Márya Mikháilovna looked in astonishment into the darkness, but she could see only the red spot on the ikon, and the quivering glare from the stove on Likharyóff’s face. The darkness, the clang of the church bells, the roar of the storm, the limping boy, peevish Sasha and unhappy Likharyóff—all these mingled, fused in one great impression, and the whole of God’s world seemed to her fantastic, full of mystery and magical forces. The words of Likharyóff resounded in her ears, and human life seemed to her a lovely, poetical fairy-tale, to which there was no end.
The great impression grew and grew, until it absorbed all consciousness and was transformed into a sweet sleep. Mdlle. Ilováisky slept. But in sleep she continued to see the lamp, and the thick nose with the red light dancing upon it. She was awakened by a cry.
«Papa, dear,» tenderly implored a child’s voice. «Let us go back to uncle’s! There is a Christmas tree. Stepa and Kolya are there!»
«What can I do, darling?» reasoned a soft, male bass. «Try and understand me….»
And to the child’s crying was added the man’s. The cry of this double misery breaking through the howl of the storm, touched upon the ears of the girl with such soft, human music, that she could not withstand the emotion, and wept also. And she listened as the great black shadow walked across the room, lifted up the fallen shawl and wrapped it round her feet.
Awakened again by a strange roar, she sprang up and looked around her. Through the windows, covered half-way up in snow, gleamed the blue dawn. The room itself was full of a grey twilight, through which she could see the stove, the sleeping girl, and Nasr Edin. The lamp and stove had both gone out. Through the wide-opened door of the room could be seen the public hall of the inn with its tables and benches. A man with a blunt, gipsy face and staring eyes stood in the middle of the room in a pool of melted snow, and held up a stick with a red star on the top. Around him was a throng of boys, immovable as statues, and covered with snow. The light of the star, piercing though its red paper covering, flushed their wet faces. The crowd roared in discord, and out of their roar Mdlle. Ilováisky understood only one quatrain:—
«Hey, boy, bold and fearless,
Take a knife sharp and shiny.
Come, kill and kill the Jew,
The sorrowing son …»
At the counter stood Likharyóff, looking with emotion at the singers, and tramping his feet in time. Seeing Márya Mikháilovna he smiled broadly, and entered the room. She also smiled.
«Congratulations!» he said. «I see you have slept well.»
Mdlle. Ilováisky looked at him silently, and continued to smile.
After last night’s conversation he seemed to her no monger tall and broad-shouldered, but a little man. A big steamer seems small to those who have crossed the ocean.
«It is time for me to go,» she said. «I must get ready. Tell me, where are you going to?»
«I? First to Klinushka station, thence to Siergievo, and from Sergievo a drive of forty versts to the coalmines of a certain General Shashkovsky. My brothers have got me a place as manager…. I will dig coal.»
«Allow me … I know these mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle. But … why are you going there?» asked Márya Mikháilovna in surprise.
«As manager. I am to manage the mines.»
«I don’t understand.» She shrugged her shoulders. «You say you are going to these mines. Do you know what that means? Do you know that it is all bare steppe, that there is not a soul near … that the tedium is such that you could not live there a single day? The coal is bad, nobody buys it, and my uncle is a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt…. He will not even pay your salary.»
«It is the same,» said Likharyóff indifferently. «Even for the mines, thanks!»
Mdlle. Ilováisky again shrugged her shoulders, and walked up and down the room in agitation. «I cannot understand, I cannot understand,» she said, moving her fingers before her face. «This is inconceivable … it is madness. Surely you must realise that this … it is worse than exile. It is a grave for a living man. Akh, heavens!» she said passionately, approaching Likharyóff and moving her fingers before his smiling face. Her upper lip trembled, and her stinging face grew pale. «Imagine it, a bare steppe … and solitude. Not a soul to say a word to … and you … infatuated with women! Mines and women!»
Mdlle. Ilováisky seemed ashamed of her warmth, and, turning away from Likharyóff, went over to the window.
«No … no … you cannot go there!» she said, rubbing her finger down the window-pane. Not only through her head, but through her whole body ran a feeling that here behind her stood an unhappy, forsaken, perishing man. But he, as if unconscious of his misery, as if he had not wept the night before, looked at her and smiled good-humouredly. It would have been better if he had continued to cry. For a few minutes in agitation she walked up and down the room, and then stopped in the corner and began to think. Likharyóff said something, but she did not hear him. Turning her back to him, she took a credit note from her purse, smoothed it in her hand, and then, looking at him, blushed and thrust it into her pocket.
Outside the inn resounded the coachman’s voice. Silently, with a severe, concentrated expression, Mdlle. Ilováisky began to put on her wraps. Likharyóff rolled her up in them, and chattered gaily. But every word caused her intolerable pain. It is not pleasant to listen to the jests of the wretched or dying.
When the transformation of a living woman into a formless bundle was complete, Mdlle. Ilováisky, looked for the last time around «The Traveller,» stood silent a moment, and then went out slowly. Likharyóff escorted her.
Outside, God alone knows why, the storm still raged. Great clouds of big, soft snowflakes restlessly whirled over the ground, finding no abiding place. Horses, sledge, trees, the bull tethered to the post—all were white, and seemed made of down.
«Well, God bless you!» stammered Likharyóff, as he helped Márya Mikháilovna into the sledge. «Don’t think ill of me!»
Mdlle. Ilováisky said nothing. When the sledge started and began to circle round a great snowdrift, she looked at Likharyóff as if she wished to say something. Likharyóff ran up to the sledge, but she said not a word, and only gazed at him through her long eyelashes to which the snowflakes already clung.
Whether it be that his sensitive mind read this glance aright, or whether, as it may have been, that his imagination led him astray, it suddenly struck him that but a little more and this girl would have forgiven him his age, his failures, his misfortunes, and followed him, neither questioning nor reasoning, to the ends of the earth. For a long time he stood as if rooted to the spot, and gazed at the track left by the sledge-runners. The snowflakes settled swiftly on his hair, his beard, his shoulders. But soon the traces of the sledge-runners vanished, and he, covered with snow, began to resemble a white boulder, his eyes all the time continuing to search for something through the clouds of snow.
