This fear of talking about the past occasionally came upon Elisaveta. Who knows what sorrow is hid behind a bright smile, and from what darkness has sprung the blossoming which gives sudden joy to a glance, elusively beautiful and born of unhappy worldly experience?
“Did you find your way in easily?” asked the golden-haired Nadezhda with a friendly but subtle smile. “It’s usually not a simple matter,” she explained.
Elisaveta replied:
“A white boy opened the gate for us. He ran off so quickly that we had not even the time to thank him.”
Nadezhda suddenly ceased smiling.
“Oh yes—he isn’t one of us,” she said falteringly. “They live over there with Trirodov. There are several of them. Wouldn’t you like to have lunch with us?” she asked, cutting short her previous remarks.
Elisaveta suspected that Nadezhda wanted to change the subject.
“We live here all day long, we eat here, we learn here, and we play here—do everything here,” said Nadezhda. “People have built cities to escape the wild beast, but they themselves have become like wild beasts, like savages.”
A bitter note crept into her voice—was it the echo of her past life or was it a thing foreign to her and grafted upon her sensitive nature? She continued:
“We have come from the town into the woods. From the wild beast, from the savages of the town. The beast must be killed. The wolf and the fox and the hawk—all those who prey upon others—they must be killed.”
Elisaveta asked:
“How is one to kill a beast who has grown iron and steel nails, and who has built his lair in the town? It is he who does the killing, and there’s no end in sight to his ferocity.”
Nadezhda knitted her eyebrows, pressed her hands, and stubbornly repeated:
“We shall kill him, we shall kill him.”
II
The sisters stayed to lunch.
They remained over an hour chattering cheerfully with the children and their instructresses. The children were sweet and confiding. The instructresses, no less simple and charming, seemed cheerful, carefree, and restful. Yet they were always busy, and nothing escaped them. Besides many of the children did certain things without being urged, this being evidently a part of a system, of which the sisters had as yet barely an inkling.
Instruction was mixed up with play. One of the instructresses invited the sisters to listen to what she called her lesson. The sisters listened with enjoyment to an interesting discourse concerning the objects the children had observed that day in the wood. There were other instructresses who had just returned from the depths of the wood—some children were going into the wood, others were coming out, quite different ones.
The instructress to whom the sisters were listening ended her discourse and suddenly scampered off somewhere. Through the dark foliage of the trees could be seen the glimmer of red caps and of sunburnt arms and legs. The sisters were again left alone. No one paid especial attention to them any longer; evidently there was no one they either embarrassed or hindered.
“It’s time to go,” said Elena.
Elisaveta made a move.
“Yes, let’s go,” she agreed. “It’s very interesting and delightful here, but we can’t stay forever.”
The departure of the sisters had been noticed. A few of the children ran up to them. The children cried gaily:
“We will show you the way, or you’ll get lost.”
When the sisters paused at the gate, Elisaveta thought that someone was looking at her, out of a hiding-place, with a gaze of astonishment. In perplexity, strange and distressing, she looked around her. Behind the hedge in the bushes a small boy and a small girl were hiding. They were like the others she had seen here, except that they were very white, as though the kisses of the stern Dragon floating in the hot sky had left no traces upon their tender skin. Both the little boy and the little girl were staring with a motionless but attentive gaze. Their chaste look seemed to penetrate into the very depth of one’s soul; this rather disconcerted Elisaveta. She whispered to Elena:
“Look, what strange beings!”
Elena looked in the direction of Elisaveta’s glance and said indifferently:
“Monsters!”
Elisaveta was astonished at her sister’s observation—the faces of these hiding children seemed to her like the faces of praying angels.
By this time the children who had escorted the sisters ran back, jostling each other and laughing. Only one boy remained with them. He opened the gate and waited for the sisters to go out so that he could shut it again. Elisaveta quietly asked him:
“Who are these?”
With a light movement of her head she indicated the bushes, where the boy and the girl were hiding. The cheerful urchin looked in the direction of her glance, then at her, and said:
“There’s no one there.”
And actually no one was now visible in the bushes. Elisaveta persisted:
“But I did see a boy and a girl there. Both were quite white, not at all brown like the rest of you. They stood ever so quietly and looked.”
The cheery, dark-eyed lad looked attentively at Elisaveta, frowned slightly, lowered his eyes, reflected, then again eyed the sisters attentively and sadly, and said:
“In the main building, where Giorgiy Sergeyevitch lives, there are more of these quiet children. They are never with us. They are quiet ones. They do not play. They have been ill. It’s likely they haven’t improved yet. I don’t know. They are kept separately.”
The boy said this slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were astonished because there, in the house of the master, were other children, quiet ones, who did not join in their play. Suddenly he shook his head lustily, banishing, as it were, unaccustomed thoughts, then took off his cap and exclaimed cheerily and with some tenderness:
“A happy journey, darlings! Follow this footpath.”
He made an obeisance and ran off. The sisters were quite alone now. They went on in the direction given them by the boy. A quiet vale opened up before them, and in the distance
