a distance sprang up a howling noise and a drone. The rails began
to sing and ring. A train was passing over them, its red eyes twinkling
in the twilight. And the dusk quickly sailed after it, growing ever
thicker and darker. Yevsey went to the roadbed as fast as he could, sank
on his knees, then laid his side across the road, with his back to the
train, and his neck upon the rail. He enveloped his head closely in the
skirts of his overcoat.
For some seconds it was pleasant to feel the burning contact of the
iron. It appeased the pain in his neck, but the rail trembled and sang
louder, more alarmingly. It filled his whole body with an aching groan.
The earth, too, now quivered with a fine tremor, as if swimming away
from under his body and pushing him from itself.
The train rolled heavily and slowly, but the clang of its couplings, the
even raps of the wheels upon the joinings of the rails were already
deafening. Its snorting breath pushed Klimkov in the back. Everything
round about him and with him shook in tempestuous agitation, and tore
him from the ground.
He could wait no longer. He jumped to his feet, ran along the rails, and
shouted in a high screech:
"I am guilty--I will--everything--I will, I will!"
Along the smoothly polished metal of the rails darted reddish rays of
light, outstripping Klimkov. They glared more and more fiercely. Now
glowing strips to each side of him ran impetuously into the distance,
directing his course.
"I will--" he yelled, waving his hands.
Something hard and wide struck his back. He fell across the sleepers
between the red cords of rail, and the harsh iron rumble crushed his
feeble screams.
The design on the cover is taken from Gorky's book-plate, drawn by
Ephraim Mose Lilien. It is reproduced from an illustration in "The New
Art of an Ancient People," by M. S. Levussove, New York, 1906.
"The torch which all the Prophets from Moses to Jesus bore aloft is
to-day being borne onward by Socialist agitators."
* * * * *
The Spiritual Significance of Modern Socialism
By JOHN SPARGO
Author of "The Bitter Cry of the Children"
At all bookstores, 50c net
He makes clear that socialism in its economic aspect is but a single
phase of a great movement; that in every avenue of its activity, a
higher meaning is connoted and that every Socialistic aspiration is as
important ethically as economically and politically.
* * * * *
B. W. HUEBSCH, Publisher
225 FIFTH AVENUE - - - - NEW YORK
THE ART OF LIFE SERIES
EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS, Editor
_VOLUMES READY_:
The Use of the Margin
By EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS
In this work the author's charm as a public speaker is transferred to
the printed page. His theme is the problem of utilizing the time one has
to spend as one pleases for the aim of attaining the highest culture of
mind and spirit. How to work and how to play; how to read and how to
study, how to avoid intellectual dissipation and how to apply the open
secrets of great achievement evidenced in conspicuous lives are among
the many phases of the problem which the author discusses, earnestly,
yet with a light touch and not without humor.
Things Worth While
By THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
He discusses in an intimate, conversational manner various problems of
thinking and living and has entered fully into the spirit animating the
publication of The Art of Life Series.
Where Knowledge Fails
By EARL BARNES
From the pen of a scientific thinker, one whose attitude is liberal yet
reverent, presenting the outlines of a belief in which the relations of
knowledge and faith are clearly established.
Self-Measurement
A Scale of Human Values; with Directions for Personal Application
By WILLIAM DE WITT HYDE
He reduces life to its fundamental relations showing the degrees in
which each may be fulfilled or nonfulfilled. In a series of searching
questions he directs attention to every human activity.
_OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION_
Cloth. 12mo. Each, 50 cents net. By mail, 55 cents
* * * * *
TO BE HAD AT ALL BOOKSTORES, OR OF
B. W. HUEBSCH ... Publisher ... NEW YORK
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained.