Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/87

Rh "Brothers, Sasha!"

All turned, and there stood the twice-raised Sasha, bearded, gaunt, and pallid. The people flocked around him and cried to him and called on him to play. But the same nervous, frightened voice cried out again:—

"His arm!"

All grew silent. Sasha's left arm hung broken and twisted and nerveless from his shoulder.

"What is it, brother?" asked one.

"Muscle dried up, that's all," he answered.

"So—o."

"Then that's an end to Chaban," said one of the crowd, referring to one of the most popular dances that Sasha played.

But Sasha took out of his pocket with his right hand a queer black wooden instrument which he had either made in prison or had had given to him, and he put it to his lips and began to play.

Then every one began to dance, and Sasha sat in his place, and all was as before. As Kuprin says at the conclusion of his tale, "Man is for Life, but Art is For Ever."

Such is the orgy unrehearsed. So a tavern can be a popular theatre. It can also be a church, a place of searching after God. In England you sit