Tales of the Wilderness Part 16

In the train at Budslav--where the staff-officers were billeted--it was known that Lieutenant Agrenev had such a single, overmastering, life-long love.

A wife--the woman, the maiden who loves only once--to whom love is the most beautiful and only thing in life, will do heroic deeds to get past all the Army ordinances, the enemy's reconnaissance, and reach her beloved. To her there is but one huge heart in the world and nothing more.

Lieutenant Agrenev's quarters were in a distant carriage, Number 30- 35.

The Staff Officers' train stood under cover. No one was allowed to strike a light there. In the evening, after curtaining the windows with blankets, the officers gathered together in the carriage of the General Commanding the XXth Corps, to play cards and drink cognac.

Someone cynically remarked that there was a close resemblance between life at the front and life in a monastery, in as much as in both the chief topic of conversation was women: there was no reason, therefore, why monks should not be sent to the front for fasting and prayer.

While they were playing cards, the guard, Pan Ponyatsky, came in and spoke to the cavalry-captain Kremnev. He told him of a woman, young and very beautiful. The captain's knees began to tremble; he sat helplessly on the step of the carriage, and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. Pan Ponyatsky warned him that he must not strike a light. In the distance could be heard the roar of cannon, like an approaching midnight storm. Kremnev had never felt such a throbbing joy as he felt now, sitting on the carriage step. Pan Ponyatsky repeated that she was a beauty, and waiting--that the captain must not delay; and led him through the dark corridor of the train.

The carriage smelt of men and leather; behind the doors of the compartments echoed a sound of laughter from those who were playing cards. The two men walked half the length of the train.

As they pa.s.sed from one waggon to another they saw the flare of a rocket in the distance, and in its baleful green light the number of carriage--30-35--loomed in faint outline.

Pan Ponyatsky unlocked the door and whispered:

"Here. Only mind, be quiet."

The Pan closed the door after Kremnev. It was an officer's compartment; there was a smell of perfume, and on one of the lower bunks was a woman--sleeping. Kremnev threw off his cloak and sat down by the sleeping figure.

The door opened; Pan Ponyatsky thrust in his head and whispered:

"Don't worry about her, sir; she is all right, only a little quieter now." Then the head disappeared.

Love! Love over the seas and hills and years!

It had become known that a woman was to visit Agrenev, and forthwith he was ordered away for twenty-four hours on Detachment. Who then would ever know what guard had opened the door, what officer had wrought the deed? Would a woman dare scream, having come where she had no right to be? Or would she dare tell ... to a husband or a lover? No, not to a husband, nor a lover, nor to anyone! And Pan Ponyatsky? Why should he not earn an odd fifty roubles? Who was he to know of love across the seas and hills?

Yesterday, the day before, and again to-day, continuous fighting and retreating. The staff-train moved off, but the officers went on foot.

A wide array of men, wagons, horses, cannon, ordinance. All in a vast confusion. None could hear the rattling fire of the machine-guns and rifles. All was lost in a torrential downpour of rain. Towards evening there was a halt. All were eager to rest. No one noticed the approaching dawn. Then a Russian battery commenced to thunder. They were ordered to counter-attack. They trudged back through the rain, no one knew why--Agrenev, Kremnev, the brethren--three women.

THE SNOW WIND

A cruel, biting blizzard swept across the snow; over the earth moved misty, fantastic clouds, that drifted slowly across the face of a pale troubled moon. Towards night-fall, the wolves could be heard in the valley, howling a summons to their leader from the spot where the pack always a.s.sembled.

The valley descended sharply to a hollow thickly overgrown with red pines. Thirteen years back an unusually violent storm had swept the vicinity, and hurled an entire pine belt to the ground. Now, under the wide, windy sky, spread a luxuriant growth of young firs, while little oaks, hazels, and alders here and there dotted the depression.

Here the leader of the wolf-pack had his lair. Here for thirteen years his mate had borne his cubs. He was already old, but huge, strong, greedy, ferocious, and fearless, with lean legs, powerful snapping jaws, a short, thick neck on which the hair stood up s.h.a.ggily like a short mane and terrified his younger companions.

This great, gaunt old wolf had been leader for seven years, and with good reason. By day he kept to his lair. At night, terrible and relentless, he prowled the fields and growled a short summons to his mates. He led the pack on their quests for food, hunting throughout the night, racing over plains and down ravines, ravening round farms and villages. He not only slew elks, horses, bulls, and bears, but also his own wolves if they were impudent or rebellious. He lived--as every wolf must live--to hunt, to eat, and to breed.

In winter the snow lay over the land like a dead white pall, and food was scarce. The wolves sat round in a circle, gnashed their teeth, and wailed long and plaintively through the night, their noses pointed at the moon.

Five days back, on a steep slope of the valley not far from the wolf track to a watering place, and close to a belt of young fir-trees surrounded by a snow-topped coppice, some men from a neighbouring farm had set a powerful wolf-trap, above which they had thrown a dead calf. On their nocturnal prowls the wolves discovered the carcase.

For a long time they sat round it in the grey darkness, howling plaintively, hungrily gnas.h.i.+ng their fangs, afraid to move nearer, and each one timidly jostling the other forward with cruel vicious eyes.

At last one young wolf's hunger overcame his fear; he threw himself on the calf with a shrill squeal, and after him rushed the rest, whining, growling, raising their tails, bending their bony backs, bristling the hair on their short thick necks--and into the trap fell the leader's mate.

They paid no attention to her, but eagerly devoured the calf, and it was only when they had finished and cleared away all traces of the orgy that they realised the she-wolf was trapped there for good.

All night she howled and threw herself about, saliva falling from her dripping jaws, her eyes rolling wildly and emitting little sparks of green fire as she circled round and round on a clanking chain. In the morning two farm-hands arrived, threw her on their sleigh and drove away.

The leader remained alone the whole day. Then, when night again returned, he called his band together, tore one young wolf to pieces, rushed round with lowered head and bristling hair, finally leaving the pack and returning to his lair. The wolves submitted to his terrible punishment, for he was their chief, who had seized power by force, and they patiently awaited his return, thinking he had gone on a solitary food-hunt.

But as the night advanced and he did not come, they began to howl their urgent summons to him, and now there was an undercurrent of menace in their cries, the l.u.s.t to kill, for the code of the wild beasts prescribed only one penalty for the leader who deserted his pack--death!

II

All through that night, and the following days and nights, the old wolf lay immovable in his lair. At last, with drooping head, he rose from his resting-place, stretched himself mournfully, first on his fore-paws, then on his hind-legs, arched his back, gnashed his fangs and licked the snow with his clotted tongue. The sky was still shrouded in a dense, velvety darkness: the snow was hard, and glittered like a million points of white light. The moon--a dark red orb--was blotted over with ragged ma.s.ses of inky clouds and was fast disappearing on the right of the horizon; on the left, a crimson dawn full of menace was slowly breaking. The snow-wind blew and whistled overhead. Around the wolf, under a bleak sky, were fallen pines and little fir trees cloaked with snow.

He moved up to a lone, naked waste above the valley, emerged from the wood, and stood with lowered head by its border, listening and sniffing. Here the wind blew more strongly, the trees cracked and groaned, and from the wide dark expanse of open country came a sense of dreary emptiness and bitter cold.

The old wolf raised his head, pointed his nose, and uttered a prolonged howl. There was no answer. Then he sped to the watering place and to the river, to the place where his mate had perished.

He loped along swiftly, noiselessly, crouching on the earth, unnoticeable but for his glistening eyes, which made him terrible to encounter suddenly.

From a hill by the riverside a village could be descried, its mole- like windows already alight, and not far distant loomed the dark silhouette of a lonely farm.

The wolf prowled aimlessly through the quiet, snow-covered fields.

Although it was a still, dark night, the blue lights of the approaching dawn proclaimed that March had already come. The gale blew fiercely and bitingly, driving the snow in swirls and spirals before it.

All was smooth at the place where the trap had been set; there was not a trace of the recent death, even the snow round the trap had been flattened out. The very scent of the she-wolf had been almost entirely blown away. The wolf again raised his head and uttered a deep, mournful howl; the moonlight was reflected in his expressionless eyes, which were filled with little tears, then he lowered his head to the earth and was silent.

A light twinkled in the farm-house windows. The wolf went towards it, his eyes gleaming with vicious green sparks. The dogs scented him and began a loud, terrified barking. The wolf lay in the snow and howled back loudly. The red moon was swimming towards the horizon, and swift murky clouds glided over it. Here by the river-side, and down at the watering-place, in the great primeval woods and in the valleys, this wolf had lived for thirteen years. Now his mate lay in the yard of yonder farm-house. He howled again. A man came out into the yard and shouted savagely, thinking a pack of wolves were approaching.

The night pa.s.sed, but the wolf still wandered aimlessly, his broad head drooping, his ferocious eyes glaring. The moon sank, slanting and immense, behind the horizon, the dawn-light increased, a universal murmuring filled the air, shadowy vistas of pine-trees, firs and frowning ravines began to open up in all directions. The morning glow deepened into rivers and floods of delicate, interchanging colour. Under the protean play the snow changed its dress to lilac. The wolf withdrew to its lair.

By the fallen pine trees where grew delicate green firs, fat, clumsy little cubs, born earlier in the spring, played among the cones and the belt of young spruces that guarded the entrance to their lair.

III

The morning came, its clear blue bringing an a.s.surance that it was March to those desolate places lying in lonely grandeur beneath a smiling sky. It whispered that the winter was pa.s.sed and that spring had come. Soon the snow would melt and the sodden earth would throb and pulse with vernal activity, and it would be impossible not to rejoice with Nature.

The snow thickened into a grey s.h.i.+ning crust under the warm rays of the sun, to deepen into blue where the shadows fell. The fir-trees, s.h.a.ggy and formidable, seemed especially verdant and welcoming to the tide of sunlight that flowed to their feet, and lay there collected in the little hollows about their roots. The woodp.e.c.k.e.r could be heard amidst the pines, and daws, tomt.i.ts and bullfinches carolled merrily as they spread their wings and preened their plumage in the sun. The pines exhaled their pungent, resinous, exhilarating odour.

The wolf lay under cover all day. His bed was bestrewn with decaying foliage and overgrown with moss. He rested his head on his paws, gazing solemnly before him with small tear-stained eyes; he lay there motionless, feeling a great weariness and melancholy. Around him was a thick cl.u.s.ter of firs overspread with snow.

Twice the old wolf raised his head, opened his jaws wide and gave a bitter plaintive whine; then his eyes grew dim, their ferocity died down, and he wagged his tail like a cub, striking a thick branch a sharp blow with it. Then again he relapsed into melancholy immobility.

At last, as the day declined, as the naming splendour of the dying sun sailed majestically towards the west and sank beneath the horizon in a glory of spilled violets and purples, and as the moon uprose, a huge, glowing lantern of light, the old wolf for the first time showed himself angry and restless. He emerged from his cover and commenced a loud howling, fiercely bristling his hair; then he sat on his hind-legs and whined as though in great pain, again, as if driven wild by this agony, he began to scatter and gnaw at the snow. Finally at a swift pace, and crouching, he fled into the fields, to the neighbourhood of the farm near which the wolf-traps were laid.

Here it was dark and cold, the snow-wind rose afresh, harsh and violent, and the crusted snow cut the animal's feet. The last scent of the she-wolf, which he had sniffed only the previous day, had completely disappeared. In some remote part of the valley the pack were howling in rage and hunger for their leader.

Tossing himself about and howling, the old wolf rushed madly over hill and hollow. The night pa.s.sed; he dashed about the fields and valleys, went down to the river, ran into the deep fastness of the forest and whined ferociously, for there was nothing left for him to do. He had lived to eat and to breed. Man, by an iron trap, had severed him from the law; now he knew only death awaited him.