“Eh, hey; now I know, now I know,” said the old man, resuming his work
on the shoe. “My old head is like a sieve; nothing stays in it now. I
remember people who died a long time ago, oh, I remember them well!
But I forget new people. I have lived in this world a long time.”
“Have you lived in this forest long, daddy?”
“Eh, hey; a long time! When the Frenchmen came into the Tsar’s country
I was here.”
“You have seen much in your day. You must have many stories to tell.”
The old man looked at me with surprise.
“And what would I have seen, lad? I have seen the forest. The forest
murmurs night and day, winter and summer. One hundred years have I
lived in this forest like that tree there without heeding the passage
of time. And now I must go to my grave, and sometimes I can’t tell,
myself, whether I have lived in this world or not. Eh, hey; yes, yes.
Perhaps, after all, I have not lived at all.”
A corner of the dark cloud moved out over the clearing from behind the
close-growing tree-tops, and the pines that stood about the clearing
rocked in the first gusts of wind. The murmur of the forest swelled
into a great resonant chord. The old man raised his head and listened.
“A storm is coming,” he said after a pause. “I know. Oi, oi! A storm
will howl to-night, and will break the pines and tear them up by the
roots. The Master of the forest will come out.”
“How do you know that, daddy?”
“Eh, hey; I know it! I know what the trees are saying. Trees know what
fear is as well as we do. There’s the aspen, a worthless tree that’s
always getting broken to pieces. It trembles even when there is no
wind. The pines in the forest sing and play, but if the wind rises
ever so little they raise their voices and groan. This is nothing
yet. There, listen to that! Although my eyes see badly, my ears can
hear: that was an oak tree rustling. The oaks have been touched in the
clearing. The storm is coming.”
And, as a matter of fact, the pair of low, gnarled oak trees that
stood in the centre of the clearing, protected by the high wall of
the forest, now waved their strong branches and gave forth a muffled
rustling easily distinguishable from the clear, resonant notes of the
pines.
“Eh, hey; do you hear that, lad?” asked the old man with a childishly
cunning smile. “When the oak trees mutter like that, it means that the
Master is coming out at night to break them. But no, he won’t break
them! The oak is a strong tree, too strong even for the Master. Yes
indeed!”
“What Master, daddy? You say yourself it is the storm that breaks them.”
The old man nodded his head with a crafty look.
“Eh, hey; I know that! They tell me there are some people in the world
these days who don’t believe in anything. Yes indeed! But I have seen
him as plainly as I see you now, and better, because my eyes are old
now, and they were young then. Oi, oi! How well I could see when I was
young!”
“When did you see him, daddy? Tell me, do!”
“It was an evening just like this. The pines began to groan in the
forest. First they sang and then they groaned: oh-ah-o-oh-a-h! And then
they stopped, and then they began again louder and more pitifully than
ever. Eh, hey; they groaned because they knew that the Master would
throw down many of them that night! And then the oak trees began to
talk. And toward evening things grew worse until _he_ came whirling
along with the night. He ran through the forest laughing and crying,
dancing and spinning, and always swooping down on those oak trees and
trying to tear them up by the roots. And once in the Autumn I looked
out of the window, and _he_ didn’t like that. He came rushing up to the
window and, bang-bang, he broke it with a pine knot. He nearly hit my
face, bad luck to him! But I’m no fool. I jumped back. Eh, hey; lad,
that’s the sort of a quarrelsome fellow he is!”
“But what does he look like?”
“He looks exactly like an old willow tree in a marsh. Just exactly!
His hair is like dry mistletoe on a tree, and his beard too; but his
nose is like a big fat pine knot and his mouth is as twisted as if
it were all overgrown with lichen. Bah, how ugly he is! God pity any
Christian that looks like him! Yes indeed! I saw him once quite close,
in a swamp. If you’ll come here in the winter you can see _him_ for
yourself. You must go in that direction, up that hill--it is covered
with woods--and climb to the very top of the highest tree. He can
sometimes be seen from there racing along over the tree-tops, carrying
a white staff in his hand, and whirling, whirling until he whirls down
the hill into the valley. Then he runs away and disappears into the
forest. Eh, hey! And wherever he steps he leaves a foot-print of white
snow. If you don’t believe an old man come and see for yourself.”
The old man babbled on; the excited, anxious voices of the forest and
the impending storm seemed to have set his old blood racing. The aged
gaffer laughed and blinked his faded eyes.
But suddenly a shadow flitted across his high, wrinkled forehead. He
nudged me with his elbow and said with a mysterious look:
“Let me tell you something, lad. Of course the Master of the forest is
a worthless, good-for-nothing creature, that is true. It disgusts a
Christian to see an ugly face like his, but let me tell you the truth
about him: he never does any one any harm. He plays jokes on people, of
course, but as for hurting them, he never would do that!”
“But you said yourself, daddy, that he tried to hit you with a pine
knot.”
“Eh, hey; he tried to! But he was angry then because I was looking at
him through the window; yes indeed! But if you don’t go poking your
nose into his affairs he’ll never play you a dirty trick. That’s what
he’s like. Worse things have been done by men than by him in this
forest. Eh, hey; they have indeed!”
The old man’s head dropped forward on to his breast and he sat silent
for several minutes. Then he looked at me, and a ray of awakening
memory seemed to gleam through the film that fogged his eyes.
“I’ll tell you an old story of our forest, lad. It happened here in
this very place, a long, long time ago. Almost always I remember it as
in a dream. But when the forest begins to talk more loudly, I remember
it well. Shall I tell it to you?”
“Yes, do, daddy! Tell me!”
“Very well, I’ll tell you; eh, hey! Listen!”