bed; yet he was loathe to tear himself away from the book. He began
to read the seventh chapter of St. Luke, and read on about the
centurion, the widow’s son, and the answer given to John’s
disciples; until in time he came to the passage where the rich
Pharisee invited Jesus to his house, and the woman washed the Lord’s
feet with her tears and He justified her. So he came to the
forty-fourth verse and read:
“And He turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this
woman? I entered into thine house, and thou gavest Me no water for
My feet: but she hath washed My feet with tears, and wiped them with
the hairs of her head. Thou gavest Me no kiss: but this woman since
the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss My feet. My head with oil
thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed My feet with
ointment.”
He read these verses and thought:
“‘Thou gavest Me no water for My feet’ ... ‘Thou gavest Me no kiss’
... ‘My head with oil thou didst not anoint’ ...”—and once again he
took off his spectacles, laid them on the book, and became lost in
meditation.
“I am even as that Pharisee,” he thought to himself. “I drink tea
and think only of my own needs. Yes, I think only of having plenty
to eat and drink, of being warm and clean—but never of entertaining
a guest. And Simon too was mindful only of himself, although the
guest who had come to visit him was—who? Why, even the Lord Himself!
If, then, He should come to visit _me_, should I receive Him any
better?”—and, leaning forward upon his elbows, he was asleep almost
before he was aware of it.
“Martin!” someone seemed to breathe in his ear.
He started from his sleep.
“Who is there?” he said. He turned and looked towards the door, but
could see no one. Again he bent forward over the table. Then
suddenly he heard the words:
“Martin, Martin! Look thou into the street to-morrow, for I am
coming to visit thee.”
Martin roused himself, got up from the chair, and rubbed his eyes.
He did not know whether it was dreaming or awake that he had heard
these words, but he turned out the lamp and went to bed.
The next morning Avdeitch rose before daylight and said his prayers.
Then he made up the stove, got ready some cabbage soup and porridge,
lighted the _samovar_, slung his leather apron about him, and sat
down to his work in the window. He sat and worked hard, yet all the
time his thoughts were centred upon last night. He was in two ideas
about the vision. At one moment he would think that it must have
been his fancy, while the next moment he would find himself
convinced that he had really heard the voice. “Yes, it must have
been so,” he concluded.
As Martin sat thus by the window he kept looking out of it as much
as working. Whenever a pair of boots passed with which he was
acquainted he would bend down to glance upwards through the window
and see their owner’s face as well. The doorkeeper passed in new
felt boots, and then a water-carrier. Next, an old soldier, a
veteran of Nicholas’ army, in old, patched boots, and carrying a
shovel in his hands, halted close by the window. Avdeitch knew him
by his boots. His name was Stepanitch, and he was kept by a
neighboring tradesman out of charity, his duties being to help the
doorkeeper. He began to clear away the snow from in front of
Avdeitch’s window, while the shoemaker looked at him and then
resumed his work.
“I think I must be getting into my dotage,” thought Avdeitch with a
smile. “Just because Stepanitch begins clearing away the snow I at
once jump to the conclusion that Christ is about to visit me. Yes, I
am growing foolish now, old greybeard that I am.”
Yet he had hardly made a dozen stitches before he was craning his
neck again to look out of the window. He could see that Stepanitch
had placed his shovel against the wall, and was resting and trying
to warm himself a little.
“He is evidently an old man now and broken,” thought Avdeitch to
himself. “He is not strong enough to clear away snow. Would he like
some tea, I wonder? That reminds me that the _samovar_ must be ready
now.”
He made fast his awl in his work and got up. Placing the _samovar_
on the table, he brewed the tea, and then tapped with his finger on
the window-pane. Stepanitch turned round and approached. Avdeitch
beckoned to him, and then went to open the door.
“Come in and warm yourself,” he said. “You must be frozen.”
“Christ requite you!” answered Stepanitch. “Yes, my bones are almost
cracking.”
He came in, shook the snow off himself, and, though tottering on his
feet, took pains to wipe them carefully, that he might not dirty the
floor.
“Nay, do not trouble about that,” said Avdeitch. “I will wipe your
boots myself. It is part of my business in this trade. Come you here
and sit down, and we will empty this tea-pot together.”
He poured out two tumblerfuls, and offered one to his guest; after
which he emptied his own into the saucer, and blew upon it to cool
it. Stepanitch drank his tumblerful, turned the glass upside down,
placed his crust upon it, and thanked his host kindly. But it was
plain that he wanted another one.
“You must drink some more,” said Avdeitch, and refilled his guest’s
tumbler and his own. Yet, in spite of himself, he had no sooner
drunk his tea than he found himself looking out into the street
again.
“Are you expecting anyone?” asked his guest.
“Am—am I expecting anyone? Well, to tell the truth, yes. That is to
say, I am, and I am not. The fact is that some words have got fixed
in my memory. Whether it was a vision or not I cannot tell, but at
all events, my old friend, I was reading in the Gospels last night
about Our Little Father Christ, and how He walked this earth and
suffered. You have heard of Him, have you not?”
“Yes, yes, I have heard of Him,” answered Stepanitch; “but we are
ignorant folk and do not know our letters.”
“Well, I was reading of how He walked this earth, and how He went to
visit a Pharisee, and yet received no welcome from him at the door.
All this I read last night, my friend, and then fell to thinking
about it—to thinking how some day I too might fail to pay Our Little
Father Christ due honor. ‘Suppose,’ I thought to myself, ‘He came to
me or to anyone like me? Should we, like the great lord Simon, not
know how to receive Him and not go out to meet Him?’ Thus I thought,
and fell asleep where I sat. Then as I sat sleeping there I heard
someone call my name; and as I raised myself the voice went on (as
though it were the voice of someone whispering in my ear): ‘Watch
thou for me to-morrow, for I am coming to visit thee.’ It said that
twice. And so those words have got into my head, and, foolish though
I know it to be, I keep expecting _Him_—the Little Father—every
moment.”
Stepanitch nodded and said nothing, but emptied his glass and laid
it aside. Nevertheless Avdeitch took and refilled it.
“Drink it up; it will do you good,” he said. “Do you know,” he went
on, “I often call to mind how when Our Little Father walked this
earth, there was never a man, however humble, whom He despised, and
how it was chiefly among the common people that He dwelt. It was
always with _them_ that He walked; it was from among _them_—from
among such men as you and I—from among sinners and working folk—that
He chose His disciples. ‘Whosoever,’ He said, ‘shall exalt himself,
the same shall be abased; and whosoever shall abase himself, the
same shall be exalted.’ ‘You,’ He said again, ‘call me Lord; yet
will I wash your feet.’ ‘Whosoever,’ He said, ‘would be chief among
you, let him be the servant of all. Because,’ He said, ‘blessed are
the lowly, the peacemakers, the merciful, and the charitable.’”
Stepanitch had forgotten all about his tea. He was an old man, and
his tears came easily. He sat and listened, with the tears rolling
down his cheeks.
“Oh, but you must drink your tea,” said Avdeitch; yet Stepanitch
only crossed himself and said the thanksgiving, after which he
pushed his glass away and rose.
“I thank you, Martin Avdeitch,” he said. “You have taken me in, and
fed both soul and body.”
“Nay, but I beg of you to come again,” replied Avdeitch. “I am only
too glad of a guest.”
So Stepanitch departed, while Martin poured out the last of the tea
and drank it. Then he cleaned the crockery, and sat down again to
his work by the window—to the stitching of a back-piece. He stitched
away, yet kept on looking through the window—looking for Christ, as
it were—and ever thinking of Christ and His works. Indeed, Christ’s
many sayings were never absent from Avdeitch’s mind.
* * * * *
Two soldiers passed the window, the one in military boots, and the
other in civilian. Next, there came a neighboring householder, in
polished goloshes; then a baker with a basket. All of them passed
on. Presently a woman in woollen stockings and rough country shoes
approached the window, and halted near the buttress outside it.
Avdeitch peered up at her from under the lintel of his window, and
could see that she was a plain-looking, poorly-dressed woman and had
a child in her arms. It was in order to muffle the child up more
closely—little though she had to do it with!—that she had stopped
near the buttress and was now standing there with her back to the
wind. Her clothing was ragged and fit only for summer, and even from
behind his window-panes Avdeitch could hear the child crying
miserably and its mother vainly trying to soothe it. Avdeitch rose,
went to the door, climbed the steps, and cried out: “My good woman,
my good woman!”
She heard him and turned round.
“Why need you stand there in the cold with your baby?” he went on.
“Come into my room, where it is warm, and where you will be able to
wrap the baby up more comfortably than you can do here. Yes, come in
with you.”
The woman was surprised to see an old man in a leather apron and
with spectacles upon his nose calling out to her, yet she followed
him down the steps, and they entered his room. The old man led her
to the bedstead.
“Sit you down here, my good woman,” he said. “You will be near the
stove, and can warm yourself and feed your baby.”
“Ah,” she replied. “I have had nothing to eat this morning.”
Nevertheless she put the child to her breast.
Avdeitch nodded his head approvingly, went to the table for some
bread and a basin, and opened the stove door. From the stove he took
and poured some soup into the basin, and drew out also a bowl of
porridge. The latter, however, was not yet boiling, so he set out
only the soup, after first laying the table with a cloth.
“Sit down and eat, my good woman,” he said, “while I hold your baby.
I have had little ones of my own, and know how to nurse them.”
The woman crossed herself and sat down, while Avdeitch seated
himself upon the bedstead with the baby. He smacked his lips at it
once or twice, but made a poor show of it, for he had no teeth left.
Consequently the baby went on crying. Then he bethought him of his
finger, which he wriggled to and fro towards the baby’s mouth and
back again—without, however, actually touching the little one’s
lips, since the finger was blackened with work and sticky with
shoemaker’s wax. The baby contemplated the finger and grew
quiet—then actually smiled. Avdeitch was delighted. Meanwhile the
woman had been eating her meal, and now she told him, unasked, who
she was and whither she was going.
“I am a soldier’s wife,” she said, “but my husband was sent to a
distant station eight months ago, and I have heard nothing of him
since. At first I got a place as cook, but when the baby came they
said they could not do with it and dismissed me. That was three
months ago, and I have got nothing since, and have spent all my
savings. I tried to get taken as a nurse, but no one would have me,
for they said I was too thin. I have just been to see a tradesman’s
wife where our grandmother is in service. She had promised to take
me on, and I quite thought that she would, but when I arrived to-day
she told me to come again next week. She lives a long way from here,
and I am quite worn out and have tired my baby for nothing. Thank
Heaven, however, my landlady is good to me, and gives me shelter for
Christ’s sake. Otherwise I should not have known how to bear it
all.”
Avdeitch sighed and said: “But have you nothing warm to wear?”
“Ah, sir,” replied the woman, “although it is the time for warm
clothes I had to pawn my last shawl yesterday for two
_grivenki_.”[4]
Footnote 4:
The grivenka = 10 copecks = about five cents.
Then the woman returned to the bedstead to take her baby, while
Avdeitch rose and went to a cupboard. There he rummaged about, and
presently returned with an old jacket.
“Here,” he said. “It is a poor old thing, but it will serve to cover
you.”
The woman looked at the jacket, and then at the old man. Then she
took the jacket and burst into tears. Avdeitch turned away, and went
creeping under the bedstead, whence he extracted a box and pretended
to rummage about in it for a few moments; after which he sat down
again before the woman.
Then the woman said to him: “I thank you in Christ’s name, good
grandfather. Surely it was He Himself who sent me to your window.
Otherwise I should have seen my baby perish with the cold. When I
first came out the day was warm, but now it has begun to freeze. But
He, Our Little Father, had placed you in your window, that you might
see me in my bitter plight and have compassion upon me.”
Avdeitch smiled and said: “He did indeed place me there: yet, my
poor woman, it was for a special purpose that I was looking out.”
Then he told his guest, the soldier’s wife, of his vision, and how
he had heard a voice foretelling that to-day the Lord Himself would
come to visit him.
“That may very well be,” said the woman as she rose, took the
jacket, and wrapped her baby in it. Then she saluted him once more
and thanked him.
“Also, take this in Christ’s name,” said Avdeitch, and gave her a
two-_grivenka_ piece with which to buy herself a shawl. The woman
crossed herself, and he likewise. Then he led her to the door and
dismissed her.
When she had gone Avdeitch ate a little soup, washed up the crockery
again, and resumed his work. All the time, though, he kept his eye
upon the window, and as soon as ever a shadow fell across it he
would look up to see who was passing. Acquaintances of his came
past, and people whom he did not know, yet never anyone very
particular.
* * * * *
Then suddenly he saw something. Opposite his window there had
stopped an old pedlar-woman, with a basket of apples. Only a few of
the apples, however, remained, so that it was clear that she was
almost sold out. Over her shoulder was slung a sack of shavings,
which she must have gathered near some new building as she was going
home. Apparently, her shoulder had begun to ache under their weight,
and she therefore wished to shift them to the other one. To do this,
she balanced her basket of apples on the top of a post, lowered the
sack to the pavement, and began shaking up its contents. As she was
doing this, a boy in a ragged cap appeared from somewhere, seized an
apple from the basket, and tried to make off. But the old woman, who
had been on her guard, managed to turn and seize the boy by the
sleeve, and although he struggled and tried to break away, she clung
to him with both hands, snatched his cap off, and finally grasped
him by the hair. Thereupon the youngster began to shout and abuse
his captor. Avdeitch did not stop to make fast his awl, but threw
his work down upon the floor, ran to the door, and went stumbling up
the steps—losing his spectacles as he did so. Out into the street he
ran, where the old woman was still clutching the boy by the hair and
threatening to take him to the police, while the boy, for his part,
was struggling in the endeavor to free himself.
“I never took it,” he was saying. “What are you beating me for? Let
me go.”
Avdeitch tried to part them as he took the boy by the hand and said:
“Let him go, my good woman. Pardon him for Christ’s sake.”
“Yes, I will pardon him,” she retorted, “but not until he has tasted
a new birch-rod. I mean to take the young rascal to the police.”
But Avdeitch still interceded for him.
“Let him go, my good woman,” he said. “He will never do it again.
Let him go for Christ’s sake.”
The old woman released the boy, who was for making off at once had
not Avdeitch stopped him.
“You must beg the old woman’s pardon,” he said, “and never do such a
thing again. I saw you take the apple.”
The boy burst out crying, and begged the old woman’s pardon as
Avdeitch commanded.
“There, there,” said Avdeitch. “Now I will give you one. Here you
are,”—and he took an apple from the basket and handed it to the boy.
“I will pay you for it, my good woman,” he added.
“Yes, but you spoil the young rascal by doing that,” she objected.
“He ought to have received a reward that would have made him glad to
stand for a week.”
“Ah, my good dame, my good dame,” exclaimed Avdeitch. “That may be
_our_ way of rewarding, but it is not God’s. If this boy ought to
have been whipped for taking the apple, ought not we also to receive
something for our sins?”
The old woman was silent. Then Avdeitch related to her the parable
of the master who absolved his servant from the great debt which he
owed him, whereupon the servant departed and took his own debtor by
the throat. The old woman listened, and also the boy.
“God has commanded us to pardon one another,” went on Avdeitch, “or
_He_ will not pardon us. We ought to pardon all men, and especially
the thoughtless.”
The old woman shook her head and sighed.
“Yes, that may be so,” she said, “but these young rascals are so
spoilt already!”
“Then it is for us, their elders, to teach them better,” he replied.
“That is what I say myself at times,” rejoined the old woman. “I had
seven of them once at home, but have only one daughter now.” And she
went on to tell Avdeitch where she and her daughter lived, and how
they lived, and how many grandchildren she had.
“I have only such strength as you see,” she said, “yet I work hard,
for my heart goes out to my grandchildren—the bonny little things
that they are! No children could run to meet me as they do.
Aksintka, for instance, will go to no one else. ‘Grandmother,’ she
cries, ‘dear grandmother, you are tired’”—and the old woman became
thoroughly softened. “Everyone knows what boys are,” she added
presently, referring to the culprit. “May God go with him!”
She was raising the sack to her shoulders again when the boy darted
forward and said:
“Nay, let me carry it, grandmother. It will be all on my way home.”
The old woman nodded assent, gave up the sack to the boy, and went
away with him down the street. She had quite forgotten to ask
Avdeitch for the money for the apple. He stood looking after them,
and observing how they were talking together as they went.
Having seen them go, he returned to his room, finding his
spectacles—unbroken—on the steps as he descended them. Once more he
took up his awl and fell to work, but had done little before he
found it difficult to distinguish the stitches, and the lamplighter
had passed on his rounds. “I too must light up,” he thought to
himself. So he trimmed the lamp, hung it up, and resumed his work.
He finished one boot completely, and then turned it over to look at
it. It was all good work. Then he laid aside his tools, swept up the
cuttings, rounded off the stitches and loose ends, and cleaned his
awl. Next he lifted the lamp down, placed it on the table, and took
his Testament from the shelf. He had intended opening the book at
the place which he had marked last night with a strip of leather,
but it opened itself at another instead. The instant it did so, his
vision of last night came back to his memory, and, as instantly, he
thought he heard a movement behind him as of someone moving towards
him. He looked round and saw in the shadow of a dark corner what
appeared to be figures—figures of persons standing there, yet could
not distinguish them clearly. Then the voice whispered in his ear:
“Martin, Martin, dost thou not know me?”
“Who art Thou?” said Avdeitch.
“Even I!” whispered the voice again. “Lo, it is I!”—and there
stepped from the dark corner Stepanitch. He smiled, and then, like
the fading of a little cloud, was gone.
“It is I!” whispered the voice again—and there stepped from the same
corner the woman with her baby. She smiled, and the baby smiled, and
they were gone.
“And it is I!” whispered the voice again—and there stepped forth the
old woman and the boy with the apple. They smiled, and were gone.
Joy filled the soul of Martin Avdeitch as he crossed himself, put on
his spectacles, and set himself to read the Testament at the place
where it had opened. At the top of the page he read:
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye
gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in.”
And further down the page he read:
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren ye have done it unto Me.”
Then Avdeitch understood that the vision had come true, and that his
Saviour had in very truth visited him that day, and that he had
received Him.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WOOD-LADIES[5]
By PERCEVAL GIBBON
Footnote 5:
By permission of the author. Copyright by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
THE pine-trees of the wood joined their branches into a dome of
intricate groinings over the floor of ferns where the children sat,
sunk to the neck in a foam of tender green. The sunbeams that
slanted in made shivering patches of gold about them. Joyce, the
elder of the pair, was trying to explain why she had wished to come
here from the glooms of the lesser wood beyond.
“I wasn’t ’zactly frightened,” she said. “I knew there wasn’t any
lions or robbers, or anything like that. But——”
“Tramps?” suggested Joan.
“No! You know I don’t mind tramps, Joan. But as we was going along
under all those dark bushes where it was so quiet, I kept feeling as
if there was—something—behind me. I looked round and there wasn’t
anything, but—well, it felt as if there was.”
Joyce’s small face was knit and intent with the efforts to convey
her meaning. She was a slim erect child, as near seven years of age
as makes no matter, with eyes that were going to be gray, but had
not yet ceased to be blue. Joan, who was a bare five, a mere huge
baby, was trying to root up a fern that grew between her feet.
“I know,” she said, tugging mightily. The fern gave suddenly, and
Joan fell over on her back, with her stout legs sticking up stiffly.
In this posture she continued the conversation undisturbed. “I know,
Joy. It was wood-ladies!”
“Wood-ladies!” Joyce frowned in faint perplexity as Joan rolled
right side up again. Wood-ladies were dim inhabitants of the woods,
being of the order of fairies and angels and even vaguer, for there
was nothing about them in the story-books. Joyce, who felt that she
was getting on in years, was willing to be sceptical about them, but
could not always manage it. In the nursery, with the hard clean
linoleum underfoot and the barred window looking out on the lawn and
the road, it was easy; she occasionally shocked Joan, and sometimes
herself, by the license of her speech on such matters; but it was a
different affair when one came to the gate at the end of the garden,
and passed as through a dream portal from the sunshine and frank sky
to the cathedral shadows and great whispering aisles of the wood.
There the dimness was like the shadow of a presence; as babies they
had been aware of it, and answered their own questions by inventing
wood-ladies to float among the trunks and people the still green
chambers. Now, neither of them could remember how they had first
learned of wood-ladies.
“Wood-ladies,” repeated Joyce, and turned with a little shiver to
look across the ferns to where the pines ended and the lesser wood,
dense with undergrowth, broke at their edge like a wave on a steep
beach. It was there, in a tunnel of a path that writhed beneath
overarching bushes, that she had been troubled with the sense of
unseen companions. Joan, her fat hands struggling with another fern,
followed her glance.
“That’s where they are,” she said casually. “They like being in the
dark.”
“Joan!” Joyce spoke earnestly. “Say truly—truly, mind!—do you think
there _is_ wood-ladies at all?”
“’Course there is,” replied Joan cheerfully. “Fairies in fields and
angels in heaven and dragons in caves and wood-ladies in woods.”
“But,” objected Joyce, “nobody ever sees them.”