Once again, when I was a student in college, I was on my way south by
train. It was May. At one of the stations between Byelogorod and
Kharkoff, I think it was, I got out of the train to walk up and down the
platform.
The evening shadows were already lying on the little garden, the
platform, and the distant fields. The sunlight had faded from the
station, but by the rosy glow that shone on the highest puffs of steam
from our engine we could tell that the sun had not yet sunk beneath the
horizon.
As I strolled along the platform I noticed that most of the passengers
had gathered round one of the second-class carriages as if there were
some well-known person inside. In that inquisitive crowd I found my
travelling companion, a bright young artillery officer, warm-hearted and
sympathetic as people are with whom one strikes up a chance
acquaintanceship for a few hours on a journey.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
He did not answer, but motioned me with his eyes toward a female figure
standing alongside the train. She was a young girl of seventeen or
eighteen, dressed in Russian costume, bareheaded, with a kerchief thrown
carelessly over one shoulder. She was not a passenger on the train, but
probably the daughter or the sister of the station superintendent. She
was chatting at a window with an elderly woman. Before I could realise
exactly what I was looking at, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the same
sensation that I had experienced in the Armenian village.
The girl was extraordinarily beautiful, of this neither I nor any one of
those who were looking at her could have the slightest doubt.
Were I to describe her lineaments in detail, as the custom is, the only
really beautiful point I could ascribe to her would be her thick, curly,
blond hair, caught up with a black ribbon. Her other features were
either irregular or frankly commonplace. Whether from coquetry or
short-sightedness, she kept her eyes half-closed; her nose was vaguely
tip-tilted; her mouth was small; her profile was weak and ill-defined;
her shoulders were too narrow for her years. Nevertheless, the girl gave
one the impression of being a great beauty, and as I looked at her I
grew convinced that the Russian physiognomy does not demand severe
regularity of feature to be beautiful; on the contrary, it seemed to me
that, had this girl’s nose been straight and classic as the Armenian’s
was, her face would have lost all its comeliness.
As she stood at the window chatting and shrinking from the evening
chill, the girl now glanced back at us, now stuck her arms akimbo, now
raised her hands to catch up a stray lock of hair, and, as she laughed
and talked, the expression on her face varied between surprise and mimic
horror. I do not remember one second when her features and body were at
rest. The very mystery and magic of her loveliness lay in those
indescribably graceful little motions of hers; in her smile; in the play
of her features; in her swift glances at us; in the union of delicate
grace, youth, freshness, and purity that rang in her voice and laughter.
The charm of her was the frailty which we love in children, birds,
fawns, and slender saplings.
Hers was the beauty of the butterfly that accords so well with waltzes,
with flutterings about a garden, with laughter, and the merriment that
admits neither thought, nor sadness, nor repose. It seemed that, should
a strong gust of wind blow along the platform, or a shower of rain fall,
this fragile figure must crumple to nothing, and this wayward beauty
dissolve like the pollen of a flower.
“Well, well, well!” murmured the officer, sighing as we walked toward
our compartment after the second starting-bell had rung.
What he meant by that “Well, well, well,” I shall not attempt to decide.
Perhaps he was sad at leaving the lovely girl and the spring evening,
and returning to the stuffy train, or perhaps he was sorry, as I was,
for her, and for himself, and for me, and for all the passengers that
were languidly and unwillingly creeping toward their several
compartments. As we walked past a window at which a pale, red-haired
telegraph operator was sitting over his instrument, the officer, seeing
his pompadour curls, and his faded, bony face, sighed again, and said:
“I’ll bet you that operator is in love with the little beauty. To live
among these lonely fields, under the same roof with that lovely little
creature, and not to fall in love with her would be superhuman. And, oh,
my friend, what a misfortune, what a mockery, to be a round-shouldered,
threadbare, colourless, earnest, sensible man and to fall in love with
that beautiful, foolish child, who is not worth a thought from any one!
Or, worse still, supposing this operator is in love with her, and at the
same time married to a woman as round-shouldered, and threadbare, and
colourless, and sensible as himself! What misery!”
Near our compartment the train conductor was leaning against the
platform railing, gazing in the direction of the beautiful girl. His
flabby, dissipated, wrinkled face, haggard with the weariness of
sleepless nights and the motion of the train, wore an expression of
profoundest melancholy, as if in this girl he saw the spectre of his
youth, his happiness, his sober ways, his wife, and his children. His
heart was full of repentance, and he felt with his whole being that this
girl was not for him and that, with his premature old age, his
awkwardness, and his bloated face, every day, human happiness was as far
beyond his reach as was the sky.
The third bell clanged, the whistle blew, and the train moved slowly
away. Past our windows flashed the conductor, the station
superintendent, the garden, and at last the beautiful girl herself with
her sweet, childishly cunning smile.
By leaning out of the window and looking back, I could see her walking
up and down the platform in front of the window where the telegraph
operator was sitting, watching the train and pinning up a stray lock of
hair. Then she ran into the garden. The station was no longer kindled by
the western light; though the fields were level and bare, the sun’s rays
had faded from them, and the smoke from our engine lay in black, rolling
masses upon the green velvet of the winter wheat. A sense of sadness
pervaded the spring air, the darkling sky, and the railway-carriage.
Our friend the conductor came into our compartment and lit the lamp.