Chapter V

It was a clear, warm morning, and the birds were chirping away in the consumptive urban trees somewhat more cheerfully than usual. The old man rose early, took his hoop, and walked a little distance out of town.

He coughed as he made his way among the old trees and the thorny bushes in the woods. The trees, covered with their dry, blackish, bursting bark, seemed to him incomprehensibly and sternly silent. The odours were strange, the insects astonishing, the ferns of gigantic growth. There was neither dust nor din here, and the gentle, exquisite morning mist lay behind the trees. The old feet glided over the dry leaves and stumbled across the old gnarled roots.

The old man broke off a dry limb and hung his hoop upon it.

He came upon an opening, full of daylight and of calm. The dewdrops, countless and opalescent, gleamed upon the green blades of newly mown grass.

Suddenly the old man let the hoop slide off the stick. He struck with the stick, and sent the hoop rolling across the green lawn. The old man laughed, brightened at once, and pursued the hoop like that little boy. He kicked up his feet and drove the hoop with his stick, which he flourished high over his head, just as that little boy did.

It seemed to him that he was small, beloved, and happy. It seemed to him that he was being looked after by his mother, who was following close behind and smiling. Like a child on his first outing, he felt refreshed on the bright grass, and on the still mosses.

His goat-like, dust-grey beard, that harmonized with his sallow face, trembled, while his cough mingled with his laughter, and raucous sounds came from his toothless mouth.

VI

And the old man grew to love his morning hour in the woods with the hoop.

He sometimes thought he might be discovered, and ridiculed—and this aroused him to a keen sense of shame. This shame resembled fear; he would grow numb, and his knees would give way under him. He would look round him with fright and timidity.

But no—there was no one to be seen, or to be heard....

And having diverted himself to his heart’s content he would return to the city, smiling gently and joyously.

VII

No one had ever found him out. And nothing unusual ever happened. The old man played peacefully for several days, and one very dewy morning he caught cold. He went to bed, and soon died. Dying in the factory hospital, among strangers, indifferent people, he smiled serenely.

His memories soothed him. He, too, had been a child; he, too, had laughed and scampered across the green grass, among the dark trees—his beloved mother had followed him with her eyes.

THE SEARCH