Tales of the Wilderness Part 6

"I am a woman," she cried aloud. "I drink to ourselves, to women, to the gentle, to the homely, to happiness and purity! To motherhood! I drink to the sacred--" she broke off abruptly, sat down and hung her head.

Somebody cried: "Hurrah!" To someone else it seemed that Kseniya was weeping. The clock began to chime, the guests shouted "Hurrah!"

clinked gla.s.ses, and drank.

Then they sang, while some rose and carried round gla.s.ses to those of the guests who were still sober and those who were only partially intoxicated. They bowed. They sang _The Goblets_, and the ba.s.ses thundered:

"Drink to the dregs! Drink to the dregs!" Kseniya Ippolytovna offered her first gla.s.s to Polunin. She stood in front of him with a tray, curtseyed without lifting her eyes and sang. Polunin rose, colouring with embarra.s.sment:

"I never drink wine," he protested.

But the ba.s.ses thundered: "Drink to the dregs! Drink to the dregs!"

His face darkened, he raised a silencing arm, and firmly repeated:

"I never drink wine, and I do not intend to."

Kseniya gazed into the depths of his eyes and said softly:

"I want you to, I beg you.... Do you hear?"

"I will not," Polunin whispered back.

Then she cried out:

"He doesn't want to! We mustn't make him against his will!" She turned away, offered her gla.s.s to the Magistrate, and after him to the Lyceum student; then excused herself and withdrew, quietly returning later looking sad and as if she had suddenly aged.

They lingered a long while over supper; then went into the ball-room to dance, and sing, and play old fas.h.i.+oned games. The men went to the buffets to drink, the older ones then sat in the drawing-room playing whist, and talked.

It was nearly five o'clock when the guests departed. Only the Arkhipovs and Polunin remained. Kseniya Ippolytovna ordered coffee, and all four sat down at a small table feeling worn out. The house was now wrapt in silence. The dawn had just broken.

Kseniya was tired to death, but endeavoured to appear fresh and cheerful. She pa.s.sed the coffee round, and then fetched a bottle of liqueur. They sat almost in silence; what talk they exchanged was desultory.

"One more year dropped into Eternity," Arkhipov said, sombrely.

"Yes, a year nearer to death, a year further from birth," rejoined Polunin.

Kseniya Ippolytovna was seated opposite him. Her eyes were veiled.

She rose now to her feet, leaned over the table and spoke to him in slow, measured accents vibrating with malice:

"Well, pious one! Everything here is mine. I asked you to-day to give me a baby, because I am merely a woman and so desire motherhood.... I asked you to take wine... You refused. The nearer to death the further from birth, you say? Well then, begone!"

She broke into tears, sobbing loudly and plaintively, covering her face with her hands; then leant against the wall, still sobbing. The Arkhipovs ran to her; Polunin stood at the table dumbfounded, then left the room.

"I didn't ask him for pa.s.sion or caresses. ... I have no husband!"

Kseniya cried, sobbing and shrieking like a hysterical girl. They calmed her after a time, and she spoke to them in s.n.a.t.c.hes between her sobs, which were less violent for a while. Then she broke out weeping afresh, and sank into an armchair.

The dawn had now brightened; the room was filled with a faint, flickering light. Misty, vaporous, tormenting shadows danced and twisted oddly in the s.h.i.+fting glimmer: in the tenebrous half-light the occupants looked grey, weary, and haggard, their faces strangely distorted by the alternate rise and fall of the shadows. Arkhipov's bald head with its tightly stretched skin resembled a greatly elongated skull.

"Listen to me, you Arkhipovs," Kseniya cried brokenly. "Supposing a distracted woman who desired to be pure were to come and ask you for a baby--would you give her the same answer as Polunin? He said it was impossible, that it was sin, that he loved someone else. Would you answer like that, Arkhipov, knowing it was the woman's last--her only--chance of salvation--her only love?" She looked eagerly from one to the other.

"No, certainly not--I should answer in a different way," Arkhipov replied quietly.

"And you, Vera Lvovna, a wife ... do you hear? I speak in front of you?"

Vera Lvovna nodded, laid her hand gently on Kseniya's forehead, and answered softly and tenderly:

"I understand you perfectly."

Again Kseniya wept.

The dawn trod gently down the lanes of darkness. The light grew clearer and the candles became dim and useless. The outlines of the furniture crept out of the net of shadows. Through the blue mist outside the snow, valley, forest, and fields were faintly visible.

From the right of the horizon dawn's red light flushed the heavens with a cold purple.

Polunin drove along by the fields, trotting smoothly behind his stallion. The earth was blue and cold and ghostly, a land carved out of dreams, seemingly unsubstantial and unreal. A harsh, bitter wind blew from the north, stirring the telegraph-wires by the roadside to a loud, humming refrain. A silence as of death reigned over the land, yet life thrilled through it; and now and then piping goldfinches appeared from their winter nests in the moist green ditches, and flew ahead of Polunin; then suddenly turned aside and perched lightly on the wayside brambles.

Night still lingered amid the calm splendour of the vast, primeval forest. As he drove through the shadowed glades the huge trees gently swayed their giant boughs, softly brus.h.i.+ng aside the shroud of encompa.s.sing darkness.

A golden eagle darted from its mist-wreathed eyrie and flew over the fields; then soared upwards in ever-widening circles towards the east--where, like a pale rose ribbon stretched across the sky, the light from the rising sun shed a delicate opalescent glow on the snow, which it transformed to an exquisite lilac, and the shadows, to which it lent a wonderful, mysterious, quivering blue tint.

Polunin sat in his seat, huddled together, brooding morosely, deriving a grim satisfaction from the fact that--all the same--he had not broken the law. Henceforth, he never could break it; the thought of Kseniya Ippolytovna brought pain, but he would not condemn her.

At home, Alena was already up and about; he embraced her fondly, clasped her in his arms, kissed her forehead; then he took up the infant and gazed lingeringly, with infinite tenderness, upon her innocent little face.

The day was glorious; the golden sunlight streamed in through the windows in a s.h.i.+ning cataract, betokening the advent of spring, and made pools of molten gold upon the floor. But the snow still lay in all its virgin whiteness over the earth.

A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES

I

To the north, south, east, and west--in all directions for hundreds of miles--stretched forests and bogs enveloped in a wide-spread veil of lichen. Brown-trunked cedars and pines towered on high. Beneath there was a thick, impenetrable jungle of firs, alders, wild-berries, junipers, and low-hanging birches. Pungent, deep-sunken, lichen- covered springs of reddish water were hidden amidst undergrowth in little glades, couched in layers of turf bordered by red bilberries and huckleberries.

With September came the frosts--fifty degrees below zero. The snow lay everywhere--crisp and dazzling. There was daylight for three or four hours only; the remainder of the time it was night. The sky was lowering, and brooded darkly over the earth. There was a tense hush and stillness, only broken in September by the lowing of mating elks.

In December came the mournful, sinister howling of the wolves; for the rest of the time--a deep, dreadful, overpowering silence! A silence that can be found only in the wastelands of the world.

A village stood on the hill by the river.

The bare slope descended to the water's edge, a grey-brown granite, and white slatey clay, steep, beaten by wind and rain. Clumsy discoloured boats were anch.o.r.ed to the bank. The river was broad, dark, and cold, its surface broken by sombre, choppy, bluish waves.

Here and there the grey silhouettes of huts were visible; their high, projecting, boarded roofs were covered by greenish lichen. The windows were shuttered. Nets dried close by. It was the abode of hunters who went long excursions into the forests in winter, to fight the wild beasts.

II

In the spring the rivers--now broad, free and mighty--overflowed their banks. Heavy waves broke up the face of the waters, which sent forth a deep, hoa.r.s.e, subdued murmur, as restless and disquieting as the season itself. The snow thawed. The pine-trees showed resinous lights, and exhaled a strong, pungent odour.