miserable creature--his mutilated arms, with their sleeves wet through
and through, held out before him--stopped perplexed in the roadway and
vanished from my sight.
The heavy rain, driven before the tempestuous wind, poured down in
pailfuls and, dripping from Vassili's thick cloak, formed a series of
pools on the apron. The dust became changed to a paste which clung to
the wheels, and the ruts became transformed into muddy rivulets.
At last, however, the lightning grew paler and more diffuse, and the
thunderclaps lost some of their terror amid the monotonous rattling
of the downpour. Then the rain also abated, and the clouds began to
disperse. In the region of the sun, a lightness appeared, and between
the white-grey clouds could be caught glimpses of an azure sky.
Finally, a dazzling ray shot across the pools on the road, shot through
the threads of rain--now falling thin and straight, as from a sieve--,
and fell upon the fresh leaves and blades of grass. The great cloud was
still louring black and threatening on the far horizon, but I no longer
felt afraid of it--I felt only an inexpressibly pleasant hopefulness in
proportion, as trust in life replaced the late burden of fear. Indeed,
my heart was smiling like that of refreshed, revivified Nature herself.
Vassili took off his cloak and wrung the water from it. Woloda flung
back the apron, and I stood up in the britchka to drink in the new,
fresh, balm-laden air. In front of us was the carriage, rolling along
and looking as wet and resplendent in the sunlight as though it had just
been polished. On one side of the road boundless oatfields, intersected
in places by small ravines which now showed bright with their moist
earth and greenery, stretched to the far horizon like a checkered
carpet, while on the other side of us an aspen wood, intermingled with
hazel bushes, and parquetted with wild thyme in joyous profusion, no
longer rustled and trembled, but slowly dropped rich, sparkling diamonds
from its newly-bathed branches on to the withered leaves of last year.
From above us, from every side, came the happy songs of little birds
calling to one another among the dripping brushwood, while clear from
the inmost depths of the wood sounded the voice of the cuckoo. So
delicious was the wondrous scent of the wood, the scent which follows
a thunderstorm in spring, the scent of birch-trees, violets, mushrooms,
and thyme, that I could no longer remain in the britchka. Jumping out,
I ran to some bushes, and, regardless of the showers of drops discharged
upon me, tore off a few sprigs of thyme, and buried my face in them to
smell their glorious scent.
Then, despite the mud which had got into my boots, as also the fact that
my stockings were soaked, I went skipping through the puddles to the
window of the carriage.
'Lubotshka! Katenka!' I shouted as I handed them some of the thyme,
'Just look how delicious this is!'
The girls smelt it and cried, 'A-ah!' but Mimi shrieked to me to go
away, for fear I should be run over by the wheels.
'Oh, but smell how delicious it is!' I persisted.
III. A NEW POINT OF VIEW
Katenka was with me in the britchka; her lovely head inclined as she
gazed pensively at the roadway. I looked at her in silence and wondered
what had brought the unchildlike expression of sadness to her face which
I now observed for the first time there.
'We shall soon be in Moscow,' I said at last. 'How large do you suppose
it is?'
'I don't know,' she replied.
'Well, but how large do you IMAGINE? As large as Serpukhov?'
'What do you say?'
'Nothing.'
Yet the instinctive feeling which enables one person to guess the
thoughts of another and serves as a guiding thread in conversation
