This track soon changed into a tiny footpath, and at last disappeared
altogether, and was crossed by a stream. Sanin counselled turning back,
but Maria Nikolaevna said, “No! I want to get to the mountains! Let’s
go straight, as the birds fly,” and she made her mare leap the stream.
Sanin leaped it too. Beyond the stream began a wide meadow, at first
dry, then wet, and at last quite boggy; the water oozed up everywhere,
and stood in pools in some places. Maria Nikolaevna rode her mare
straight through these pools on purpose, laughed, and said, “Let’s be
naughty children.”
“Do you know,” she asked Sanin, “what is meant by pool-hunting?”
“Yes,” answered Sanin.
“I had an uncle a huntsman,” she went on.
“I used to go out hunting with him—in the spring. It was delicious!
Here we are now, on the pools with you. Only, I see, you’re a Russian,
and yet mean to marry an Italian. Well, that’s your sorrow. What’s
that? A stream again! Gee up!”
The horse took the leap, but Maria Nikolaevna’s hat fell off her head,
and her curls tumbled loose over her shoulders. Sanin was just going to
get off his horse to pick up the hat, but she shouted to him, “Don’t
touch it, I’ll get it myself,” bent low down from the saddle, hooked
the handle of her whip into the veil, and actually did get the hat. She
put it on her head, but did not fasten up her hair, and again darted
off, positively holloaing. Sanin dashed along beside her, by her side
leaped trenches, fences, brooks, fell in and scrambled out, flew down
hill, flew up hill, and kept watching her face. What a face it was! It
was all, as it were, wide open: wide-open eyes, eager, bright, and
wild; lips, nostrils, open too, and breathing eagerly; she looked
straight before her, and it seemed as though that soul longed to master
everything it saw, the earth, the sky, the sun, the air itself; and
would complain of one thing only—that dangers were so few, and all she
could overcome. “Sanin!” she cried, “why, this is like Bürger’s Lenore!
Only you’re not dead—eh? Not dead … I am alive!” She let her force and
daring have full fling. It seemed not an Amazon on a galloping horse,
but a young female centaur at full speed, half-beast and half-god, and
the sober, well-bred country seemed astounded, as it was trampled
underfoot in her wild riot!
Maria Nikolaevna at last drew up her foaming and bespattered mare; she
was staggering under her, and Sanin’s powerful but heavy horse was
gasping for breath.
“Well, do you like it?” Maria Nikolaevna asked in a sort of exquisite
whisper.
“I like it!” Sanin echoed back ecstatically. And his blood was on fire.
“This isn’t all, wait a bit.” She held out her hand. Her glove was torn
across.
“I told you I would lead you to the forest, to the mountains…. Here
they are, the mountains!” The mountains, covered with tall forest, rose
about two hundred feet from the place they had reached in their wild
ride. “Look, here is the road; let us turn into it—and forwards. Only
at a walk. We must let our horses get their breath.”
They rode on. With one vigorous sweep of her arm Maria Nikolaevna flung
back her hair. Then she looked at her gloves and took them off. “My
hands will smell of leather,” she said, “you won’t mind that, eh?” …
Maria Nikolaevna smiled, and Sanin smiled too. Their mad gallop
together seemed to have finally brought them together and made them
friends.
“How old are you?” she asked suddenly.
“Twenty-two.”
“Really? I’m twenty-two too. A nice age. Add both together and you’re
still far off old age. It’s hot, though. Am I very red, eh?”
“Like a poppy!”
Maria Nikolaevna rubbed her face with her handkerchief. “We’ve only to
get to the forest and there it will be cool. Such an old forest is like
an old friend. Have you any friends?”
Sanin thought a little. “Yes … only few. No real ones.”
“I have; real ones—but not old ones. This is a friend too—a horse. How
carefully it carries one! Ah, but it’s splendid here! Is it possible I
am going to Paris the day after to-morrow?”
“Yes … is it possible?” Sanin chimed in.
“And you to Frankfort?”
“I am certainly going to Frankfort.”
“Well, what of it? Good luck go with you! Anyway, to-day’s ours … ours
… ours!”
The horses reached the forest’s edge and pushed on into the forest. The
broad soft shade of the forest wrapt them round on all sides.
“Oh, but this is paradise!” cried Maria Nikolaevna. “Further, deeper
into the shade, Sanin!”
The horses moved slowly on, “deeper into the shade,” slightly swaying
and snorting. The path, by which they had come in, suddenly turned off
and plunged into a rather narrow gorge. The smell of heather and
bracken, of the resin of the pines, and the decaying leaves of last
year, seemed to hang, close and drowsy, about it. Through the clefts of
the big brown rocks came strong currents of fresh air. On both sides of
the path rose round hillocks covered with green moss.
“Stop!” cried Maria Nikolaevna, “I want to sit down and rest on this
velvet. Help me to get off.”
Sanin leaped off his horse and ran up to her. She leaned on both his
shoulders, sprang instantly to the ground, and seated herself on one of
the mossy mounds. He stood before her, holding both the horses’ bridles
in his hand.
She lifted her eyes to him…. “Sanin, are you able to forget?”
Sanin recollected what had happened yesterday … in the carriage. “What
is that—a question … or a reproach?”
“I have never in my life reproached any one for anything. Do you
believe in magic?”
“What?”
“In magic?—you know what is sung of in our ballads—our Russian peasant
ballads?”
“Ah! That’s what you’re speaking of,” Sanin said slowly.
“Yes, that’s it. I believe in it … and you will believe in it.”
“Magic is sorcery …” Sanin repeated, “Anything in the world is
possible. I used not to believe in it—but I do now. I don’t know
myself.”
Maria Nikolaevna thought a moment and looked about her. “I fancy this
place seems familiar to me. Look, Sanin, behind that bushy oak—is there
a red wooden cross, or not?”
Sanin moved a few steps to one side. “Yes, there is.” Maria Nikolaevna
smiled. “Ah, that’s good! I know where we are. We haven’t got lost as
yet. What’s that tapping? A wood-cutter?”
Sanin looked into the thicket. “Yes … there’s a man there chopping up
dry branches.”
“I must put my hair to rights,” said Maria Nikolaevna. “Else he’ll see
me and be shocked.” She took off her hat and began plaiting up her long
hair, silently and seriously. Sanin stood facing her … All the lines of
her graceful limbs could be clearly seen through the dark folds of her
habit, dotted here and there with tufts of moss.
One of the horses suddenly shook itself behind Sanin’s back; he himself
started and trembled from head to foot. Everything was in confusion
within him, his nerves were strung up like harpstrings. He might well
say he did not know himself…. He really was bewitched. His whole being
was filled full of one thing … one idea, one desire. Maria Nikolaevna
turned a keen look upon him.
“Come, now everything’s as it should be,” she observed, putting on her
hat. “Won’t you sit down? Here! No, wait a minute … don’t sit down!
What’s that?”
Over the tree-tops, over the air of the forest, rolled a dull rumbling.
“Can it be thunder?”
“I think it really is thunder,” answered Sanin.
“Oh, this is a treat, a real treat! That was the only thing wanting!”
The dull rumble was heard a second time, rose, and fell in a crash.
“Bravo! Bis! Do you remember I spoke of the _Æneid_ yesterday? They too
were overtaken by a storm in the forest, you know. We must be off,
though.” She rose swiftly to her feet. “Bring me my horse…. Give me
your hand. There, so. I’m not heavy.”
She hopped like a bird into the saddle. Sanin too mounted his horse.
“Are you going home?” he asked in an unsteady voice.
“Home indeed!” she answered deliberately and picked up the reins.
“Follow me,” she commanded almost roughly. She came out on to the road
and passing the red cross, rode down into a hollow, clambered up again
to a cross road, turned to the right and again up the mountainside….
She obviously knew where the path led, and the path led farther and
farther into the heart of the forest. She said nothing and did not look
round; she moved imperiously in front and humbly and submissively he
followed without a spark of will in his sinking heart. Rain began to
fall in spots. She quickened her horse’s pace, and he did not linger
behind her. At last through the dark green of the young firs under an
overhanging grey rock, a tumbledown little hut peeped out at him, with
a low door in its wattle wall…. Maria Nikolaevna made her mare push
through the fir bushes, leaped off her, and appearing suddenly at the
entrance to the hut, turned to Sanin, and whispered “Æneas.”
Four hours later, Maria Nikolaevna and Sanin, accompanied by the groom,
who was nodding in the saddle, returned to Wiesbaden, to the hotel.
Polozov met his wife with the letter to the overseer in his hand. After
staring rather intently at her, he showed signs of some displeasure on
his face, and even muttered, “You don’t mean to say you’ve won your
bet?”
Maria Nikolaevna simply shrugged her shoulders.
The same day, two hours later, Sanin was standing in his own room
before her, like one distraught, ruined….
“Where are you going, dear?” she asked him. “To Paris, or to
Frankfort?”
“I am going where you will be, and will be with you till you drive me
away,” he answered with despair and pressed close to him the hands of
his sovereign. She freed her hands, laid them on his head, and clutched
at his hair with her fingers. She slowly turned over and twisted the
unresisting hair, drew herself up, her lips curled with triumph, while
her eyes, wide and clear, almost white, expressed nothing but the
ruthlessness and glutted joy of conquest. The hawk, as it clutches a
captured bird, has eyes like that.