Max | Page 2

firewood. He saw, recognized, lost it, and knew himself to be skimming down the Nevskiy Prospekt and across the Winter Palace Square, where the great angel towers upon its rose-granite monument. Forward, forward he was carried, along the bank of the frozen Neva and over the Troitskiy bridge, the powdered snow stinging his face like pinpoints as it flew up from the nails in his little horse's shoes. Then followed a magnifying of the picture--massed buildings rising from the snow--buildings gold and turquoise-domed, that, even as they materialized, lost splendor and merged into the unpretentious frontage of the Finland station.
The scroll of the dream unwound; the dreamer moved, easing his position, shaking back a lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead. He was no longer rocking to the power of the north express; he was standing on the platform at the end of a little train that puffed out of the Finland station--a primitive, miniature train, white with frost and powdered with the ashes of its wood fuel. The vision came and passed a sketch, not a picture--a suggestion of straight tracks, wide snow plains, and the blue, misty blur of fir woods. Then a shifting, a juggling of effects! ?bo, the Finnish port, painted itself upon his imagination, and he was embarked upon the lonely sledge-drive, to the harbor. He started in his sleep, shivered and sighed at that remembered drive. The train passed over new points, the hoods of the lamps swayed, the lights blinked and winked, and his mind swung onward in response to the physical jar.
?bo was obliterated. He was on board a ship--a ship ploughing her way through the ice-fields as she neared Stockholm; salt sea air flicked his nostrils, he heard the broken ice tearing the keel like a million files, he was sensible of the crucial sensation--the tremendous quiver--as the vessel slipped from her bondage into the cradle of the sea, a sentient thing welcoming her own element!
The heart of the dreamer leaped to that strange sensation. He drew a long, sharp breath, and sat up, suddenly awake. It was over and done with--the coldness, the rigor, the region of ice bonds! The fingers of the future beckoned to him; the promises of the future lapped his ears as the waves had lapped the ship's sides.
He looked about him, at first excitedly, then confusedly, then a little shamedfacedly, for we are always involuntarily shamed at being tricked by our emotions into a false conception. Drawing his hand from his coat-pocket, he stretched himself with an assumption of ease, as though he saw and recognized the twinkle in the electric lamps and spontaneously rose to its demands.
The train was flying forward at unabated speed. Outside, the raw January air was clinging in a film to the carriage window; inside, the dim light and overheated air made an artificial atmosphere, enervating or stimulating according to the traveller's gifts. To this solitary voyager stimulation was obviously the effect produced, for, try as he might to cheat the inquisitive lamps, interest in every detail of his surroundings was portrayed in his face, in the poise of his head, the quickness of his glance as he gazed round the compartment, verifying the impression that he was alone.
[Illustration: STANDING AGAIN IN THE OUTER COURT OF A HOUSE IN PETERSBURG]
Yes, he was absolutely alone! Everything was as it had been when he settled himself to sleep on the departure of the three strangers. There, on the opposite seat, were their rugs, their fur-lined coats, their illustrated papers--all the impedimenta of prosperous travellers; and there, on the rack above them, was his own modest hand-bag without initials or label--a common little bag that might have belonged to some poor Russian clerk or held the possessions of some needy Polish student. The owner's glance scanned and appraised it, then by suggestion fell to the plain rough overcoat that covered him from his neck to the tops of his high boots, and whose replica was to be seen any day in the meaner streets of Petersburg or Moscow. Like the bag, it was a little strange, a little incongruous in its comfortable surroundings--a little savoring of mystery.
The traveller's pulses quickened, his being lifted to the moment, for in his soul was the spark of adventure, in his eyes the adventurous look--fearless, observant, questioning. In composition, in expression and essence, this boy was that free and fascinating creature, the born adventurer--high of courage, prodigal of emotion, capturer of the world's loot.
The spirit within him shone out in the moment of solitude; he passed his hands down the front, of his coat, revelling in its coarse texture; he rose to his feet, turned to the sheet of gray, misted glass, and, letting down the window, leaned out into the night.
The scene was