"Do you now pray to God," he said once as he pointed to heaven with one of his crooked fingers, and with the disengaged hand clasped his dishevelled, variously coloured beard.

Whereupon Nilushka glanced fearfully at the mysteriously pointing finger, and, plucking sharply at his forehead, shoulders, and stomach with two fingers and a thumb, intoned in thin, plaintive accents:

"Our Father in Heaven—"

"WHICH ART in Heaven."

"Yes, in the Heaven of Heavens."

"Ah, well! God will understand. He is the friend of all blessed ones." [Idiots; since persons mentally deficient are popularly deemed to stand in a peculiarly close relation to the Almighty.]

Again, great was Nilushka's interest in anything spherical. Also, he had a love for handling the heads of children; when, softly approaching a group from behind, he would, with his bright, quiet smile, lay slender, bony fingers upon a close-cropped little poll; with the result that the children, not relishing such fingering, would take alarm at the same, and, bolting to a discreet distance, thence abuse the idiot, put out their tongues at him, and drawl in a nasal chorus:

"Nilka, the bottle-neck, the neck without a nape to it" [Probably the attractiveness of this formula lay rather in the rhyming of the Russian words: "Nilka, butilka, bashka bez zatilka!" than in their actual meaning].

Yet their fear of him was in no way reciprocated, nor, for that matter, did they ever assault him, despite the fact that occasionally they would throw an old boot or a chip of wood in his direction-throw it aimlessly, and without really desiring to hit the mark aimed at.

Also, anything circular—for example, a plate or the wheel of a toy, engaged Nilushka's attention and led him to caress it as eagerly as he did globes and balls. Evidently the rotundity of the object was the point that excited his interest. And as he turned the object over and over, and felt the flat part of it, he would mutter:

"But what about the other one?"

What "the other one" meant I could never divine. Nor could Antipa. Once, drawing the idiot to him, he said:

"Why do you always say 'What about the other one'?"

Troubled and nervous, Nilushka merely muttered some unintelligible reply as his fingers turned and turned about the circular object which he was holding.

"Nothing," at length he replied.

"Nothing of what?

"Nothing here."

"Ah, he is too foolish to understand," said Vologonov with a sigh as his eyes darkened in meditative fashion.

"Yes, though it may seem foolish to say so," he added, "some people would envy him."

"Why should they?"

"For more than one reason. To begin with, he lives a life free from care—he is kept comfortably, and even held in respect. Since no one can properly understand him, and everyone fears him, through a belief that folk without wit, the 'blessed ones of God,' are more especially the Almighty's favourites than persons possessed of understanding. Only a very wise man could deal with such a matter, and the less so in that it must be remembered that more than one 'blessed one' has become a Saint, while some of those possessed of understanding have gone—well, have gone whither? Yes, indeed!"

And, thoughtfully contracting the bushy eyebrows which looked as though they had been taken from the face of another man, Vologonov thrust his hands up his sleeves, and stood eyeing Nilushka shrewdly with his intangible gaze.

Never did Felitzata say for certain who the boy's father had been, but at least it was known to me that in vague terms she had designated two men as such—the one a young "survey student," and the other a merchant by name Viporotkov, a man notorious to the whole town as a most turbulent rake and bully. But once when she and Antipa and I were seated gossiping at the entrance-gates, and I inquired of her whether Nilushka's father were still surviving, she replied in a careless way:

"He is so, damn him!"

"Then who is he?"

Felitzata, as usual, licked her faded, but still comely, lips with the tip of her tongue before she replied:

"A monk."

"Ah!" Vologonov exclaimed with unexpected animation. "That, then, explains things. At all events, we have in it an intelligible THEORY of things."

Whereafter, he expounded to us at length, and with no sparing of details, the reason why a monk should have been Nilushka's father rather than either the merchant or the young "survey student." And as Vologonov proceeded he grew unwontedly enthusiastic, and went so far as to clench his fists until presently he heaved a sigh, as though mentally hurt, and said frowningly and reproachfully to the woman:

"Why did you never tell us this before? It was exceedingly negligent of you."

Felitzata looked at the old man with sarcasm and sauciness gleaming in her brown eyes. Suddenly, however, she contracted her brows, counterfeited a sigh, and whined:

"Ah, I was good-looking then, and desired of all. In those days I had both a good heart and a happy nature."

"But the monk may prove to have been an important factor in the question," was Antipa's thoughtful remark.

"Yes, and many another man than he has run after me for his pleasure," continued Felitzata in a tone of reminiscence. This led Vologonov to cough, rise to his feet, lay his hand upon the woman's claret-coloured sleeve of satin, and say sternly:

"Do you come into my room, for I have business to transact with you."

As she complied she smiled and winked at me. And so the pair departed—he shuffling carefully with his bandy legs, and she watching her steps as though at any moment she might collapse on to her left side.

Thenceforth, Felitzata visited Vologonov almost daily; and once during the time of two hours or so that the pair were occupied in drinking tea I heard, through the partition-wall, the old man say in vigorous, level, didactical tones:

"These tales and rumours ought not to be dismissed save with caution. At least ought they to be given the benefit of the doubt. For, though all that he says may SEEM to us unintelligible, there may yet be enshrined therein a meaning, such as—"

"You say a meaning?"

"Yes, a meaning which, eventually, will be vouchsafed to you in a vision. For example, you may one day see issue from a dense forest a man of God, and hear him cry aloud: Felitzata, Oh servant of God, Oh sinner most dark of soul—"

"What a croaking, to be sure!"

"Be silent! No nonsense! Do you blame yourself rather than sing your own praises. And in that vision you may hear the man of God cry: 'Felitzata, go you forth and do that which one who shall meet you may request you to perform!' And, having gone forth, you may find the man of God to be the monk whom we have spoken of."

"A-a-ah!" the woman drawled with an air of being about to say something more.

"Come, fool!"

"You see—"

"Have I, this time, abused you?"

"No, but—"

"I have an idea that the man of God will be holding a crook."

"Of course," assented Felitzata.

Similarly, on another occasion, did I hear Antipa mutter confidentially to his companion:

"The fact that all his sayings are so simple is not a favourable sign. For, you see, they do not harmonise with the affair in its entirety—in such a connection words should be mysterious, and so, able to be interpreted in more than one way, seeing that the more meanings words possess, the more are those words respected and heeded by mankind."

"Why so?" queried Felitzata.

"Why so?" re-echoed Vologonov irritably. "Are we not, then, to respect ANYONE or ANYTHING? Only he is worthy of respect who does not harm his fellows; and of those who do not harm their fellows there are but few. To this point you must pay attention—you must teach him words of variable import, words more abstract, as well as more sonorous."

"But I know no such words."

"I will repeat to you a few, and every night, when he goes to bed, you shall repeat them to HIM. For example: 'Adom ispolneni, pokaites'[Do ye people who are filled with venom repent]. And mark that the exact words of the Church be adhered to. For instance, 'Dushenbitzi, pozhaleite Boga, okayannie,' [Murderers of the soul, accursed ones, repent ye before God.] must be said rather than 'Dushenbitzi, pozhaleite Boga, okayanni,' since the latter, though the shorter form, is also not the correct one. But perhaps I had better instruct the lad myself."

"Certainly that would be the better plan."

So from that time onwards Vologonov fell to stopping Nilushka in the street, and repeating to him something or another in his kindly fashion. Once he even took him by the hand, and, leading him to his room, and giving him something to cat, said persuasively:

"Say this after me. 'Do not hasten, Oh ye people.' Try if you can say that."

"'A lantern,'" began Nilushka civilly.

"'A lantern?' Yes. Well, go on, and say, 'I am a lantern unto thee—"

"I want to sing, it."

"There is no need for that, though presently you shall sing it. For the moment your task is to learn the correct speaking of things. So say after me—"

"O Lo-ord, have mercy!" came in a quiet, thoughtful chant from the idiot. Whereafter he added in the coaxing tone of a child:

"We shall all of us have to die."

"Yes, but come, come!" expostulated Vologonov. "What are you blurting out NOW? That much I know without your telling me—always have I known, little friend, that each of us is hastening towards his death. Yet your want of understanding exceeds what should be."

"Dogs run-"

"Dogs? Now, enough, little fellow."

"Dogs run like chickens. They run here, in the ravine," continued Nilushka in the murmuring accents of a child of three.

"Nevertheless," mused Vologonov, "even that seeming nothing of his may mean something. Yes, there may lie in it a great deal. Now, say: 'Perdition will arise before him who shall hasten.'"

"No, I want to SING something."

With a splutter Vologonov said:

"Truly you are a difficult subject to deal with!"

And with that he fell to pacing the floor with long, thoughtful strides as the idiot's voice cried in quavering accents:

"O Lo-ord, have me-ercy upon us!"

* * * * *

Thus the winsome Nilushka proved indispensable to the foul, mean, unhealthy life of the suburb. Of that life he coloured and rounded off the senselessness, the ugliness, the superfluity. He resembled an apple hanging forgotten on a gnarled old worm-eaten tree, whence all the fruit and the leaves have fallen until only the branches wave in the autumn wind. Rather, he resembled a sole-surviving picture in the pages of a ragged, soiled old book which has neither a beginning nor an ending, and therefore can no longer be read, is no longer worth the reading, since now its pages contain nothing intelligible.

And as smiling his gracious smile, the lad's pathetic, legendary figure flitted past the mouldy buts and cracked fences and riotous beds of nettles, there would readily recur to the memory, and succeed one another, visions of some of the finer and more reputable personages of Russian lore—there would file before one's mental vision, in endless sequence, men whose biographies inform us how, in fear for their souls, they left the life of the world, and, hieing them to the forests and the caves, abandoned mankind for the wild things of nature. And at the same time would there recur to one's memory poems concerning the blind and the poor-in particular, the poem concerning Alexei the Man of God, and all the multitude of other fair, but unsubstantial, forms wherein Russia has embodied her sad and terrified soul, her humble and protesting grief. Yet it was a process to depress one almost to the point of distraction.

Once, forgetting that Nilushka was imbecile, I conceived an irrepressible desire to talk with him, and to read him good poetry, and to tell him both of the world's youthful hopes and of my own personal thoughts.

The occasion happened on a day when, as I was sitting on the edge of the ravine, and dangling my legs over the ravine's depths, the lad came floating towards me as though on air. In his hands, with their fingers as slender as a girl's, he was holding a large leaf; and as he gazed at it the smile of his clear blue eyes was, as it were, pervading him from head to foot.

"Whither, Nilushka?" said I.

With a start he raised his head and eyes heavenward. Then timidly he glanced at the blue shadow of the ravine, and extended to me his leaf, over the veins of which there was crawling a ladybird.

"A bukan," he observed.

"It is so. And whither are you going to take it?"

"We shall all of us die. I was going to take and bury it."

"But it is alive; and one does not bury things before they are dead."

Nilushka closed and opened his eyes once or twice.

"I should like to sing something," he remarked.

"Rather, do you SAY something."

He glanced at the ravine again—his pink nostrils quivering and dilating—then sighed as though he was weary, and in all unconsciousness muttered a foul expression. As he did so I noticed that on the portion of his neck below his right ear there was a large birthmark, and that, covered with golden down like velvet, and resembling in shape a bee, it seemed to be endowed with a similitude of life, through the faint beating of a vein in its vicinity.

Presently the ladybird raised her upper wings as though she were preparing for flight; whereupon Nilushka sought with a finger to detain her, and, in so doing, let fall the leaf, and enabled the insect to detach itself and fly away at a low level. Upon that, bending forward with arms outstretched, the idiot went softly in pursuit, much as though he himself were launching his body into leisurely flight, but, when ten paces away, stopped, raised his face to heaven, and, with arms pendent before him, and the palms of his hands turned outwards as though resting on something which I could not see, remained fixed and motionless.

From the ravine there were tending upwards towards the sunlight some green sprigs of willow, with dull yellow flowers and a clump of grey wormwood, while the damp cracks which seamed the clay of the ravine were lined with round leaves of the "mother-stepmother plant," and round about us little birds were hovering, and from both the bushes and the bed of the ravine there was ascending the moist smell of decay. Yet over our heads the sky was clear, as the sun, now sole occupant of the heavens, declined slowly in the direction of the dark marshes across the river; only above the roofs of Zhitnaia Street could there be seen fluttering about in alarm a flock of snow-white pigeons, while waving below them was the black besom which had, as it were, swept them into the air, and from afar one could hear the sound of an angry murmur, the mournful, mysterious murmur of the town.

Whiningly, like an old man, a child of the suburb was raising its voice in lamentation; and as I listened to the sound, it put me in mind of a clerk reading Vespers amid the desolation of an empty church. Presently a brown dog passed us with shaggy head despondently pendent, and eyes as beautiful as those of a drunken woman.

And, to complete the picture, there was standing—outlined against the nearest shanty of the suburb, a shanty which lay at the extreme edge of the ravine-there was standing, face to the sun, and back to the town, as though preparing for flight, the straight, slender form of the boy who, while alien to all, caressed all with the eternally incomprehensible smile of his angel-like eyes. Yes, that golden birthmark so like a bee I can see to this day!

* * * * *

Two weeks later, on a Sunday at mid-day, Nilushka passed into the other world. That day, after returning home from late Mass, and handing to his mother a couple of wafers which had been given him as a mark of charity, the lad said:

"Mother, please lay out my bed on the chest, for I think that I am going to lie down for the last time."

Yet the words in no way surprised Felitzata, for he had often before remarked, before retiring to rest:

"Some day we shall all of us have to die."

At the same time, whereas, on previous occasions, Nilushka had never gone to sleep without first of all singing to himself his little song, and then chanting the eternal, universal "Lord, have mercy upon us!" he, on this occasion, merely folded his hands upon his breast, closed his eyes, and relapsed into slumber.

That day Felitzata had dinner, and then departed on business of her own; and when she returned in the evening, she was astonished to find that her son was still asleep. Next, on looking closer at him, she perceived that he was dead.

"I looked," she related plaintively to some of the suburban residents who came running to her cot, "and perceived his little feet to be blue; and since it was only just before Mass that I had washed his hands with soap, I remarked the more readily that his feet were become less white than his hands. And when I felt one of those hands, I found that it had stiffened."

On Felitzata's face, as she recounted this, there was manifest a nervous expression. Likewise, her features were a trifle flushed. Yet gleaming also through the tears in her languorous eyes there was a sense of relief—one might almost have said a sense of joy.

"Next," continued she, "I looked closer still, and then fell on my knees before the body, sobbing: 'Oh my darling, whither art thou fled? Oh God, wherefore hast Thou taken him from me?'"

Here Felitzata inclined her head upon her left shoulder contracted her brows over her mischievous eyes, clasped her hands to her breast, and fell into the lament:

Oh, gone is my dove, my radiant moon! O star of mine eyes, thou hast set too soon! In darksome depths thy light lies drown'd, And time must yet complete its round, And the trump of the Second Advent sound, Ere ever my—

"Here, you! Hold your tongue!" grunted Vologonov irritably.

For myself, I had, that day, been walking in the forest, until, as I returned, I was brought up short before the windows of Felitzata's cot by the fact that some of the erstwhile turbulent denizens of the suburb were whispering softly together as, with an absence of all noise, they took turns to raise themselves on tiptoe, and, craning their necks, to peer into one of the black window-spaces. Yes, like bees on the step of a hive did they look, and on the great majority of faces, and in the great majority of eyes, there was quivering an air of tense, nervous expectancy.

Only Vologonov was nudging Felitzata, and saying to her in a loud, authoritative tone:

"Very ready are you to weep, but I should like first to hear the exact circumstances of the lad's death."

Thus invited, the woman wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her bodice, licked her lips, heaved a prolonged sigh, and fell to regarding Antipa's red, hardbitten face with the cheerful, unabashed glance of a person who is under the influence of liquor. From under her white head-band there had fallen over her temples and her right cheek a few wisps of golden hair; and indeed, as she drew herself up, and tossed her head and bosom, and smoothed out and stretched the creases in her bodice, she looked less than her years. Everyone now fell to eyeing her in an attentive silence, though not, it would seem, without a touch of envy.

Abruptly, sternly, the old man inquired:

"Did the lad ever complain of ill-health?"

"No, never," Felitzata replied. "Never once did he speak of it—never once."

"And he had not been beaten?"

"Oh, how can you ask me such a thing, and especially seeing that, that—?"

"I did not say beaten by YOU."

"Well, I cannot answer for anyone else, but at least had he no mark on his body, seeing that when I lifted the smock I could find nothing save for scratches on legs and back."

Her tone now had in it a new ring, a ring of increased assurance, and when she had finished she closed her bright eyes languidly before heaving a soft, as it were, voluptuous, and, withal, very audible sigh.

Someone here murmured:

"She DID use to beat him."

"What?"

"At all events she used to lose her temper with him."

This led to the putting of a further dozen or so of leading questions; whereafter Antipa, for a while, preserved a suggestive silence, and the crowd too remained silent, as though it had suddenly been lulled to slumber. Only at long last, and with a clearing of his throat, did Antipa say:

"Friends, we must suppose that God, of His infinite Mercy, has vouchsafed to us here a special visitation, in that, as all of us have perceived, a lad bereft of wit, the same radiant lad whom all of us have known, has here abided in the closest of communion with the Blessed Dispenser of life on earth."

Then I moved away, for upon my heart there was pressing a burden of unendurable sorrow, and I was yearning, oh, so terribly, to see Nilushka once more.

The back portion of Felitzata's cot stood a little sunken into the ground, so that the front portion had its cold window panes and raised sash tilted a trifle towards the remote heavens. I bent my head, and entered by the open door. Near the threshold Nilushka was lying on a narrow chest against the wall. The folds of a dark-red pillow of fustian under the head set off to perfection the pale blue tint of his round, innocent face under its corona of golden curls; and though the eyes were closed, and the lips pressed tightly together, he still seemed to be smiling in his old quiet, but joyous, way. In general, the tall, thin figure on the mattress of dark felt, with its bare legs, and its slender hands and wrists folded across the breast, reminded me less of an angel than of a certain image of the Holy Child with which a blackened old ikon had rendered me familiar from my boyhood upwards.

Everything amid the purple gloom was still. Even the flies were forbearing to buzz. Only from the street was there grating through the shaded window the strong, roguish voice of Felitzata as it traced the strange, lugubrious word-pattern:

With my bosom pressed to the warm, grey earth, To thee, grey earth, to thee, Oh my mother of old, I beseech thee, I who am a mother like thee, And a mother in pain, to enfold in thy arms This my son, this my dead son, this my ruby, This my drop of my heart's blood, this my—

Suddenly I caught sight of Antipa standing in the doorway. He was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Presently in a gruff and unsteady voice he said:

"It is all very fine for you to weep, good woman, but the present is not the right moment to sing such verses as those—they were meant, rather, to be sung in a graveyard at the side of a tomb. Well, tell me everything without reserve. Important is it that I should know EVERYTHING."

Whereafter, having crossed himself with a faltering hand, he carefully scrutinised the corpse, and at last let his eyes halt upon the lad's sweet features. Then he muttered sadly:

"How extraordinarily he has grown! Yes, death has indeed enlarged him! Ah, well, so be it! Soon I too shall have to be stretching myself out. Oh that it were now!"

Then with cautious movements of his deformed fingers he straightened the folds of the lad's smock, and drew it over the legs. Whereafter he pressed his flushed lips to the hem of the garment.

Said I to him at that moment:

"What is it that you have been wanting of him? Why is it that you have been trying to teach him strange words?"

Straightening himself, and glancing at me with dim eyes, Antipa repeated:

"What is it that I have been wanting of him?" To the repetition he added with manifest sincerity, though also with a self-depreciatory movement of the head:

"To tell the truth, I scarcely know WHAT it is that I have been wanting of him. By God I do not. Yet, as one speaking the truth in the presence of death, I say that never during my long lifetime had I so desired aught else.... Yes, I have waited and waited for fortune to reveal it to me; and ever has fortune remained mute and tongueless. Foolish was it of me to have expected otherwise, to have expected, for instance, that some day there might occur something marvellous, something unlooked-for."

With a short laugh, he indicated the corpse with his eyes, and continued more firmly:

"Yes, bootless was it to have expected anything from such a source as that. Never, despite one's wishes, was anything possible of acquisition thence... This is usually the case. Felitzata, as a clever woman indeed (albeit one cold of heart), was for having her son accounted a God's fool, and thereby gaining some provision against her old age."

"But you yourself were the person who suggested that? You yourself wished it?"

"I?"

Presently, thrusting his hands up his sleeves, he added dully and brokenly:

"Yes, I DID wish it. Why not, indeed, seeing that at least it would have brought comfort to the poor people of this place? Sometimes I feel very sorry for them with their bitter, troublous lives—lives which may be the lives of rogues and villains, yet are lives which have produced amongst us a pravednik," [A "just person," a human being without sin].

All the evening sky was now aflame. Upon the ear there fell the mournful lament:

When snow has veiled the earth in white, The snowy plain the wild wolves tread. They wail for the cheering warmth of spring As I bewail the bairn that's dead.

Vologonov listened for a moment. Then he said firmly:

"These are mere accesses of impulse which come upon her. And that is only what might be expected. Even as in song or in vice there is no holding her, so remorse, when it has fastened upon such a woman's heart, will know no bounds. I may tell you that on one occasion two young merchants took her, stripped her stark naked, and drove her in their carriage down Zhitnaia Street, with themselves sitting on the seats of the vehicle, and Felitzata standing upright between them—yes, in a state of nudity! Thereafter they beat her almost to death."

As I stepped out into the dark, narrow vestibule, Antipa, who was following me, muttered:

"Such a lament as hers could come only of genuine grief."

We found Felitzata in front of the hut, with her back covering the window. There, with hands pressed to her bosom, and her skirt all awry, she was straining her dishevelled head towards the heavens, while the evening breeze, stirring her fine auburn hair, scattered it promiscuously over her flushed, sharply-defined features and wildly protruding eyes. A bizarre, pitiable, and extraordinary figure did she cut as she wailed in a throaty voice which constantly gathered strength:

Oh winds of ice, winds cruel and rude, Press on my heart till its throbbings fail! Arrest the current of my blood! Turn these hot melting tears to hail!

Before her there was posted a knot of women, compassionate contemplators of the singer's distracted, grief-wrought features. Through the ravine's dark opening I could see the sun sinking below the suburb before plunging into the marshy forest and having his disk pierced by sharp, black tips of pine trees. Already everything around him was red. Already, seemingly, he had been wounded, and was bleeding to death.



THE CEMETERY

In a town of the steppes where I found life exceedingly dull, the best and the brightest spot was the cemetery. Often did I use to walk there, and once it happened that I fell asleep on some thick, rich, sweet-smelling grass in a cradle-like hollow between two tombs.

From that sleep I was awakened with the sound of blows being struck against the ground near my head. The concussion of them jarred me not a little, as the earth quivered and tinkled like a bell. Raising myself to a sitting posture, I found sleep still so heavy upon me that at first my eyes remained blinded with unfathomable darkness, and could not discern what the matter was. The only thing that I could see amid the golden glare of the June sunlight was a wavering blur which at intervals seemed to adhere to a grey cross, and to make it give forth a succession of soft creaks.

Presently, however—against my wish, indeed—that wavering blur resolved itself into a little, elderly man. Sharp-featured, with a thick, silvery tuft of hair beneath his under lip, and a bushy white moustache curled in military fashion, on his upper, he was using the cross as a means of support as, with his disengaged hand outstretched, and sawing the air, he dug his foot repeatedly into the ground, and, as he did so, bestowed upon me sundry dry, covert glances from the depths of a pair of dark eyes.

"What have you got there?" I inquired.

"A snake," he replied in an educated bass voice, and with a rugged forefinger he pointed downwards; whereupon I perceived that wriggling on the path at his feet and convulsively whisking its tail, there was an echidna.

"Oh, it is only a grassworm," I said vexedly.

The old man pushed away the dull, iridescent, rope-like thing with the toe of his boot, raised a straw hat in salute, and strode firmly onwards.

"I thank you," I called out; whereupon, he replied without looking behind him:

"If the thing really WAS a grassworm, of course there was no danger."

Then he disappeared among the tombstones.

Looking at the sky, I perceived the time to be about five o'clock.

The steppe wind was sighing over the tombs, and causing long stems of grass to rock to and fro, and freighting the heated air with the silken rustling of birches and limes and other trees, and leading one to detect amid the humming of summer a note of quiet grief eminently calculated to evoke lofty, direct thoughts concerning life and one's fellow-men.

Veiling with greenery, grey and white tombstones worn with the snows of winter, crosses streaked with marks of rain, and the wall with which the graveyard was encircled, the rank vegetation served to also conceal the propinquity of a slovenly, clamorous town which lay coated with rich, sooty grime amid an atmosphere of dust and smells.

As I set off for a ramble among the tombs and tangled grass, I could discern through openings in the curtain of verdure a belfry's gilded cross which reared itself solemnly over crosses and memorials. At the foot of those memorials the sacramental vestment of the cemetery was studded with a kaleidoscopic sheen of flowers over which bees and wasps were so hovering and humming that the grass's sad, prayerful murmur seemed charged with a song of life which yet did not hinder reflections on death. Fluttering above me on noiseless wing were birds the flight of which sometimes made me start, and stand wondering whether the object before my gaze was really a bird or not: and everywhere the shimmer of gilded sunlight was setting the close-packed graveyard in a quiver which made the mounds of its tombs reminiscent of a sea when, after a storm, the wind has fallen, and all the green level is an expanse of smooth, foamless billows.

Beyond the wall of the cemetery the blue void of the firmament was pierced with smoky chimneys of oil-mills and soap factories, the roofs of which showed up like particoloured stains against the darker rags and tatters of other buildings; while blinking in the sunlight I could discern clatter-emitting, windows which looked to me like watchful eyes. Only on the nearer side of the wall was a sparse strip of turf dotted over with ragged, withered, tremulous stems, and beyond this, again, lay the site of a burnt building which constituted a black patch of earth-heaps, broken stoves, dull grey ashes, and coal dust. To heaven gaped the black, noisome mouths of burning-pits wherein the more economical citizens were accustomed nightly to get rid of the contents of their dustbins. Among the tall stems of steppe grass waved large, glossy leaves of ergot; in the sunlight splinters of broken glass sparkled as though they were laughing; and, from two spots in the dark brown plot which formed a semicircle around the cemetery, there projected, like teeth, two buildings the new yellow paint of which nevertheless made them look mean and petty amid the tangle of rubbish, pigweed, groundsel, and dock.

Indolently roaming hither and thither, a few speckled hens resembled female pedlars, and some pompous red cockerels a troupe of firemen; in the orifices of the burning-pits a number of mournful-eyed, homeless dogs were lying sheltered; among the shoots of the steppe scrub some lean cats were stalking sparrows; and a band of children who were playing hide-and-seek among the orifices above-mentioned presented, a pitiful sight as they went skipping over the filthy earth, disappearing in the crevices among the piles of heaped-up dirt.

Beyond the site of the burnt-out building there stretched a series of mean, close-packed huts which, crammed exclusively with needy folk, stood staring, with their dim, humble eyes of windows, at the crumbling bricks of the cemetery wall, and the dense mass of trees which that wall enclosed. Here, in one such hut, had I myself a lodging in a diminutive attic, which not only smelt of lamp-oil, but stood in a position to have wafted to it the least gasp or ejaculation on the part of my landlord, Iraklei Virubov, a clerk in the local treasury. In short, I could never glance out of the window at the cemetery on the other side of the strip of dead, burnt, polluted earth without reflecting that, by comparison, that cemetery was a place of sheer beauty, a place of ceaseless attraction.

And ever, that day, as though he had been following me, could there be sighted among the tombs the dark figure of the old man who had so abruptly awakened me from slumber; and since his straw hat reflected the sunlight as brilliantly as the disk of a sunflower as it meandered hither and thither, I, in my turn, found myself following him, though thinking, all the while, of Iraklei Virubov. Only a week was it since Iraklei's wife, a thin, shrewish, long-nosed woman with green and catlike eyes, had set forth on a pilgrimage to Kiev, and Iraklei had hastened to import into the hut a stout, squint-eyed damsel whom he had introduced to me as his "niece by marriage."

"She was baptised Evdokia," he had said on the occasion referred to. "Usually, however, I call her Dikanka. Pray be friendly with her, but remember, also, that she is not a person with whom to take liberties."

Large, round-shouldered, and clean-shaven like a chef, Virubov was for ever hitching up breeches which had slipped from a stomach ruined with surfeits of watermelon. And always were his fat lips parted as though athirst, and perpetually had he in his colourless eyes an expression of insatiable hunger.

One evening I overheard a dialogue to the following effect.

"Dikanka, pray come and scratch my back. Yes, between the shoulder-blades. O-o-oh, that is it. My word, how strong you are!"

Whereat Dikanka had laughed shrilly. And only when I had moved my chair, and thrown down my book, had the laughter and unctuous whispering died away, and given place to a whisper of:

"Holy Father Nicholas, pray for us unto God! Is the supper kvas ready, Dikanka?"

And softly the pair had departed to the kitchen—there to grunt and squeal once more like a couple of pigs....

The old man with the grey moustache stepped over the turf with the elastic stride of youth, until at length he halted before a large monument in drab granite, and stood reading the inscription thereon. Featured not altogether in accordance with the Russian type, he had on a dark-blue jacket, a turned-down collar, and a black stock finished off with a large bow—the latter contrasting agreeably with the thick, silvery, as it were molten, chin-tuft. Also, from the centre of a fierce moustache there projected a long and gristly nose, while over the grey skin of his cheeks there ran a network of small red veins. In the act of raising his hand to his hat (presumably for the purpose of saluting the dead), he, after conning the dark letters of the inscription on the tomb, turned a sidelong eye upon myself; and since I found the fact embarrassing, I frowned, and passed onward, full, still, of thoughts of the street where I was residing and where I desired to fathom the mean existence eked out by Virubov and his "niece."

As usual, the tombs were also being patrolled by Pimesha, otherwise Pimen Krozootov, a bibulous, broken-down ex-merchant who used to spend his time in stumbling and falling about the graves in search of the supposed resting-place of his wife. Bent of body, Pimesha had a small, bird-like face over-grown with grey down, the eyes of a sick rabbit, and, in general, the appearance of having undergone a chewing by a set of sharp teeth. For the past three years he had thus been roaming the cemetery, though his legs were too weak to support his undersized, shattered body; and whenever he caught his foot he fell, and for long could not rise, but lay gasping and fumbling among the grass, and rooting it up, and sniffing with a nose as sharp and red as though the skin had been flayed from it. True, his wife had been buried at Novotchevkassk, a thousand versts away, but Pimen refused to credit the fact, and always, on being told it, stuttered with much blinking of his wet, faded eyes: "Natasha? Natasha is here."

Also, there used to visit the spot, well-nigh daily, a Madame Christoforov, a tall old lady who, wearing black spectacles and a plain grey, shroudlike dress that was trimmed with black velvet, never failed to have a stick between her abnormally long fingers. Wizened of face, with cheeks hanging down like bags, and a knot of grey, rather, grey-green, hair combed over her temples from under a lace scarf, and almost concealing her ears, this lady pursued her way with deliberation, and entire assurance, and yielded the path to no one whom she might encounter. I have an idea that there lay buried there a son who had been killed in a roisterers' brawl.

Another habitual visitor was thin-legged, short-sighted Aulic Councillor Praotzev, ex-schoolmaster. With a book stuffed into the pocket of his canvas pea-jacket, a white umbrella grasped in his red hand, and a smile extending to ears as sharp and pointed as a rabbit's, he could, any Sunday after dinner, be seen skipping from tomb to tomb, with his umbrella brandished like a white flag soliciting terms of peace with death.

And, on returning home before the bell rang for Vespers, he would find that a crowd of boys had collected outside his garden wall; whereupon, dancing about him like puppies around a stork, they would fall to shouting in various merry keys:

"The Councillor, the Councillor! Who was it that fell in love with Madame Sukhinikh, and then fell into the pond?"

Losing his temper, and opening a great mouth, until he looked like an old rook which is about to caw, the Councillor would stamp his foot several times, as though preparing to dance to the boys' shouting, and lower his head, grasp his umbrella like a bayonet, and charge at the lads with a panting shout of:

"I'll tell your fathers! Oh, I'll tell your mothers!"

As for the Madame Sukhinikh, referred to, she was an old beggar-woman who, the year round, and in all weathers, sat on a little bench beside the cemetery wicket, and stuck to it like a stone. Her large face, a face rendered bricklike by years of inebriety, was covered with dark blotches born of frostbite, alcoholic inflammation, sunburn, and exposure to wind, and her eyes were perpetually in a state of suppuration. Never did anyone pass her but she proffered a wooden cup in a suppliant hand, and cried hoarsely, rather as though she were cursing the person concerned:

"Give something for Christ's sake! Give in memory of your kinsfolk there!"

Once an unexpected storm blew in from the steppes, and brought a downpour which, overtaking the old woman on her way home, caused her, her sight being poor, to fall into a pond, whence Praotzev attempted to rescue her, and into which, in the end, he slipped himself. From that day onwards he was twitted on the subject by the boys of the town.

Other frequenters of the cemetery I see before me—dark, silent figures, figures of persons whom still unsevered cords of memory seemed to have bound to the place for the rest of their lives, and compelled to wander, like unburied corpses, in quest of suitable tombs. Yes, they were persons whom life had rejected, and death, as yet, refused to accept.

Also, at times there would emerge from the long grass a homeless dog with large, sullen eyes, eyes startling at once in their intelligence and in their absolute Ishmaelitism—until one almost expected to hear issue from the animal's mouth reproaches couched in human language.

And sometimes the dog would still remain halted in the cemetery as, with tail lowered, it swayed its shelterless, shaggy head to and fro with an air of profound reflection, while occasionally venting a subdued, long-drawn yelp or howl.

Again, among the dense old lime trees, there would be scurrying an unseen mob of starlings and jackdaws whose young would, meanwhile, maintain a soft, hungry piping, a sort of gently persuasive, chirruping chorus; until in autumn, when the wind had stripped bare the boughs, these birds' black nests would come to look like mouldy, rag-swathed heads of human beings which someone had torn from their bodies and flung into the trees, to hang for ever around the white, sugarloaf-shaped church of the martyred St. Barbara. During that autumn season, indeed, everything in the cemetery's vicinity looked sad and tarnished, and the wind would wail about the place, and sigh like a lover who has been driven mad through bereavement....

Suddenly the old man halted before me on the path, and, sternly extending a hand towards a white stone monument near us, read aloud:

"'Under this cross there lies buried the body of the respected citizen and servant of God, Diomid Petrovitch Ussov,'" etc., etc.

Whereafter the old man replaced his hat, thrust his hands into the pockets of his pea-jacket, measured me with eyes dark in colour, but exceptionally clear for his time of life, and said:

"It would seem that folk could find nothing to say of this man beyond that he was a 'servant of God.' Now, how can a servant be worthy of honour at the hand of 'citizens'?"

"Possibly he was an ascetic," was my hazarded conjecture; whereupon the old man rejoined with a stamp of his foot:

"Then in such case one ought to write—"

"To write what?"

"To write EVERYTHING, in fullest possible detail."

And with the long, firm stride of a soldier my interlocutor passed onwards towards a more remote portion of the cemetery—myself walking, this time, beside him. His stature placed his head on a level with my shoulder only, and caused his straw hat to conceal his features. Hence, since I wished to look at him as he discoursed, I found myself forced to walk with head bent, as though I had been escorting a woman.

"No, that is not the way to do it," presently he continued in the soft, civil voice of one who has a complaint to present. "Any such proceeding is merely a mark of barbarism—of a complete lack of observation of men and life."

With a hand taken from one of his pockets, he traced a large circle in the air.

"Do you know the meaning of that?" he inquired.

"Its meaning is death," was my diffident reply, made with a shrug of the shoulders.

A shake of his head disclosed to me a keen, agreeable, finely cut face as he pronounced the following Slavonic words:

"'Smertu smert vsekonechnie pogublena bwist.'" [Death hath been for ever overthrown by death."]

"Do you know that passage?" he added presently.

Yet it was in silence that we walked the next ten paces—he threading his way along the rough, grassy path at considerable speed. Suddenly he halted, raised his hat from his head, and proffered me a hand.

"Young man," he said, "let us make one another's better acquaintance. I am Lieutenant Savva Yaloylev Khorvat, formerly of the State Remount Establishment, subsequently of the Department of Imperial Lands. I am a man who, after never having been found officially remiss, am living in honourable retirement—a man at once a householder, a widower, and a person of hasty temper."

Then, after a pause, he added:

"Vice-Governor Khorvat of Tambov is my brother—a younger brother; he being fifty-five, and I sixty-one, si-i-ixty one."

His speech was rapid, but as precise as though no mistake was permissible in its delivery.

"Also," he continued, "as a man cognisant of every possible species of cemetery, I am much dissatisfied with this one. In fact, never satisfied with such places am I."

Here he brandished his fist in the air, and described a large arc over the crosses.

"Let us sit down," he said, "and I will explain things."

So, after that we had seated ourselves on a bench beside a white oratory, and Lieutenant Khorvat had taken off his hat, and with a blue handkerchief wiped his forehead and the thick silvery hair which bristled from the knobs of his scalp, he continued:

"Mark you well the word kladbistche." [The word, though customarily used for cemetery, means, primarily, a treasure-house.] Here he nudged me with his elbow—continuing, thereafter, more softly: "In a kladbisiche one might reasonably look for kladi, for treasures of intellect and enlightenment. Yet what do we find? Only that which is offensive and insulting. All of us does it insult, for thereby is an insult paid to all who, in life, are bearing still their 'cross and burden.' You too will, one day, be insulted by the system, even as shall I. Do you understand? I repeat, 'their cross and burden'—the sense of the words being that, life being hard and difficult, we ought to honour none but those who STILL are bearing their trials, or bearing trials for you and me. Now, THESE folk here have ceased to possess consciousness."

Each time that the old man waved his hat in his excitement, its small shadow, bird-like, flew along the narrow path, and over the cross, and, finally, disappeared in the direction of the town.

Next, distending his ruddy cheeks, twitching his moustache, and regarding me covertly out of boylike eyes, the Lieutenant resumed:

"Probably you are thinking, 'The man with whom I have to deal is old and half-witted.' But no, young fellow; that is not so, for long before YOUR time had I taken the measure of life. Regard these memorials. ARE they memorials? For what do they commemorate as concerns you and myself? They commemorate, in that respect, nothing. No, they are not memorials; they are merely passports or testimonials conferred upon itself by human stupidity. Under a given cross there may lie a Maria, and under another one a Daria, or an Alexei, or an Evsei, or someone else—all 'servants of God,' but not otherwise particularised. An outrage this, sir! For in this place folk who have lived their difficult portion of life on earth are seen robbed of that record of their existences, which ought to have been preserved for your and my instruction. Yes, A DESCRIPTION OF THE LIFE LIVED BY A MAN is what matters. A tomb might then become even more interesting than a novel. Do you follow me?"

"Not altogether," I rejoined.

He heaved a very audible sigh.

"It should be easy enough," was his remark. "To begin with, I am NOT a 'servant of God.' Rather, I am a man intelligently, of set purpose, keeping God's holy commandments so far as lies within my power. And no one, not even God, has any right to demand of me more than I can give. That is so, is it not?"

I nodded.

"There!" the Lieutenant cried briskly as, cocking his hat, he assumed a still more truculent air. Then, spreading out his hands, he growled in his flexible bass:

"What is this cemetery? It is merely a place of show."

At this moment, for some reason or another, there occurred to me an incident which involved the figure of Iraklei Virubov, the figure which had carpet slippers on its ponderous feet, thick lips, a greedy mouth, deceitful eyes, and a frame so huge and cavernous that the dapper little Lieutenant could have stepped into it complete.

The day had been a Sunday, and the hour eventide. On the burnt plot of ground some broken glass had been emitting a reddish gleam, shoots of ergot had been diffusing their gloss, children shouting at play, dogs trotting backwards and forwards, and all things, seemingly, faring well, sunken in the stillness of the portion of the town adjoining the rolling, vacant steppe, with, above them, only the sky's level, dull-blue canopy, and around them, only the cemetery, like an island amidst a sea.

With Virubov, I had been sitting on a bench near the wicket-gate of his hut, as intermittently he had screwed his lecherous eyes in the direction of the stout, ox-eyed lacemaker, Madame Ezhov, who, after disposing of her form on a bank hard-by, had fallen to picking lice out of the curls of her eight-year-old Petka Koshkodav. Presently, as swiftly she had rummaged the boy's hair with fingers grown used to such rapid movement, she had said to her husband (a dealer in second-hand articles), who had been seated within doors, and therefore rendered invisible—she had said with oily derision:

"Oh, yes, you bald-headed old devil, you! Of course you got your price. Ye-es. Then, fool, you ought to have had a slipper smacked across that Kalmuck snout of yours. Talk of my price, indeed!"

Upon this Virubov had remarked with a sigh, and in sluggish, sententious tones:

"To grant the serfs emancipation was a sheer mistake. I am a humble enough servant of my country, yet I can see the truth of what I have stated, since it follows as a matter of course. What ought to have been done is that all the estates of the landowners should have been conveyed to the Tsar. Beyond a doubt that is so. Then both the peasantry and the townsfolk, the whole people, in short, would have had but a single landlord. For never can the people live properly so long as it is ignorant of the point where it stands; and since it loves authority, it loves to have over it an autocratic force, for its control. Always can it be seen seeking such a force."

Then, bending forward, and infusing into each softly uttered word a perfect lusciousness of falsity, Virubov had added to his neighbour:

"Take, for example, the working-woman who stands free of every tie."

"How do I stand free of anything?" the neighbour had retorted, in complete readiness for a quarrel.

"Oh, I am not speaking in your despite, Pavlushka, but to your credit," hastily Virubov had protested.

"Then keep your blandishments for that heifer, your 'niece,'" had been Madame Ezhov's response.

Upon this Virubov had risen heavily, and remarked as he moved away towards the courtyard:

"All folk need to be supervised by an autocratic eye."

Thereafter had followed a bout of choice abuse between his neighbour and his "niece," while Virubov himself, framed in the wicket-gate, and listening to the contest, had smacked his lips as he gazed at the pair, and particularly at Madame Ezhov. At the beginning of the bout Dikanka had screeched:

"It is my opinion, it is my opinion, that—"

"Don't treat me to any of YOUR slop!" the long-fanged Pavla had interrupted for the benefit of the street in general. And thus had the affair continued....

Lieutenant Khorvat blew the fag-end of his cigarette from his mouthpiece, glanced at me, and said with seemingly, a not over-civil, twitch of his bushy moustache:

"Of what are you thinking, if I might inquire?"

"I am trying to understand you."

"You ought not to find that difficult," was his rejoinder as again he doffed his hat, and fanned his face with it. "The whole thing may be summed up in two words. It is that we lack respect both for ourselves and for our fellow men. Do you follow me NOW?"

His eyes had grown once more young and clear, and, seizing my hand in his strong and agreeably warm fingers, he continued:

"Why so? For the very simple reason that I cannot respect myself when I can learn nothing, simply nothing, about my fellows."

Moving nearer to me, he added in a mysterious undertone:

"In this Russia of ours none of us really knows why he has come into existence. True, each of us knows that he was born, and that he is alive, and that one day he will die; but which of us knows the reason why all that is so?"

Through renewed excitement, its colour had come back to the Lieutenant's face, and his gestures became so rapid as to cause the ring on his finger to flash through the air like the link of a chain. Also, I was able to detect the fact that on the small, neat wrist under his left cuff, there was a bracelet finished with a medallion.

"All this, my good sir, is because (partially through the fact that men forget the point, and partially through the fact that that point fails to be understood aright) the WORK done by a man is concealed from our knowledge. For my own part, I have an idea, a scheme—yes, a scheme—in two words, a, a—"

"N-n-o-u, n-n-o-u!" the bell of the monastery tolled over the tombs in languid, chilly accents.

"—a scheme that every town and every village, in fact, every unit of homogeneous population, should keep a record of the particular unit's affairs, a, so to speak, 'book of life.' This 'book of life' should be more than a list of the results of the unit's labour; it should also be a living narrative of the workaday activities accomplished by each member of the unit. Eh? And, of course, the record to be compiled without official interference—solely by the town council or district administration, or by a special 'board, of life and works' or some such body, provided only that the task be not carried out by nominees of the GOVERNMENT. And in that record there should be entered everything—that is to say, everything of a nature which ought to be made public concerning every man who has lived among us, and has since gone from our midst."

Here the Lieutenant stretched out his hand again in the direction of the tombs.

"My right it is," he added, "to know how those folk there spent their lives. For it is by their labours and their thoughts, and even on the product of their bones, that I myself am now subsisting. You agree, do you not?"

In silence I nodded; whereupon he cried triumphantly:

"Ah! You see, do you? Yes, an indispensable point is it, that whatsoever a man may have done, whether good or evil, should be recorded. For example, suppose he has manufactured a stove specially good for heating purposes; record the fact. Or suppose he has killed a mad dog; record the fact. Or suppose he has built a school, or cleansed a dirty street, or been a pioneer in the teaching of sound farming, or striven, by word and deed, his life long, to combat official irregularities... record the fact. Again, suppose a woman has borne ten, or fifteen, healthy children; record the fact. Yes, and this last with particular care, since the conferment of healthy children upon the country is a work of absolute importance."

Further, pointing to a grey headstone with a worn inscription, he shouted (or almost did so):

"Under that stone lies buried the body of a man who never in his life loved but one woman, but ONE woman. Now, THAT is a fact which ought to have been recorded about him for it is not merely a string of names that is wanted, but a narrative of deeds. Yes, I have not only a desire, but a RIGHT, to know the lives which men have lived, and the works which they have performed; and whenever a man leaves our midst we ought to inscribe over his tomb full particulars of the 'cross and burden' which he bore, as particulars ever to be held in remembrance, and inscribed there both for my benefit and for the benefit of life in general, as constituting a clear and circumstantial record of the given career. Why did that man live? To the question write down, always, the answer in large and conspicuous characters. Eh?"

"Most certainly."

This led the Lieutenant's enthusiasm to increase still more as, for the third time waving his hand in the direction of the tombs, and mouthing each word, he continued:

"The folk of that town are liars pure and simple, for of set purpose they conceal the particulars of careers that they may depreciate those careers in our eyes, and, while showing us the insignificance of the dead, fill the living with a sense of similar insignificance, since insignificant folk are the easiest to manage. Yes, it is a scheme thought out with diabolical ingenuity. Yet, for myself—well, try and make me do what I don't intend to do!"

To which, with his face wrinkled with disgust, he added in a tone like a shot from a pistol:

"Machines are we! Yes, machines, and nothing else!"

Curious was it to watch the old man's excitement as one listened to the strong bass voice amid the stillness of the cemetery. Once more over the tombs, there came floating the languid, metallic notes of "N-n-o-u! N-n-o-u!"

The oily gloss on the withered grass had vanished, faded, and everything turned dull, though the air remained charged with the spring perfume of the geraniums, stocks, and narcissi which encircled some of the graves.

"You see," continued the Lieutenant, "one could not deny that each of us has his value. By the time that one has lived threescore years, one perceives that fact very clearly. Never CONCEAL things, since every life lived ought to be set in the light. And is capable of being so, in that every man is a workman for the world at large, and constitutes an instructor in good or in evil, and that life, when looked into, constitutes, as a whole, the sum of all the labour done by the aggregate of us petty, insignificant individuals. That is why we ought not to hide away a man's work, but to publish it abroad, and to inscribe on the cross over his tomb his deeds, his services, in their entirety. Yes, however negligible may have been those deeds, those services, hold them up for the perusal of those who can discover good even in what is negligible. NOW do you understand me?"

"I do," I replied. "Yes, I do."

"Good!"

The bell of the monastery struck two hasty beats—then became silent, so that only the sad echo of its voice remained reverberating over the cemetery. Once more my interlocutor drew out his cigarette-case, silently offered it to myself, and lighted and puffed industriously at another cigarette. As he did so his hands, as small and brown as the claws of a bird, shook a little, and his head, bent down, looked like an Easter egg in plush.

Still smoking, he looked me in the eyes with a self-diffident frown, and muttered:

"Only through the labour of man does the earth attain development. And only by familiarising himself with, and remembering, the past can man obtain support in his work on earth."

In speaking, the Lieutenant lowered his arm; whereupon on to his wrist there slipped the broad golden bracelet adorned with a medallion, and there gazed at me thence the miniature of a fair-haired woman: and since the hand below it was freckled, and its flexible fingers were swollen out of shape, and had lost their symmetry, the woman's fine-drawn face looked the more full of life, and, clearly picked out, could be seen to be smiling a sweet and slightly imperious smile.

"Your wife or your daughter?" I queried.

"My God! My God!" was, with a subdued sigh, the only response vouchsafed. Then the Lieutenant raised his arm, and the bracelet slid back to its resting place under his cuff.

Over the town the columns of curling smoke were growing redder, and the clattering windows blushing to a tint of pink that recalled to my memory the livid cheeks of Virubov's "niece," of the woman in whom, like her uncle, there was nothing that could provoke one to "take liberties."

Next, there scaled the cemetery wall and stealthily stretched themselves on the ground, so that they looked not unlike the far-flung shadows of the cemetery's crosses, a file of dark, tattered figures of beggars, while on the further side of the slowly darkening greenery a cantor drawled in sluggish, careless accents:

"E-e-ternal me-e—"

"Eternal memory of what?" exclaimed Lieutenant Khorvat with an angry shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose, in his day, a man has been the best cucumber-salter or mushroom-pickler in a given town. Or suppose he has been the best cobbler there, or that once he said something which the street wherein he dwelt can still remember. Would not THAT man be a man whose record should be preserved, and made accessible to my recollection?"

And again the Lieutenant's face wreathed itself in solid rings of pungent tobacco smoke.

Blowing softly for a moment, the wind bent the long stems of grass in the direction of the declining sun, and died away. All that remained audible amid the stillness was the peevish voices of women saying:

"To the left, I say."

"Oh, what is to be done, Tanechka?"

Expelling a fresh cloud of tobacco smoke in cylindrical form, the old man muttered:

"It would seem that those women have forgotten the precise spot where their relative or friend happens to lie buried."

As a hawk flew over the sun-reddened belfry-cross, the bird's shadow glided over a memorial stone near the spot where we were sitting, glanced off the corner of the stone, and appeared anew beyond it. And in the watching of this shadow, I somehow found a pleasant diversion.

Went on the Lieutenant:

"I say that a graveyard ought to evince the victory of life, the triumph of intellect and of labour, rather than the power of death. However, imagine how things would work out under my scheme. Under it the record of which I have spoken would constitute a history of a town's life which, if anything, would increase men's respect for their fellows. Yes, such a history as THAT is what a cemetery ought to be. Otherwise the place is useless. Similarly will the past prove useless if it can give us nothing. Yet is such a history ever compiled? If it is, how can one say that events are brought about by, forsooth, 'servants of God'?"

Pointing to the tombs with a gesture as though he were swimming, he paused for a moment or two.

"You are a good man," I said, "and a man who must have lived a good and interesting life."

He did not look at me, but answered quietly and thoughtfully:

"At least a man ought to be his fellows' friend, seeing that to them he is beholden for everything that he possesses and for everything that he contains. I myself have lived—"

Here, with a contraction of his brows, he fell to gazing about him, as though he were seeking the necessary word; until, seeming to fail to find it, he continued gravely:

"Men need to be brought closer together, until life shall have become better adjusted. Never forget those who are departed, for anything and everything in the life of a 'servant of God' may prove instructive and of profound significance."

On the white sides of the memorial-stones, the setting sun was casting warm lurid reflections, until the stonework looked as though it had been splashed with hot blood. Moreover, every thing around us seemed curiously to have swelled and grown larger and softer and less cold of outline; the whole scene, though as motionless as ever, appeared to have taken on a sort of bright-red humidity, and deposited that humidity in purple, scintillating, quivering dew on the turf's various spikes and tufts. Gradually, also, the shadows were deepening and lengthening, while on the further side of the cemetery wall a cow lowed at intervals, in a gross and drunken fashion, and a party of fowls cackled what seemed to be curses in response, and a saw grated and screeched.

Suddenly the Lieutenant burst into a peal of subdued laughter, and continued to do so until his shoulders shook. At length he said through the paroxysms, as, giving me a push, he cocked his hat boyishly:

"I must confess that, that—that the view which I first took of you was rather a tragic one. You see, when I saw a man lying prone on the grass I said to myself: 'H'm! What is that?' Next I saw a young fellow roaming about the cemetery with a frown settled on his face, and his breeches bulging; and again I said to myself—"

"A book is lying in my breeches pocket," I interposed.

"Ah! Then I understand. Yes, I made a mistake, but a very, welcome one. However, as I say, when I first saw you, I said to myself: 'There is a man lying near that tomb. Perhaps he has a bullet, a wound, in his temple?' And, as you know—"

He stopped to wink at me with another outburst of soft, good-humoured laughter. Then he continued.

"Nevertheless, the scheme of which I have told you cannot really be called a scheme, since it is merely a fancy of my own. Yet I SHOULD like to see life lived in better fashion."

He sighed and paused, for evidently he was becoming lost in thought.

"Unfortunately," he continued at last, "the latter is a desire which I have conceived too late. If only I had done so fifteen years ago, when I was filling the post of Inspector of the prison at Usman—"

His left arm stretched itself out, and once more there slid on to his wrist the bracelet. For a moment he touched its gold with a rapid, but careful, delicate, movement—then he restored the trinket to its retreat, rose suddenly, looked about him for a second or two with a frown, and said in dry, brisk tones as he gave his iron-grey moustache an energetic twist:

"Now I must be going."

For a while I accompanied him on his way, for I had a keen desire to hear him say something more in that pleasant, powerful bass of his; but though he stepped past the gravestones with strides as careful and regular as those of a soldier on parade, he failed again to break silence.

Just as we passed the chapel of the monastery there floated forth into the fair evening stillness, from the bars, of a window, while yet not really stirring that stillness, a hum of gruff, lazy, peevish ejaculations. Apparently they were uttered by two persons who were engaged in a dispute, since one of them muttered:

"What have you done? What have you done?"

And the other responded carelessly:

"Hold your tongue, now! Pray hold your tongue!"



ON A RIVER STEAMER

The water of the river was smooth, and dull silver of tint. Also, so barely perceptible was the current that it seemed to be almost stagnant under the mist of the noontide heat, and only by the changes in the aspect of the banks could one realise how quietly and evenly the river was carrying on its surface the old yellow-hulled steamer with the white-rimmed funnel, and also the clumsy barge which was being towed in her wake.

Dreamily did the floats of the paddle-wheels slap the water. Under the planks of the deck the engines toiled without ceasing. Steam hissed and panted. At intervals the engine-room bell jarred upon the car. At intervals, also, the tiller-chains slid to and fro with a dull, rattling sound. Yet, owing to the somnolent stillness settled upon the river, these sounds escaped, failed to catch one's attention.

Through the dryness of the summer the water was low. Periodically, in the steamer's bow, a deck hand like a king, a man with a lean, yellow, black-avised face and a pair of languishing eyes, threw overboard a polished log as in tones of melting melancholy he chanted:

"Se-em, se-em, shest!"

["Seven, seven, six!" (the depth of water, reckoned in sazheni or fathoms)]

It was as though he were wailing:

"Seyem, seyem, a yest-NISHEVO"

[Let us eat, let us eat, but to eat there is—nothing]

Meanwhile, the steamer kept turning her stearlet-like [The stearlet is a fish of the salmon species] prow deliberately and alternately towards either bank as the barge yawed behind her, and the grey hawser kept tautening and quivering, and sending out showers of gold and silver sparkles. Ever and anon, too, the captain on the bridge kept shouting, hoarsely through a speaking-trumpet:

"About, there!"

Under the stem of the barge a wave ran which, divided into a pair of white wings, serpentined away towards either bank.

In the meadowed distance peat seemed to be being burnt, and over the black forest there had gathered an opalescent cloud of smoke which also suffused the neighbouring marshes.

To the right, the bank of the river towered up into lofty, precipitous, clayey slopes intersected with ravines wherein aspens and birches found shelter.

Everything ashore had about it a restful, sultry, deserted look. Even in the dull blue, torrid sky there was nought save a white-hot sun.

In endless vista were meadows studded with trees—trees sleeping in lonely isolation, and, in places, surmounted with either the cross of a rural church which looked like a day star or the sails of a windmill; while further back from the banks lay the tissue cloths of ripening crops, with, here and there, a human habitation.

Throughout, the scene was indistinct. Everything in it was calm, touchingly simple, intimate, intelligible, grateful to the soul. So much so that as one contemplated the slowly-varying vistas presented by the loftier bank, the immutable stretches of meadowland, and the green, timbered dance-rings where the forest approached the river, to gaze at itself in the watery mirror, and recede again into the peaceful distance; as one gazed at all this one could not but reflect that nowhere else could a spot more simply, more kindly, more beautiful be found, than these peaceful shores of the great river.

Yet already a few shrubs by the river's margin were beginning to display yellow leaves, though the landscape as a whole was smiling the doubtful, meditative smile of a young bride who, about to bear her first child, is feeling at once nervous and delighted at the prospect.

* * * * *

The hour was past noon, and the third-class passengers, languid with fatigue induced by the heat, were engaged in drinking either tea or beer. Seated mostly on the bulwarks of the steamer, they silently scanned the banks, while the deck quivered, crockery clattered at the buffet, and the deck hand in the bows sighed soporifically:

Six! Six! Six-and-a-half!

From the engine-room a grimy stoker emerged. Rolling along, and scraping his bare feet audibly against the deck, he approached the boatswain's cabin, where the said boatswain, a fair-haired, fair-bearded man from Kostroma was standing in the doorway. The senior official contracted his rugged eyes quizzically, and inquired:

"Whither in such a hurry?"

"To pick a bone with Mitka."

"Good!"

With a wave of his black hand the stoker resumed his way, while the boatswain, yawning, fell to casting his eyes about him. On a locker near the companion of the engine-room a small man in a buff pea-jacket, a new cap, and a pair of boots on which there were clots of dried mud, was seated.

Through lack of diversion the boatswain began to feel inclined to hector somebody, so cried sternly to the man in question:

"Hi there, chawbacon!"

The man on the locker turned about—turned nervously, and much as a bullock turns. That is to say, he turned with his whole body.

"Why have you gone and put yourself THERE?" inquired the boatswain. "Though there is a notice to tell you NOT to sit there, it is there that you must go and sit! Can't you read?"

Rising, the passenger inspected not the notice, but the locker. Then he replied:

"Read? Yes, I CAN read."

"Then why sit there where you oughtn't to?"

"I cannot see any notice."

"Well, it's hot there anyway, and the smell of oil comes up from the engines.... Whence have you come?"

"From Kashira."

"Long from home?"

"Three weeks, about."

"Any rain at your place?"

"No. But why?"

"How come your boots are so muddy?"

The passenger lowered his head, extended cautiously first one foot, and then the other, scrutinised them both, and replied:

"You see, they are not my boots."

With a roar of laughter that caused his brilliant beard to project from his chin, the boatswain retorted:

"I think you must drink a bit."

The passenger said nothing more, but retreated quietly, and with short strides, to the stem. From the fact that the sleeves of his pea-jacket reached far below his wrists, it was clear that the garment had originated from the shoulders of another man.

As for the boatswain, on noting the circumspection and diffidence with which the passenger walked, he frowned, sucked at his beard, approached a sailor who was engaged in vigorously scrubbing the brass on the door of the captain's cabin with a naked palm, and said in an undertone:

"Did you happen to notice the gait of that little man there in the light pea-jacket and dirty boots?"

"I did."

"Then see here. Do keep an eye upon him."

"But why? Is he a bad lot?"

"Something like it, I think."

"I will then."

At a table near the hatchway of the first-class cabin, a fat man in grey was drinking beer. Already he had reached a state of moderate fuddlement, for his eyes were protruding sightlessly and staring unwinkingly at the opposite wall. Meanwhile, a number of flies were swarming in the sticky puddles on the table, or else crawling over his greyish beard and the brick-red skin of his motionless features.

The boatswain winked in his direction, and remarked:

"Half-seas over, HE is."

"'Tis his way," a pockmarked, eyebrow-less sailor responded.

Here the drunken man sneezed: with the result that a cloud of flies were blown over the table. Looking at them, and sighing as his companion had done, the boatswain thoughtfully observed:

"Why, he regularly sneezes flies, eh?"

* * * * *

The resting-place which I myself had selected was a stack of firewood over the stokehole shoot; and as I lay upon it I could see the hills gradually darkening the water with a mourning veil as calmly they advanced to meet the steamer; while in the meadows, a last lingering glow of the sunset's radiance was reddening the stems of the birches, and making the newly mended roof of a hut look as though it were cased in red fustian—communicating to everything else in the vicinity a semblance of floating amid fire—and effacing all outline, and causing the scene as a whole to dissolve into streaks of red and orange and blue, save where, on a hill above the hut, a black grove of firs stood thrown into tense, keen, and clear-cut relief.

Under a hill a party of fishermen had lit a wood fire, the flames of which could be seen playing upon, and picking out, the white hull of a boat—the dark figure of a man therein, a fishing net suspended from some stakes, and a woman in a yellow bodice who was sitting beside the fire. Also, amid the golden radiance there could be distinguished a quivering of the leaves on the lower branches of the tree whereunder the woman sat shaded.

All the river was calm, and not a sound occurred to break the stillness ashore, while the air under the awning of the third-class portion of the vessel felt as stifling as during the earlier part of the day. By this time the conversation of the passengers, damped by the shadow of dusk, had merged into a single sound which resembled the humming of bees; and amid it one could not distinguish nor divine who was speaking, nor the subject of discussion, since every word therein seemed disconnected, even though all appeared to be talking amicably, and in order, concerning a common topic. At one moment a suppressed laugh from a young woman would reach the ear; in the cabin, a party who had agreed to sing a song of general acceptation were failing to hit upon one, and disputing the point in low and dispassionate accents; and in each, such sound there was something vespertinal, gently sad, softly prayer-like.

From behind the firewood near me a thick, rasping voice said in deliberate tones:

"At first he was a useful young fellow enough, and clean and spruce; but lately, he has become shabby and dirty, and is going to the dogs."

Another voice, loud and gruff, replied:

"Aha! Avoid the ladies, or one is bound to go amiss."

"The saying has it that always a fish makes for deeper water."

"Besides, he is a fool, and that is worse still. By the way, he is a relative of yours, isn't he?"

"Yes. He is my brother."

"Indeed? Then pray forgive me."

"Certainly; but, to speak plainly, he is a fool."

At this moment I saw the passenger in the buff pea-jacket approach the sally-port, grasp with his left hand a stanchion, and step on to the grating under which one of the paddle-wheels was churning the water to foam. There he stood looking over the bulwarks with a swinging motion akin to that of a bat when, grappling some object or another with its wings, it hangs suspended in the air. The fact that the man's cap was drawn tightly over his ears caused the latter to stick out almost to the point of absurdity.

Presently he turned and peered into the gloom under the awning, though, seemingly, he failed to distinguish myself reposing on the firewood. This enabled me to gain a clear view of a face with a sharp nose, some tufts of light-coloured hair on cheeks and chin, and a pair of small, muddy-looking eyes. He stood there as though he were listening to something.

All of a sudden he stepped firmly to the sally-port, swiftly unlashed from the iron top-rail a mop, and threw it overboard. Then he set about unlashing a second article of the same species.

"Hi!" I shouted to him. "What are you doing there?"

With a start the man turned round, clapped a hand to his forehead to discover my whereabouts, and replied softly and rapidly, and with a stammer in his voice:

"How is that your business? Get away with you!"

Upon this I approached him, for I was astonished and amused at his impudence.

"For what you have done the sailors will make you pay right enough," I remarked.

He tucked up the sleeves of his pea-jacket as though he were preparing for a fight. Then, stamping his foot upon the slippery grating, he muttered:

"I perceived the mop to have come untied, and to be in danger of falling into the water through the vibration. Upon that I tried to secure it, and failed, for it slipped from my hands as I was doing so."

"But," I remarked in amazement, "my belief is that you WILLFULLY untied the mop, to throw it overboard!"

"Come, come!" he retorted. "Why should I have done that? What an extraordinary thing it would have been to do! How could it have been possible?"

Here he dodged me with a dexterous movement, and, rearranging his sleeves, walked away. The length of the pea-jacket made his legs look absurdly short, and caused me to notice that in his gait there was a tendency to shuffle and hesitate.

Returning to my retreat, I stretched myself upon the firewood once more, inhaled its resinous odour, and fell to listening to the slow-moving dialogue of some of the passengers around me.

"Ah, good sir," a gruff, sarcastic voice began at my side—but instantly a yet gruffer voice intervened with:

"Well?"

"Oh, nothing, except that to ask a question is easy, and to answer it may be difficult."

"True."

From the ravines a mist was spreading over the river.

* * * * *

At length night fell, and as folk relapsed into slumber the babel of tongues became stilled. The car, as it grew used to the boisterous roar of the engines and the measured rhythm of the paddle-wheels, did not at first notice the new sound born of the fact that into the sounds previously made familiar there began to intrude the snores of slumberers, and the padding of soft footsteps, and an excited whisper of:

"I said to him—yes, I said: 'Yasha, you must not, you shall not, do this.'"

The banks had disappeared from view. Indeed, one continued to be reminded of their existence only by the slow passage of the scattered fires ashore, and the fact that the darkness lay blacker and denser around those fires than elsewhere. Dimly reflected in the river, the stars seemed to be absolutely motionless, whereas the trailing, golden reproductions of the steamer's lights never ceased to quiver, as though striving to break adrift, and float away into the obscurity. Meanwhile, foam like tissue paper was licking our dark hull, while at our stern, and sometimes overtaking it, there trailed a barge with a couple of lanterns in her prow, and a third on her mast, which at one moment marked the reflections of the stars, and at another became merged with the gleams of firelight on one or the other bank.

On a bench under a lantern near the spot where I was lying a stout woman was asleep. With one hand resting upon a small bundle under her head, she had her bodice torn under the armpit, so that the white flesh and a tuft of hair could be seen protruding. Also, her face was large, dark of brow, and full of jowl to a point that caused the cheeks to roll to her very ears. Lastly, her thick lips were parted in an ungainly, corpselike smile.

From my own position on a level higher than hers, I looked dreamily down upon her, and reflected: "She is a little over forty years of age, and (probably) a good woman. Also, she is travelling to visit either her daughter and son-in-law, or her son and daughter-in-law, and therefore is taking with her some presents. Also, there is in her large heart much of the excellent and maternal."

Suddenly something near me flashed as though a match had been struck, and, opening my eyes, I perceived the passenger in the curious pea-jacket to be standing near the woman spoken of, and engaged in shielding a lighted match with his sleeve. Presently, he extended his hand and cautiously applied the particle of flame to the tuft of hair under the woman's armpit. There followed a faint hiss, and a noxious smell of burning hair was wafted to my nostrils.

I leapt up, seized the man by the collar, and shook him soundly.

"What are you at?" I exclaimed.

Turning in my grasp he whispered with a scarcely audible, but exceedingly repulsive, giggle:

"Haven't I given her a good fright, eh?"

Then he added:

"Now, let me go! Let go, I say!"

"Have you lost your wits?" I retorted with a gasp.

For a moment or two his blinking eyes continued to glance at something over my shoulder. Then they returned to me, while he whispered:

"Pray let me go. The truth is that, unable to sleep, I conceived that I would play this woman a trick. Was there any harm in that? See, now. She is still asleep."

As I thrust him away his short legs, legs which might almost have been amputated, staggered under him. Meanwhile I reflected:

"No, I was NOT wrong. He DID of set purpose throw the mop overboard. What a fellow!"

A bell sounded from the engine-room.

"Slow!" someone shouted with a cheerful hail.

Upon that, steam issued with such resounding shrillness that the woman awoke with a jerk of her head; and as she put up her left hand to feel her armpit, her crumpled features gathered themselves into wrinkles. Then she glanced at the lamp, raised herself to a sitting position, and, fingering the place where the hair had been destroyed, said softly to herself:

"Oh, holy Mother of God!"

Presently the steamer drew to a wharf, and, with a loud clattering, firewood was dragged forth and cast into the stokehole with uncouth, warning cries of "Tru-us-sha!" [The word means ship's hold or stokehole, but here is, probably, equivalent to the English "Heads below!"]

Over a little town which had its back pressed against a hill the waning moon was rising and brightening all the black river, causing it to gather life as the radiance laved, as it were, the landscape in warm water.

Walking aft, I seated myself among some bales and contemplated the town's frontage. Over one end of it rose, tapering like a walking-stick, a factory chimney, while at the other end, as well as in the middle, rose belfries, one of which had a gilded steeple, and the other one a steeple either green or blue, but looking black in the moonlight, and shaped like a ragged paint-brush.

Opposite the wharf there was stuck in the wide gable of a two-storied building a lantern which, flickering, diffused but a dull, anaemic light from its dirty panes, while over the long strip of the broken signboard of the building there could be seen straggling, and executed in large yellow letters, the words, "Tavern and—" No more of the legend than this was visible.

Lanterns were hanging in two or three other spots in the drowsy little town; and wherever their murky stains of light hung suspended in the air there stood out in relief a medley of gables, drab-tinted trees, and false windows in white paint, on walls of a dull slate colour.

Somehow I found contemplation of the scene depressing.

Meanwhile the vessel continued to emit steam as she rocked to and fro with a creaking of wood, a slap-slapping of water, and a scrubbing of her sides against the wharf. At length someone ejaculated surlily:

"Fool, you must be asleep! The winch, you say? Why, the winch is at the stern, damn you!"

"Off again, thank the Lord!" added the rasping voice already heard from behind the bales, while to it an equally familiar voice rejoined with a yawn:

"It's time we WERE off!"

Said a hoarse voice:

"Look here, young fellow. What was it he shouted?"

Hastily and inarticulately, with a great deal of smacking of the lips and stuttering, someone replied:

"He shouted: 'Kinsmen, do not kill me! Have some mercy, for Christ's sake, and I will make over to you everything—yes, everything into your good hands for ever! Only let me go away, and expiate my sins, and save my soul through prayer. Aye, I will go on a pilgrimage, and remain hidden my life long, to the very end. Never shall you hear of me again, nor see me.' Then Uncle Peter caught him a blow on the head, and his blood splashed out upon me. As he fell I—well, I ran away, and made for the tavern, where I knocked at the door and shouted: 'Sister, they have killed our father!' Upon that, she put her head out of the window, but only said: 'That merely means that the rascal is making an excuse for vodka.'... Aye, a terrible time it was—was that night! And how frightened I felt! At first, I made for the garret, but presently thought to myself: 'No; they would soon find me there, and put me to an end as well, for I am the heir direct, and should be the first to succeed to the property.' So I crawled on to the roof, and there lay hidden behind the chimney-stack, holding on with arms and legs, while unable to speak for sheer terror."

"What were you afraid of?" a brusque voice interrupted.

"What was I afraid of?"

"At all events, you joined your uncle in killing your father, didn't you?"

"In such an hour one has not time to think—one just kills a man because one can't help oneself, or because it seems so easy to kill."

"True," the hoarser voice commented in dull and ponderous accents. "When once blood has flowed the fact leads to more blood, and if a man has started out to kill, he cares nothing for any reason—he finds good enough the reason which comes first to his hand."

"But if this young fellow is speaking the truth, he had a BUSINESS reason—though, properly speaking, even property ought not to provoke quarrels."

"Similarly one ought not to kill just when one chooses. Folk who commit such crimes should have justice meted out to them."

"Yes, but it is difficult always to obtain such justice. For instance, this young fellow seems to have spent over a year in prison for nothing."