III
O Liberty! With a thousand tongues she spoke to him, with a thousand tones and colours she greeted the fugitive everywhere. For two weeks he saw nothing overhead but the immense expanse of blue sky, against which the branches with their reddish opening blossoms showed in delicate relief. It seemed as if there were no such things in the world as gloomy walls and rusty prison bars. Only in his dreams at times the fugitive still heard the clanking of chains and the rattling of locks; then he awoke in terror to see above him the starry sky of night and the waving pine-tops. He would lie for hours without moving, listening to the solemn sound of the wind roaring through the forest. O Liberty!
He did not know how many versts he was from the great high road, along which he had been driven together with the whole herd of prisoners. At first he had come across clearings and settlements in the forest, seen the smoke of chimneys from a distance, and made a wide detour. It was only at night that he ventured into the neighbourhood of human dwellings, and looked about, like a wild animal, to see where he could clamber in, and get some bread without awaking the dogs. On one occasion hunger drove him into a cottage in the window of which he had seen a candle burning. An old woman who was cowering down by the hearth was paralysed by fear and began to tremble all over. What wonder? Who did not know the yellow sign on the convict's back? He tried to speak gently. "Don't fear, mother! Have you any bread?" But the old woman's tongue could not move. So he looked for and found a crust of bread and drank some water. He saw her desperate poverty and asked, "Have you got no more bread?"
Then the old woman recovered herself a little. "Go!" she stammered; "to-morrow I will get some more."
"Shall I take your last piece?" he said, left the crust lying on the table and departed.
Another day he met a hunter in the forest and would probably have passed him with an ordinary greeting, had not the latter pointed his gun at him.
Then a cloud came before Ivan's eyes; he rushed at the stranger and tore him down. His breath was soon choked out of him, and no one knew how long his body lay in the forest before the wolves devoured it. He had brought his death on himself. The fugitive was glad to get rid of his convict's garb and now wore a coat of sheepskin. He also had a gun to protect himself from wild beasts. If his hair had only been longer, he had no need to go out of people's way.
O Liberty! His conscience was silent; no recollection of the blood which he had shed stirred in him, or if it did occur to his mind, it troubled him as little as it troubles a beast of prey. Men had always been the old vagabond's worst enemies. He had grown up like a hungry, young dog, a mark for missiles and kicks. He received little to eat and many blows, and when hunger drove him to steal, he received more blows. In the house of correction the priest spoke to him of the sufferings of Christ, of repentance and reform. He listened gloomily and returned to his cell. "Christ is gracious to sinners," he thought, "but who has ever been gracious to me?"
After he had shed blood once, his soul seemed to become covered with a hard crust. He became like an animal, escaped from prison when he could, and no longer had a home. Since then his eyebrows were closely contracted over his gloomy eyes, and he was filled with bitter hatred against the whole world. He only longed for one thing, the solitude of field and forest, for liberty and loneliness, where he felt no one near him.
Still farther and farther he roamed between the grey scarred tree-trunks. Through the carpet of pine-needles over which his foot passed, there were springing here and there pointed little leaves and the first grass-blades. The squirrels had already ventured out of their warm nests into the sunshine and sprang briskly and blithely from branch to branch, as though they would make fun of the old vagabond. The sky sent down soft spring showers, or brief thunder-storms, or expanded itself in blue serenity as though it would warm the earth on its bosom. Ivan wandered through dark ravines, where noisy rivulets streamed down on all sides, and in the perpetual shadow the snow still lay white and untouched.
The farther he went, the louder and merrier foamed and bubbled the tides of spring. O Liberty!
When the fugitive was tired, he could find a shelter anywhere. He would fling himself down where he liked, cross his hands under his head, and look up at the sky till his eyes closed of themselves. The wounds on his legs caused by the iron fetters began to heal; no one who met him would have guessed who he was. But the primeval forest seemed quite deserted; no tree bore the mark of an axe, and none had been felled. Here a black scorched pine-tree had been blasted by the lightning; there a half-decayed one, whose top was entangled in its neighbour's branches, had collapsed from sheer old age. This solitude had been profaned by no one's foot; here was real freedom.
Only now and then he encountered wild animals. Once a bear came within gun-shot, but the old man spared his life. "You have nothing to give me now," he thought. "Your skin is no use in summer. Come again in winter." And he shouted at the animal in such a terrible voice, that it trotted off with its tail drawn in.
Sometimes he heard the howling of the wolves in the distance; in the deep silence it sounded weird and terrifying. It filled the old man with a strange feeling, not fear, but in his innermost being something seemed to howl and moan in sympathy with the beasts of prey. Was he not indeed like a wolf among men? Cowering by the fires he made, he would gaze for hours into the red glowing embers. The flames roared and strained towards the dark sky as though they would make themselves free; the fresh brushwood crackled and emitted clouds of blue whirling smoke; the birch-trunk over which the sparks danced, contracted itself as though in a spasm, till it finally flared up in a sheet of fire, and the solitary man felt ever more painfully conscious that he too was every one's enemy, and was only tolerated in this wilderness like those creatures whose howling so strangely thrilled his heart. The darkness which seemed to press from all sides on the fire looked between the grey pine-trunks on the gloomy face of the convict, and listened to his moody murmuring.
IV
Ivan the Runaway wandered farther through dark forests over waste silent stretches of land and wide moors where his step left behind it little cold pools in the spongy ground, and where the wildfowl gathered on the mossy hillocks and chattered cheerfully in the sunshine. At last he came across traces of human existence. It was true that from the pine-tree which he climbed up he could perceive in the grey plain enclosed by woods neither cottage roofs nor smoke, though it was such a clear day that the streamlets which ran between the hillocks shone brightly and dazzled his eyes which were accustomed to the darkness of the forest. But yet the district seemed to be inhabited. A firm yellow road wound in a broad semicircle round the moor. The ruts left by the cart-wheels of the previous year crossed each other distinctly, but no new wheels had ground the dry clods of earth into dust. Probably the road was seldom used; at any rate the fugitive sat for hours in his tree, without hearing in the distance the creaking of the ungreased axle of a peasant's cart.
From the road there branched off a path which seemed to lead to a distant village. Ivan was heartily tired of his diet of wood-game, and began to consider whether he could venture into a village to buy bread. In the pocket of the murdered huntsman he had found a rouble-note and some silver coins. It was true that his hair had not grown again the normal length, but he could tie a piece of cloth round his half-shorn skull; and need not take it off when he entered a shop. "One buys what one wants, and goes one's way, that is all," he said to re-assure himself, for he felt a nervous antipathy to meeting any one, just as a wolf fears every yelping cur as soon as he wanders by mistake into a village.
At last he determined to go on quite slowly so as to reach the village under cover of the approaching darkness. With this idea he turned into the path which wound in an eccentric fashion through the moor, sometimes diving into ravines, and sometimes emerging into clear sunshine. Here and there stumps of trees bearing the fresh marks of an axe, and black abandoned fire-places whose ashes had not yet been quite blown away, showed that men had worked and rested here. The wanderer also thought he often heard human voices, but when he held his breath to listen, he always found it had been the deceptive cry of a bird.
The day came to an end, the golden radiance of the sun setting behind the distant hills grew pale, and the first stars glimmered in the dusky sky. Ivan strode valiantly forwards through the white rising mists out of which single branches of trees projecting, beckoned to him like long lean arms, till he reached a copse with dry mossy ground which seemed admirably adapted to furnish him with a sleeping-place for the night. He collected a bundle of twigs together and struck a light.
But in the act of raising his hand he stopped. What was that? Was there not a sound from the wood like a child's crying? For a moment a cold thrill passed through him; half-forgotten ghost-stories occurred to him, but he was too intimately familiar with the life of the forest to be seriously alarmed. After a short pause the crying began again.
"Hullo! Who is there? Is there any one?" Ivan shouted as loud as he could. His voice aroused the sleeping wood; squirrels rustled among the branches, and startled birds flapped their wings. Then everything was again perfectly silent, nor could the sound of crying be heard any more. Ivan again turned into the path.
"It must be a woman or a child," he thought, "and quite close too."
He peered with keen eyes through the darkness and moved noiselessly forward, in order not to frighten the weeper. Now he heard the sound of sobbing more distinctly; it was a child. But how had a child got here? The moon had risen and threw an uncertain light on the path; in a ditch by the side of it lay something white – it was the skeleton of a horse which had been devoured by wolves. Near it was rustling some creature which moved off at the convict's approach, first crawling and then at full speed.
Ivan went on and asked in a lower voice, "Who is there?"
A low sob was the only answer, "Oh, I am frightened. Mother! Mother!"
The moon now showed distinctly a little clearing in the wood. At the edge of it lay a woman's figure stretched out at full length. The wide-open eyes stared fixedly at the sky; no breath moved the rags which covered her breast; from under her wretched dress projected the lean way-worn feet. Near her lay a wallet. A little living creature clung to the motionless body and tried to raise it.
"What are you doing there?" asked the old man in a hoarse voice.
"Oh, I am so frightened, so frightened!" sobbed the child. A little ragged girl lifted her pale face to the convict, and then, seized with alarm, tried to hide herself again in her mother's clothing. Ivan touched the woman's ice-cold forehead.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Anjuta," whispered the child without letting go of the body.
"Have you been here long?"
"I do not know. Oh, I am so frightened!"
"Was the sun still high when your mother fell down?"
"Yes, Grandfather."
Ivan stepped to one side, and piled up a heap of dry twigs which he set on fire. The merry flames licked with red tongues at the branches.
"Go and warm yourself," said the old man, speaking as abruptly as before to the child. "Do it quickly."
"And mother?"
"Let mother rest. She is asleep."
The fire-light played on the face of the dead woman and lent it a ghostly semblance of life. The convict sat by the fire, buried in his thoughts. Perhaps he also would soon be somewhere in the forest or by the road-side like this woman. The thought was not a new one to him. How cold-bloodedly he had himself often engaged in a deadly affray with knives and turned his back on his fallen opponent without compunction. And yet he felt moved at the sight of this stranger woman, who lay there in such a pitiable way like an animal which has breathed its last. "It's a pity, a pity!" he growled to himself.
Anjuta approached the fire timidly and stared straight at him. Perhaps the rapidly increasing darkness alarmed her, for she came nearer, without his observing it; suddenly with her little hand she seized his finger and held it fast.
"Well, little thing, what do you want?" he growled, involuntarily laying his free hand on her head.
"What are we to do?"
Anjuta raised her clear little eyes. For the first time a human being looked at him, the thief and murderer, trustfully.
"It is all right, all right; don't worry!" he said half-embarrassed. And for the first time something strange came into his eyes and rolled in warm drops into his grey bristly beard.
V
Ivan the Runaway could not bury Anjuta's mother, for he had no spade. He contented himself with collecting twigs, pine-branches, and stones in order to cover the body of the poor tramp. The little girl at first wanted to hold his hands, but at his sharp rebuke she crept into a ditch and remained there crying bitterly, while he finished his work.
"Well, why are you crying?" he asked at last to comfort her.
"I am sad about mother."
"Your mother is dead; she won't come back."
"How can she be dead?"
"Have you never seen any one die?"
"Oh yes, Uncle Andron, whom God took to Himself."
"Well, God has taken your mother to Himself. Perhaps He wanted her."
"There was also the grey horse," said the child. "God took him too. When will He take me?"
The old man looked long at the child, and something like pity stirred him.
"For you it is still too early," he said gloomily.
"But what shall I do without mother?" She again held his finger with her little hand.
"Don't be afraid. I will stay with you. No one will touch you; I have a gun."
The old man picked up two slender sticks and tied them together with a strip of birch-bark, so as to make a rude cross. "Now your mother's grave is finished. Make a prayer, Anjuta; then we will go."
"I don't know how to pray; mother never taught me. I can only say, 'Give me a piece of bread for Jesus' sake.'"
"Have you never been in church?"
"No; mother and I – we always stood before the church door when people came out and cried, 'Good people, give us bread for Jesus' sake; we have eaten nothing for two days.'"
"Well then, God can ask nothing more of you, poor thing," said Ivan in a more friendly tone and stroked her. "He will be tolerant. Cross yourself and kiss this cross. That's right. And now say, 'Lord, have mercy on her poor soul.'"
"Lord, have mercy on her poor soul," the child repeated.
"Now let us go on. We have no time to loiter."
It was not till evening that Ivan, carrying the tired child on his arm, reached a little village. He waited till it was dark and lights showed in the windows. As though they scented a thief in him, the dogs raised an ear-splitting noise. Anjuta, who had been asleep, nestling against his cheek, started with fright, and began to cry; he told her harshly to be quiet and approached the last cottage in the village which stood near the wood.
"Who is knocking? Is it a Christian?" asked a woman's voice.
"Will you give me a bed for the night? I am tired with carrying her." He pointed to the child, whose little head had again sunk on his shoulder. The woman would hardly have admitted him alone.
"Come in, but don't take it ill that there is nothing to eat; we have nothing ourselves."
"I have money, if there is any chance of buying anything."
"Is the child yours? How tired it is, poor little thing!"
"No, she is not mine. What should a hunter do with children? She came in my way, that is all. Her mother died in the forest and I found her before the wolves ate her. Perhaps some one will adopt her. She is quite healthy and her name is Anjuta."
"Who can adopt her? We ourselves have barely enough to live upon. You must report your finding her at the police office in the nearest town, or go with her to the bailiff of the village."
But Ivan was not at all disposed to go either to the town or to the village bailiff. "Since God has sent me the poor orphan, she can remain with me," he said. "We will not come to grief, we two, in the forest. Will you promise not to be afraid when you hear howlings and moanings in the wood?"
"If you are with me, Grandfather, I won't be afraid. You have a gun and can shoot all the wolves dead."
As the child chattered, the old man's sulky face assumed a brighter expression.
VI
The forest was silent. An atmosphere of church-like stillness brooded round every branch and leaf. It seemed as if in the azure heights of the sky a solemn mystery was being performed, and the earth lay silent in solemn awe. The birds were hidden in the bushes and not a squirrel could be seen. The heat had penetrated even the shady parts of the wood; it was cool only in the ravines where scanty rivulets trickled over the sandy ground and conjured forth a green cloud of fine perfumed grass. A profusion of flowers – red, yellow, white and blue – grew on the slopes. They arranged themselves in most fantastic patterns, crowded together in gay groups, or climbed the hills singly. Some seemed to stretch themselves as though with curiosity on swaying stems, others hung their heads languidly. The wild rose-bush opened its first blossoms like thirsty red lips which could not breathe in air enough. From a thousand altars rose incense in this majestic temple; the mysterious Celebration continued in the heights above and the sun glowed and glittered like a golden chalice in the hands of the invisible high-priest.
Only from one corner came the sound of suppressed laughter. It was difficult to recognize Anjuta again. Her pale face had become sunburnt, her eyes glowed, and her mouth smiled continually. Just now the smile would have turned into loud laughter, had not the child feared to awaken Grandfather. The latter had found for himself a cool spot by the edge of the stream and was sleeping with his cap under his head, like an old wolf, after a full meal. Anjuta had just been throwing flowers at him. A tiny beetle had crawled out of one, and the child held her breath as she watched its movements. The beetle balanced itself skilfully on one of the longer hairs of Ivan's beard, then fell among the grey stubble, worked its way laboriously out with its slender wings, and finally settled on the old man's nose. Then the little girl could no longer contain herself; she laughed outright and clapped her hands.
"Good-for-nothing brat!" growled Ivan, awaking. "Can't you be quiet?" He shook off the flowers and tried to seize her.
Anjuta sprang with a joyous shriek among the reeds, rustled about among them, and presently her voice was heard calling from the opposite bank of the stream, "Catch me, Grandfather! Catch me!"
"That beats everything. Go and play with the squirrels! They are just such wind-bags as you are!"
"But I want to play with you."
"Well, you will have to wait long for that," and he crept quietly nearer to her.
"Grandfather, where are you?" she cried in an anxious tone. "Grandfather, I am frightened."
"There, I have caught you," he exclaimed suddenly and held the struggling child fast. "How wet you are, a regular frog!"
The child flung her puny arms round his brown sinewy neck and coaxed him. "Grandfather, listen, Grandfather! Now you be the wolf!"
"You are always wanting something," he grumbled discontentedly.
"Please! Please! You can do it so beautifully. I will be the little hare. Little hare with the long ears."
"Then I must eat you, stupid!" And the old man took the trouble to roll his eyes and growl fiercely.
But it was very difficult to satisfy Anjuta. "But you don't do it properly. Please, please come!" She stooped down and looked pleadingly into his eyes overhung by their shaggy brows.
"Very well, little one! Here goes!"
He placed the child carefully on the ground and crept among the reeds and bushes. The thorns scratched his face and hands, but he had something more important to think about. He lay flat and kept a sharp look-out. Were it not for his eyes, his grey shaggy head might frighten one. In order to heighten the illusion, he gnashed with his teeth. Anjuta played the part of the hare, sprang hither and thither, pulled at the grasses, and waved her hands to and fro above her head, to represent long ears. She pretended not to notice the old man.
"I don't see you. Grandfather, really I don't!"
Then the wolf sprang out of his hiding-place; the hare fled to the stream, crossed over, and climbed the opposite bank. But the wicked wolf came creeping nearer and nearer and seized the poor little animal by the throat with his great jaws.
"Were you very frightened?" the old wolf asked good-humouredly.
"Not a little bit. Grandfather, why does the wolf eat hares?"
"He can't eat grass. He wants flesh – hares, dogs, fowls, little children like you – it is all the same to him. He seizes them so, you see, and tears them in pieces."
"Does it hurt them?" asked Anjuta.
"Oh, you stupid, stupid thing! Of course it hurts them. Death is never pleasant."
Anjuta became very thoughtful. "Do you know, Grandfather," she said after a pause, "we won't play that game any more. You must not be a wolf. Wolves are wicked and you are good." "I – good? Ah, you…" Ivan made a long pause; something seemed to stick in his throat. "For you perhaps I may be good" – he cleared his throat violently – "You see, Anjuta, when I was little like you, no one said a kind word to me. I was thrashed nearly to a jelly, and always black and blue. Otherwise I would have been good; why should I be wicked without a reason? Oh, you stupid little thing, what do you know about it?"
"Take me on your arm," asked Anjuta, standing on tiptoe.
He awoke as out of a dream. "What do you want?"
"Take me on your arm, Grandfather. I am tired."
"First you jump about like a hare; then you want to be carried. No, stay down there."
"Yes, yes, you will take me," she coaxed him. "When I ask, you never say no."
"Look at the little rogue! Shall I break off a switch and whip you? Well, come along then!"
He lifted her up and walked with her deeper into the solemn stillness of the forest. The old man felt his heart grow warmer as the tired child's eyelids gradually drooped, and she began to breathe regularly in his arms. With a kind of pity he looked at the little open mouth and the helpless dusty little legs as they hung down.
"And that, too, is one of God's creatures! Why does such a useless thing come into the world?" he philosophized to himself and took the greatest pains to tread gently and not to move his outstretched arm in order not to wake the child.