The night passed, 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 assurance that it was March to those desolate places lying in lonely grandeur beneath a smiling sky. It whispered that the winter was passed 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 shining crust under the warm rays of the sun, to deepen into blue where the shadows fell. The fir-trees, shaggy 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 woodpecker could be heard amidst the pines, and daws, tomtits 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 cluster 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 passed; 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.

* * * * * * *

IV

While it was yet quite dark, a farm-hand rose from his warm bed to go to the village on business. He put on a wadded jacket and fur-lined cap, lighted a pipe—the glow illuminating his pock-marked hands—and went out into the yard. The dogs leaped round him, uttering timid cowardly whines. He grinned, kicked them aside, and opened the gate.

Outside darkness had descended softly from the heavens, and lovingly overspread a tired world; greenish clouds floated through the blue- black sea of naked space and the snow gleamed greyish blue beneath a turbid moon. The keen snow-wind swept the ground in a fury of white swirls.

The man glanced up at the sky, whistled, and strode off to the village at a brisk swinging pace. He did not mark a wolf stealing along close by the road and running on ahead of him. But when he was near the village he came to a sudden halt. There, on the road in front of him, a huge, lean, much-scarred wolf sat on its hind legs by a crossway. With hideous, baleful green eyes it watched his approach. The man whistled, and waved his arm. The wolf did not stir: its eyes grew dim for a moment; then lighted up again with a cruel ferocious glare.

The man struck a match and took a few steps forward: still the wolf did not stir. Then the man halted, the smile left his face, and he looked anxiously about him. All around stretched fields, the village was yet in the distance. He made a snow-ball and flung it ingratiatingly at the wolf. The brute remained still, only champing its jaws and bristling the hair on its neck.

A moment the man remained there; then turned back. He walked slowly at first; then he began to run. Faster and faster he flew; but, as he neared his farm, he beheld the wolf again on the road before him. It was once more sitting on its haunches, and it licked its dripping jaws. Now terror seized the unfortunate peasant. He shouted; then wheeled, and ran back blindly. He shrieked wildly as he ran—mad with fear, unaware what he was doing. There was a death-like hush over the snow-laden earth that lay supine beneath the cloud-ridden moon. The frenzied man alone was screaming.

Gasping, staggering, with froth on his lips, he reached the village at last. There stood the wolf! He dashed from the road tossing his arms, uttering hoarse terrified cries; his cap had fallen off long before, his hair and red scarf were streaming in the wind. Behind him came the relentless pad, pad of the wolf; it's hot, fetid breath scorched the nape of his neck; he could hear it snapping its jaws. He stumbled, lurched forward, fell: as he was about to lift himself from the deep spongy snow, the wolf leaped upon him and struck him from behind—a short, powerful blow on the neck.

The man fell—to rise no more! A moment, and then his horrible choking cries had ceased. Through the vastness rang the wolf's savage, solitary howling.

V

At dusk when the snow-wind was rushing through the darkness of the night—a wild turbulent cataract of icy air—the wolf-pack gathered together in the valley and howled. They were calling for a leader.

The sky spread above them, wan and pallid, the wind moaned and whistled through the feathery tops of the pine-trees. Amid the snow the wolves sat in a circle on their haunches and howled dismally. They were hungry and had not eaten for six days; their leader had deserted them. He who had led them on their hunts and prowls, who seven years back had killed their former leader and established his own chieftainship, had now left them forlorn.

Sitting in a circle, howling with gleaming eyes and bristling hair, they were mournful yet vicious; like helpless slaves they did not know what to do. Only one young wolf, a brother of the one their leader had recently killed, strutted about independently and gnashed his teeth, conscious of his strength and agility. In the pride of his youthful vigour he had conceived the ambition to make himself the leader; he certainly had no thought that this was a fatal step entailing in the end his doom. For it is the Law of the Pack that death is meted out to the usurper of power. He commenced to howl proudly, but the others paid no heed, they only drooped their heads and howled in fear and trembling.

Gradually the dawn broke. Faint and silvery, the moon was sinking through pale, luminous veils in the west; in the east there glowed a fierce red light like that of a camp fire. The sky was still shrouded in darkness, the snow glimmered a cold pallid blue in the half-light.

The old wolf, fresh from his kill, slowly descended the valley where his pack had gathered. At sight of his grey, gaunt form they rushed forward to meet him, and as they ran none seemed to know what was about to happen; they advanced fawning and cringing until the young wolf, with a savage squeal, dared to throw himself upon the leader in a sudden fierce attack: then they all suddenly remembered his desertion of them, their law which demands death for its infringement, and with glistening bared teeth they too flung themselves upon him. He made no resistance. He died and was torn to pieces which, with his bones, were quickly devoured.

* * * * * * *

VI

The leader died seven days after the death of his mate.

A week later, beneath a golden sun and a smiling blue sky, the snow was melting, cleansing the earth for the breath of spring. Streamlets became abundant, twining like shining ribbons of molten light through the fields and valleys, the river grew swollen and turbid, becoming a fierce impassable flood, and the little fir trees grew still more feathery and verdant.

The young wolf, like the old one before him, now became leader and took a mate; she was the daughter of the old leader, and she went into the cover to breed.



THE FOREST MANOR

I

Dark, yellow snow still lay in the ravines from under which flowed icy streamlets; on the surface it was thawing, and last year's grass pointed up like stiff golden arrows to the cold Heavens. Here and there, in bright sunny patches, appeared the first yellow flowers. The sky was dull and overcast, laden with massy, leaden-coloured clouds.

A carrion-crow flew low over the trees and the twittering birds fell silent. When the menace had passed they broke forth anew in triumphant song, once more absorbed by the joy of living,

The swelling earth gurgled happily beneath the soft kiss of the warm humid wind, and from somewhere afar came reverberating sounds of spring; perchance from the people in the village across the water, or perchance from the warbling birds over the streams.

Ivanov the forester came out on to the door-step which had already dried, and lighted a cigarette; it burned but slowly in the moist atmosphere of the deepening twilight.

"It will be hot, Mitrich, thank God!" remarked the watchman, Ignat, as he passed by with some buckets.... "Snipe will be about to-morrow, and we will have to hunt right into Easter."

He went into the cow-house, then returned, sat down on a step, and rolled a cigarette.

The pungent odour of his bad tobacco mingled with the sweet aroma of dying foliage and melting snow. Beyond the river a church bell was ringing for the Lenten festival, and there was a melancholy thrill in its notes as they crossed the water.

"That must be the seventh Gospel," said Ignat. "They will be coming out with the candles soon." Then he added abruptly: "The river won't reach to a man's waist in the summer and now it is like a torrent; they have been hardly able to cross it in the long boat ... Spring, ah!... Well, I shall certainly have to clean out my double-barrelled gun to-day." With a business-like air he spat into a puddle and vigorously inhaled his cigarette smoke.

"The cranes will come down by the garden for the night, at dusk, judging by all portents, and to-morrow we will go after the grouse," replied Ivanov, and listened intently to the myriad sounds of evening.

Ignat also listened, bending his shaggy head sideways to the earth and the sky. He caught some desired note and agreed:

"Yes, it must be so. I can hear the beat of their wings. I am truly thankful. At dawn to-morrow we must get out the drosky. We will go to the Ratchinsky wood and have a look. We can get through all right by the upper road."

From the right of the steps, his daughter Aganka skipped gaily on to the terrace and began beating the dust out of a sheep-skin coat with thin brown sticks. It was cold and she commenced to dance for warmth, singing in a shrill voice:

"The nightingale sings In the branches above— The nightingale brings No rest to his love!"

Ignat gave her an indulgent look; nevertheless he said sternly: "Come, come! That is sin ... it is Lent and you singing!"

Aganka merely laughed.

"There is no sin now!" she retorted, turning her back to the steps and propping up her right leg as she vigorously beat the sheepskin coat.

Ignat playfully threatened her—then smiled and said to Ivanov: "A fine girl, isn't she?... She is not yet sixteen and is already a flirt! Its no use talking to her. She won't remain in the house at night, but must go slipping off somewhere."

Aganka turned round sharply, tossing her head. "Well, I am not a dead creature!"

"You are not, my girl; indeed you are not—only hold your tongue!"

Ivanov glanced at her. She was like a little wild fawn with her fresh young body and sparkling eyes, always so ready to bewitch. His own weary eyes involuntarily saddened for a moment; then he said cheerily, in a louder tone than necessary:

"Well, isn't that the right attitude? Isn't it the best way? Love while you can, Aganka, have a happy time."

"Oh, yes, let her have a happy time by all means ... it is young blood's privilege." replied Ignat.

The bells again rang out for the Gospel. The sky grew darker and darker. Ravens croaked hoarsely amidst the verdant foliage of the trees. Ignat put his ear to the ground, listening. From the distance, from the garden, the ravines, and the pasturage came the low cries of cranes, barely audible amid the subdued rustling of the spring. Ignat thrust forward his bearded face, it looked at first serious and attentive, then it grew cunning and became animated with joy.

"The cranes have come down!" he cried in an excited whisper, as though afraid of frightening them. Then he began to bustle about, muttering:

"I must grease the double-barrel...."

Ivanov also bestirred himself. Because while tracking the cranes he would be seeing her, Arina's image now came vividly before him— broad, strong, ardent, with soft sensual lips, and wearing a red handkerchief.

"Get the drosky out at dawn to-morrow," he ordered Ignat. "We will go to the Ratchinsky wood. I will go there now and have a look round."

II

The panelled walls and the stove with its cracked tiles were only faintly visible in the soft twilight which filled Ivanov's study. By the walls stood a sofa, and a desk whose green cloth was untidily bestrewn with the accumulated litter of years and copiously spotted with candle grease, reminiscent of the long, dreary nights Ivanov had spent—a prey to loneliness.

A heap of horse trappings—collars, straps, saddles, bridles—lay by the large, square, bare windows. During the winter nights wolves watched the gleam of yellow candlelight within them. Now outside was the tranquil, genial atmosphere of Spring with all its multi-coloured splendour. Against a deep-blue sky with an orange streak like a pencil line drawn across the horizon, showed the sharp, knotted twigs of the crotegus and the lilac beneath the windows.

Ivanov lighted a candle and commenced manufacturing cartridges to pass away the time. Lydia Constantinovna entered the room.

"Will you have tea here or in the dining-room?" she inquired.

Ivanov declined tea with a wave of his hand.

All through the years of the Revolution Lydia Constantinovna had lived in the Crimea, coming to Marin-Brod for a fortnight the previous summer, afterwards leaving for Moscow. Now she had returned for the Easter holidays, but not alone—the artist Mintz accompanied her. Ivanov had never heard of him before.

Mintz was clean-shaven and had long fair hair; he wore steel-rimmed pince-nez over his cold grey eyes which he often took off and put on again; when he did so his eyes changed, looking helpless and malicious without the glasses, like those of little owlets in daylight; his thin, shaven lips were closely compressed, and there was often an expression of mistrust and decrepitude in his face; his conversation and movements were noisy.

Lydia Constantinovna had arrived with Mintz the day before at dusk; Ivanov was not at home. They had gone for a walk in the evening, returning only at two o'clock when dawn was just about to break, and a cold mist hung over the earth like a soft grey veil. They were met by barking dogs which were quickly silenced by the lash of Ignat's whip.

Ivanov had come home earlier, at eleven o'clock, and sat by his study window alone, listening to the gentle sounds of night and the ceaseless hootings of the owls in the park. Lydia Constantinovna did not come to him, nor did he go in to her.

It was in the daytime that Ivanov first saw the artist. Mintz was sitting in the park on a dried turf-bench, and gazing intently at the river. Ivanov passed him. The artist's shrunken ruffled figure had an air of desolation and abandonment.

The drawing-room was next to Ivanov's study. There still remained out of the ruin a carpet and some armchairs near the large, dirty windows, an old piano stood unmoved, and some portraits still hung on the walls.

Lydia Constantinovna and Mintz came in from the back-room. Lydia walked with her usual brisk, even tread, carrying herself with the smooth, elastic bearing and graceful swing of her beautiful body that Ivanov remembered so well.

She raised the piano-cover and began playing a dashing bravura that was strikingly out of place in the dismantled room, then she closed the piano-lid with a slam.

Aganka entered with the tea on a tray.

Mintz walked about the dim room, tapping his heels on the parquet floor, and though he spoke loudly, his voice held a note of yearning pain.

"I was in the park just now. That pond, those maple avenues— disintegrating, dying, disappearing—drive me melancholy mad. The ice has already melted in the pond by the dam. Why can we not bring back the romantic eighteenth century, and sit in dressing-gowns, musing with delicious sadness over our pipes? Why are we not illustrious lords?"

Lydia Constantinovna smiled as she answered: "Why not indeed! That is a poetic fancy. But the reality is very much worse. Marin-Brod has never been a country house, it is a forest manor, a forestry-office and nothing more ... nothing more.... I always feel an interloper here. This is only my second day and I am already depressed." Her tone was sad, yet it held just a perceptible note of anger.

"Reality and Fancy? Certainly I am an artist, for I always see the latter, the beautiful and spiritual side," Mintz declared; and added in an undertone: "Do you remember yesterday ... the park?"

"Oh, yes, the park," Lydia replied in a tired, subdued tone. "They hold the Twelfth Gospel Service to-day; when I was a young girl, how I used to love standing in church with a candle—I felt so good. And now I love nothing!"

It was already quite dark in the drawing room. A wavering, greenish- golden light streamed in through the windows and played on the dim walls. Ivanov came out of his study. He was wearing high boots and a leather jacket, and carried a rifle under his arm. He went silently to the door. Lydia Constantinovna stopped him.

"Are you going out again, Sergius? Is it to hunt?"

"Yes."

Ivanov stood still and Lydia went up to him. She had dark shadows under her eyes, and the hand of time—already bearing away her youth and beauty—lay upon her marvellously white skin, at her lips and on her cheeks, in faint, scarcely visible wrinkles. Ivanov noticed it distinctly.

"Does one hunt at night—in the dark? I did not know that," Lydia said, repeating "I did not know...."

"I am going to the wood."

"I have come back here after not having seen you for months, and we have not yet spoken a word...."

Ivanov did not reply, but went out. His footsteps echoed through the great house, finally dying away in the distance. The front-door slammed, shaking the whole mansion, which was old and falling to pieces.

Lydia Constantinovna remained in the middle of the room, her face turned to the door. Mintz approached, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.

"You must not take it to heart, Lit," he said softly and kindly.

She freed her hand and laid it on Mintz's shoulder.

"No, one should not take it to heart," she assented in a low voice, "One should not.... But listen, Mintz.... How strange it all is! Once he loved me very much, though I never loved him.... But my youth was spent here, and now I feel unhappy.... I remember all that happened in this drawing-room, it was the first time. If only I could have all over again! Perhaps I should act differently then. I feel sorry now for my youth and inexperience, though formerly I cursed them, and I am far from regretting all that followed afterwards. But I need a refuge now.... If you only knew how much he loved me in those days!..."

Lydia Constantinovna was silent a moment, her head bent, then flinging it back she gave a hollow sardonic laugh.

"Oh, what nonsense I talk! Well, we will be cheerful yet. I am tired, that is all. How stuffy it is in here!... Open the windows, Mintz ... Now let down the blinds ... They live on milk and black bread here and are happy—but I have a bottle of brandy in my trunk. Get it out! Light the chandelier."

Mintz opened the windows. From outside came a cool, refreshing breeze laden with the moist and fragrant perfumes of spring. Dusk had crept over the sky, which was flecked with warm vernal clouds.

III

The heavens were a glorious, triumphant, impenetrable blue; there was a faint glimmer of greenish light on the Western horizon over which brooded damp low clouds. The air was humid, soft, and redolent with the aroma of earth and melting snow. From all around came a faint medley of echoing sounds.... The wind fell completely, not a tree stirred; the ferns stood motionless with all the magic of the springtime among their roots. So calm and still was the night, the earth herself, it seemed, stopped turning in that wonderful stillness.

Ivanov lighted a cigarette, and as the match flared between his fingers, illuminating his black beard, his trembling hands were distinctly visible. His pointer Gek came out of the darkness and fawned round his legs.

Through the darkness of the windless night rang the church bell tolling for the last Gospel Service; it seemed to peal just outside the manor. The yard was silent, but once or twice Aganka's voice could be heard from the cattle-shed calling to the cows, and the sound of milk falling into her pail was faintly audible.

Ivanov listened to the church chimes and the subdued sounds of night round the manor, then noiselessly, well accustomed to the obscurity, he descended the steps; only Gek was at his side, the other dogs did not hear him.

Cold raindrops fell from the trees in tiny shining globules of iridescent light, close by him an owl fluttered in a tangle of branches, uttering its dreadful cry of joy as it flashed past.

Ivanov walked through the fields, descended by a chalky ribbon of a footpath to the ravine, crossed over it by a narrow shadow-dappled pathway hidden among a maze of trees, and made his way along its further ridge to a forest watch-house. It stood in a bare open space, exposed to the swift rushing Dance of the Winds, and close to the naked trunks of three ancient pines that still reared their grim, shaggy heads to the sky and spilled their pungent balsam perfumes into the air. Behind it loomed the faint grey shadow of an embankment.

A dog at the watch-house began to bark. Gek growled in return and suddenly disappeared. The dogs became silent. A man appeared on the step with a lantern.

"Who is there?" he asked quietly.

"It is I," said Ivanov.

"You, Sergius Mitrich?... Aha! But Arina is still at church ... went off there ... busy with her nonsense." The watchman paused. "Shall I go in and turn off the light? The express will soon be passing. Will you come in? Arina will be back before long. The wife's at home."

"No, I'm going into the forest."

"As you wish." The watchman passed along the embankment with his lantern and approached the bridge.

Ivanov left the watch-house, and went into the forest, walking along the edge of the ravine towards the river slope. A train rushed out from the forest on the further side of the river, its flaming eyes reflected in the dark shiny water; it moved forward, rolling loudly and harshly over the bridge.

It was that hour of spring-time when, despite the many noises, there was still an atmosphere of peace, and the burgeoning, luxuriantly- clad earth could almost be heard breathing as it absorbed the vernal moisture; the clash of the stream as it struck the rocks in the ravine was hushed for the night. Nevertheless it seemed as though the bold-browed, rugged wood-demon—awakened by spring—was shaking his wings in the water.

Beyond the ravine and wood, beyond the river to the right, left, behind, and before, the birds still chirruped over the currents. Below, not many steps away, the stream flowed almost noiselessly; only, as though immeasurably remote the confused gurgle of its waters broke the profound quiet. Far away rose a soft murmur. The air hummed and shook with the roar of distant rapids.

Ivanov leaned against a birch tree, laid his rifle beside him, struck a match and began to smoke. The flickering light illuminated the white trunks of the trees, the withered herbage of last year's growth and a path leading down the embankment. Arina had descended it many times.

The church bells in the village were ringing for evensong. From the church precincts twinkled the yellow lights of candles and lanterns, then there was the hum of people's voices. Many of the lights dispersed to the right and left, others moved down to the river side. There was the sound of foot-falls on the bottom of a boat and the splashing of oars. Someone called out:

"Wai ... ait ... Mitri ... ich!"

There was a clanking of iron—a boat-chain; then stillness. Only the lights showed that the boat had been launched into the middle of the river and was floating down stream. Soon the murmur of voices again, and the plash of oars, and now these sounds were quite close to Ivanov. One of the men was teasing the girls, the latter laughed at first, then all at once they were silent.

The boat was made fast to the bridge, the passengers bustling about for a long time on landing. The ferryman collected his paper roubles, the men continued merry-making with the girls. Their rugged forms— their chest, knees and chins were clearly discernible in the lights they carried. They all strolled up a narrow pathway, but one light withdrew from the rest and moved along a short cut that led to the watch-house—it was Arina's. Ivanov held Gek in tightly, the dog was straining to rush down the embankment.

Arina slowly ascended the steep incline, planting her broad, short heavily-shod feet firmly in the sticky mud; her breath came pantingly. She wore a red jacket, unbuttoned in the front through which her large bosom was visible in the lantern-light. The reflection shone upon her bent face, illuminating her lips, her bluish cheek-bones and dark arched brows; only her eyes were invisible in the darkness, and their cavities seemed enormous. The night's density gave way before the light of her lantern and the silvery trunks of birch trees glimmered ahead.

Ivanov crossed the road in front of her. Arina stopped with a sudden gasp, and he felt the touch of her warm breath.

"How you scared me!" she exclaimed quickly, stretching out her hand. "How are you? I have been at the church service. How you scared me!"

Ivanov was about to draw her hand towards him, but she withdrew it, saying sternly: "No, you musn't, I'm in a hurry to get home, I have no time. Let me go."

Ivanov smiled faintly, and dropped her hands.

"All right, it does not matter, I will come to-morrow at dusk." Then in a low voice he added: "Will you come?"

Arina moved closer to him, and she too spoke under her breath: "Yes, come this way. And we will have a walk ... Bother my father! But go now, I am in a hurry ... there is the house to put straight.... I feel the baby under my heart. Go!"

The first warm rain drops fell from the invisible sky as Ivanov walked across the meadows; at first they were sparse, pattering noisily on his leather jacket; then they began to fall more heavily and he was soon enveloped in the sonorous downpour of a vernal shower. Close to the manor Gek darted aside and disappeared down the ravine, from whence arose the rustling of wings, and the perturbed cries of cranes. Gek barked, some dogs on a neighbouring farm answered him; to these, others responded from a distant village, and then again, from far away there was borne over the earth the clear springtime baying of other dogs.

On entering the main avenue of the park, Ivanov noticed the glow of a cigarette suddenly disappearing down a side-walk; afterwards he encountered Aganka at a gate.

"You!" he exclaimed. "On the run as usual? So you have made friends with a smoker this time?"

The girl giggled loudly and ran off, splashing through the mud towards the cow-shed; then she called out innocently:

"I have put the milk by the window in your study."

Ivanov lingered a while on the doorstep scraping the mud off his boots, then stretched himself vigorously, working the muscles of his arms and reflecting that it was high time for him to be in bed, in a sound healthy sleep, so as to be up at dawn on the morrow.

IV

In the drawing-room a chandelier hung above the sofa and round table near the piano; it had not been lighted for many years, indeed not since the last Christmas before the Revolution. Now once again it was illumined, and the dull yellow flare of its candles—dimly shining out of their dust-laden pendants—lit up the near side of the room and its contents; at the further side, however, where doors led into the hall and a sittingroom, there was a complete wreckage. The chairs, armchairs, and couches had vanished through the agency of unknown hands, leaving only fragments of broken furniture, and odds and ends of utensils heaped together in casual profusion in a dark corner, only penetrated by grey, ghostlike shadows. The curtains were closely drawn; outside the rain pattered drearily on the windows.

Lydia Constantinovna played a long while on the piano, at first a bravura from the operas, then some classical pieces, Liszt's "Twelfth Rhapsody," and finally ended with the artless music of Oppel's "A Summer's Night in Berezovka"—a piece she used to play to Ivanov when she was his fiancee.

She played it through twice; then broke off abruptly, rising from her seat and shaking with gusts of malicious laughter. Still laughing loudly and evilly, she began to sip brandy out of a high narrow glass.

Her eyes were still beautiful, with the beauty of lakes in autumn when the trees are shedding their leaves. She seated herself on the sofa, and lay back among its cushions, her hands clasped behind her head, in an attitude of utter abandonment. Her legs in their open- work stockings were plainly visible under her black silk skirt, and she crossed them, leisurely placing her feet, encased in their patent leather shoes, upon a low footstool.

She drank a great deal of brandy in slow sips, and as she pressed her beautiful lips to the glass she vilified everybody and everything— Ivanov, the Revolution, Moscow, the Crimea, Marin-Brod, Mintz, and herself.

Then she became silent, her eyes grew dull, she began to speak quietly and sadly, with a foolish helpless smile.

Mintz was drinking and pacing up and down the room, speaking volubly with noisy derision. The brandy flowed through his veins, warming his sluggish blood; his thoughts grew vivid and spiteful, engendering sarcastic, malicious remarks. Whenever he took a drink, he removed his pince-nez for a moment, and his eyes became evil, vacant and bemused.

Lydia Constantinovna sat in the corner of the sofa, covered her shoulders with a plaid shawl, and crossed her legs in the Turkish fashion.

"What a smell of chipre there is, Mintz," she murmured in a low voice. "I think I must be tipsy. Yes, I must be. When I drink a great deal I always begin to think there are too many perfumes about. They suffocate me, I get their taste in my mouth, they sing in my ears and I feel ill.... What a smell of chipre ... it is my favourite perfume: do you smell it?"

She looked at Mintz with a half dazed stare, then continued:

"In an hour's time I shall be having hysterics. It is always the way when I drink too much. I don't feel cheerful any longer, I feel melancholy now, Mintz. I feel now as though ... as though I have wept on this sofa all through the night ... Oh, how happy we used to be once upon a time," she sighed tearfully, then added with a giggle. "Why I hardly know what I am saying!"

Mintz was walking up and down the room, measuring his steps extremely carefully. He halted in front of Lydia Constantinovna, removed his glasses and scowled:

"But I, when I drink, I begin to see things with extraordinary clearness: I see that we are melancholy because the devil only knows why or for what we are living; I see that life is impossible without faith; that our hearts and minds are exhausted with the endless discussions in cafes, attics and promenades. I realise that no matter what happens, villainy will always exist. I see, too, that we have been drinking because we feel lonely and dull—yes, even though we have been joking and laughing boisterously; I see that there is now the great joy and beauty of spring outside—so different from the distorted images visible to warped minds and clouded eyes; I see, moreover, that the Revolution has passed us by after throwing us aside, even though the New Economic Policy may put on us our feet again for a while, and that ... that ..." Mintz did not finish, but turned round abruptly and strode away with an air of self-assertion, into the remote end of the room, where the debris was littered.

"Yes, that is true ... you are right," answered Lydia Constantinovna. "But then I do not love Sergius, I never have done."

"Of course I am right," Mintz retorted severely from his dim corner. "People never love others. They love themselves—through others."

Ivanov came in from the hall in his cap and muddy boots, carrying his rifle. Without a single word he passed through the room and went into his study. Mintz watched him in severe silence, then followed him. Inside he leaned against the door-post with a wry smile:

"You are shunning me all this time. Why?"

"You imagine it," returned Ivanov.

He lighted a candle on his desk, took off his coat, changed his boots and clothes, hung up his rifle.

"That is ridiculous!" Mintz replied coldly. "I very seldom imagine things. I want to say how very comfortable you seem here, because this is the very essence of comfort.... Look at me! I have painted pictures, sold them, painted more in order to sell those also—though I ceased painting long ago—and I lived in garrets because I must have light, and by myself because my wife will not come to such a place.... True, she is no longer with me, she deserted me long ago! Now I have only mistresses.... And I envy you because ... because it is very cold in garrets.... You understand me?"

Mintz took off his pince-nez and his eyes looked bewildered and malignant: "In the name of all who had been tortured, all who have exchanged the springtime beauty of the parks for the erotic atmosphere of boudoirs; all who in the soft luxury of their homes forgot, and have now lost their claim on Russia—I say you are supremely comfortable, and we envy you! One may work here, one may even ... marry ... You have never painted, have you?"

"No."

Mintz was silent, then suddenly said in a low tone: "Look here! We have some brandy. Shall we have a drink?"

"No, thank you. I want to sleep. Good night."

"I want to talk!"

Ivanov extinguished the candle, through custom finding his bread and milk in the dark, and hastily consumed it without sitting down. Mintz stood a moment by the door; then went out, slamming it behind him.

Lydia Constantinovna now had her feet on the carpet and her head was bowed. Her eyes under their long lashes were blank and limpid, like lakes amid reeds. Her hands were clasped round her knees.

"How was Sergius?" she enquired, without raising her head.

"Boorish, he has gone to bed," answered Mintz.

He was about to sit beside her, but she rose, arranged her hair mechanically, and smiled faintly and tenderly—not at Mintz, but into the empty space.

"To bed? Well, it is time. Good rest!" she said softly. "Ah, how the perfume torments me. I feel giddy."

She went to the other end of the room, Mintz following her, and halted on the threshold. In the stillness of the night the pattering rain could be heard distinctly. Lydia Constantinovna leaned against the white door, throwing back her head, and began to speak; avoiding Mintz's eyes, she endeavoured to express herself simply and clearly, but the words seemed dry as they fell from her lips:

"I am very tired, Mintz, I am going to bed at once. You go too. Goodbye until tomorrow. We shall not meet again to-night. Do you understand, Mintz? It is my wish."

Mintz stood still, his legs wide apart, his arms akimbo, his head hanging. Then with a sad, submissive smile he answered in an unexpectedly mild tone: "Very well, then, All right, I understand you. It is quite all right."

Lydia Constantinovna stretched out her hand, speaking in the unaffected, friendly way she had desired earlier: "I know you are a malicious, bored, lonely cynic, like ... like an old homeless dog ... But you are kind and intelligent.... You know I will never leave you— we are so.... But now I am going in to him ... just for the last time."

Mintz kissed her hand without speaking, then his tall, bony, somewhat stooping figure disappeared down the corridor.

V

Lydia Constantinovna's bedroom was cold and gloomy. As formerly, it contained a huge four-poster, a chest of drawers, a dressing table and a wardrobe. The rain beat fiercely against the window panes running down in tiny glass globules.

Lydia lighted two candles, and placed them beside the tarnished mirror. Some toilette belongings, relics of her childhood, lay on the chest-of-drawers, and the contents of the baggage she had brought with her the previous day were scattered about the room. The candles burnt dimly, their yellow tongues flickering unsteadily over the tarnished mirror.

She changed her garments and put on a loose green neglige, then re- arranged her hair into plaits, forming them into a coronet which made her head appear very small and graceful.

From force of habit she opened a bottle of perfume, moistened the palms of her hands and rubbed them over her neck and bosom. At once she felt giddy, even the cold, dampish sheets on her bed seemed to smell of chipre.

Lydia sat down on the edge of her bed in her green neglige, listening to the sounds around her. Outside, there was a continuous howling and barking of dogs, now and then she could distinguish the croaking of half-awakened crows in the park.

The clock struck eleven, then half-past, someone passed along the corridor, Aganka cleared up in the dining-room, Mintz walked to and fro in the drawing-room, then all became quiet.

Lydia Constantinovna went to the window and gazed out for a long time. Then, quietly, she left her bedroom and crept down to Ivanov's study. All around her it was dark, cold and silent as she passed through the empty, spacious rooms. A forgotten candle still burnt wanly in the drawing-room, and a rat ran out from under the table.

She was again plunged in darkness when she entered Ivanov's study, and she was greeted by a smell of horse trappings and joiners' glue.

Ivanov was asleep on the sofa. He lay on his back, his arms extended; the outlines of his body could just be discerned. Lydia sat down quietly beside him and laid her hand on his breast. Ivanov sighed, drew in his arms and raised his head quickly from the pillow:

"Who is there?"

"It is I, Sergius—me—Lida," answered Lydia Constantinovna in a rapid whisper. "I know you do not wish to speak to me. I am bored ... I returned here in a happy mood, not even thinking of you, and now all at once I feel wretched.... Oh, those perfumes! How they torment me...." She passed her hand over her face, then was silent. Ivanov sat up.

"What is the matter Lida? What do you want?" he asked drowsily, and he lighted a cigarette. The light shone on them as they sat half- dressed on the sofa. Ivanov had a rugged, lumbering look.

"What do I want?" Lydia Constantinovna murmured. "Age creeps on me, Sergius, and a lonely old age is terrible ... I feel so weary.... I came here happy enough, now I am miserable. I can think of nothing but the time you and I spent here together ... I am always playing" A Summer's Night in Berezovka "—do you remember? I used to play it to you in those days.... Well, so there you see.... Age creeps on and I am longing for a home.... To-day they had the Twelfth Gospel Service.... Surely we still have a word for each other?" Her face clouded in sudden doubt. "You have been with Arina then?" she questioned sharply.

Ivanov did not answer immediately.

"I have grieved and worried greatly, Lida," he said at last, "but that does not matter. These four years I have lived alone, and have placed the past behind me. It is gone for ever. These four years I have struggled against death, and struggled for my daily bread. You know nothing of all this, we are as strangers.... Yes, I have been with Arina. Soon I shall have a son. I do not know if I am broken or merely tired, but for the moment I feel all right. I am going to bring Arina here, she will be my wife and keep house for me. And I shall live.... I am keeping step with some elemental Force . . . I shall have a son.... It will be a totally different life for me, Lida."

"And for me Moscow—as ever—wine, theatres, cafes, Mintz, an eternal hurly-burly ... I am sick of it!"

"I cannot help you, Lida. I too am sick of all that, but now I am at peace. We must all work out our own salvation."

Ivanov spoke very quietly and simply. Lydia Constantinovna sat bowed and motionless, as if fearing to move, clasping her knees with both hands. When Ivanov ceased speaking she rose noiselessly and went towards the door. She stood on the threshold a brief moment then, went out. The candle still burnt fitfully in the drawing-room. The house was wrapt in silence.



THE BIELOKONSKY ESTATE

Ivan Koloturov, President of the Bielokonsky Committee of the Poor, had ploughed his tiny holding for twenty years. He always rose before dawn and worked—dug, harrowed, threshed, planed, repaired—with his huge, strong, pock-marked hands; he could only use his muscular strength.

On rising in the morning, he prepared his hash of potatoes and bread, and went out of the hut to work—on the land, with cattle, with wood, stone and iron. He was honest, careful, and laborious. While still a lad of five he had, while driving from the station, helped a stranger in a mechanic's overalls to a seat; the man had told him all were equal in the sight of God, that the land belonged to the peasants, that the proprieters had stolen it from them, and that a time would come when he would have to "do things."

Ivan Koloturov did not understand what he would have to do, but when the fierce wave of the Revolution broke over the country and swept into the Steppe, he was the first to rise to "do things." Now he felt disillusioned. He had wanted to do everything honestly, but he was only able to work with his hands and muscles.

They elected him to the County Committee. He was accustomed to rise before dawn and set to work immediately. Now he was not permitted to do anything before ten o'clock. At ten he went to the Committee where, with the greatest difficulty, he put his name to papers—but this was not work: papers came in and went out independently of him. He did not understand their purport, he only signed them.

He wanted to do something! In the spring he went home to the plough. He had been elected in the Autumn, President of the Committee of the Poor, and he established himself in Prince Prozorovsky's domain, putting on his soldier brother's great coat and carrying a revolver in his belt.

He went home in the evening. His wife met him sullenly, jerking her elbows as she prepared some mash. The children were sitting on the stove, some little pigs grunted in a corner. There was a strong smell of burning wood.

"You won't care to eat with us now after the Barin's meal," nagged the old woman. "You are a Barin yourself now. Ha, ha!"

Ivan remained silent, sitting down on a bench beneath the Ikon.

"So you mix with rascals now," she persisted, "yes, that is what they are, Ivan Koloturov. Discontented rascals!"

"Peace, fool! You don't understand. Be quiet, I say!"

"You are ashamed of me, so you are hiding."

"We will live there together—soon."

"Not I! I will not go there."

"Idiot!"

"Ah, you have already learnt to snarl," the old woman jibed. "Ate your mash then! But perhaps you don't relish it after your Barin's pork."

She was right, he had already eaten—pork, and she had guessed it. Ivan began to puff. "You are an idiot, I tell you," he growled.

He had come home to have a business talk about their affairs, but he left without settling anything. The old woman's sharp tongue had stung him in a tender spot. It was true that all the respectable peasants had stood aside, and only those who had nothing to lose had joined the Committee.

Ivan passed through the village. As he walked across the park, he saw a light burning in the stables and went over to discover the reason. He found some lads had assembled there and were playing cards and smoking. He watched them awhile, frowningly.

"This is stupid! You will set the place alight," he grumbled.

"What if we do?" the men answered sulkily. "It is for you to defend other people's property?"

"Not other peoples'—ours!" he retorted, then turned away.

"Ivan!" they shouted after him; "have you the wine-cellar key? There are spirits in there—if you don't give it to us, we shall break in...."

The house was dark and silent. The huge, spacious apartments seemed strange, terrible. The Prince still occupied the drawing-room. Ivan entered his office—formerly the dining-room—and lighted a lamp. He went down on his knees and began to pick up the clods of earth that lay on the floor; he threw them out of the window, then fetched a brush and swept up. He could not understand why gentlemen's boots did not leave a trail of dirt behind them.

Then he went into the drawing-room and served the final notice on the Prince while the men were accommodating themselves in the kitchen. Then he joined them, lying down on a form without undressing. After a long time he fell asleep.

He awoke the next morning while all were still sleeping, rose and walked round the manor. The lads were still playing cards in the stable.

"Why aren't you asleep?" one of them asked him.

"I have had all I want," he replied. He called the cow-herd. The man came out, stood still, scratched his head, and swore angrily— indignant at being aroused.

"Don't meddle in other people's affairs," he grunted. "I know when to wake."

The dawn was fine, clear and chilly. A light appeared in the drawing- room, and Ivan saw the Prince go out, cross the terrace and depart into the Steppe.

At ten o'clock, the President entered the office, and set about what was, in his opinion, a torturous, useless business—the making out an inventory of the wheat and rye in each peasant's possession. It was useless because he knew, as did everyone in the village, how much each man had; it was torturous because it entailed such a great deal of writing.

Prince Prozorovsky had risen at daybreak. The sun glared fiercely over the bare autumn-swept park and into the drawing-room windows. The wedding cry of the ravens echoed through the autumnal stillness that hung broodingly over the Steppe.

On such a dazzling golden day as this, the Prince's ancestors had set off with their blood-hounds in by-gone days. In this house a whole generation had lived—now the old family was forced to leave it—for ever!

A red notice—"The Bielokonsky Committee of the Poor"—had been affixed to the front door the previous evening, and the intruders had bustled all night arranging something in the hall. The drawing-room had not so far been touched; the gilt backs of books still glittered from behind glass cases in the study. Oh books! Will not your poison and your delights still abide?

Prince Prozorovsky went out into the fields; they were barren but for dead rye-stalks that stuck up starkly from the earth. Wolves were already on the trail. He wandered all day long, drank the last wine of autumn and listened to the ravens' wedding cries.

When he had beheld this bird's carnival as a child, he had clapped his hands, crying: "Hurrah for my wedding! Hurrah for my wedding!" He had never had a wedding. Now his days were numbered. He had lived for love. He had known many affections, had felt bitter pangs. He had tasted the poison of the Moscow streets, of books and of women; had been touched by the autumnal sadness of Bielokonsky, where he always stayed in the autumn. Now he knew grief!

He walked aimlessly through the trackless fields and down into hollows; the aspens glowed in a purple hue around him; on a hill behind him the old white house stood amid the lilac shrubbery of a decaying park. The crystal clear, vast, blue vista was immeasurably distant.

The hair on his temples was already growing thin and gray—there was no stopping, no returning!

He met a peasant, a rough, plain man in a sheep-skin jacket, driving a cart laden with sacks. The man took off his cap and stopped his horse, to make way for the ... gentleman.

"Good morning, little Father," he wheezed, then addressed his beast, pulled the reins, drove on, then stopped again and called out:

"Listen, Barin, I want to tell you...."

The Prince turned round and looked at the man. The peasant was old, his face was covered with hair and wrinkles.

"What will your Excellency do now?"

"That is difficult to say," replied the Prince.

"When will you go?" the old man asked. "Those Committees of the Poor are taking away the corn. There are no matches, no manufacturers, and I am burning splinters for light.... They say no corn is to be sold.... Listen, Barin, I will take some secretly to the station. People are coming from Moscow ... and ... and ... about thirty five of them ... thirty five I tell you!... But then, what will there be to buy with the proceeds?... Well, well! It is a great time all the same ... a great time, Barin! Have a smoke, your Excellency."

Prozorovsky refused the proffered pipe, and rolled himself a small cigar of an inferior brand. Around was the Steppe. No one saw, no one knew of the peasant's compassion. The prince shook hands with him, turned sharply on his heel and went home.

The cold, clear, glassy water in the park lake was blue and limpid, for it was still too early for it to freeze all over. The sun was now sinking towards the west in an ocean of ruddy gold and amethyst.

Prince Prozorovsky entered his study, sat down at the desk and drew out a drawer full of letters. No! he could not take all his life away with him: He laid the drawer on the desk, then went into the drawing- room. A jug of milk and some bread stood on an album-table. The Prince lighted the fire, burnt some papers, and stood by the mantelpiece drinking his milk and eating the bread, for he had grown hungry during the day.... The milk was sour, the bread stale.

Already the room was filling with the dim shadows of evening, a purplish mist hung outside; the fire burnt with a bright yellow flame.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the silence of the corridor, and Ivan Koloturov appeared in the doorway. Koloturov! As young lads they had played together, Ivan had developed into a sober, sensible, thrifty, and industrious peasant. Standing in the middle of the room, the President silently handed the Prince his paper—it had taken him a whole hour to type it out.

On the sheet was typed "To the Barin Prozorovsky. The Bielokonsky Committee of the Poor order you to withdraw from the Soviet Estate of Bielokonsky and from the district precincts. President Koloturov."

"Very well," said the Prince quietly; "I will go this evening."

"You will take no horse."

"I will go on foot."

"As you like," Koloturov replied. "You will take nothing with you." He turned round, stood a moment with his back to the Prince, then went out of the room.

At that instant, a clock struck three quarters of the hour. It was the work of Kuvaldin, the eighteenth century master. It had been in the Moscow Kremlin and had afterwards travelled through the Caucasus with the Vadkovsky Princes. How many times had its ticking sounded during the course of those centuries.

Prozorovsky sat down by the window and looked out at the neglected park. He remained there for about an hour, leaning his arms on the marble sill, thinking, remembering. His reflections were interrupted by Koloturov. The peasant came in silently with two of his men and passed through into the office. They endeavoured silently to lift a writing-table. Something cracked.

The Prince rose and put on his big grey overcoat, a felt hat, and went out. He walked through the rustling gold-green foliage of the park, passed close by some stables and a distillery, descended into a dell, came up on its opposite side. Then, feeling tired, he decided to walk slowly—walk twenty miles on foot for the first time in his life. After all, how simple the whole thing was ... it was only terrible in its simplicity.

The sun had already sunk beneath the horizon. The last ravens had flown. An autumn hush over-hung the Steppe. He walked on briskly through the wide, windy, open space, walking for the first time he knew not whither, nor wherefore. He carried nothing, he possessed nothing. The night was silent, dark, autumnal, and frosty.

He walked on briskly for eight miles, heedless of everything around, then he stopped a moment to tie his shoe lace. Suddenly he felt an overwhelming weariness and his legs began to ache; he had covered nearly forty miles during the day.

In front of him lay the village of Makhmytka; he had often ridden there in his youth on secret visits to a soldier's wife; but now he would not go to her; no, not for anything in the world! The village lay pressed to the earth and was ornamented with numerous stacks which smelt of straw and dung. On its outskirts the Prince was met by a pack of baying dogs, who flitted over the ground like dark, ghostly shadows as they leapt round him.

At the first cabin he tapped at the little window, dimly lighted within by some smouldering splinters.

"Who is there?" came the tardy response.

"Let me in for the night, good people," called the Prince.

"Who is it?"

"A traveller."

"Well, just a minute," came the grudging answer.

A bare-footed peasant in red drawers came out holding a lighted splinter over his head and looking round.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "it is you, Prince! So you were too wise to stay, were you? Well, come in."

An immense quantity of straw was spread over the floor. A cricket was chirruping, and there was a smell of soot and dung.

"Lay yourself down, Barin, and God bless you!"

The peasant climbed on to the stove and sighed. His old wife began to mutter something, the man grumbled, then said to the Prince:

"Barin, you can have your sleep, only get up in the morning and leave before daylight, so that none will see you. You know yourself these are troubled times, there is no gainsaying it. You are a gentleman, Barin, and gentlemen have got to be done away with. The old woman will wake you.... Sleep now."

Prozorovsky lay down without undressing, put his cape under his head— and at once caught a cockroach on his neck! Some young pigs grunted in a corner. The hut was swarming with vermin, blackened by smoke and filled with stenches. Here, where men, calves and pigs herded all together, the Prince lay on his straw, tossing about and scratching. He thought of how, some centuries hence, people would be writing of this age with love, compassion, and tenderness. It would be thought of as an epoch of the most sublime and beautiful manifestation of the human spirit.

A little pig came up, sniffed all round him, then trotted away again. A low, bright star peeped in through the window. How infinite the world seemed!

He did not notice when he fell asleep. The old woman woke him at daybreak and led him through the backyard. The dawn was bright and cold, and the grass was covered with a light frost. He walked along briskly, swinging his stick, the collar of his overcoat turned up. The sky was marvellously deep and blue.

At the station the Prince squeezed himself into a warm place on the train, amongst other passengers carrying little sacks and bags of flour. Thus, pressed against the sides of a truck, his clothes bedaubed with white flour, he journeyed off to—Moscow.

Prince Prozorovsky had left at evening. Immediately after, furniture was pulled about and re-arranged, the veneer was chipped off the desk. The clock was about to be transferred to the office, but some one noticed that it had only one hand. None of the men realised that Kuvaldin's old clocks were necessarily one-handed, and moved every five minutes simply because the minutes were not counted singly in those days. Somebody suggested that the clock could be removed from its case.

"Take the clock out of the box," Ivan Koloturov ordered. "Tell the joiners to put some shelves in it, it will do as a cupboard for the office.... Now then, don't stamp, don't stamp!"

That night an old woman came running in. There was a great turmoil in the village: a girl had been abused—no one knew by whom, whether by the villagers themselves or the people who had come from Moscow for flour; the old woman began to accuse the Committee men. She stood by the window and reviled them at the top of her voice. Ivan Koloturov drove her away with a blow on the neck, and she went off wailing bitterly.

It was pitch-dark. The house was quiet. Milkmaids outside were singing boisterously. Ivan went into the study, sat down on the sofa, felt its softness, found a forgotten electric lamp and played with it, flashing its light on the walls as he passed through. He noticed the clock on the floor of the drawing-room and began to think what he would do with it, then he picked it up and threw it into the water- closet. A band of his men had broken their way into the other end of the house, and some one was thumping on the piano; Ivan Koloturov would have liked to have driven them away, to prevent them from doing damage, but he dared not. He suddenly felt sorry for himself and his old wife and he wanted to go home to his stove.

A bell clanged—supper! Ivan quietly stole to the wine-cellar, filled up his jug, and drank, then hurriedly locked the cellar door.

On the way home he fell down in the park; he lay there a long time, trying to lift himself, wanting all the while to say something and to explain—but he fell asleep.

The dark, dismal autumn night enfolded the empty, frozen, desolate Steppe.



DEATH

I

It seemed as though the golden days of "St. Martin's" summer had come to stay.

The sun shone without warmth in the vast blue expanse of sky, across which swept the gabbling cranes on their annual flight southward. A hoar-frost lay in the shadow of the houses. The air was crisp and sapphire, the cold invigorating, a brooding stillness wrapped the world.

The vine-wreathed columns on the terrace, the maple avenue and the ground beneath, all glowed under a purple pall of fallen leaves. The lake shone blue and smooth as a mirror, reflecting in its shining surface the white landing-stage and its boat, the swans and the statues. The fruit was already plucked in the garden and the leaves were falling. What a foolish wanton waste this stripping of the trees after summer seemed!

In days such as these, the mind grows at once alert and calm. It dwells peacefully on the past and the future. The individual feels impelled by a kind of langour just to walk over the fallen leaves, to look in the gardens for unnoticed, forgotten apples, and to listen to the cries of the cranes flying south.

II

Ippolyte Ippolytovich was a hundred years old less three months and some days. He had been a student in the Moscow University with Lermontov, and they had been drawn together in friendship through their mutual admiration of Byron. In the "sixties,"—he was then close to his fiftieth birthday—he constantly conferred with the Emperor Alexander on liberative reforms, and pored over Pisarev's writings in his own home.

It was only by the huge, skeleton frame over which stretched the parchment skin, that it could be seen he had once been a tall, big, broad-shouldered man; his large face was covered with yellowish-white hair that crept from the nose, the cheek-bones, the forehead and the ears, while the skull was completely bald; the eyes were white and discoloured; the hands and legs shrunken, and seemed as though emaciated by nature's own design.

There was a smell of wax in his room, and that peculiar fusty odour that pervades every old nobleman's home. It was a large, bare apartment containing only a massive mahogany writing-table, covered with a faded green cloth and bestrewn with a quantity of old- fashioned ornaments; there was also an armchair and a sofa.

The moulded ceiling, the greenish-white marbled walls, the dragon fire-place, the inlaid flooring of speckled birch, the window panes, rounded at the tops, curtainless and with frequent intersecting of their framework, all, had become tarnished and lustreless, covered over with all the colours of the rainbow. Through the windows streamed the mellow golden rays of the autumn sun, resting on the table, a part of the sofa, and on the floor.

For many years the old man had ceased to sleep at night so as to sit up by day. It might truly be said that he slept almost the entire twenty-four hours, and also that he sat up during the whole of that time! He was always slumbering, lying with half-open, discoloured eyes on a large sofa tapestried in pig-skin of English make, and covered with a bear-skin rug. He lay there day and night, his right arm flung back behind his head. Whenever, by day or night, he was called by his name—Ippolyte Ippolytovich, he would remain silent a moment collecting his wits, then answer:

"Eh?"

He had no thoughts. All that took place round him, all that he had gone through in life, was meaningless to him now. It was all outlived, and he had nothing to think about. Neither had he any feelings, for all his organs of receptivity had grown dulled.

At night mice could be heard; while through the empty, columned hall out of which his room opened, rats scurried, flopping about and tumbling down from the armchairs and tables. But the old man did not hear them.

III

Vasilisa Vasena came every morning at seven o'clock; she was a country-woman of about thirty seven, strong, healthy, red-faced, reminiscent of a July day in her floridness and vigorous health.

She used to say quietly: "Good morning to you, Ippolyte Ippolytovich."

And he would give a base "Eh?" in a voice like a worn-out gramophone record.

Vasena promptly began washing him with a sponge, then fed him with manna-gruel. The old man sat bent up on the sofa, his hands resting on his knees. He ate slowly from a spoon. They were silent, his eyes gazing inwardly, seeing nothing. Sunbeams stole in through the window and glistened on his yellowish hair.

"Your good son, Ilya Ippolytovich, has come," Vasena said.

"Eh?"

Ippolyte Ippolytovich had married at about the age of forty; of his three sons only Ilya was living. The old man called his son to memory, pictured him in his mind, but felt neither joy nor interest— felt nothing!

Dimly, somewhere far away in the dark recesses of his memory, lurked a glimmering, wavering image of his son; at first he saw him as an infant, then as a boy, finally a youth. He recollected that now already he too was almost an old man. It came to him that once, long ago, this image was necessary and very dear to him, that afterwards he had lost sight of it, and that now it had become meaningless to him.

Dully, through inertia, the old man inquired: "He has come, you say?"

"Yes, came in the night, alone. He is resting now."

"Eh? He has come to have a look at me before I die."

Vasena promptly answered: "Lord! you are not so young as to...."

They were silent. The old man lay back on the sofa and slept.

"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, you must take your walk!"

"Eh?"

It was a "St. Martin's Summer." Over the scattered blood-red vine leaves on the terrace, which was deluged in mellow autumnal sunshine, the bent-up old man walked, leaning heavily on a bamboo cane, and supported by the sturdy Vasena. He had a skull-cap pulled down low over his forehead, and wore a long, black overcoat.

IV

Sometimes the old man relapsed into a state of coma, lasting several hours. Then life seemed to have ebbed from him entirely. A clay-like pallor over-spread his face, he had the lips and open, glassy eyes of a corpse, and he scarcely breathed. Then they sent post-haste for the doctor, who sprinkled him with camphor, gave him oxygen and produced artificial respiration. The old man slowly came to, rolling his eyes.

"Another minute and it would have been death," the doctor would say in a deep, grave voice.

When the old man had at length recovered, Vasena used to say to him: "Lord! We were so frightened, we were so frightened! ... We thought you were quite gone. Yes, we did. For you know, you are not so young as to...."

Ippolyte Ippolytovich was silent and indifferent, only at moments, half-closing and screwing up his eyes, and straightening out his lips, he laughed:

"He-he! He-he!" Then added, slyly: "I am dying, you say? He-he! He- he!"

V

Ilya Ippolytovich walked through the empty rooms of the dying house. How dusty and mouldy it seemed! The sun came through the tarnished window-panes and the specks of dust looked golden in its radiant light. He entered the room where he had passed his childhood. Dust lay everywhere, on the window-sills, on the floor, and on the furniture. Here and there fresh boot-prints were visible. A thin portmanteau—not belonging to the house and pasted over with many labels—lay on a table. A hard, icy stillness pervaded the entire place.

Ilya Ippolytovich was stout like his father, but he still walked erect. His hair was already thinning and growing grey over the temples, but his face was clean-shaven, like a youth's. His lips were wrinkled and he had large, grey, weary eyes.

He felt gloomy and unhappy, because his father's days were numbered; and he brooded miserably over the awkwardness of approaching death, wondering how one should behave towards a man who was definitely doomed. To and fro, from corner to corner, he walked, with restless, springy steps.

He met his father on the terrace.

"Hallo, father!" he said briskly, with an intentional show of carelessness.

The old man looked at him blindly, not recognising his son at first. But afterwards he smiled, went up the steps, and gave his cheek to be kissed. It smelt of wax.

"Eh?" said the old man.

Ilya kissed him, laughed hilariously, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder: "It is a long time since we met, father. How are you?"

His father looked at him from beneath his cap, gave a feeble smile, then said after a pause: "Eh?"

Vasena answered for him: "You may well ask how he is doing, Ilya Ippolytovich! Why, we are fearing the worst every day."

Ilya threw her a reproachful glance and said loudly: "It is nonsense, father! You have still a hundred years to live! You are tired, let us sit down here and have a talk together."

They sat down on the marble steps of the terrace. Silence. No words came to Ilya. Try as he might, he could not think what to say.

"Well, I am still painting pictures," he tried at last; "I am preparing to go abroad."

The old man did not hear him; he looked at his son without seeing or understanding, plunged in his own reflections.

"You have come to look at me? You think I shall die soon?" he asked suddenly.

Ilya Ippolytovich grew very pale and muttered confusedly: "What are you saying, father? What do you mean?"

But his father no longer heard. He had fallen back in his chair, his eyes half-closed and glassy, his face utterly expressionless. He was asleep.

VI

The sun was shining, the sky was blue; in the limpid spaces above the earth there was a flood of crystal light.

Ilya Ippolytovich strolled through the park and thought of his father. The old man had lived a full, rich, and magnificent life. It had possessed so much that was good, bright and necessary. Now— death! Nothing would remain. Nothing! And this nothing was terrible to Ilya Ippolytovitch.

Does not living man recognize life, the world, the sun, all that is around and within him, through himself? he reflected. A man dies, and the world dies for him. Thenceforward he feels and recognises nothing. Nothing! Then what is the use of living, developing, working, when in the end there will be—nothing?... Was there no great wisdom in his father's hundred years? Nor in his fatherhood?

A crane was crying somewhere overhead. The sound came from a scarcely visible dark arrow in the cloudless sky, which flew south. Red, frost-covered leaves were rustling underfoot. Ilya's face was pale, the wrinkles round his lips made him seem tired and feeble. He had spent his whole life alone, in the solitude of a cold studio, living arduously among pictures, for the sake of pictures. To what end?

VII

Ippolyte Ippolytovich sat in the large, bare dining-room eating chicken cutlets and broth. A napkin was tied round his neck as if he were a child. Vasena fed him from a tea-spoon, and afterwards led him into his study. The old man lay down on a sofa, put his hand behind his head and fell asleep, his eyes half-open.

Ilya went to him in the study. He again made a pretence of being cheerful, but his tired eyes betrayed grief, and behind his clean- shaven face, his grey English coat, and yellow boots, somehow one felt there was a great shaken and puzzled soul suffering, yet seeking to conceal its anguish.

He sat down at his father's feet.

For a long time the old man searched his face with his eyes, then in a scraping, worn-out piping voice, said: "Eh?"

"It is so long since we met, father, I am longing to have a chat with you! Somehow I have no one dearer to me than you! Absolutely no one! How are you, sir?"

The old man gazed before him with bleary eyes. He did not seem to have heard. But suddenly screwing up his eyes, straightening out his lips and opening his empty jaws, he laughed:

"He-he! he-he!" he laughed, and said jovially: "I am dying soon. He- he! he-he!"

However, Ilya no longer felt as embarrassed as on that first occasion on the terrace. In a hasty undertone, almost under his breath, he asked:

"But aren't you afraid?"

"No! He-he!"

"Don't you believe in God?"

"No! He-he!"

They were silent for a long time after that. Then the old man raised himself on his elbows with a sly grin.

"You see," he said, "when a man is worn out ... sleep is the best thing for him ... that is so with dying ... one wants to die.... Understand? When a man is worn out...."

He was silent for a moment, then grinned and repeated:

"He-he! He-he! Understand?"

Ilya gave his father a long look, standing there motionless, with wide-open eyes, feeling a thrill of utter horror.

But the old man was already slumbering.

VIII

Day faded. The blue autumnal twilight spread over the earth and peeped in through the windows. A purple mist filled the room with vague, spectral shadows. Outside was a white frost. A silvery moon triumphantly rode the clear cold over-arching sky.

Ippolyte Ippolytovich lay upon his sofa. He felt nothing. The space occupied by his body resembled only a great, dark, hollow bin in which there was—nothing! Close by, a rat flopped across the floor, but the old man did not hear. A teasing autumnal fly settled on his eyebrow, he did not wink. From the withered toes to the withered legs, to the hips, stomach, chest, and heart, passed a faint, agreeable, scarcely noticeable numbness.

It was evening now and the room was dark; the mist gathered thick and threatening through the windows. Outside in the crisp, frosty moonlight, it was bright. The old man's face—all over-grown with white hair—and his bald skull, had a death-like look.

Vasena entered in her calm yet vigorous manner. Her broad hips and deep bosom were only loosely covered by a red jacket.

"Ippolyte Ippolytovich, it is time for your meal," she called in a matter of fact tone.

But he did not reply, nor utter his usual "Eh?"

They sent at once for the doctor, who felt his pulse, pressed a glass to his lips, then said in a low, solemn tone:

"He is dead."

Vasena, standing by the door, and somewhat resembling a wild animal, answered calmly:

"Well he wasn't so young as to.... Haven't we all got to die! What is it to him now? He and his had everything in their day! Dear Lord, they had everything!"

IX

Low, downy cloudlets drifted over the sky in the early hours of the morning. Dark, lowering masses followed in their wake. The snow fell in large, cold, soft, feather-like flakes.

St. Martin's Summer was past, to be succeeded by the advent of another earthly joy—the first white covering of snow, when it is so delicious to follow the fresh footprints of the beasts, a rifle in hand.



THE HEIRS

I

Legend says that from the Sokolovaya Mountain—called the Mountain of Falcons, came Stenka Razin. It is written in books that from thence came also Emelian Pugachev.

The Sokolovaya Mountain towers high above the Volga and the plains, making a dark, precipitous descent to the pirate river below.

Across the Volga lies an ancient town. By the Glebychev Ravine, close to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a mansion with a facade of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' balls were held there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya Davydovna—the mistress—old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end of her days.

She died in October, 1917, and now the tumbling, plundered house was occupied by—the heirs.

They had been scattered over the face of Russia, had spent their lives in Petersburg, Moscow and Paris; for twenty years the house had stood vacant and moribund. Then the Revolution came! The instinctive fury of the masses burst forth—and the remnants of the Rastorov family gathered in their old nest—to be hidden from the Revolution and famine.

Snow-storms—galloping snowy chargers—howled over the Steppe, the Volga, and the town. Elemental, all-devastating, as in the days of Stenka Razin—thundered the Revolution.

The rooms in the ancient mansion were damp, dark and chilly. The old cathedral could be seen from the window, and down below lay the Volga, seven miles wide, wrapt in a dazzling sheet of snow, its steamers moored to their wharves.

The family lived as a community at first, but their communism was nominal, for each barricaded and entrenched himself in his own room, with his own pot and samovar. They lived tedious, mean, malignant, worthless lives, execrating existence and the Revolution; they lived utterly apart from the turmoil that now replaced the placid even flow of the old regime: they were outside current events, and their thoughts for ever turned back to the past, awaiting its return.

General Kirill Lvovich awoke at seven o'clock. Everything was crowded closely together in the room, which was bedroom, drawing-room and dining-room combined. The blue dusk of morning was visible through the heavy blinds of the low window. The general put on his tasselled Bukhara dressing-gown and went outside, then returned coughing hoarsely.

"Anna," he snarled, "ask your kinsfolk which of them left the place in such a state. Don't they know we have no servants? It is your turn to set the samovar to-day. Are there no cigarette boxes?" he walked about the room, his hands behind his back, diamond rings glittering on his fingers.

"And it is your turn to go for the rations," retorted Anna Andreevna.

"That will do, I know it. There are four families living in the house and they cannot organise themselves so as to go in turn for the rations. Give me a sheet of paper and some ink."

The general sat down at the table and wrote out a notice:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have no servants; We must see to things ourselves. We can't all perch like eagles, therefore, I beg you to be more careful. Kirill L. Lezhner."

Kirill Lvovich was not one of the heirs, it was his wife who came of the Rastorov family, and he had merely accompanied her to the ancestral mansion. Lvovich took his notice and hung it on the lavatory door. Then again he paced the floor, his jewels sparkling brilliantly.

"Why the devil do Sergius and his family occupy three rooms, and we only one?" he grumbled. "I shall leave this den. They don't behave like relatives! Are there no cigarettes?"

Anna Andreevna, a quiet, weary, feeble woman, replied tonelessly: "You know there are none. But I will look for some butt-ends in a moment. Lina sometimes throws away the unused cigarette wraps."

"What bourgeois they are—throwing away fag-ends and keeping servants!" her husband complained.

The dark twining corridor was strewn with rubbish, for no one had the will or wish to keep it neat. Anna Andreevna rummaged by the stove of Sergius Andreevich, Lina's husband, looking among the papers and sweepings. She peered into the stove and discovered that Leontyevna, the maid—a one-eyed Cyclop—had filled it with birch-wood, whereas it had been agreed that the rotting timber from the summer-house should be used as fuel first.

After enjoying a cigarette of his "own" tobacco, the general went out to the courtyard for firewood, returning with a bundle of sticks from the summer-house. The samovar was now ready and he sat down to his tea, leisurely drinking glass after glass, while Anna Andreevna heated her stove in the corridor.

A dim, wintry dawn was gradually breaking. The family of Sergius—the former head of a ministerial department—could be heard rousing themselves behind the wall.

"You have had sufficient albumen; take hydrates now," rose Lina's voice, calling to her children.

"Potatoes?"

"Yes."

"And fat?"

"You have had enough fat."

The general smiled craftily, then muttered grumpily:

"That is not eating, that is scientific alimentation." He cut himself a piece of bacon, ate it with some white bread, and drank more tea with sweet root and candied melon.

Gradually the occupants of the house roused themselves and half- dressed, sleepy—carrying their towels, empty samovars, and tooth brushes—they began to pass along the corridor in front of the general's open door.

Kirill Lvovich eyed them maliciously as he sat drinking his tea and inwardly cursed them all.

The Cyclop, Leontyevna, Sergius Andreevich's servant, tramped in heavily with her man's boots from the Labour Exchange; her solitary eye peered searchingly into Anna Andreevna's stove.

"I'll see she's not deceiving us over the firewood," she shouted aggressively: "Oh, what a store she's got!"

"But you have used the birch-wood," the general hit back from his room.

The Cyclop flew into a rage and slapped her thighs. One of the periodic scenes ensued.

"What?" Leontyevna cried, "I am not trusted, I am being spied on! Lina Fedorovna, I am going to complain to the Exchange."

Lina Fedorovna joined in from behind her door.

"She isn't trusted, she is being spied on," she echoed, "there must be spies in this house! And they call themselves intellectual people!"

"But you took the birch-wood!" protested Lvovich.

"And they call themselves intellectual!" screamed Lina.

The general came out into the passage and said severely:

"It is not for us to judge, Lina Fedorovna. We are not the heirs here. But it seems strange to me that Sergius should occupy three rooms, and Anna only one—yes, very strange indeed."

The quarrel became more violent. Satisfied, the general put on his overcoat and went out to take his place in the ration queue. Lina ran to her husband; he went to get an explanation of the scene, but Lvovich was not to be found, however; he remonstrated with his sister, Anna Andreevna.

"This spying is impossible, it must stop," he insisted.

"But, can't you understand, it all began with searching for the butt- end of a cigarette?" Anna pleaded in deep distress.

Lina had gone upstairs and was telling the whole story to Ekaterina. Anna appealed to her younger brother, Constantine, a Lyceum student, but he told her he was busy, immediately sitting down at his desk to write. Soon after, however, he rose and went to Sergius.

"Busy?" he asked.

"What? Yes, I am busy."

"Have a smoke."

They began to smoke an inferior brand of tobacco known as "Kepsten." They were silent.

"Will you have a game of chess?" Constantine asked after a while.

"Yes...But no, I think not," Sergius replied.

"Just one game?"

"Just one? Well, only one!"

They sat down and played chess. Constantine was dressed in a rumpled Lyceum uniform; he wore rings on his fingers, like the general and Sergius, and an antique gold chain hung round his neck.

Being in constant dread of requisitioners and robbers they had divided all the jewellery between them, and wore it for safety.

The brothers played one game, then a second, a fourth, a sixth— smoking and quarrelling, disagreeing over the moves and trying to re- arrange them. The general returned from the ration queue in the market and came along the passage. He peeped in at the two players through the open door, and after some hesitation decided to enter.

"Greenhorns, you don't know how to play!" he said.

"What do you mean? Don't know how to play?"

"Now, now, don't fly into a rage. If I am wrong—excuse an old man ... I sent Kirka for the newspaper, I gave him a twenty copeck piece for a tip."

"I am not in a rage!"

"Very well, then that's all right. But throw over your chess. Let us play a game of chance."

They sat down and played it for the entire day, only interrupting the game to go to their rooms for dinner.

Whenever Sergius had to pay a fine he would say:

"Anyhow, Kirill Lvovich, you have an objectionable manner."

"Now, now, greenhorn!" the general would reply.

They had not a penny between them. Katerina Andreevna had been appointed guardian of their possessions. The men refused to recognise her authority and called it merely a "femocracy." Only Sergius still had some capital, the proceeds of an estate he had sold before the Revolution. Therefore he could well afford to keep a servant.

Upstairs with Katerina were two girls who had thrown up their careers on principle—the one her college studies, the other her Conservatoire courses. They kept up a desultory conversation while helping to clean potatoes. Presently Anna and Lina joined them, and they all went down to the storeroom and began rummaging through their grandparents' old wardrobes. They turned over a variety of crinolines, farthingales, bustles and wigs, laying on one side the articles of silver, bronze and porcelain—for the Tartars were coming after dinner. The storeroom smelt of rats. Packed along its walls were boxes, coffers, trunks, and a huge pair of rusty scales.

They all gathered together on the arrival of the Tartars, who greeted them with handshakes. The general snorted. One of the Tartars, an old man wearing new goloshes over felt boots, spoke to Katerina:

"How d'ye do, Barina?"

The general leisurely swung one leg over the other, and said stiffly:

"Be good enough to state your price."

The two Tartars looked over the old-fashioned articles, criticised them, none too well, and fixed the most ridiculous prices. The general burst out laughing and tried to be witty. Katerina grew angrier and angrier, until at last she could no longer contain herself:

"Kirill Lvovich," she shouted, "you are impossible!" "Very well," came the infuriated reply; "I am not one of the heirs, I can go!"

They calmed him, however, and then began bargaining with the Tartars, who slung the old-fashioned articles carelessly over their arms— laces worked by serfs, antique, hand made candle-sticks, a field- glass and an acetylene lamp.

The twilight spread gently over the town, and through its dusky, star-spangled veil, loomed the old Cathedral—reminiscent of Stenka Razin; now and then came the chime of its deep-toned bells.

The Tartars at length succeeding in striking a bargain, rolled the goods up into neat little packs with their customary promptitude, paid out Kerensky notes from their bulging purses and left.

Then the heirs divided the proceeds. They were sitting in the drawing-room. Blinds covered the low windows; some portraits hung on the walls, a chandelier was shrouded in a muslin wrapper that had not been changed for years. A yellow oaken piano was covered with dust, and the furniture's velvet covering was tarnished and threadbare. The house struck cold.

The heirs were dressed fantastically; the general in a dressing-gown with gold embroideries and tassels; Sergius wore a black hooded coat; Lina a warm hare-skin jacket, and Katerina, the eldest—the moustached guardian—a man's thick overcoat, a petticoat and felt shoes. On all were jewels—rings, ear-rings, bracelets and necklaces.

Sergius remarked ungallantly:

"This is a trying time for us all, and I propose that we divide the proceeds among us according to the number of consumers."

"I am not one of the heirs," the general hastily interposed.

"I don't share your socialistic views." Constantine informed Sergius with a cold smile; "I think they should be divided according to the number of heirs."

A heated argument followed, above which rang the Cathedral bells. At last, with great difficulty, they came to an agreement. Then Katerina brought in the samovar. All fetched their own bread and sweet roots and drank the tea, thankful not to have to prepare it for themselves.

Suddenly—with unexpected sadness and, therefore, unusually well—the general began to speak:

"When I—a lieutenant-bridegroom—met our Aunt Kseniya for the first time, she was wearing that bustle that you sold just now. Ah, will things ever be the same again? If I were told the Bolshevik tyranny would endure for another year, I should shoot myself! For, good Lord, what I suffer! How my heart is wrung! And I am an old man.... Life is simply not worth living."

All burst into tears; the general wept as old men weep, the moustached Katerina cried in a sobbing bass. Neither could Anna Andreevna, nor the two girls who stood clasping each other in the corner, refrain from shedding tears, the girls for their youth and the sparkling joys of their maidenhood of which they had been deprived.

"I would shoot them all if I could!" Katerina declared.

Then Sergius' children, Kira and Lira, came in and Lina told them they might take some albumen. Kira put butter on his.

The moon rose.... The stars shone brilliantly. The snow was dead- white. The river Volga was deserted. It was dark and still by the old Cathedral. The frost was hard and crisp, crackling underfoot. The two young girls, Kseniya and Lena, with Sergius and the general, were returning to the mansion to fetch their handsleighs and toboggan down the slope to the river.

Constantine had gone into town, to a club of cocaine-eaters, to drug himself, utter vulgar platitudes, and kiss the hands of loose women. Leontyevna, the Cyclop maid from the Exchange, lay down on a bench in the kitchen to rest from the day's work, said her prayers, and fell into a sound sleep.

The general stood on the door-steps. Sergius drew up the sleighs, and they took their seats—three abreast—Kseniya, Elena and himself, and whirled along over the crackling snow, down to the ice-covered Volga. The sleighs flew wildly down the slope, and in this impetuous flight, in the sprinkling and crackling snow, and bitter, numbing frost, Kseniya dreamed of a wondrous bliss: she felt a desire to embrace the world! Life suddenly seemed so joyous.

The frost was harsh, cruel and penetrating. On regaining the house the general bristled up like a sparrow—he was frozen—and called out from the door-step:

"Sergius! There is a frost to-day that will certainly burst the water-pipes. We will have to place a guard for the night."

Perhaps Sergius, and even the old man, had had a glimpse of wonderful happiness in the sleigh's swift flight over the snow. The former called back:

"Never mind!"—and again whirled wildly down from the old Cathedral to the Volga, where the boats and steamers plied amid the deep-blue, massive ice-floes, so sparkling and luminous in their snowy raiment.

But the general had now worked himself up to a state of great excitement. He rushed indoors and roused everyone:

"I tell you, it will freeze and the pipes will burst unless you let the water run a little. There are 27 degrees of frost!"

"But the tap is in the kitchen and Leontyevna is sleeping there," objected Lina.

"Well, waken her!"

"Impossible!"

"Damn rot!" snarled the general and went into the kitchen and shook Leontyevna, explaining to her about the pipes.

"I will go to the Exchange and complain! Not even letting one rest!...Stealing in to an undressed woman!..."

Lina jabbered her words after her like a parrot. Sergius ran in.

"Leave off, please," he begged. "It is I who am responsible. Let Leontyevna sleep."

"Certainly, I am not one of the heirs," the general retorted smoothly.

The night and the frost swept over the Volga, the Steppe, and Saratov. The general was unable to sleep. Kseniya and Lena were crying in the attic. Constantine arrived home late, and noiselessly crept in to Leontyevna.

Bluish patches of moonlight fell in through the windows.

The water pipes froze in the night and burst.



THE CROSSWAYS

Forest, thickets, marshes, fields, a tranquil sky—and the crossways! The sky is overcast at times with dove-coloured clouds; the forest now gabbles, now groans in the glittering summer sunshine.

The crossways creep and crawl like a winding thread, without beginning and without end. Sometimes their stretch tires and vexes— one wants to go by a shorter route and turns aside, goes astray, comes back to the former way. Two wheel-tracks, ripple grass, a foot- path and around them, besides sky or rye or snow or trees, are the crossways, without beginning or end or limit. And over them pass the peasants singing their low toned songs. At times these are sorrowful, as endless as the crossways themselves: Russia was borne in these songs, born with them, from them.

Our ways lie through the crossways as they ever have done, and ever will. All Russia is in the crossways—amid the fields, thickets marshes, and forests.

But there were also those Others who wanted to march over the bog- ways, who planned to throw Russia on to her haunches, to press on through the marshlands, make main-roads straight as rules, and barricade themselves behind granite and steel, forgetful of Russia's peasant cottages. And on they marched!

Sometimes the main-road is joined by the crossways, and from them to the main-road and over it passes the long vaunted Rising, the people's tumult, to sweep away the Unnecessary, then vanish back again into the crossways.

Near the main-road lies the railway. By turning aside from it, walking through a field, fording a river, penetrating first through a dark aspen grove, then through a red pine belt, skirting some ravines, threading a way across a village, trudging wearily through dried-up river-beds and on through a marsh, the village of Pochinki is reached, surrounded by forest.

In the village were three cottages, their backs to the forest; their rugged noses seemed to scowl from beneath the pine-trees, and their dim, tear-dribbling window-eyes looked wolfish. Their grey timbers lay on them like wrinkles, their reddish-yellow thatch, like bobbed hair, hung to the ground. Behind them was the forest; in front, pasture, thickets, forest again, and sky. The neighbouring crossways coiled round them in a ring, then narrowed away into the forest.

In all three cottages dwelt Kononovs: they were not kinsfolk, though they bore that name, closer linked through their common life than kinsmen ever were. Kononov-Yonov, the One-Eyed, was the village elder: he no longer remembered his grandfather's name, but knew the olden times well, and remembered how his great-grandfathers and his great-great-grandfathers had lived and how it was good for men to live.

From the oldest to the youngest they toiled with all their strength from spring to autumn, from autumn to spring, and from sunrise to sundown, growing grey like their hen-coops from smoke, scorching in the heat and steaming sweat like boiling tar.

The kinsfolk of Yonov the One-eyed made tar besides tilling the land, while Yonov himself kept bee-hives in the forest. The sisters Yonov barked lime-trees and made bast shoes. It was a hard, stern life, with its smoke, heat, frosts, and languour; but they loved it profoundly.

The Kononovs lived alone in friendship with the woods, the fields, and the sky; yet ever engaged in stubborn struggle against them. They had to remember the rise and set of the sun, the nights and the dung- mounds. They had to look into putrid corners, watch for cold blasts from the north, and give ear to the rumbling and gabbling of the forest.

They knew:

With January, mid-winter time, Starts the year its frosty prime, Blows wild the wind e'er yet'tis still, Crackles the ice in the frozen rill; Epiphany betimes is past, Approaches now the Lenten Fast.

In February there's a breath of heat, Summer and winter at Candlemas meet. In April the year grows moist and warm the air, The old folks' lives without their doors bids fair; The woodcock then comes flying from the sea, Brings back the Spring from its captivity.

Under a showery sky, Bloom wide the fields of rye, Ever blue and chill May will the granaries fill.

It was necessary to work stubbornly, sternly, in harmony with the earth, to fight hand-to-hand with the forest, the axe, the plough and the scythe. They had learnt to keep their eyes wide open, for each had to hold his own against the wood-spirit, the rumbling forest, famine, and the marshes. They had learnt to know their Mother-Earth by the birds, sky, wind, and stars, like those men of whom Yonov the One-Eyed told them—those who of old wended their way to Chuvsh tribes and the Murman Forest.

All the Kononovs were built alike, strong, rugged, with short legs and broad, heavy feet like juniper-roots, long backs, arms that hung down to their knees, shoulder-blades protruding as though made for harness, mossy green eyes that gazed with a slow stubborn look, and noses like earthen whistles.

They lived with the rye, horses, cows, the sheep, the woods, and the grass. They knew that as the rye dropped seeds to the ground and reproduced in abundance so also bred beast and bird, counteracting death with birth. They knew too that to breed was also man's lot.

Ulyanka reached her seventeenth year, Ivan his eighteenth: they bowed to the winds and went to the altar.

Ivan Kononov did not think of death when he went to the war, for what was death when through it came birth? Were there not heat-waves and drought in summer? Did not the winter sweep the earth by blizzards? Yet in spring all began to pulsate again with life.

The War came: Ivan Kononov went without understanding, without reason—what concern was it of Pochinki? He was dragged through towns, he pined in spittle-stained barracks; and then he was sent to the Carpathians. He fired. He fought hand-to-hand: he fled; he retreated forty versts a day, resting in the woods singing his peasant-songs with the soldiers—and yearning for Pochinki. He found all spoke like Grandfather Yonov the One-Eyed; he learnt of the land in the olden time order, of the people's Rising. At its approach he went on furlough to Pochinki, met it there, and there remained.

The Rising came like happy tidings, like the cool breath of dawn, like a May-time shower:

Under a showery sky Bloom wide the fields of rye, Ever blue and chill May will the granaries fill.

Formerly there were the village constable, the district clerk, trumperies, requisitions, and taxations; for then it was the gentry who were the guardians. But now, Yonov the One-Eyed croaked exultantly:

"Now it's ourselves! We ourselves! In our own way! In our own world! The land is ours! We are the masters: it is the Rising! Our Rising!"

There were no storms that winter; it was cold and dark, and the wolf- packs were astir. One after another the inhabitants were stricken down with typhoid—it was with typhoid that they paid for the Rising! Half the village succumbed and was borne on the peasants' sleighs to the churchyard.

By Candlemas, when winter and summer meet, all the provisions were exhausted, and the villagers drove to the station. But even that had changed. New people congregated there, some shouting, others hurrying to and fro with sacks. The villagers returned with nothing and sat down to their potatoes.

In the spring prayers were offered up for the dead and a religious procession paraded round the village, the outskirts of which were bestrewn with ashes. Then the villagers started to take tar and bast shoes to the station; they wanted to sell them, and with the proceeds buy ploughshares, harrows, scythes, sickles, and leather straps. But they never reached the station.

Their way led them through fields all lilac-coloured in the glowing sun: there they encountered an honest peasant dressed in a short fur jacket and a cap beneath which his look was calm and grave.