Dig the grave and let me lie,”
also wrote, “There are no stars like the Edinburgh gaslamps and no atmosphere like the air of Auld Reekie.” Again one wished to be everywhere at home. “Philosophy,” Novalis said, “was home-sickness.”
A little procession of cloud-scuds passed over the sky and I fell asleep. I awakened again as the dawn light was flooding upward: the peaks of distant white summits were rosy-red with the reflection of sunrise. Then gradually, as the shadow had climbed upward the night before, so the light came down—down, down into the valley. It was as if angels were being let down by shining rope ladders. A lark jumped from the grass beside me, brown and wet, and twittered on a boulder and sang three notes. It was magical.
I gathered sticks and dry grass and made a fire, and watched it burn, and boiled a kettle on it, and made tea and munched millet-bread. I had a supply of this “biscuit.” After tea a river dip and then onward!
The whole of this day, from sunrise to sunset, I wandered and met not one human being. Therefore I nearly starved, for I had a very poor day’s rations in my bag. After making my detour past Fortoug I had to climb the steep cliff in order to proceed, for there was no means of following the river otherwise. The water hugged the rock and was very deep and rapid. I crept through a wood on hands and knees, and when I got to the other side found an impassable wall stretching up to the snow-line. I found a cleft, however, and a path leading away from the direction I wished to take. I went along this. It was difficult to follow, and led up to a perfectly barren region, where there was not a shrub or blade of grass, or even a piece of moss to be seen; nothing but grey rock and the waste end of last winter’s snow, not yet melted by the summer sun. I grew rather anxious, for I had no wish to sleep at such a height in such cold air, but suddenly the path diverged downward again, and late in the evening I clambered down a dangerously steep slope right into a valley. The boulders were very loose, and there was a chaos of them, large and small. One had to step from one to another all the way down, and sometimes just a touch would send a rock bigger than myself thundering into the valley below. At last, in the twilight of the evening, I found myself on the Georgian road in the Gorge of Dariel. I was some way up the gorge, just at the Trans-Caucasian frontier. I hailed a cart coming along and got a lift to the Kazbek village. It was quite dark when we arrived, so I plucked out Nicholas’s epistle from my bosom and inquired the way to the village pope.
CHAPTER XV
THE IKON NOT MADE BY HANDS
VLADIMIR ALEXANDROVITCH was, I suppose, one of the minor clergy. It was evident he was very poor; his house consisted of one room only, and was furnished by two chairs and a table. Several Ikons hung on the walls. On the floor a rough black sheepskin mat showed where he slept. He wouldn’t find me a lodging, but bade me welcome to his own. We ate kasha together, buckwheat porridge, and then he put the samovar on and we had tea. The Ikons were all Christ-faces, and they watched us all through the meal in a way that gave the place a strange atmosphere. At my elbow stood a famous picture, one that many Russians love beyond all others as a comforter. It is called “The Joy of all the Afflicted”; it is, of course, a portrait of Christ painted in the features of a Russian peasant. It means nothing to a foreigner, but somehow it appeals to the peasant; it brings Christ very near to him, it makes Him a fellow-man. Opposite me was “The Ikon not made by hands,” also a peasant face, but having an expression as cold as the other was warm. But this one was arresting; one’s eyes continually rested upon it and tried to discover some hidden meaning. I asked the priest to tell me the story of it, and it was not until the end that I discovered that it was a version of the St Veronica legend. I don’t know now whether he would agree with the version of his story I should tell. But this is how it remains in my mind.
The fame of Jesus spread into many countries, even before the time of His death. It came to Abyssinia where a queen was dying. The tidings came of the healing of the sick, the raising from the dead, tidings of all the wonderful faith-miracles wrought in the distant land where Jesus was teaching. The tidings were brought to the dying queen, and as she heard a light passed over her face. All those who stood by wondered and hoped, for in the sudden light in the eyes of the queen they deemed they saw the promise of new life. The queen was silent, and looked on them, and then the light faded away, and she said: “If I might see Him it is possible I should live, but how could it happen that He should come hither, so many hundred miles o’er hill and vale and desert and sea, for the sake even of a queen?” So she spoke and was silent, and yet was not without hope. And those around her were sad, and they waited for the queen to say more. But the queen lay still and spoke no more, and with a strange thought of comfort her feeble body and spirit slid gently into sleep. Sweetly and gently her eyes and soul closed to the day, and her night eyes and soul opened to the night. She dreamed. She dreamed, and then even her dreaming self fell asleep.
In the morning she opened her eyes and remembered that she had dreamed, and she remembered a voice in the dream, and a face and a promise. She remembered the strange words that had been spoken to her dreaming self—“Andray, the painter, shall bring you the face that shall save you from all harm.”