I felt a slight twinge of uneasiness.... I dismissed Marfa.
"Why, going on like this, you"ll die, or go out of your mind, perhaps,"
I reasoned with myself, as I sat deep in thought at the window. "I must give it all up. It"s dangerous. And now my heart beats so strangely. And when I fly, I keep feeling as though some one were sucking at it, or as it were drawing something out of it--as the spring sap is drawn out of the birch-tree, if you stick an axe into it. I"m sorry, though. And Alice too.... She is playing cat and mouse with me ... still she can hardly wish me harm. I will give myself up to her for the last time--and then.... But if she is drinking my blood? That"s awful. Besides, such rapid locomotion cannot fail to be injurious; even in England, I"m told, on the railways, it"s against the law to go more than one hundred miles an hour...."
So I reasoned with myself--but at ten o"clock in the evening, I was already at my post before the old oak-tree.
XVIII
The night was cold, dull, grey; there was a feeling of rain in the air. To my amazement, I found no one under the oak; I walked several times round it, went up to the edge of the wood, turned back again, peered anxiously into the darkness.... All was emptiness. I waited a little, then several times I uttered the name, Alice, each time a little louder,... but she did not appear. I felt sad, almost sick at heart; my previous apprehensions vanished; I could not resign myself to the idea that my companion would not come back to me again.
"Alice! Alice! come! Can it be you will not come?" I shouted, for the last time.
A crow, who had been waked by my voice, suddenly darted upwards into a tree-top close by, and catching in the twigs, fluttered his wings.... But Alice did not appear.
With downcast head, I turned homewards. Already I could discern the black outlines of the willows on the pond"s edge, and the light in my window peeped out at me through the apple-trees in the orchard--peeped at me, and hid again, like the eye of some man keeping watch on me--when suddenly I heard behind me the faint swish of the rapidly parted air, and something at once embraced and s.n.a.t.c.hed me upward, as a buzzard pounces on and s.n.a.t.c.hes up a quail.... It was Alice sweeping down upon me. I felt her cheek against my cheek, her enfolding arm about my body, and like a cutting cold her whisper pierced to my ear, "Here I am." I was frightened and delighted both at once.... We flew at no great height above the ground.
"You did not mean to come to-day?" I said.
"And you were dull without me? You love me? Oh, you are mine!"
The last words of Alice confused me.... I did not know what to say.
"I was kept," she went on; "I was watched."
"Who could keep you?"
"Where would you like to go?" inquired Alice, as usual not answering my question.
"Take me to Italy--to that lake, you remember."
Alice turned a little away, and shook her head in refusal. At that point I noticed for the first time that she had ceased to be transparent. And her face seemed tinged with colour; there was a faint glow of red over its misty whiteness. I glanced at her eyes ... and felt a pang of dread; in those eyes something was astir--with the slow, continuous, malignant movement of the benumbed snake, twisting and turning as the sun begins to thaw it.
"Alice," I cried, "who are you? Tell me who you are."
Alice simply shrugged her shoulders.
I felt angry ... I longed to punish her; and suddenly the idea occurred to me to tell her to fly with me to Paris. "That"s the place for you to be jealous," I thought. "Alice," I said aloud, "you are not afraid of big towns--Paris, for instance?"
"No."
"Not even those parts where it is as light as in the boulevards?"
"It is not the light of day."
"Good; then take me at once to the Boulevard des Italiens."
Alice wrapped the end of her long hanging sleeve about my head. I was at once enfolded in a sort of white vapour full of the drowsy fragrance of the poppy. Everything disappeared at once; every light, every sound, and almost consciousness itself. Only the sense of being alive remained, and that was not unpleasant.
Suddenly the vapour vanished; Alice took her sleeve from my head, and I saw at my feet a huge ma.s.s of closely--packed buildings, brilliant light, movement, noisy traffic.... I saw Paris.
XIX
I had been in Paris before, and so I recognised at once the place to which Alice had directed her course. It was the Garden of the Tuileries with its old chestnut-trees, its iron railings, its fortress moat, and its brutal-looking Zouave sentinels. Pa.s.sing the palace, pa.s.sing the Church of St. Roche, on the steps of which the first Napoleon for the first time shed French blood, we came to a halt high over the Boulevard des Italiens, where the third Napoleon did the same thing and with the same success. Crowds of people, dandies young and old, workmen in blouses, women in gaudy dresses, were thronging on the pavements; the gilded restaurants and cafes were flaring with lights; omnibuses, carriages of all sorts and shapes, moved to and fro along the boulevard; everything was bustle, everything was brightness, wherever one chanced to look.... But, strange to say, I had no inclination to forsake my pure dark airy height. I had no inclination to get nearer to this human ant-hill. It seemed as though a hot, heavy, reddish vapour rose from it, half-fragrance, half-stench; so many lives were flung struggling in one heap together there. I was hesitating.... But suddenly, sharp as the clang of iron bars, the voice of a harlot of the streets floated up to me; like an insolent tongue, it was thrust out, this voice; it stung me like the sting of a viper. At once I saw in imagination the strong, heavy-jawed, greedy, flat Parisian face, the mercenary eyes, the paint and powder, the frizzed hair, and the nosegay of gaudy artificial flowers under the high-pointed hat, the polished nails like talons, the hideous crinoline.... I could fancy too one of our sons of the steppes running with pitiful eagerness after the doll put up for sale.... I could fancy him with clumsy coa.r.s.eness and violent stammering, trying to imitate the manners of the waiters at Vefour"s, mincing, flattering, wheedling ...
and a feeling of loathing gained possession of me.... "No," I thought, "here Alice has no need to be jealous...."
Meanwhile I perceived that we had gradually begun to descend.... Paris was rising to meet us with all its din and odour....
"Stop," I said to Alice. "Are you not stifled and oppressed here?"
"You asked me to bring you here yourself."
"I am to blame, I take back my word. Take me away, Alice, I beseech you. To be sure, here is Prince Kulmametov hobbling along the boulevard; and his friend, Serge Varaksin, waves his hand to him, shouting: "Ivan Stepanitch, _allons souper_, make haste, zhay angazha Rigol-bouche itself!" Take me away from these furnished apartments and _maisons dorees_, from the Jockey Club and the Figaro, from close-shaven military heads and varnished barracks, from sergents-de-ville with Napoleonic beards, and from gla.s.ses of muddy absinthe, from gamblers playing dominoes at the cafes, and gamblers on the Bourse, from red ribbons in b.u.t.ton-holes, from M. de Four, inventor of "matrimonial specialities," and the gratuitous consultations of Dr. Charles Albert, from liberal lectures and government pamphlets, from Parisian comedies and Parisian operas, from Parisian wit and Parisian ignorance.... Away! away! away!"
"Look down," Alice answered; "you are not now in Paris."
I lowered my eyes.... It was true. A dark plain, intersected here and there by the whitish lines of roads, was rushing rapidly by below us, and only behind us on the horizon, like the reflection of an immense conflagration, rose the great glow of the innumerable lights of the capital of the world.
XX
Again a veil fell over my eyes.... Again I lost consciousness. The veil was withdrawn at last. What was it down there below? What was this park, with avenues of lopped lime-trees, with isolated fir-trees of the shape of parasols, with porticoes and temples in the Pompadour style, with statues of satyrs and nymphs of the Bernini school, with rococo tritons in the midst of meandering lakes, closed in by low parapets of blackened marble?
Wasn"t it Versailles? No, it was not Versailles. A small palace, also rococo, peeped out behind a clump of bushy oaks. The moon shone dimly, shrouded in mist, and over the earth there was, as it were spread out, a delicate smoke. The eye could not decide what it was, whether moonlight or fog. On one of the lakes a swan was asleep; its long back was white as the snow of the frost-bound steppes, while glow-worms gleamed like diamonds in the bluish shadow at the base of a statue.
"We are near Mannheim," said Alice; "this is the Schwetzingen garden."
"We are in Germany," I thought, and I fell to listening. All was silence, except somewhere, secluded and unseen, the splash and babble of falling water. It seemed continually to repeat the same words: "Aye, aye, aye, for aye, aye." And all at once I fancied that in the very centre of one of the avenues, between clipped walls of green, a cavalier came tripping along in red-heeled boots, a gold-braided coat, with lace ruffs at his wrists, a light steel rapier at his thigh, smilingly offering his arm to a lady in a powdered wig and a gay chintz.... Strange, pale faces.... I tried to look into them.... But already everything had vanished, and as before there was nothing but the babbling water.
"Those are dreams wandering," whispered Alice; "yesterday there was much--oh, much--to see; to-day, even the dreams avoid man"s eye. Forward!
forward!"
We soared higher and flew farther on. So smooth and easy was our flight that it seemed that we moved not, but everything moved to meet us.
Mountains came into view, dark, undulating, covered with forest; they rose up and swam towards us.... And now they were slipping by beneath us, with all their windings, hollows, and narrow glades, with gleams of light from rapid brooks among the slumbering trees at the bottom of the dales; and in front of us more mountains sprung up again and floated towards us.... We were in the heart of the Black Forest.
Mountains, still mountains ... and forest, magnificent, ancient, stately forest. The night sky was clear; I could recognise some kinds of trees, especially the splendid firs, with their straight white trunks. Here and there on the edge of the forest, wild goats could be seen; graceful and alert, they stood on their slender legs and listened, turning their heads prettily and p.r.i.c.king up their great funnel-shaped ears. A ruined tower, sightless and gloomy, on the crest of a bare cliff, laid bare its crumbling turrets; above the old forgotten stones, a little golden star was shining peacefully. From a small almost black lake rose, like a mysterious wail, the plaintive croak of tiny frogs. I fancied other notes, long-drawn-out, languid like the strains of an aeolian harp.... Here we were in the home of legend! The same delicate moonlight mist, which had struck me in Schwetzingen, was shed here on every side, and the farther away the mountains, the thicker was this mist. I counted up five, six, ten different tones of shadow at different heights on the mountain slopes, and over all this realm of varied silence the moon queened it pensively. The air blew in soft, light currents. I felt myself a lightness at heart, and, as it were, a lofty calm and melancholy....
"Alice, you must love this country!"
"I love nothing."
"How so? Not me?"
"Yes ... you!" she answered indifferently.
It seemed to me that her arm clasped my waist more tightly than before.
"Forward! forward!" said Alice, with a sort of cold fervour.