Through Russia [106]
"
"For the reason that I am so--I can say no more. I look back from a given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather floats before the wind."
***************************
"Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I am the foreman here."
The voice of the ex-soldier replied:
"What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians, fellows who are for ever singing hymns."
To which someone else added:
"Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all building work before the beginning of a Sunday?"
"Let us throw their tools into the stream."
"Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted before the embers of the fire.
Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces--at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and then the strident, hilarious command:
"Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just hand over the saw!"
Apparently there were three men in charge of the proceedings: the one a red-bearded muzhik in a seaman's blouse; the second a tall man with hunched shoulders, thin legs, and long arms who kept grasping the foreman by the collar, shaking him, and bawling, "Where are your lathes? Bring them out!" (while noticeable also was a broad-shouldered young fellow in a ragged red shirt who kept thrusting pieces of scantling through the windows of the barraque, and shouting, "Catch hold of these! Lay them out in a row!"); and the third the ex-soldier himself. The last-named, as he jostled his way among the crowd, kept vociferating, viciously, virulently, and with a curious system of division of his syllables:
"Aha-a, ra-abble, secta-arians. Yo-ou would have nothing to say to me, you Se-erbs! Yet I say to YOU: Go along, my chickens, for the re-est of us are ti-ired of you, and come to sa-ay so!"
"What does he want?" asked Silantiev quietly as he lit a cigarette. "Vodka? Oh, THEY'LL give him vodka! . . . Yet are you not sorry for fellows of that stamp?"
Through the blue tobacco-smoke he gazed into the glowing embers; until at last he took a charred stick, and collected the embers into a heap glowing red-gold like a bouquet of fiery poppies; and as he did so, his handsome eyes gleamed with just such a reverent affection, such a prayerful kindliness, as must have lurked in the eyes of primeval, nomadic man in the presence of the dancing, beneficent source of light and heat.
"At least I am sorry for such fellows," Vasili continued. "Aye, the very thought of the many, many folk who have come to nothing! The very thought of it! Terrible, terrible!"
A touch of daylight was still lingering on the tops of the mountains, but in the defile itself night was beginning to loom, and to lull all things to sleep--to incline one neither to speak oneself nor to listen to the dull clamour of those others on the opposite bank, where even to the murmur of the rivulet the distasteful din seemed to communicate a note of anger.
There the crowd had lit a huge bonfire, and then added to it a second one which, crackling, hissing, and emitting coils of bluish-tinted smoke, had fallen to vying with its fellow in lacing the foam of the rivulet with muslin-like patterns in red. As the mass of dark figures surged between the two flares an hilarious voice shouted to us the invitation:
"Come over here, you! Don't be backward! Come over here, I say!"
Upon which followed a clatter as of the smashing of a drinking- vessel, while from the red-bearded muzhik came a thick, raucous shout of:
"These fellows needed to be taught a lesson!"
Almost at the same moment the foreman of the carpenters broke his way clear of the crowd, and, carefully crossing the rivulet by the stepping-stones which we had constructed, squatted down upon his heels by the margin, and with much puffing and blowing fell to rinsing his face, a face which in the murky firelight looked
"For the reason that I am so--I can say no more. I look back from a given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather floats before the wind."
***************************
"Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I am the foreman here."
The voice of the ex-soldier replied:
"What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians, fellows who are for ever singing hymns."
To which someone else added:
"Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all building work before the beginning of a Sunday?"
"Let us throw their tools into the stream."
"Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted before the embers of the fire.
Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces--at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and then the strident, hilarious command:
"Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just hand over the saw!"
Apparently there were three men in charge of the proceedings: the one a red-bearded muzhik in a seaman's blouse; the second a tall man with hunched shoulders, thin legs, and long arms who kept grasping the foreman by the collar, shaking him, and bawling, "Where are your lathes? Bring them out!" (while noticeable also was a broad-shouldered young fellow in a ragged red shirt who kept thrusting pieces of scantling through the windows of the barraque, and shouting, "Catch hold of these! Lay them out in a row!"); and the third the ex-soldier himself. The last-named, as he jostled his way among the crowd, kept vociferating, viciously, virulently, and with a curious system of division of his syllables:
"Aha-a, ra-abble, secta-arians. Yo-ou would have nothing to say to me, you Se-erbs! Yet I say to YOU: Go along, my chickens, for the re-est of us are ti-ired of you, and come to sa-ay so!"
"What does he want?" asked Silantiev quietly as he lit a cigarette. "Vodka? Oh, THEY'LL give him vodka! . . . Yet are you not sorry for fellows of that stamp?"
Through the blue tobacco-smoke he gazed into the glowing embers; until at last he took a charred stick, and collected the embers into a heap glowing red-gold like a bouquet of fiery poppies; and as he did so, his handsome eyes gleamed with just such a reverent affection, such a prayerful kindliness, as must have lurked in the eyes of primeval, nomadic man in the presence of the dancing, beneficent source of light and heat.
"At least I am sorry for such fellows," Vasili continued. "Aye, the very thought of the many, many folk who have come to nothing! The very thought of it! Terrible, terrible!"
A touch of daylight was still lingering on the tops of the mountains, but in the defile itself night was beginning to loom, and to lull all things to sleep--to incline one neither to speak oneself nor to listen to the dull clamour of those others on the opposite bank, where even to the murmur of the rivulet the distasteful din seemed to communicate a note of anger.
There the crowd had lit a huge bonfire, and then added to it a second one which, crackling, hissing, and emitting coils of bluish-tinted smoke, had fallen to vying with its fellow in lacing the foam of the rivulet with muslin-like patterns in red. As the mass of dark figures surged between the two flares an hilarious voice shouted to us the invitation:
"Come over here, you! Don't be backward! Come over here, I say!"
Upon which followed a clatter as of the smashing of a drinking- vessel, while from the red-bearded muzhik came a thick, raucous shout of:
"These fellows needed to be taught a lesson!"
Almost at the same moment the foreman of the carpenters broke his way clear of the crowd, and, carefully crossing the rivulet by the stepping-stones which we had constructed, squatted down upon his heels by the margin, and with much puffing and blowing fell to rinsing his face, a face which in the murky firelight looked