Page:Andreyev - The Burglar (Current Literature).djvu/2

110 crevices with strange and wily eyes, he will not be able to discover his presence.

And this is why he goes in the middle of the street, and there walks on apart from and visible to all, persecuted by the looks directed upon him from the gardens, the fences, the houses.

Thus he emerges upon the shore of the frozen river. The houses, full of men, remain outside the confines of the luminous circle, and only the field and the sky look at each other with hollow cold eyes. Yet the field is without motion and the sky flows rapidly onward, and the dim whitish moon falls headlong into the emptiness of measureless space. And not a sound, not a breath, not a stirring shadow is upon the snow. He stretches himself to his full length in the midst of the free and open country, looks up into the great arch of heaven, then angrily at the deserted street, and remains standing. "Let us smoke!" he says aloud in a husky voice. The match feebly illumines his broad black beard, but falls immediately from his lifted hand when an answer comes to his words — a strange, unexpected answer in the dead stillness of the night. He can not make it out. Is it a groan? Is it far or near, threatening or calling for help? Some sound arose and died away again. Long he listens, aghast with fright; the sound is not repeated; he waits and then asks softly: "Who is there?"

So surprisingly, so astoundingly simple is the answer that the man laughs out aloud and breaks into meaningless oaths. A little dog whines, a very ordinary and apparently very young dog. That is evident from its voice — weak, plaintive, and full of that peculiar assurance which knows that it will be heard and will be pitied, that peculiar sound which is heard in the crying of children. A little dog whines in the midst of the snow — a little dog, where all was so unusual and terrifying and the whole world hunted the man with a thousand open eyes. The man follows the soft call.

Upon the trodden snow of the wide road sits a little black dog. Helplessly stretching out his hind feet, he supports himself on his fore feet. He trembles in his entire body. The feet on which he supports himself tremble, the little black nose trembles, and the coiled end of the tail strikes out a pitiful, caressing curl upon the snow. He has been freezing long, astray in the infinite waste, urgently calling to all who came near him but heeded by none. Now a man has stopped in front of him, and no longer has he need to cry out for help.

"This seems to be our dog," muses the man as he scans him carefully. He vaguely recalls something, small, black and moving, which beat a tattoo with his paws, always got entangled under one's feet and whined. The folks played with him and petted him, and once someone said: "Look at him, what a comical fellow he is!"

He does not recall whether he had seen him then, whether he had looked at him then; perhaps these words had never been spoken, perhaps there was never a young dog in his house, and these recollections come perhaps from the distance, from that indefinite past in which there were so much sunshine and beautiful rare sounds, and in which, as he thinks of it, everything seems to flow into everything else and form a vague mass of confused ideas and remembrances.

"Hey, little fellow, how came you here, you son of a dog?"

The dog turns his little head, but does not whine. He looks aside and trembles with an expression of patient forlornness. It is a very ordinary young dog, yet the man had been so shamefully frightened that he begins to shudder. And he is about to commit a great burglary, perhaps a murder!

"Get along with you," he cries with a threatening voice; "go home, you monster."

The dog acts as if he does not hear him. He looks aside and trembles with the same persistent, agonizing quaver, so that the man's heart begins to ache, and a cold shiver runs through his body.

He grows angry. "Get along with you! Am I speaking to you?" he cries. "Away with you, miserable hound, or I will crack your skull. C-l-e-a-r out!"

The dog looks aside as if he does not hear the terrible words which would have made anybody else tremble, or as if he does not attach any importance to them; and the man is seized with rage because his fierce and terrible words are received with indifference and inattention.

"Now, you rot here," he says, and goes resolutely forward. Whereupon the little dog sets up a piteous whimper as if in imminent peril of life, and convinced, like a child, that it will be heard. "Aha, now you are whining," says the man with triumphant malice. He turns rapidly backward and finds the dog sitting mutely and slumbering.

"Will you go now or not?" he says, but receives no answer. Again he asks and receives no answer.

Now begins the strange, senseless struggle of a huge, powerful man with the little freezing animal. The man tries to chase it home, he is angered, he cries, he stamps with his powerful feet, and the dog looks aside, trembles with cold and with fear, and does not budge from the spot. The man pretends that he is going back home, and calls to make the dog run after him; but he sits and trembles, and when the man goes off