Through Russia | Page 9

thought
occurred to me: 'Surely that bold young fellow must have gone and
spent his means on drink? Yes, that is how it must be.'"
Then, as from her swollen lips she licked a drop of honey, she again
bent her blue eyes in the direction of the bush under which the
slumbering, newly-arrived Orlovian was couched.
"How will he live?" thoughtfully she said with a sigh--then added:
"You have helped me, and I thank you. Yes, my thanks are yours,
though I cannot tell whether or not your assistance will have helped
HIM."
And, drinking the rest of her tea, she ate a morsel of bread, then made
the sign of the cross. And subsequently, as I was putting up my things,
she continued to rock herself to and fro, to give little starts and cries,
and to gaze thoughtfully at the ground with eyes which had now
regained their original colour. At last she rose to her feet.

"You are not going yet? " I queried protestingly.
"Yes, I must."
"But--"
"The Blessed Virgin will go with me. So please hand me over the
child."
"No, I will carry him."
And, after a contest for the honour, she yielded, and we walked away
side by side.
"I only wish I were a little steadier on my feet," she remarked with an
apologetic smile as she laid a hand upon my shoulder,
Meanwhile, the new citizen of Russia, the little human being of an
unknown future, was snoring soundly in my arms as the sea plashed
and murmured, and threw off its white shavings, and the bushes
whispered together, and the sun (now arrived at the meridian) shone
brightly upon us all.
In calm content it was that we walked; save that now and then the
mother would halt, draw a deep breath, raise her head, scan the sea and
the forest and the hills, and peer into her son's face. And as she did so,
even the mist begotten of tears of suffering could not dim the
wonderful brilliancy and clearness of her eyes. For with the sombre fire
of inexhaustible love were those eyes aflame.
Once, as she halted, she exclaimed:
"0 God, 0 Mother of God, how good it all is! Would that for ever I
could walk thus, yes, walk and walk unto the very end of the world! All
that I should need would be that thou, my son, my darling son, shouldst,
borne upon thy mother's breast, grow and wax strong!"
And the sea murmured and murmured.

THE ICEBREAKER
On a frozen river near a certain Russian town, a gang of seven
carpenters were hastily repairing an icebreaker which the townsfolk had
stripped for firewood.
That year spring happened to be late in arriving, and youthful March
looked more like October, and only at noon, and that not on every day,
did the pale, wintry sun show himself in the overcast heavens, or,
glimmering in blue spaces between clouds, contemplate the earth with
a squinting, malevolent eye.

The day in question was the Friday in Holy Week, and, as night drew
on, drippings were becoming congealed into icicles half an arshin long,
and in the snow-stripped ice of the river only the dun hue of the wintry
clouds was reflected.
As the carpenters worked there kept mournfully, insistently echoing
from the town the coppery note of bells; and at intervals heads would
raise themselves, and blue eyes would gleam thoughtfully through the
same grey fog in which the town lay enveloped, and an axe uplifted
would hover a moment in the air as though fearing with its descent to
cleave the luscious flood of sound.
Scattered over the spacious river-track were dark pine branches,
projecting obliquely from the ice, to mark paths, open spaces, and
cracks on the surface; and where they reared themselves aloft, these
branches looked like the cramped, distorted arms of drowning men.
From the river came a whiff of gloom and depression. Covered over
with sodden slush, it stretched with irksome rigidity towards the misty
quarter whence blew a languid, sluggish, damp, cold wind.
Suddenly the foreman, one Ossip, a cleanly built, upright little peasant
with a neatly curling, silvery beard, ruddy cheeks, and a flexible neck, a
man everywhere and always in evidence, shouted:
"Look alive there, my hearties!"
Presently he turned his attention to myself, and smiled insinuatingly.
"Inspector," he said, "what are you trying to poke out of the sky with
that squat nose of yours? And why are you here at all? You come from
the contractor, you say? -- from Vasili Sergeitch? Well, well! Then
your job is to hurry us up, to keep barking out,' Mind what you are
doing, such-and-such gang! ' Yet there you stand-blinking over your
task like an object dried