“Three house-sprites, three wood-sprites, three fallen sprites!”
The gate to the burial-ground was open. Trirodov and the children entered. They were among the poor graves—simple little mounds and wooden crosses. It was gloomy, damp, and quiet. There was a smell of grass—a graveyard reverie. The crosses gleamed white in the mist. A poignant silence hovered there, and the whole cemetery seemed filled with the dark reverie of the dead. Poignant feelings were re-experienced deliciously and painfully.
Nowhere does the soil feel so near to one as in a graveyard—it is the sacred soil of repose. They walked quietly, the whole ten of them, one after another, and felt the coolness and the softness of the ground under their bare feet. They passed near a grave. The little mound was quiet and poor, and it seemed as if the earth were crying, wailing, and suffering.
The boys, dimly discernible in the darkness against the lumps of black earth, began to dig the grave. The little girls stood very quietly, one at each of the four sides, and seemed engrossed in the nocturnal silence. The watchmen slept like the dead, and the dead slept, keeping a powerless watch over their graves.
Slowly the little coffin began to show. The low moan became audible. The boys already jumped into the grave. They bent over the poor little coffin. Though it was half-covered with earth, the boys already felt the tremors of its cover under their feet.
The cover, hammered down with nails, yielded easily to the exertions of the small, childish hands, and fell to the side against the grave’s earthen wall. The coffin opened as simply as the door of a room opens.
Egorka was already losing his consciousness. When the boys first looked at him he was lying on his side. He stirred faintly.
He breathed in the air as if with short, broken sighs. He shivered. He turned over on his back.
The fresh air blew into his face like a young rapture of deliverance. There was a sudden instant of joy—and it went out like a flame. Why indeed, should he rejoice? The tranquil, unjoyous ones bent over him.
Again to live? His soul felt strange, quiet, indifferent. Someone said affectionately over him:
“Rise, dear one, come to us; we will show you that which you have not seen and will teach you that which is secret.”
The stars of the far sky looked into his eyes, and someone’s near, affectionate eyes bent over him. Many, many gentle, cool hands stretched out to him; they took him, helped him up and lifted him out.
He stood in a circle. They looked at him. His arms again folded themselves across his breast, as in the grave—as, if the habit had been assimilated for ages. One of the little girls rearranged them and straightened them out.
Suddenly Egorka asked:
“What is this? A little grave?”
Grisha replied:
“This is your grave, but you will be with us and with our master.”
“And the grave?” asked Egorka.
“We will fill it up again,” replied Grisha.
The boys began to fill up the grave. Egorka looked on in quiet astonishment as lumps of earth fell into the grave and the little mound kept on growing. The ground was smoothed down and the cross placed as before. Egorka walked up to it and read the inscription:
“Boy Giorgiy Antipov.”
Then the year, month, and date of his death.
He was faintly astonished, but an ominous indifference already made captive his soul.
Someone touched his shoulder and asked something. Egorka was silent. He looked as if he did not understand.
“Come to me,” said Trirodov quietly to him.
The little girl who always said “No” took Egorka by the hand and led him away. They went back by the same road as they came. The darkness closed after them.
Egorka remained with the quiet children. He had no passport, and his life was different.
XXVII
Trirodov returned home. Like one returned from a grave, he felt happy and lighthearted. His heart was consumed with exultation and resolution. He recalled the talk he had had that day with Elisaveta. There rose before him the proud joyous vision of life transfigured by the force of creative art, of life created by the proud will.
If love, or what seemed like love, came to him, why should he resist it? Whether it was a true emotion, or an illusion, was it not all the same? The will, exulting above the world, would determine everything as it wanted. It would have the power to erect a beautiful love over the helplessness of the exhausted senses.
That which has so long weighed in the scales of consciousness, that which has so long and so desperately wrestled in the dark region of the unconscious now stood at a clear decision. Let the word “Yes,” be said. Once more Yes. For a new grief? For a glorious triumph? It was all the same. If only he believed in her—and she in him. So much did one mean to the other now.
Trirodov sat down at the table. He smiled, and for a few moments seemed lost in thought. Then he wrote quickly upon a light blue sheet of paper:
“Elisaveta, I want your love. Love me, dear one, love me. I forget my knowledge, I reject my doubts, I become again as simple and as humble as a communicant of a radiant kingdom, like my dear children—and I only want your nearness and your kisses. Upon the earth, dear to our heart, I will pass by, in simple and joyous humility, with bare feet, like you—in order that I may come to you as you come to me. Love me.
There was a slight rustle behind the door. It seemed as if the whole house were filled with the quiet children.
Trirodov sealed the letter. He wished to take it at once and leave it on the sill of her open window. He walked quietly, immersed in the wood’s darkness—and his feet felt the contact of warm moss,
