Part 95

"Wherefore?"

"Go and be a footman; THEN you will know. In fact, it is never the case that, if one serves a man, one can love that man.... How steadily the rain persists!"

Indeed, on every hand there was in progress a trickling and a splashing sound as though the weeping earth were venting soft, sorrowful sobs over the departure of summer before winter and its storms should arrive.

"How come you to be travelling the Caucasus?" I asked at length.

"Merely through the fact that my walking and walking has brought me hither," was the reply. "For that matter, everyone ends by heading for the Caucasus."

"Why so?"

"Why NOT, seeing that from one's earliest years one hears of nothing but the Caucasus, the Caucasus? Why, even our old General used to harp upon the name, with his moustache bristling, and his eyes protruding, as he did so. And the same as regards my mother, who had visited the country in the days when, as yet, the General was in command but of a company. Yes, everyone tends hither. And another reason is the fact that the country is an easy one to live in, a country which enjoys much sunshine, and produces much food, and has a winter less long and severe than our own winter, and therefore presents pleasanter conditions of life."

"And what of the country's people?"

"What of the country's people? Oh, so long as you keep yourself to yourself they will not interfere with you."

"And why will they not?"

Kalinin paused, stared at me, smiled condescendingly, and, finally, said:

"What a dullard you are to ask about such simple things! Were you never given any sort of an education? Surely by this time you ought to be able to understand something?"

Then, with a change of subject, and subduing his tone to one of snuffling supplication, he added in the sing-song chant of a person reciting a prayer:

"'Oh Lord, suffer me not to become bound unto the clergy the priesthood, the diaconate, the tchinovstvo, [The official class] or the intelligentsia!' This was a petition which my mother used often to repeat."

The raindrops now were falling more gently, and in finer lines and more transparent network, so that one could once more descry the great trunks of the blackened oaks, with the green and gold of their leaves. Also, our own hollow had grown less dark, and there could be discerned its smoky, satin-bright walls. From those walls Kalinin picked a bit of charcoal with finger and thumb, saying:

"It was shepherds that fired the place. See where they dragged in hay and dead leaves! A shepherd's fife hereabouts must be a truly glorious one!"

Lastly, clasping his head as though he were about to fall asleep, he sank his chin between his knees, and relapsed into silence.

Presently a brilliant, sinuous little rivulet which had long been laving the bare roots of our tree brought floating past us a red and fawn leaf.

"How pretty," I thought, "that leaf will look from a distance when reposing on the surface of the sea! For, like the sun when he is in solitary possession of the heavens, that leaf will stand out against the blue, silky expanse like a lonely red star."

After awhile my companion began, catlike, to purr to himself a song. Its melody, the melody of "the moon withdrew behind a cloud," was familiar enough, but not so the words, which ran:

Oh Valentina, wondrous maid, More comely thou than e'er a flow'r! The nurse's son doth pine for thee, And yearn to serve thee every hour!

"What does that ditty mean?" I inquired.

Kalinin straightened himself, gave a wriggle to a form that was as lithe as a lizard's, and passed one hand over his face.

"It is a certain composition," he replied presently. "It is a composition that was composed by a military clerk who afterwards died of consumption. He was my friend his life long, and my only friend, and a true one, besides being a man out of the common."

"And who was Valentina?"

"My one-time mistress," Kalinin spoke unwillingly.

"And he, the clerk--was he in love with her?"

"Oh dear no!"