第88章 KALININ(9)

"'What are we to do about it all?' she repeated.

"'What am I to say about it, at length I replied, 'save that I feel as though I were not really existing on earth?'

"'Are you one who can hold your tongue?' was her next question.

"I nodded--nothing else could I compass, for further speech had become impossible. Whereupon, rising with brows puckered, she fetched a couple of small phials, and, with the aid of ingredients thence, mixed a powder which she wrapped in paper, and handed me with the words:

"'Only one way of escape offers from the Plagues of Egypt. Here I have a certain powder. Tonight the doctor is to dine with us.

Place the powder in his soup, and within a few days I shall be free!--yes, free for you!'

"I crossed myself, and duly took from her the paper, whilst a mist rose, and swam before my eyes, as I did so, and my legs became perfectly numb. What I next did I hardly know, for inwardly I was swooning. Indeed, until Kliachka's arrival the same evening I remained practically in a state of coma."

Here Kalinin shuddered--then glanced at me with drawn features and chattering teeth, and stirred uneasily.

"Suppose we light a fire?" he ventured. "I am growing shivery all over. But first we must move outside."

The torn clouds were casting their shadows wearily athwart the sodden earth and glittering stones and silver-dusted herbage.

Only on a single mountain top had a blur of mist settled like an arrested avalanche, and was resting there with its edges steaming. The sea too had grown calmer under the rain, and was splashing with more gentle mournfulness, even as the blue patches in the firmament had taken on a softer, warmer look, and stray sunbeams were touching upon land and sea in turn, and, where they chanced to fall upon herbage, causing pearls and emeralds to sparkle on every leaf, and kaleidoscopic tints to glow where the dark-blue sea reflected their generous radiance. Indeed, so goodly, so full of promise, was the scene that one might have supposed autumn to have fled away for ever before the wind and the rain, and beneficent summer to have been restored.

Presently through the moist, squelching sound of our footsteps, and the cheerful patter of the rain-drippings, Kalinin's narrative resumed its languid, querulous course:

"When, that evening, I opened the door to the doctor I could not bring myself to look him in the face--I could merely hang my head; whereupon, taking me by the chin, and raising it, he inquired:

"Why is your face so yellow? What is the matter with you?'

"Yes, a kind-hearted man was he, and one who had never failed to tip me well, and to speak to me with as much consideration as though I had not been a footman at all.

"'I am not in very good health,' I replied. 'I, I--'

"'Come, come!' was his interjection. 'After dinner I must look you over, and in the meanwhile, do keep up your spirits.'

"Then I realised that poison him I could not, but that the powder must be swallowed by myself--yes, by myself! Aye, over my heart a flash of lightning had gleamed, and shown me that now I was no longer following the road properly assigned me by fate.

"Rushing away to my room, I poured out a glass of water, and emptied into it the powder; whereupon the water thickened, fizzed, and became topped with foam. Oh, a terrible moment it was! . . . Then I drank the mixture. Yet no burning sensation ensued, and though I listened to my vitals, nothing was to be heard in that quarter, but, on the contrary, my head began to lighten, and I found myself losing the sense of self-pity which had brought me almost to the point of tears. . . . Shall we settle ourselves here?"

Before us a large stone, capped with green moss and climbing plants, was good-humouredly thrusting upwards a broad, flat face beneath which the body had, like that of the hero Sviatogov, sunken into the earth through its own weight until only the face, a visage worn with aeons of meditation, was now visible. On every side, also, had oak-trees overgrown and encompassed the bulk of the projection, as though they too had been made of stone, with their branches drooping sufficiently low to brush the wrinkles of the ancient monolith. Kalinin seated himself on his haunches under the overhanging rim of the stone, and said as he snapped some twigs in half:

"This is where we ought to have been sitting whilst the rain was coming down."

"And so say I," I rejoined. "But pray continue your story."

"Yes, when you have put a match to the fire."

Whereafter, further withdrawing his spare frame under the stone, so that he might stretch himself at full length, Kalinin continued:

"I walked to the pantry quietly enough, though my legs were tottering beneath me, and I had a cold sensation in my breast.

Suddenly I heard the dining-room echo to a merry peal of laughter from Valentina Ignatievna, and the General reply to that outburst:

"'Ah, that man! Ah, these servants of ours! Why, the fellow would do ANYTHING for a piatak '[A silver five-kopeck piece, equal in value to 2 1/4 pence.]

"To this my beloved one retorted:

"'Oh, uncle, uncle! Is it only a piatak that I am worth?

And then I heard the doctor put in:

"'What was it you gave him?'

"'Merely some soda and tartaric acid. To think of the fun that we shall have!'"

Here, closing his eyes, Kalinin remained silent for a moment, whilst the moist breeze sighed as it drove dense, wet mist against the black branches of the trees.

"At first my feeling was one of overwhelming joy at the thought that at least not DEATH was to be my fate. For I may tell you that, so far from being harmful, soda and tartaric acid are frequently taken as a remedy against drunken headache. Then the thought occurred to me: 'But, since I am not a tippler, why should such a joke have been played upon ME?' However, from that moment I began to feel easier, and when the company had sat down to dinner, and, amid a general silence, I was handing round the soup, the doctor tasted his portion, and, raising his head with a frown, inquired:

"'Forgive me, but what soup is this? '