The Faraway Bride

would stand in the gateway of the timber-yard by the river, watching the straining bullocks pulling at logs, watching the tilted trees on trestles being sawed by one man below and one above, watching glistening satin logs being hauled out of the river, watching finished planks being built into bristling wigwams. Sometimes she walked to an orchard that tiptoed on the slope of a hill, to see a little freak of a glimpse of very distant Korean mountains, wedged into the jumbled puzzle of Manchurian ups and downs. Sometimes she went to the mission garden to watch the children of Mrs. Butters’s and to gloat over every pimple of their inferior complexions, every missing tooth in their whining little mouths, every ungraceful angle in their rickety limbs, every detail that flattered her memory of her fine son. She was very kind to the mission children during those days and spent a whole afternoon mending their toy pedal motorcar. “Your children are so very little, Mrs. Butters⁠—perhaps it is healthy to be so little, perhaps my Seryozha was always too big⁠—I dare say he was six inches taller than Dickie, when he was so old. It is pity that Dickie cannot carve woods⁠—my Seryozha did always carve small ships in woods⁠—but you are right⁠—perhaps it is dangerous to do things with knives. Your children can play with motorcar⁠—this is more modern⁠—my Seryozha must always make something.⁠ ⁠… This motorcar see, it is broken⁠—the horn cries no more, it is in two bits⁠—the back side has come undone from the sit-down-upon. When my Seryozha was nine he shall have mended this⁠—but never mind, Dickie, I will mend it for you⁠—because I also have a little boy, I will glue the bulge of this horn to his tootle⁠—I will glue this back side⁠—and so Betti and Dickie shall be as safe⁠—as safe⁠—as safe as in their lovers’ arms.⁠ ⁠…”

“Indeed, much safer, I hope, Mrs. Malinin,” said Mrs. Butters, frostily, drawing her children away toward the house.

Sometimes Anna would seek out young Alexander Weber and make anxiously prosaic and useless suggestions about his problem. “Well, if you love her, my dear boy, marry her.⁠ ⁠… Well, if you feel like that about her, forget her.⁠ ⁠… Occupy your mind with something else.⁠ ⁠… Have you tried fishing in our river? Well, dear Alexander Petrovitch, why not go back and ask her⁠—ah⁠—you are tired of her⁠—well, make up your mind⁠—you can’t have it both ways, you know.⁠ ⁠…” All the time she cursed herself. “How useless I am. Being a mother has taught me nothing about how to comfort a young creature’s sorrow. Any other woman would know what to say to him.” Yet she heard her own reasonable, tiresome voice again, “Well, if you still love her, why not ask her to marry you⁠ ⁠… ?” Indeed, a practical friend can always easily cut the ground from under the feet of sorrow, but sorrow, as Anna knew, remains reared up in the heart that harbors it; without a leg to stand on, there it stands, as tall and terrible as ever⁠—silly sorrow that will not lie down⁠—the ghost that cannot be laid⁠—casting its shadow where no ground is.

A day or two later, when Anna came in from mending socks and boasting of her son at the mission, she found her husband in great agitation, fumbling in his bureau among his threadbare Sunday clothes.

“We must go, Annitchka, and help⁠ ⁠… a terrible thing has happened.⁠ ⁠… Oi-oi! poor boy! poor boy!⁠ ⁠… Yet what a wicked presumption it is to take one’s own life.⁠ ⁠… Oi-oi! what a terrible thing to happen⁠ ⁠… !”

Anna gave a loud, furious cry, instantly imagining Seryozha dead with a stain of blackish blood in his yellow hair. She could not speak; she took Old Sergei by the arm with a cruelly tight grip, and tugged him away from his occupation, feeling impelled to prevent anyone from doing anything⁠—to stop everything in the world happening⁠—if Seryozha was dead.

“Alexander Petrovitch has killed himself.⁠ ⁠… Little Mitya Nikitin came just now to ask us to go over⁠—the boy cut his throat.⁠ ⁠… Little Mitya says there was blood creeping out under the door; Nikitin saw it when he got up this morning, though they heard no sound in the night except a sort of cooing that they thought was owls⁠—Elyena Ivanovna said, ‘Owls! I never heard an owl before in Chi-tao-kou.’ And then, in the morning, blood coming under the crack of the door in the shape of a long spoon, little Mitya says. Of course they tried to rush in, but the door was bolted⁠—they had to break it open so violently that the bolt flew across and broke the window, and Nikitin, falling inward, nearly tumbled over the body, because it was just inside the door. Young Weber was quite dead. Little Mitya says he was lying with his head thrown right back and his throat gaping, looking widely upward, as though at an airplane, his mouth open, one hand thrown up, as though pointing, the other holding his razor.⁠ ⁠…”

Anna sank down on a chair, leaning on the table. She could hear inside her head a loud keen sound as of steam escaping. Her first thought was: “Well, now Seryozha cannot die⁠—now that he has once been dead in my thoughts and has risen again. He is safe now.” She sat breathing heavily, and gradually, as the shock passed, she forgot that ultimate crisis of her fear and began to feel that young Weber’s death was the most terrible thing that could have happened today. She began to remember that the day had been mounting up in a sort of crescendo to disaster; the milk had been sour, a chicken had been killed by a cat, by some freak of absence of mind she had opened the wrong door in the mission compound and found Mr. Butters at prayer with a friend⁠—she imagined now that she had suffered an overwhelming sense of foreboding on hearing the mission children teaching their puppy to die for its country⁠—“Dead⁠—dead⁠—Spot⁠—dead.⁠ ⁠…”