第62章 A WOMAN(9)

Her shoulders heave, and presently she bursts into tears, with a whisper, between the pitiful sobs, of:

"How, on such a night as this, one remembers all that one has ever seen, and the folk that ever one has known! And oh, how wearisome, wearisome it all is! And how I should like to cry throughout the world--But to cry what? I know not--I have no message to deliver."

That feeling I can understand as well as she, for all too often has it seemed to crush my soul with voiceless longing.

Then, as I stroke her bowed head and quivering shoulder, I ask her who she is; and presently, on growing a little calmer, she tells me the history of her life.

She is, it appears, the daughter of a carpenter and bee-keeper.

On her mother's death, this man married a young woman, and allowed her, as stepmother, to persuade him to place the narrator, Tatiana, in a convent, where she (Tatiana) lived from the age of nine till adolescence, and, meanwhile, was taught her letters, and also a certain amount of manual labour; until, later, her father married her off to a friend of his, a well-to-do ex-soldier, who was acting as forester on the convent's estate.

As the woman relates this, I feel vexed that I cannot see her face--only a dim, round blur amid which there looms what appears to be a pair of closed eyes. Also, so complete is the stillness, that she can narrate her story in a barely audible whisper; and I gain the impression that the pair of us are sitting plunged in a void of darkness where life does not exist, yet where we are destined to begin life.

"However, the man was a libertine and a drunkard, and many a riotous night did he spend with his cronies in the porter's lodge of the convent. Also, he tried to arouse a similar taste in myself; and though for a time I resisted the tendency, I at length, on his taking to beating me, yielded. Only for one man, however, had I really a liking; and with him it was, and not with my husband, that I first learnt the meaning of spousehood. . . .

Unfortunately, my lover himself was married; and in time his wife came to hear of me, and procured my husband's dismissal. The chief reason was that the lady, a person of great wealth, was herself handsome, albeit stout, and did not care to see her place assumed by a nobody. Next, my husband died of drink; and as my father had long been dead, and I found myself alone, I went to see and consult my stepmother. All that she said, however, was:

'Why come to me? Go and think things out for yourself.' And I too then reflected: 'Yes, why should I have gone to her? ' and repaired to the convent. Yet even there there seemed to be no place left for me, and eventually old Mother Taisia, who had once been my governess, said: 'Tatiana, do you return to the world, for there, and only there, will you have a chance of happiness.

So to the world I returned --and still am roaming it."

"Your quest of happiness is not following an easy road!"

"It is following the road that it best can."

By now the darkness has ceased to keep spread over us, as it were, the stretched web of a heavy curtain, but has grown thinner and more transparent with the tension, save that, in places (for instance, in the window of the hut), it still lies in thick folds or clots as it peers at us with its sightless eyes.

Over the hummock-like roofs of the huts rise the church's steeple and the poplar trees; while hither and thither on the wall of the hut, the cracks and holes in the crumbling plaster have caused the wall to resemble the map of an unknown country.

Glancing at the woman's dark eyes, I perceive them to be shining as pensively, innocently as the eyes of a young maiden.

"You are indeed a curious woman!" I remark.

"Perhaps I am," she replies as she moistens her lips with a slender, almost feline tongue.

"What are you really seeking?"

"I have considered the matter, and know, at last, my mind. It is this: I hope some day to fall in with a good muzhik with whom to go in search of land. Probably land of the kind, I mean, is to be found in the neighbourhood of New Athos, [A monastery in the Caucasus, built on the reputed site of a cave tenanted by Simeon the Canaanite] for I have been there already, and know of a likely spot for the purpose. And there we shall set our place in order, and lay out a garden and an orchard, and prepare as much plough land as we may need for our working."

Her words are now firmer, more assured.

"And when we have put everything in order, other folk may join us; and then, as the oldest settlers in the place, we shall hold the position of honour. And thus things will continue until a new village, really a fine settlement, will have become formed--a settlement 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: