The Old Woman.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1857, 31 May 1884, Page 5

The Old Woman.

I wandered alone in a distant meadow. Suddenly it seemed to me as if I heard hgiit, cautious footsteps behind me. . . . Some one was following mo. I looked around and discovered a little humpbacked old woman, completely scathed in gray lags. Only her face — a yellow, wrinkled, keen, toothless face — peered out. I advanced towards her. . . . She remained standing. " Who are you ? What do you want ? Are you a beggar? Do you ask alms ? The old woman answered nothing. I benfc down toward her and remarked that both her eyes were veiled with a white, half-transparent membrane, similar to that which one finds in many birds that shelter their eyes from a too glaring light. But this old woman's membrane was motionless ; it was never lifted from the pupil. ... I concluded from this that she was blind. "Do you demand alms?" I repeated my question. "Why do you follow me?" But still the old woman replied not, but only bowed herself a little lower. I turned round and pursued my road. And again I heard the same soft, stealthy, measured footsteps behiad me. " This woman again I" I thought ; " what does she want with me?" But immediately I added to myself, " Probably she may have wandered from the path in her blindness and she is following the sound of my footsteps, in order to arrive with me at some inhabited neighbourhood. . . . Yes, yes; that is it!" But a curious unrest took possession of me. ... It seemed to me as if I were following the given direction of this old woman and not she mme — that she was forcing me forward, now to the right, now to the left, and that I unwillingly obeyed her. Meanwhile Igo further and further. . . . And there before me, exactly in the direction of my path, is something black ; it grows wider ; . . . it is a ditch. . . . "A grave 1 " The thought came like a flash of lightning. And she is forcing me toward it. I turn round short. The old woman is still by me. . . . But now she can see. She glares at me with large, menacing eyes — the eyes of a bird of prey. ... I look closer at her iace— at her eye 3. . . . And there again was the dim membrane, and again the same infirm and sightless lineaments. "Ah! "I reflect. . . . "Thisoldwoman is my J?ate ; that Pate which mankind cannot escape." " Cannot escape ? Cannot escape ? Wnat a delasion. ... I will attempt to do so." And I strike ouiin a different direction. I hasten, . . . but the airy footsteps rustle behind me — near, so near; . . . and still before me is that gloomy pit. I turn and pursue another path. . . . And still this same rusLle behind me and the same dark speck before me. And as I turn, now here, now there, like a hunted hare, . . . 'tis ever the same, ever the same 1 " Stop 1 " I say to myself, " now I will deceive her ! I will remain still." Suddenly I threw myself upon the earth. The old woman stands two paces behind me. I hear her not, but I feel that she is there. And suddenly I see: yonder speck, that was visible in tha distance, floats, crawls toward me ! God ! . . . I look behind me. . . . The old woman utares rigidly at me, and her toothless mouth is distorted by a smile. " Thou shalt not escape me I" — From Poems in Prose by Ivan Turgemeff.