IV
A month later a stone monument had been raised over the dead woman’s grave. But there was still no stone over the driver’s grave, and there was nothing but the bright green grass over the mound, which was the only sign of a man’s past existence.
“It’ll be a sin in you, Seryoga,” the cook at the station said one day, “if you don’t buy a stone for Fyodor. You were always saying it was winter, but now why don’t you keep your word? I was by at the time. He’s come back once already to ask you for it; if you don’t buy it, he’ll come again and stifle you.”
“Why, did I say I wasn’t going to?” answered Seryoga; “I’ll buy a stone as I said I would; I’ll buy one for a silver rouble and a half. I’ve not forgotten, but it must be fetched, you know. As soon as I’ve a chance to go to the town I’ll buy it.”
“You might put a cross up anyway,” put in an old driver, “or else it’s a downright shame. You’re wearing the boots.”
“Where’s one to get a cross? You wouldn’t cut one out of a log of firewood?”
“What are you talking about? You can’t hew it out of a log. You take an axe and go early in the morning into the copse; you can cut a cross there. An aspen or something you can fell. And it’ll make a fine wooden monument too. Or else you’ll have to go and stand the forest-reeve a drink of vodka. One doesn’t want to have to give him a drink for every trifle. The other day I broke a splinter-bar; I cut myself a firstrate new one, and no one said a word to me.”
In the early morning, when it was hardly light, Seryoga took his axe and went into the wood. Over all lay a chill, even-coloured veil of still-falling dew, not lighted up by the sun. The east was imperceptibly growing clearer, reflecting its faint light on the arch of sky covered with fine clouds. Not a blade of grass below, not a leaf on the topmost twig stirred. The stillness of the forest was only broken at intervals by the sound of wings in a tree or a rustle on the ground. Suddenly a strange sound, not one of nature’s own, rang out and died away on the edge of the forest. But again the sound was heard, and began to be repeated at regular intervals near the trunk of one of the motionless trees. One of the treetops began shaking in a strange way; its sappy leaves whispered something; and a warbler that had been perched on one of its branches fluttered round it twice, and uttering a whistle and wagging its tail, settled on another tree.
The axe gave a duller and duller ring, the sappy, white chips flew out on the dewy grass, and a faint crackling sound followed each blow. The tree shuddered all over, bowed, and quickly stood up straight again, trembling in dismay on its roots. For a moment all was still, but again the tree bent; a crack was heard in its trunk, and with a snapping of twigs its branches dropped, and it crashed down with its top on the damp earth. The sounds of the axe and of steps died away. The warbler whistled and flew up higher. The branch in which it had caught its wings shook for a little while in all its leaves, then became still like the rest. The trees displayed their motionless branches more gladly than ever in the open space. The first beams of the sun, piercing through the transparent cloud, shone out in the sky and darted over the earth. The mist began rolling in waves into the hollows; the dew glittered sparkling on the green grass; the transparent clouds turned white, and floated in haste across the bluish sky. The birds flitted to and fro in the thickets and twittered some happy song, like mad things. The sappy leaves whispered joyously and calmly on the treetops, and the branches of the living trees, slowly, majestically, swayed above the fallen dead tree.