"What are you at?" I exclaimed.
Turning in my grasp he whispered with a scarcely audible, but
exceedingly repulsive, giggle:
"Haven't I given her a good fright, eh?"
Then he added:
"Now, let me go! Let go, I say!"
"Have you lost your wits?" I retorted with a gasp.
For a moment or two his blinking eyes continued to glance at something
over my shoulder. Then they returned to me, while he whispered:
"Pray let me go. The truth is that, unable to sleep, I conceived that I
would play this woman a trick. Was there any harm in that? See, now.
She is still asleep."
As I thrust him away his short legs, legs which might almost have been
amputated, staggered under him. Meanwhile I reflected:
"No, I was NOT wrong. He DID of set purpose throw the mop overboard.
What a fellow!"
A bell sounded from the engine-room.
"Slow!" someone shouted with a cheerful hail.
Upon that, steam issued with such resounding shrillness that the woman
awoke with a jerk of her head; and as she put up her left hand to feel
her armpit, her crumpled features gathered themselves into wrinkles.
Then she glanced at the lamp, raised herself to a sitting position,
and, fingering the place where the hair had been destroyed, said softly
to herself:
"Oh, holy Mother of God!"
Presently the steamer drew to a wharf, and, with a loud clattering,
firewood was dragged forth and cast into the stokehole with uncouth,
warning cries of "Tru-us-sha!" [The word means ship's hold or
stokehole, but here is, probably, equivalent to the English "Heads
below!"]
Over a little town which had its back pressed against a hill the waning
moon was rising and brightening all the black river, causing it to
gather life as the radiance laved, as it were, the landscape in warm
water.
Walking aft, I seated myself among some bales and contemplated the
town's frontage. Over one end of it rose, tapering like a
walking-stick, a factory chimney, while at the other end, as well as in
the middle, rose belfries, one of which had a gilded steeple, and the
other one a steeple either green or blue, but looking black in the
moonlight, and shaped like a ragged paint-brush.
Opposite the wharf there was stuck in the wide gable of a two-storied
building a lantern which, flickering, diffused but a dull, anaemic
light from its dirty panes, while over the long strip of the broken
signboard of the building there could be seen straggling, and executed
in large yellow letters, the words, "Tavern and--" No more of the
legend than this was visible.
Lanterns were hanging in two or three other spots in the drowsy little
town; and wherever their murky stains of light hung suspended in the
air there stood out in relief a medley of gables, drab-tinted trees,
and false windows in white paint, on walls of a dull slate colour.
Somehow I found contemplation of the scene depressing.
Meanwhile the vessel continued to emit steam as she rocked to and fro
with a creaking of wood, a slap-slapping of water, and a scrubbing of
her sides against the wharf. At length someone ejaculated surlily:
"Fool, you must be asleep! The winch, you say? Why, the winch is at the
stern, damn you!"
"Off again, thank the Lord!" added the rasping voice already heard from
behind the bales, while to it an equally familiar voice rejoined with a
yawn:
"It's time we WERE off!"
Said a hoarse voice:
"Look here, young fellow. What was it he shouted?"
Hastily and inarticulately, with a great deal of smacking of the lips
and stuttering, someone replied:
"He shouted: 'Kinsmen, do not kill me! Have some mercy, for Christ's
sake, and I will make over to you everything--yes, everything into your
good hands for ever! Only let me go away, and expiate my sins, and save
my soul through prayer. Aye, I will go on a pilgrimage, and remain
hidden my life long, to the very end. Never shall you hear of me again,
nor see me.' Then Uncle Peter caught him a blow on the head, and his
blood splashed out upon me. As he fell I--well, I ran away, and made
for the tavern, where I knocked at the door and shouted: 'Sister, they
have killed our father!' Upon that, she put her head out of the window,
but only said: 'That merely means that the rascal is making an excuse
for vodka.'... Aye, a terrible time it was--was that night! And how
frightened I felt! At first, I made for the garret, but presently
thought to myself: 'No; they would soon find me there, and put me to an
end as well, for I am the heir direct, and should be the first to
succeed to the property.' So I crawled on to the roof, and there lay
hidden behind the chimney-stack, holding on with arms and legs, while
unable to speak for sheer terror."
"What were you afraid of?" a brusque voice interrupted.
"What was I afraid of?"
"At all events, you joined your uncle in killing your father, didn't
you?"
"In such an hour one has not time to think--one just kills a man
because one can't help oneself, or because it seems so easy to kill."
"True," the hoarser voice commented in dull and ponderous accents.
"When once blood has flowed the fact leads to more blood, and if a man
has started out to kill, he cares nothing for any reason--he finds good
enough the reason which comes first to his hand."
"But if this young fellow is speaking the truth, he had a BUSINESS
reason--though, properly speaking, even property ought not to provoke
quarrels."
"Similarly one ought not to kill just when one chooses. Folk who commit
such crimes should have justice meted out to them."
"Yes, but it is difficult always to obtain such justice. For instance,
this young fellow seems to have spent over a year in prison for
nothing."
"'For nothing'? Why, did he not entice his father into the hut, and
then shut the door upon him, and throw a coat over his head? He has
said so himself. 'For nothing,' indeed!"
Upon this the rapid stream of sobbed, disconnected words, which I had
heard before from some speaker poured forth anew. Somehow, I guessed
that it came from the man in the dirty boots, as once more he recounted
the story of the murder.
"I do not wish to justify myself," he said. "I say merely that,
inasmuch as I was promised a reprieve at the trial, I told everything,
and was therefore allowed to go free, while my uncle and my brother
were sentenced to penal servitude."
"But you KNEW that they had agreed to kill him?"
"Well, it is my idea that at first they intended only to give him a
good fright. Never did my father recognise me as his son--always he
called me a Jesuit."
The gruffer of the two voices pulled up the speaker.
"To think," it said, "that you can actually talk about it all!"
"Why shouldn't I? My father brought tears to the eyes of many an
innocent person."
"A fig for people's tears! If our causes of tears were one and all to
be murdered, what would the state of things become? Shed tears, but
never blood; for blood is not yours to shed. And even if you should
believe your own blood to be your own, know that it is not so, that
your blood does not belong to you, but to Someone Else."
"The point in question was my father's property. It all shows how a man
may live awhile, and earn his living, and then suddenly go amiss, and
lose his wits, and even conceive a grudge against his own father....
Now I must get some sleep."
Behind the bales all grew quiet. Presently I rose to peer in that
direction. The passenger in the buff pea-jacket was sitting huddled up
against a coil of rope, with his hands thrust into his sleeves, and his
chin resting upon his arms. As the moon was shining straight into his
face, I could see that the latter was as livid as that of a corpse, and
had its brows drawn down over its narrow, insignificant eyes.
Beside him, and close to my head, there was lying stretched on the top
of the coil of rope a broad-shouldered peasant in a short smock and a
pair of patched boots of white felt. The ringlets of the wearer's curly
beard were thrust upwards, and his hands clasped behind his head, and
with ox-like eyes he stared at the zenith where a few stars were
shining, and the moon was beginning to sink.
At length, in a trumpet-like voice (though he seemed to do his best to
soften it) the peasant asked:
"Your uncle is on that barge, I suppose?"
"He is. And so is my brother."
"Yet you are here! How strange!"
The dark barge, towed against the steamer's blue-silver wash of foam,
was cleaving it like a plough, while under the moon the lights of the
barge showed white, and the hull and the prisoners' cage stood raised
high out of the water as to our right the black, indentated bank glided
past in sinuous convolutions.
From the whole, soft, liquescent fluid scene, the impression which I
derived was melancholy. It evoked in my spirit a sense of instability,
a lack of restfulness.
"Why are you travelling?"
"Because I wish to have a word with him."
"With your uncle?"
"Yes."
"About the property?"
"What else?"
"Then look here, my young fellow. Drop it all--both your uncle and the
property, and betake yourself to a monastery, and there live and pray.
For if you have shed blood, and especially if you have shed the blood
of a kinsman, you will stand for ever estranged from all, while,
moreover, bloodshed is a dangerous thing--it may at any time come back
upon you."
"But the property?" the young fellow asked with a lift of his head.
"Let it go," the peasant vouchsafed as he closed his eyes.
On the younger man's face the down twitched as though a wind had
stirred it. He yawned, and looked about him for a moment. Then,
descrying myself, he cried in a tone of resentment:
"What are you looking at? And why do you keep following me about?"
Here the big peasant opened his eyes, and, with a glance first at the
man, and then at myself, growled:
"Less noise there, you mitten-face!"
* * * * *
As I retired to my nook and lay down, I reflected that what the big
peasant had said was apposite enough-that the young fellow's face did
in very truth resemble an old and shabby woollen mitten.
Presently I dreamt that I was painting a belfry, and that, as I did so,
huge, goggle-eyed jackdaws kept flying around the belfry's gables, and
flapping at me with their wings and hindering my work: until, as I
sought to beat them off, I missed my footing, fell to earth, and awoke
to find my breath choking amid a dull, sick, painful feeling of
lassitude and weakness, and a kaleidoscopic mist quavering before my
eyes till it rendered me dizzy. From my head, behind the car, a thin
stream of blood was trickling.
Rising with some difficulty to my feet, I stepped aft to a pump, washed
my head under a jet of cold water, bound it with my handkerchief, and,
returning, inspected my resting-place in a state of bewilderment as to
what could have caused the accident to happen.
On the deck near the spot where I had been asleep, there was standing
stacked a pile of small logs prepared for the cook's galley; while, in
the precise spot where my head had rested there was reposing a birch
faggot of which the withy-tie had come unfastened. As I raised the
fallen faggot I perceived it to be clean and composed of silky loppings
of birch-bark which rustled as I fingered them; and, consequently, I
reflected that the ceaseless vibration of the steamer must have caused
the faggot to become jerked on to my head.
Reassured by this plausible explanation of the unfortunate, but absurd,
occurrence of which I have spoken, I next returned to the stern, where
there were no oppressive odours to be encountered, and whence a good
view was obtainable.
The hour was the turn of the night, the hour of maximum tension before
dawn, the hour when all the world seems plunged in a profundity of
slumber whence there can be no awakening, and when the completeness of
the silence attunes the soul to special sensibility, and when the stars
seem to be hanging strangely close to earth, and the morning star, in
particular, to be shining as brightly as a miniature sun. Yet already
had the heavens begun to grow coldly grey, to lose their nocturnal
softness and warmth, while the rays of the stars were drooping like
petals, and the moon, hitherto golden, had turned pale and become
dusted over with silver, and moved further from the earth as intangibly
the water of the river sloughed its thick, viscous gleam, and swiftly
emitted and withdrew, stray, pearly reflections of the changes
occurring in the heavenly tints.
In the east there was rising, and hanging suspended over the black
spears of the pine forest, a thin pink mist the sensuous hue of which
was glowing ever brighter, and assuming a density ever greater, and
standing forth more boldly and clearly, even as a whisper of timid
prayer merges into a song of exultant thankfulness. Another moment, and
the spiked tops of the pines blazed into points of red fire resembling
festival candles in a sanctuary.
Next, an unseen hand threw over the water, drew along its surface, a
transparent and many-coloured net of silk. This was the morning breeze,
herald of dawn, as with a coating of tissue-like, silvery scales it
rippled the river until the eye grew weary of trying to follow the play
of gold and mother-of-pearl and purple and bluish-green reflected from
the sun-renovated heavens.
Next, like a fan there unfolded themselves the first sword-shaped beams
of day, with their tips blindingly white; while simultaneously one
seemed to hear descending from an illimitable height a dense sound-wave
of silver bells, a sound-wave advancing triumphantly to greet the sun
as his roseate rim became visible over the forest like the rim of a cup
that, filled with the essence of life, was about to empty its contents
upon the earth, and to pour a bounteous flood of creative puissance
upon the marshes whence a reddish vapour as of incense was arising.
Meanwhile on the more precipitous of the two banks some of the trees
near the river's margin were throwing soft green shadows over the
water, while gilt-like dew was sparkling on the herbage, and birds were
awakening, and as a white gull skimmed the water's surface on level
wings, the pale shadow of those wings followed the bird over the tinted
expanse, while the sun, suspended in flame behind the forest, like the
Imperial bird of the fairy-tale, rose higher and higher into the
greenish-blue zenith, until silvery Venus, expiring, herself looked
like a bird.
Here and there on the yellow strip of sand by the river's margin,
long-legged snipe were scurrying about. Two fishermen were rocking in a
boat in the steamer's wash as they hauled their tackle. Floating from
the shore there began to reach us such vocal sounds of morning as the
crowing of cocks, the lowing of cattle, and the persistent murmur of
human voices.
Similarly the buff-coloured bales in the steamer's stem gradually
reddened, as did the grey tints in the beard of the large peasant
where, sprawling his ponderous form over the deck, he was lying asleep
with mouth open, nostrils distended with stertorous snores, brows
raised as though in astonishment, and thick moustache intermittently
twitching.
Someone amid the piles of bales was panting as he fidgeted, and as I
glanced in that direction I encountered the gaze of a pair of small,
narrow, inflamed eyes, and beheld before me the ragged, mitten-like
face, though now it looked even thinner and greyer than it had done on
the previous evening. Apparently its owner was feeling cold, for he had
hunched his chin between his knees, and clasped his hirsute arms around
his legs, as his eyes stared gloomily, with a hunted air, in my
direction. Then wearily, lifelessly he said:
"Yes, you have found me. And now you can thrash me if you wish to do
so--you can give me a blow, for I gave you one, and, consequently, it's
your turn to do the hitting."
Stupefied with astonishment, I inquired in an undertone.
"It was you, then, that hit me?"
"It was so, but where are your witnesses?"
The words came in hoarse, croaked, suppressed accents, with a
separation of the hands, and an upthrow of the head and projecting cars
which had such a comical look of being crushed beneath the weight of
the battened-down cap. Next, thrusting his hands into the pockets of
his pea-jacket, the man repeated in a tone of challenge:
"Where, I say, are your witnesses? You can go to the devil!"
I could discern in him something at once helpless and froglike which
evoked in me a strong feeling of repulsion; and since, with that, I had
no real wish to converse with him, or even to revenge myself upon him
for his cowardly blow, I turned away in silence.
But a moment later I looked at him again, and saw that he was seated in
his former posture, with his arms embracing his knees, his chin resting
upon them, and his red, sleepless eyes gazing lifelessly at the barge
which the steamer was towing between wide ribbons of foaming
water--ribbons sparkling in the sunlight like mash in a brewer's vat.
And those eyes, that dead, alienated expression, the gay cheerfulness
of the morning, and the clear radiance of the heavens, and the kindly
tints of the two banks, and the vocal sounds of the June day, and the
bracing freshness of the air, and the whole scene around us served but
to throw into the more tragic relief.
* * * * *
Just as the steamer was leaving Sundir the man threw himself into the
water; in the sight of everybody he sprang overboard. Upon that all
shouted, jostled their neighbours as they rushed to the side, and fell
to scanning the river where from bank to bank it lay wrapped in
blinding glitter.
The whistle sounded in fitful alarm, the sailors threw lifebelts
overboard, the deck rumbled like a drum under the crowd's surging
rush, steam hissed afflightedly, a woman vented an hysterical cry, and
the captain bawled from the bridge the imperious command:
"Avast heaving lifebelts! By now the fool will have got one! Damn you,
calm the passengers!"
An unwashed, untidy priest with timid, staring eyes thrust back his
long, dishevelled hair, and fell to repeating, as his fat shoulder
jostled all and sundry, and his feet tripped people up.
"A muzhik, is it, or a woman? A muzhik, eh?"
By the time that I had made my way to the stern the man had fallen far
behind the stern of the barge, and his head looked as small as a fly on
the glassy surface of the water. However, towards that fly a
fishing-boat was already darting with the swiftness of a water beetle,
and causing its two oars to show quiveringly red and grey, while from
the marshier of the two banks there began hastily to put out a second
boat which leapt in the steamer's wash with the gaiety of a young calf.
Suddenly there broke into the painful hubbub on the steamer's deck a
faint, heartrending cry of "A-a-ah!"
In answer to it a sharp-nosed, black-bearded, well-dressed peasant
muttered with a smack of his lips:
"Ah! That is him shouting. What a madman he must have been! And an ugly
customer too, wasn't he?"
The peasant with the curly beard rejoined in a tone of conviction
engulfing all other utterances:
"It is his conscience that is catching him. Think what you like, but
never can conscience be suppressed."
Therewith, constantly interrupting one another, the pair betook
themselves to a public recital of the tragic story of the fair-haired
young fellow, whom the fishermen had now lifted from the water, and
were conveying towards the steamer with oars that oscillated at top
speed.
The bearded peasant continued:
"As soon as it was seen that he was but running after the soldier's
wife."
"Besides," the other peasant interrupted, "the property was not to be
divided after the death of the father."
With which the bearded muzhik eagerly recounted the history of the
murder done by the brother, the nephew, and a son, while the spruce,
spare, well-dressed peasant interlarded the general buzz of
conversation with words and comments cheerfully and stridently
delivered, much as though he were driving in stakes for the erection of
a fence.
"Every man is drawn most in the direction whither he finds it easiest
to go."
"Then it will be the Devil that will be drawing him, since the
direction of Hell is always the easiest."
"Well, YOU will not be going that way, I suppose? You don't altogether
fancy it?"
"Why should I?"
"Because you have declared it to be the easiest way."
"Well, I am not a saint."
"No, ha-ha! you are not."
"And you mean that--?"
"I mean nothing. If a dog's chain be short, he is not to be blamed."
Whereupon, setting nose to nose, the pair plunged into a quarrel still
more heated as they expounded in simple, but often curiously apposite,
language opinions intelligible to themselves alone. The one peasant, a
lean fellow with lengthy limbs, cold, sarcastic eyes, and a dark, bony
countenance, spoke loudly and sonorously, with frequent shrugs of the
shoulders, while the other peasant, a man stout and broad of build who
until now had seemed calm, self-assured of demeanour, and a man of
settled views, breathed heavily, while his oxlike eyes glowed with an
ardour causing his face to flush patchily, and his beard to stick out
from his chin.
"Look here, for instance," he growled as he gesticulated and rolled his
dull eyes about. "How can that be? Does not even God know wherein a man
ought to restrain himself?"
"If the Devil be one's master, God doesn't come into the matter."
"Liar! For who was the first who raised his hand against his fellow?"
"Cain."
"And the first man who repented of a sin?"
"Adam."
"Ah! You see!"
Here there broke into the dispute a shout of: "They are just getting
him aboard!" and the crowd, rushing away from the stern, carried with
it the two disputants--the sparer peasant; lowering his shoulders, and
buttoning up his jacket as he went; while the bearded peasant,
following at his heels, thrust his head forward in a surly manner as he
shifted his cap from the one ear to the other.
With a ponderous beating of paddles against the current the steamer
heaved to, and the captain shouted through a speaking-trumpet, with a
view to preventing a collision between the barge and the stem of the
vessel:
"Put her over! Put her o-o-ove-r!"
Soon the fishing-boat came alongside, and the half-drowned man, with a
form as limp as a half-empty sack, and water exuding from every stitch,
and his hitherto haggard face grown smooth and simple-looking, was
hoisted on board.
Next, on the sailors laying him upon the hatchway of the baggage hold,
he sat up, leaned forward, smoothed his wet hair with the palms of his
hands, and asked dully, without looking at anyone:
"Have they also recovered my cap?"
Someone among the throng around him exclaimed reprovingly:
"It is not about your cap that you ought to be thinking, but about your
soul."
Upon this he hiccuped loudly and freely, like a camel, and emitted a
stream of turgid water from his mouth. Then, looking at the crowd with
lack-lustre eyes, he said in an apathetic tone:
"Let me be taken elsewhere."
In answer, the boatswain sternly bade him stretch himself out, and this
the young fellow did, with his hands clasped under his head, and his
eyes closed, while the boatswain added brusquely to the onlookers:
"Move away, move away, good people. What is there to stare at? This is
not a show.... Hi, you muzhik! Why did you play us such a trick,
damn you?"
The crowd however, was not to be suppressed, but indulged in comments.
"He murdered his father, didn't he?"
"What? THAT wretched creature?"
As for the boatswain, he squatted upon his heels, and proceeded to
subject the rescued man to a course of strict interrogation.
"What is the destination marked on your ticket?"
"Perm."
"Then you ought to leave the boat at Kazan. And what is your name?"
"Yakov."
"And your surname?"
"Bashkin--though we are known also as the Bukolov family."
"Your family has a DOUBLE surname, then?"
With the full power of his trumpet-like lungs the bearded peasant
(evidently he had lost his temper) broke in:
"Though his uncle and his brother have been sentenced to penal
servitude and are travelling together on that barge, he--well, he has
received his discharge! That is only a personal matter, however. In
spite of what judges may say, one ought never to kill, since conscience
cannot bear the thought of blood. Even nearly to become a murderer is
wrong."
By this time more and more passengers had collected as they awakened
from sleep and emerged from the first- and second-class cabins. Among
them was the mate, a man with a black moustache and rubicund features
who inquired of someone amid the confusion: "You are not a doctor, I
suppose?" and received the astonished, high-pitched reply: "No, sir,
nor ever have been one."
To this someone added with a drawl:
"Why is a doctor needed? Surely the man is a fellow of no particular
importance?"
Over the river the radiance of the summer daylight had gathered
increased strength, and, since the date was a Sunday, bells were
sounding seductively from a hill, and a couple of women in gala apparel
who were following the margin of the river waved handkerchiefs towards
the steamer, and shouted some greeting.
Meanwhile the young fellow lay motionless, with his eyes closed.
Divested of his pea-jacket, and wrapped about with wet, clinging
underclothing, he looked more symmetrical than previously--his chest
seemed better developed, his body plumper, and his face more rotund and
less ugly.
Yet though the passengers gazed at him with compassion or distaste or
severity or fear, as the case might be, all did so without ceremony, as
though he had not been a living man at all.
For instance, a gaunt gentleman in a grey frock-coat said to a lady in
a yellow straw hat adorned with a pink ribbon:
"At our place, in Riazan, when a certain master-watchmaker went and
hanged himself to a ventilator, he first of all stopped every watch and
clock in his shop. Now, the question is, why did he stop them?"
"An abnormal case indeed!"
On the other hand, a dark-browed woman who had her hands hidden beneath
her shawl stood gazing at the rescued man in silence, and with her side
turned towards him. As she did so tears were welling in her grey-blue
eyes.
Presently two sailors appeared. One of them bent over the young fellow,
touched him on the shoulder, and said:
"Hi! You are to get up."
Whereupon the young fellow rose, and was removed elsewhither.
* * * * *
When, after an interval, he reappeared on deck, he was clean and dry,
and clad in a cook's white jumper and a sailor's blue serge trousers.
Clasping his hands behind his back, hunching his shoulders, and bending
his head forward, he walked swiftly to the stern, with a throng of
idlers--at first one by one, and then in parties of from three to a
dozen--following in his wake.
The man seated himself upon a coil of rope, and, craning his neck in
wolf-like fashion to eye the bystanders, frowned, let fall his temples
upon hands thrust into his flaxen hair, and fixed his gaze upon the
barge.
Standing or sitting about in the hot sunshine, people stared at him
without stint. Evidently they would have liked, but did not dare, to
engage him in conversation. Presently the big peasant also arrived on
the scene, and, after glancing at all present, took off his hat, and
wiped his perspiring face. Next, a grey-headed old man with a red nose,
a thin wisp of beard, and watery eyes cleared his throat, and in
honeyed tones took the initiative.
"Would you mind telling us how it all happened?" he began.
"Why should I do so?" retorted the young fellow without moving.
Taking a red handkerchief from his bosom, the old man shook it out and
applied it cautiously to his eyes. Then he said through its folds in
the quiet accents of a man who is determined to persevere:
"Why, you say? For the reason that the occasion is one when all ought
to know the tru--"
Lurching forward, the bearded peasant interposed with a rasp:
"Yes, do you tell us all about it, and things will become easier for
you. For a sin always needs to be made known."
While, like an echo, a voice said in bold and sarcastic accents:
"It would be better to seize him and tie him up."
Upon this the young fellow raised his brows a little, and retorted in
an undertone:
"Let me bide."
"The rascal!" the crowd commented, while the old man, neatly folding
and replacing his handkerchief, raised a hand as dry as a cock's leg,
and remarked with a sharp, knowing smile:
"Possibly it is not merely out of idle curiosity that folk are making
this request."
"Go and be damned to you!" the young fellow exclaimed with a grim snap.
Whereupon the big peasant bellowed out in a blustering fashion:
"What? Then you will not tell us at least your destination?"
Whereafter the same speaker continued to hold forth on humanity, God,
and the human conscience--staring wildly around him as he did so,
waving his arms about, and growing ever more frantic, until really it
was curious to watch him.
At length the crowd grew similarly excited, and took to encouraging the
speaker with cries of "True! That is so!"
As for the young fellow, he listened awhile in silence, without moving.
Then, straightening his back, he rose, thrust his hands into the
pockets of his trousers, and, swaying his body to and fro, began to
glare at the crowd with greenish eyes which were manifestly lightening
to a vicious gleam. At length, thrusting forth his chest, he cried
hoarsely:
"So you ask me whither I am bound? I am bound for the brigands' lair,
for the brigands' lair, where, unless you first take and put me in
fetters, I intend to cut the throat of every man that I meet. Yes, a
hundred murders will I commit, for all folk will be the same to me, and
not a soul will I spare. Aye, the end of my tether is reached, so take
and fetter me whilst you can."
His breath was issuing with difficulty, and as he spoke his shoulders
heaved, and his legs trembled beneath him. Also, his face had turned
grey and become distorted with tremors.
Upon this, the crowd broke into a gruff, ugly, resentful roar, and
edged away from the man. Yet, in doing so, many of its members looked
curiously like the man himself in the way that they lowered their
heads, caught at their breath, and let their eyes flash. Clearly the
man was in imminent danger of being assaulted.
Suddenly he recovered his subdued demeanour--he, as it were, thawed in
the sunlight: until, as suddenly, his legs gave way beneath him, and,
narrowly escaping injury to his face from the corner of a bale, he fell
forward upon his knees as though felled with an axe. Thereafter,
clutching at his throat, he shouted in a strange voice, and crowding
the words upon one another:
"Tell me what I am to do. Is all of it my fault? Long I lay in prison
before I was tried and told to go free... yet--"
Tearing at his ears and cheeks, he rocked his head to and fro as though
seeking to rend it from its socket. Then he continued:
"Yet I am NOT free. Nor is it in my power to say what will become of
me. For me there remains neither life nor death."
"Aha!" exclaimed the big peasant; and at the sound the crowd drew back
as in consternation, while some hastened to depart altogether. As for
the remainder (numbering a dozen or so), they herded sullenly,
nervously, involuntarily into a mass as the young fellow continued in
distracted tones and with a trembling head:
"Oh that I could sleep for the next ten years! For then could I prove
myself, and decide whether I am guilty or not. Last night I struck a
man with a faggot. As I was walking about I saw asleep a man who had
angered me, and thereupon thought, 'Come! I should like to deal him a
blow, but can I actually do it?' And strike him I did. Was it my fault?
Always I keep asking myself, 'Can I, or can I not, do a thing?' Aye,
lost, lost am I!"
Apparently this outburst caused the man to reach the end of his power,
for presently he sank from knees to heels--then on to his side, with
hands clasping his head, and his tongue finally uttering the words,
"Better had you kill me!"
A hush fell, for all now stood confounded and silent, with, about them,
a greyer, a more subdued, look which made all more resemble their
fellows. In fact, to all had the atmosphere become oppressive, as
though everyone's breast had had clamped into it a large, soft clod of
humid, viscid earth. Until at last someone said in a low, shamefaced,
but friendly, tone:
"Good brother, we are not your judges."
To which someone else added with an equal measure of gentleness:
"Indeed, we may be no better than you."
"We pity you, but we must not judge you. Only pity is permitted."
As for the well-dressed peasant, his loud, triumphant utterance was:
"Let God judge him, but men suffer him. Of judging of one another there
has been enough."
And a fifth man remarked to a friend as he walked away:
"What are we to make of this? To judge by the book, the young fellow is
at once guilty and not guilty."
"Bygones ought to be bygones. Of all courses that is the best."
"Yes, for we are too quick. What good can that do?"
"Aye, what?"
At length the dark-browed woman stepped forward. Letting her shawl to
her shoulders, straightening hair streaked with grey under a bright
blue scarf, and deftly putting aside a skirt she so seated herself
beside the young fellow as to screen from the crowd with the height of
her figure. Then, raising kindly face, she said civilly, but
authoritatively, to the bystanders:
"Do all of you go away."
Whereupon the crowd began to depart, the big peasant saying as he went:
"There! Just as I foretold has the matter turned out. Conscience HAS
asserted itself."
Yet the words were spoken without self-complacency, rather,
thoughtfully, and with a sense of awe.
As for the red-nosed old man who was walking like a shadow behind the
last speaker, he opened his snuff-box, peered therein with his moist
eyes, and drawled to no one in particular:
"How often does one see a man play with conscience, yes, even though he
be a rogue! He erects that conscience as a screen to his knaveries and
tricks and wiles, and masks the whole with a cloud of words. Yes, we
know how it is done, even though folk may stare at him, and say to one
another, 'How fervently his soul is glowing!' Aye, all the time that he
is holding his hand to his heart he will be dipping the other hand into
your pocket."
The lover of proverbs, for his part, unbuttoned his jacket, thrust his
hands under his coat-tails, and said in a loud voice:
"There is a saying that you can trust any wild beast, such as a fox or
a hedgehog or a toad, but not--"
"Quite so, dear sir. The common folk are exceedingly degenerate."
"Well, they are not developing as they ought to do."
"No, they are over-cramped," was the big peasant's rasped-out comment.
"They have no room for GROWTH."
"Yes, they DO grow, but only as regards beard and moustache, as a tree
grows to branch and sap."
With a glance at the purveyor of proverbs the old man assented by
remarking: "Yes, true it is that the common folk are cramped."
Whereafter he thrust a pinch of snuff into his nostrils, and threw back
his head in anticipation of the sneeze which failed to come. At length,
drawing a deep breath through his parted lips, he said as he measured
the peasant again with his eyes:
"My friend, you are of a sort calculated to last."
In answer the peasant nodded.
"SOME day," he remarked, "we shall get what we want."
In front of us now, was Kazan, with the pinnacles of its churches and
mosques piercing the blue sky, and looking like garlands of exotic
blooms. Around them lay the grey wall of the Kremlin, and above them
soared the grim Tower of Sumbek.
Here one and all were due to disembark.
I glanced towards the stern once more. The dark-browed woman was
breaking off morsels from a wheaten scone that was lying in her lap,
and saying as she did so:
"Presently we will have a cup of tea, and then keep together as far as
Christopol."
In response the young fellow edged nearer to her, and thoughtfully eyed
the large hands which, though inured to hard work, could also be very
gentle.
"I have been trodden upon," he said.
"Trodden upon by whom?"
"By all. And I am afraid of them."
"Why so?"
"Because I am."
Breathing upon a morsel of the scone, the woman offered it him with the
quiet words:
"You have had much to bear. Now, shall I tell you my history, or shall
we first have tea?"
* * * * *
On the bank there was now to be seen the frontage of the gay, wealthy
suburb of Uslon, with its brightly-dressed, rainbow-tinted women and
girls tripping through the streets, and the water of its foaming river
sparkling hotly, yet dimly, in the sunlight.
It was a scene like a scene beheld in a vision.