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But no longer did I desire to listen to Kalinin, for the threads which had drawn me, bound me, to his personality had now parted. All that I desired to do was to contemplate in silence the sea, while thinking of some of those subjects which at eventide never fail to stir the soul to gentle, kindly emotion. Bombers, Kalinin's words continued dripping into my ear like belated raindrops.
"Whereafter falling headlong to the floor, I lost consciousness." Kalinin's small face had become painfully contracted, and grown old and haggard-looking. Rolling over on to his breast before the languishing fire, he waved a hand to dissipate the smoke which was lazily drifting slant-wise. "For seventeen days did I remain stretched on a sick-bed, and was attended by the doctor in person.
Only to two persons has it ever been known; to my friend the clerk and to myself. Yes, and to HER, though I need hardly add that at once she forgot it." And Kalinin's eyes flashed into a smile as he added: "I think that, as a young man, you had better learn forthwith where the greatest danger lurks in life. Let me tell you a story."
Lastly the third Turk stooped forward over the sea to screen his companions, and as he did so, developed a huge red nose which comically seemed to dip towards, and sniff at, the waters. "Sometimes," continued Kalinin's even voice through the crackling and hissing of the wood fire, "a man who is old and blind may cobble a shoe better than cleverer men than he, can order their whole lives."
Kalinin's discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from time to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils. "The locality is not without its perils," once he remarked. "For hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago Maliar of Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these parts. Probably he was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances escape my memory."
Behind us the busy clamour of the monastery had died down, and even Kalinin's cheery voice seemed subdued by the influence of the night it seemed to have in it less of the note of self-confidence. "My mother was a wet-nurse," he went on to volunteer, "and I her only child. When I was twelve years of age I was, owing to my height, converted into a footman. It happened thus.
Presently through the moist, squelching sound of our footsteps, and the cheerful patter of the rain-drippings, Kalinin's narrative resumed its languid, querulous course: "When, that evening, I opened the door to the doctor I could not bring myself to look him in the face I could merely hang my head; whereupon, taking me by the chin, and raising it, he inquired: "Why is your face so yellow?
In the sun's red rays He dwells He, the Son of God. His light our every ill dispels. Praised be the Son of God! Each successive line seemed to inspire Kalinin's voice with added youthfulness, until, indeed, the concluding words "The One and Only God" issued in a high, agreeable tenor.
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