Through Russia [87]
of which my husband will be selected the warden until such time as I shall have made of him a barin [Gentleman or squire] outright. Also, children may one day play in that garden, and a summer-house be built there. Ah, how delightful such a life appears!"
In fact, she has planned out the future so thoroughly that already she can describe the new establishment in as much detail as though she has long been a resident in it.
"Yes, I yearn indeed for a nice home!" she continues. "Oh that such a home could fall to my lot! But the first requisite, of course, is a muzhik."
Her gentle face and eyes peer into the waning night as though they aspire to caress everything upon which they may light.
And all the while I am feeling sorry for her--sorry almost to tears. To conceal the fact I murmur:
"Should I myself suit you?"
She gives a faint laugh.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because the ideas in your mind are different from mine."
"How do you know what my ideas are?"
She edges away from me a little,then says drily:
"Because I can see them in your eyes. To be plain, I could never consent."
With a finger tapping upon the mouldy, gnarled old oaken stump on which we are sitting, she adds:
"The Cossacks, for instance, live comfortably enough; yet I do not like them."
"What in them is it that displeases you?"
"Somehow they repel me. True, much of everything is theirs; yet also they have ways which alienate me."
Unable any longer to conceal from her my pity, I say gently:
"Never, I fear, will you discover what you are seeking."
She shakes her head protestingly.
"And never ought a woman to be discouraged," she retorts. "Woman's proper round is to wish for a child, and to nurse it, and, when it has been weaned, to get herself ready to have another one. That is how woman should live. She should live as pass spring and summer, autumn and winter."
I find it a pleasure to watch the play of the woman's intellectual features; and though, also, I long to take her in my arms, I feel that my better plan will be to seek once more the quiet, empty steppe, and, bearing in me the recollection of this woman, to resume my lonely journey towards the region where the silver wall of the mountains merges with the sky, and the dark ravines gape at the steppe with their chilly jaws. At the moment, however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks have temporarily deprived me of my passport.
"What are you yourself seeking?" she asks suddenly as again she edges towards me.
"Simply nothing. My one desire is to observe how folk live."
"And are you travelling alone?"
"I am."
"Even as am I. Oh God, how many lonely people there are in the world!"
By this time the cattle are awakening from slumber, and, with their soft lowings, reminding one of a pipe which I used to hear played by a certain blind old man. Next, four times, with unsteady touch, the drowsy watchman strikes his gong--twice softly, once with a vigour that clangs the metal again, and a fourth time with a mere tap of the iron hammer against the copper plate.
"What sort of lives do the majority of folk lead?"
"Sorry lives."
"Yes, that is what I too have found."
A pause follows. Then the woman says quietly:
"See, dawn is breaking, yet never this night have my eyes closed. Often I am like that; often I keep thinking and thinking until I seem to be the only human being in the world, and the only human being destined to re-order it."
"Many folk live unworthy lives. They live them amid discord, abasement, and wrongs innumerable, wrongs born of want and stupidity."
And as the words leave my lips my mind loses itself in recollections of all the dark and harrowing and shameful scenes that I have beheld.
"Listen," I say. "You may approach a man with nothing but good in your heart, and be prepared to surrender both your freedom and your strength; yet still he may fail to understand you aright. And how shall he be blamed for this, seeing that never may he have been shown what is good?"
She lays a hand upon my shoulder, and looks straight
In fact, she has planned out the future so thoroughly that already she can describe the new establishment in as much detail as though she has long been a resident in it.
"Yes, I yearn indeed for a nice home!" she continues. "Oh that such a home could fall to my lot! But the first requisite, of course, is a muzhik."
Her gentle face and eyes peer into the waning night as though they aspire to caress everything upon which they may light.
And all the while I am feeling sorry for her--sorry almost to tears. To conceal the fact I murmur:
"Should I myself suit you?"
She gives a faint laugh.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because the ideas in your mind are different from mine."
"How do you know what my ideas are?"
She edges away from me a little,then says drily:
"Because I can see them in your eyes. To be plain, I could never consent."
With a finger tapping upon the mouldy, gnarled old oaken stump on which we are sitting, she adds:
"The Cossacks, for instance, live comfortably enough; yet I do not like them."
"What in them is it that displeases you?"
"Somehow they repel me. True, much of everything is theirs; yet also they have ways which alienate me."
Unable any longer to conceal from her my pity, I say gently:
"Never, I fear, will you discover what you are seeking."
She shakes her head protestingly.
"And never ought a woman to be discouraged," she retorts. "Woman's proper round is to wish for a child, and to nurse it, and, when it has been weaned, to get herself ready to have another one. That is how woman should live. She should live as pass spring and summer, autumn and winter."
I find it a pleasure to watch the play of the woman's intellectual features; and though, also, I long to take her in my arms, I feel that my better plan will be to seek once more the quiet, empty steppe, and, bearing in me the recollection of this woman, to resume my lonely journey towards the region where the silver wall of the mountains merges with the sky, and the dark ravines gape at the steppe with their chilly jaws. At the moment, however, I cannot so do, for the Cossacks have temporarily deprived me of my passport.
"What are you yourself seeking?" she asks suddenly as again she edges towards me.
"Simply nothing. My one desire is to observe how folk live."
"And are you travelling alone?"
"I am."
"Even as am I. Oh God, how many lonely people there are in the world!"
By this time the cattle are awakening from slumber, and, with their soft lowings, reminding one of a pipe which I used to hear played by a certain blind old man. Next, four times, with unsteady touch, the drowsy watchman strikes his gong--twice softly, once with a vigour that clangs the metal again, and a fourth time with a mere tap of the iron hammer against the copper plate.
"What sort of lives do the majority of folk lead?"
"Sorry lives."
"Yes, that is what I too have found."
A pause follows. Then the woman says quietly:
"See, dawn is breaking, yet never this night have my eyes closed. Often I am like that; often I keep thinking and thinking until I seem to be the only human being in the world, and the only human being destined to re-order it."
"Many folk live unworthy lives. They live them amid discord, abasement, and wrongs innumerable, wrongs born of want and stupidity."
And as the words leave my lips my mind loses itself in recollections of all the dark and harrowing and shameful scenes that I have beheld.
"Listen," I say. "You may approach a man with nothing but good in your heart, and be prepared to surrender both your freedom and your strength; yet still he may fail to understand you aright. And how shall he be blamed for this, seeing that never may he have been shown what is good?"
She lays a hand upon my shoulder, and looks straight