_September._
_Darlingest ones:--_
It has been three weeks since our arrest, and to-day is the first time
we have been allowed to leave the room and go outdoors. We are still
under house-arrest, but we can go out in the garden, while two soldiers
guard the entrance. Isn't it ludicrous? A gendarme came last night and
announced with ponderous importance that we were to be permitted the
liberty of the garden if we gave our word of honor not to try to escape.
We signed two red-sealed documents, and so we can go into the garden
while two soldiers with bayonets look to it that we don't go any
farther.
Peter had to bully me into leaving my room this afternoon. I didn't want
to get healthy. I had grown so used to the proportions of our rooms I
hated to make the effort to adjust myself to any others. But Peter came
back from his daily round of visits to the English Consul, and the Army
Headquarters, and the office of Kiev's civil governor, and produced from
his coat-pocket a rubber ball. We were to play ball out in the garden,
he said. So, after some persuasion Marie and I went out into the garden
with him. How weak I was. My legs trembled going downstairs, and I was
exhausted when I reached the benches in the garden.
Janchu, seeing us, ran up joyfully and took his mother by the hand.
"This is my mother," he said in Polish, looking around proudly at the
other children who were playing there.
Every one looked at us curiously. A head appeared at every window in the
big stone apartment house. I saw the two women spies who had undressed
us. They were evidently employed as servants in some family, for one was
ironing and the other fixing a roast for the oven. They, too, looked out
at us. I felt hot and indignant and, yes, ashamed as though I had been
guilty. I wanted to hide. I felt inadequate to life. People were too
much for me. People--people, the living and the dead. What a weight of
life! I could hardly control my tears. Weakness, I suppose, for the
soles of my feet and my fingertips hurt me as though my nerves were
bared to the touch.
I looked up over the garden-wall. The tree-tops were yellow. While we
had been locked in our room, the season had changed. Autumn was upon us.
I shivered. There was a lavender mist over the city dimming the radiance
of the gold and silver church domes. How beautiful Kiev was! The
church-bells were so mellow-toned; and the children's shrill laughter
and cries as they played in the garden. But it tired me. Every
impression seemed to bruise me.
Peter bought some little Polish cakes, and we had hot tea to cheer us
up--three and four glasses of tea.
Good-night. Sometimes, when I think of you, I don't see all of you, but
instead a particular gesture, or I hear an inflection of voice that is
too familiar to be borne. Now I see mother's hands and they are
beautiful.