Through Russia | Page 5

seat herself on a
rubbish heap, and, resting her cheeks on the palms of her hands, and
inclining her head sideways, to sing in a high and shrewish voice:
Behind the graveyard wall, Where fair green bushes stand. I'll spread
me on the sand A shroud as white as snow. And not long will it be
Before my heart's adored, My master and my lord, Shall answer my
curtsey low.
Usually her companion, the woman in the yellow scarf, had, with head
bent forward and eyes fixed upon her stomach, remained silent; but on
rare, unexpected occasions she had, in the hoarse, sluggish voice of a
peasant, sung a song with the sobbing refrain:
Ah, my beloved, sweetheart of mine, Never again will these eyes seek
thine!
Nor amid the stifling blackness of the southern night had these voices
ever failed to bring back to my memory the snowy wastes of the North,
and the icy, wailing storm-wind, and the distant howling of unseen
wolves.
In time, the squint-eyed woman had been taken ill of a fever, and
removed to the town in a tilted ambulance; and as she had lain
quivering and moaning on the stretcher she had seemed still to be
singing her little ditty about the graveyard and the sand.

The head with the yellow scarf rose, dipped, and disappeared.
After I had finished my breakfast I thatched the honey-pot with some
leaves, fastened down the lid, and indolently resumed my way in the
wake of the party, my blackthorn staff tiptapping against the hard tread
of the track as I proceeded.
The track loomed-- a grey, narrow strip-- before me, while on my right
the restless, dark blue sea had the air of being ceaselessly planed by
thousands of invisible carpenters; so regularly did the stress of a wind
as moist and sweet and warm as the breath of a healthy woman cause
ever-rustling curls of foam to drift towards the beach. Also, careening
on to its port quarter under a full set of bellying sails, a Turkish felucca
was gliding towards Sukhum; and, as it held on its course, it put me in
mind of a certain pompous engineer of the town who had been wont to
inflate his fat cheeks and say: " Be quiet, you, or I will have you locked
up! " This man had, for some reason or another, an extraordinary
weakness for causing arrests to be made; and, exceedingly do I rejoice
to think that by now the worms of the graveyard must have consumed
him down to the very marrow of his bones. Would that certain other
acquaintances of mine were similarly receiving beneficent attention!
Walking proved an easy enough task, for I seemed to be borne on air,
while a chorus of pleasant thoughts, of many-coloured recollections,
kept singing gently in my breast--a chorus resembling, indeed, the
white-maned billows in the regularity with which now it rose, and now
it fell, to reveal in, as it were, soft, peaceful depths the bright, supple
hopes of youth, like so many silver fish cradled in the bosom of the
ocean.
Suddenly, as it trended seawards, the road executed a half-turn, and
skirted a strip of the sandy margin to which the waves kept rolling in
such haste. And in that spot even the bushes seemed to have a mind to
look the waves in the eyes--so strenuously did they lean across the
riband-like path, and nod in the direction of the blue, watery waste,
while from the hills a wind was blowing that presaged rain.
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But hark! From some point among the bushes a low moan arose--the
sound which never fails to thrill the soul and move it to responsive
quivers!
Thrusting aside the foliage, I beheld before me the woman in the

yellow scarf. Seated with her back resting against the stem of a
hazel-bush, she had her head sunken deeply between her shoulders, her
mouth hideously agape, her eyes staring vaguely before her, her hands
pressed to her swollen stomach, her breath issuing with unnatural
vehemence, and her abdomen convulsively, spasmodically rising and
falling. Meanwhile from her throat were issuing moans which at times
caused her yellow teeth to show bare like those of a wolf.
"What is the matter?" I said as I bent over her. "Has anyone assaulted
you?"
The only result was that, shuffling bare feet in the sand like a fly, she
shook her nerveless hand, and gasped:
"Away, villain! Away with you!"
Then I understood what was the matter, for I had seen a similar case
before. Yet for the moment a certain feeling of shyness made me edge
away from her a little; and as I did so, she uttered a prolonged moan,
and her almost bursting eyeballs vented hot, murky tears which