Part 18 (1/2)

”I must grease the double-barrel....”

Ivanov also bestirred himself. Because while tracking the cranes he would be seeing her, Arina's image now came vividly before him-- broad, strong, ardent, with soft sensual lips, and wearing a red handkerchief.

”Get the drosky out at dawn to-morrow,” he ordered Ignat. ”We will go to the Ratchinsky wood. I will go there now and have a look round.”

II

The panelled walls and the stove with its cracked tiles were only faintly visible in the soft twilight which filled Ivanov's study. By the walls stood a sofa, and a desk whose green cloth was untidily bestrewn with the acc.u.mulated litter of years and copiously spotted with candle grease, reminiscent of the long, dreary nights Ivanov had spent--a prey to loneliness.

A heap of horse trappings--collars, straps, saddles, bridles--lay by the large, square, bare windows. During the winter nights wolves watched the gleam of yellow candlelight within them. Now outside was the tranquil, genial atmosphere of Spring with all its multi-coloured splendour. Against a deep-blue sky with an orange streak like a pencil line drawn across the horizon, showed the sharp, knotted twigs of the crotegus and the lilac beneath the windows.

Ivanov lighted a candle and commenced manufacturing cartridges to pa.s.s away the time. Lydia Constantinovna entered the room.

”Will you have tea here or in the dining-room?” she inquired.

Ivanov declined tea with a wave of his hand.

All through the years of the Revolution Lydia Constantinovna had lived in the Crimea, coming to Marin-Brod for a fortnight the previous summer, afterwards leaving for Moscow. Now she had returned for the Easter holidays, but not alone--the artist Mintz accompanied her. Ivanov had never heard of him before.

Mintz was clean-shaven and had long fair hair; he wore steel-rimmed pince-nez over his cold grey eyes which he often took off and put on again; when he did so his eyes changed, looking helpless and malicious without the gla.s.ses, like those of little owlets in daylight; his thin, shaven lips were closely compressed, and there was often an expression of mistrust and decrepitude in his face; his conversation and movements were noisy.

Lydia Constantinovna had arrived with Mintz the day before at dusk; Ivanov was not at home. They had gone for a walk in the evening, returning only at two o'clock when dawn was just about to break, and a cold mist hung over the earth like a soft grey veil. They were met by barking dogs which were quickly silenced by the lash of Ignat's whip.

Ivanov had come home earlier, at eleven o'clock, and sat by his study window alone, listening to the gentle sounds of night and the ceaseless hootings of the owls in the park. Lydia Constantinovna did not come to him, nor did he go in to her.

It was in the daytime that Ivanov first saw the artist. Mintz was sitting in the park on a dried turf-bench, and gazing intently at the river. Ivanov pa.s.sed him. The artist's shrunken ruffled figure had an air of desolation and abandonment.

The drawing-room was next to Ivanov's study. There still remained out of the ruin a carpet and some armchairs near the large, dirty windows, an old piano stood unmoved, and some portraits still hung on the walls.

Lydia Constantinovna and Mintz came in from the back-room. Lydia walked with her usual brisk, even tread, carrying herself with the smooth, elastic bearing and graceful swing of her beautiful body that Ivanov remembered so well.

She raised the piano-cover and began playing a das.h.i.+ng bravura that was strikingly out of place in the dismantled room, then she closed the piano-lid with a slam.

Aganka entered with the tea on a tray.

Mintz walked about the dim room, tapping his heels on the parquet floor, and though he spoke loudly, his voice held a note of yearning pain.

”I was in the park just now. That pond, those maple avenues-- disintegrating, dying, disappearing--drive me melancholy mad. The ice has already melted in the pond by the dam. Why can we not bring back the romantic eighteenth century, and sit in dressing-gowns, musing with delicious sadness over our pipes? Why are we not ill.u.s.trious lords?”

Lydia Constantinovna smiled as she answered: ”Why not indeed! That is a poetic fancy. But the reality is very much worse. Marin-Brod has never been a country house, it is a forest manor, a forestry-office and nothing more ... nothing more.... I always feel an interloper here. This is only my second day and I am already depressed.” Her tone was sad, yet it held just a perceptible note of anger.

”Reality and Fancy? Certainly I am an artist, for I always see the latter, the beautiful and spiritual side,” Mintz declared; and added in an undertone: ”Do you remember yesterday ... the park?”

”Oh, yes, the park,” Lydia replied in a tired, subdued tone. ”They hold the Twelfth Gospel Service to-day; when I was a young girl, how I used to love standing in church with a candle--I felt so good. And now I love nothing!”

It was already quite dark in the drawing room. A wavering, greenish- golden light streamed in through the windows and played on the dim walls. Ivanov came out of his study. He was wearing high boots and a leather jacket, and carried a rifle under his arm. He went silently to the door. Lydia Constantinovna stopped him.

”Are you going out again, Sergius? Is it to hunt?”

”Yes.”