Again they lived in silence, distant and yet near to each other. Once, in the middle of the week, on a holiday, as he was preparing to leave the house he said to his mother:
"I expect some people here on Saturday."
"What people?" she asked.
"Some people from our village, and others from the city."
"From the city?" repeated the mother, shaking her head. And suddenly she broke into sobs.
"Now, mother, why this?" cried Pavel resentfully. "What for?"
Drying her face with her apron, she answered quietly:
"I don't know, but it is the way I feel."
He paced up and down the room, then halting before her, said:
"Are you afraid?"
"I am afraid," she acknowledged. "Those people from the city-who knows them?"
He bent down to look in her face, and said in an offended tone, and, it seemed to her, angrily, like his father:
"This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and[Pg 25] frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!
"It's all the same," he said, as he turned from her; "they'll meet in my house, anyway."
"Don't be angry with me!" the mother begged sadly. "How can I help being afraid? All my life I have lived in fear!"
"Forgive me!" was his gentler reply, "but I cannot do otherwise," and he walked away.
For three days her heart was in a tremble, sinking in fright each time she remembered that strange people were soon to come to her house. She could not picture them to herself, but it seemed to her they were terrible people. It was they who had shown her son the road he was going.
On Saturday night Pavel came from the factory, washed himself, put on clean clothes, and when walking out of the house said to his mother without looking at her:
"When they come, tell them I'll be back soon. Let them wait a while. And please don't be afraid. They are people like all other people."
She sank into her seat almost fainting.
Her son looked at her soberly. "Maybe you'd better go away somewhere," he suggested.
The thought offended her. Shaking her head in dissent, she said:
"No, it's all the same. What for?"
It was the end of November. During the day a dry, fine snow had fallen upon the frozen earth, and now she heard it crunching outside the window under her son's feet as he walked away. A dense crust of darkness settled immovably upon the window panes, and seemed to[Pg 26] lie in hostile watch for something. Supporting herself on the bench, the mother sat and waited, looking at the door.
It seemed to her that people were stealthily and watchfully walking about the house in the darkness, stooping and looking about on all sides, strangely attired and silent. There around the house some one was already coming, fumbling with his hands along the wall.
A whistle was heard. It circled around like the notes of a fine chord, sad and melodious, wandered musingly into the wilderness of darkness, and seemed to be searching for something. It came nearer. Suddenly it died away under the window, as if it had entered into the wood of the wall. The noise of feet was heard on the porch. The mother started, and rose with a strained, frightened look in her eyes.
