第49章 ON A RIVER STEAMER(5)

From the whole, soft, liquescent fluid scene, the impression which I derived was melancholy.

It evoked in my spirit a sense of instability, a lack of restfulness.

"Why are you travelling?"

"Because I wish to have a word with him."

"With your uncle?"

"Yes."

"About the property?"

"What else?"

"Then look here, my young fellow. Drop it all--both your uncle and the property, and betake yourself to a monastery, and there live and pray. For if you have shed blood, and especially if you have shed the blood of a kinsman, you will stand for ever estranged from all, while, moreover, bloodshed is a dangerous thing--it may at any time come back upon you."

"But the property?" the young fellow asked with a lift of his head.

"Let it go," the peasant vouchsafed as he closed his eyes.

On the younger man's face the down twitched as though a wind had stirred it. He yawned, and looked about him for a moment. Then, descrying myself, he cried in a tone of resentment:

"What are you looking at? And why do you keep following me about?"

Here the big peasant opened his eyes, and, with a glance first at the man, and then at myself, growled:

"Less noise there, you mitten-face!"

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As I retired to my nook and lay down, I reflected that what the big peasant had said was apposite enough-that the young fellow's face did in very truth resemble an old and shabby woollen mitten.

Presently I dreamt that I was painting a belfry, and that, as I did so, huge, goggle-eyed jackdaws kept flying around the belfry's gables, and flapping at me with their wings and hindering my work: until, as I sought to beat them off, I missed my footing, fell to earth, and awoke to find my breath choking amid a dull, sick, painful feeling of lassitude and weakness, and a kaleidoscopic mist quavering before my eyes till it rendered me dizzy. From my head, behind the car, a thin stream of blood was trickling.

Rising with some difficulty to my feet, I stepped aft to a pump, washed my head under a jet of cold water, bound it with my handkerchief, and, returning, inspected my resting-place in a state of bewilderment as to what could have caused the accident to happen.

On the deck near the spot where I had been asleep, there was standing stacked a pile of small logs prepared for the cook's galley; while, in the precise spot where my head had rested there was reposing a birch faggot of which the withy-tie had come unfastened. As I raised the fallen faggot I perceived it to be clean and composed of silky loppings of birch-bark which rustled as I fingered them; and, consequently, I reflected that the ceaseless vibration of the steamer must have caused the faggot to become jerked on to my head.

Reassured by this plausible explanation of the unfortunate, but absurd, occurrence of which I have spoken, I next returned to the stern, where there were no oppressive odours to be encountered, and whence a good view was obtainable.

The hour was the turn of the night, the hour of maximum tension before dawn, the hour when all the world seems plunged in a profundity of slumber whence there can be no awakening, and when the completeness of the silence attunes the soul to special sensibility, and when the stars seem to be hanging strangely close to earth, and the morning star, in particular, to be shining as brightly as a miniature sun. Yet already had the heavens begun to grow coldly grey, to lose their nocturnal softness and warmth, while the rays of the stars were drooping like petals, and the moon, hitherto golden, had turned pale and become dusted over with silver, and moved further from the earth as intangibly the water of the river sloughed its thick, viscous gleam, and swiftly emitted and withdrew, stray, pearly reflections of the changes occurring in the heavenly tints.

In the east there was rising, and hanging suspended over the black spears of the pine forest, a thin pink mist the sensuous hue of which was glowing ever brighter, and assuming a density ever greater, and standing forth more boldly and clearly, even as a whisper of timid prayer merges into a song of exultant thankfulness. Another moment, and the spiked tops of the pines blazed into points of red fire resembling festival candles in a sanctuary.

Next, an unseen hand threw over the water, drew along its surface, a transparent and many-coloured net of silk. This was the morning breeze, herald of dawn, as with a coating of tissue-like, silvery scales it rippled the river until the eye grew weary of trying to follow the play of gold and mother-of-pearl and purple and bluish-green reflected from the sun-renovated heavens.

Next, like a fan there unfolded themselves the first sword-shaped beams of day, with their tips blindingly white; while simultaneously one seemed to hear descending from an iilimitable height a dense sound-wave of silver bells, a sound-wave advancing triumphantly to greet the sun as his roseate rim became visible over the forest like the rim of a cup that, filled with the essence of life, was about to empty its contents upon the earth, and to pour a bounteous flood of creative puissance upon the marshes whence a reddish vapour as of incense was arising. Meanwhile on the more precipitous of the two banks some of the trees near the river's margin were throwing soft green shadows over the water, while gilt-like dew was sparkling. on the herbage, and birds were awakening, and as a white gull skimmed the water's surface on level wings, the pale shadow of those wings followed the bird over the tinted expanse, while the sun, suspended in flame behind the forest, like the Imperial bird of the fairy-tale, rose higher and higher into the greenish-blue zenith, until silvery Venus, expiring, herself looked like a bird.