Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: HE LAID HIS HAND ON HER HEART.]
IN THE HOLLOW
OF HIS HAND
BY
HESBA STRETTON
AUTHOR OF
"JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER," "ALONE IN LONDON,"
"BEDE'S CHARITY," ETC., ETC.
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 BOUVERIE STREET AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
PREFACE
[Illustration]
THE most extraordinary and inexplicable phase of Christianity is the
persecution of Christians by Christians. Persecution is absolutely
opposed to the nature and teaching of the Lord, who said to His
disciples, when they desired to call down fire from heaven on the
Samaritans who refused them hospitality, "Ye know not what manner of
spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's
lives, but to save them."
In my former story, "The Highway of Sorrow," I attempted to set forth
the religious principles of the Stundist men, and their steadfast
courage in maintaining them. I have received a letter from Russia
saying that this narrative "is true to fact." "In the Hollow of His
Hand" endeavours to show the bitter sufferings of women and children in
the storm of persecution now raging in Russia. The latest suggestion
made for the complete stamping out of Stundism is that all children
should be taken from their Stundist parents and brought up in the
Orthodox Church. When this was done, in the Middle Ages, to the Jews
in Spain, many parents adopted the awful alternative of slaying their
children.
In writing both stories I have drawn largely from two sources. One
is a pamphlet, called "The Stundists: the Story of a Great Religious
Revolt," published in 1893 by James Clarke & Co. The other is a most
valuable work, entitled "Siberia and the Exile System," by George
Kennan, from whose volumes I have drawn many of the details of the
protracted journey to Eastern Siberia. Both of these stories are
sorrowful, but they are true. And I would earnestly ask my readers to
ponder over the words of our Lord, "Blessed are ye, when men shall
revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against
you falsely, for My sake. 'Rejoice,' and be 'exceeding glad:' for great
is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which
were before you."
This blessing the Stundists realise.
HESBA STRETTON.
1897.
CONTENTS
[Illustration]
CHAP.
I. THE SCOTCH COVENANTERS
II. THE RUSSIAN STUNDISTS
III. AT HOME
IV. ESTRANGED FRIENDS
V. IN THE FOREST
VI. THE CHILDREN'S SERVICE
VII. FATHER CYRIL
VIII. A CRUEL BLOW
IX. ORTHODOX REASONING
X. MOTHERS AND CHILDREN
XI. A HARD WINTER
XII. A FRIENDLY JAILER
XIII. DENYING THE FAITH
XIV. LITTLE CLAVA
XV. BLESSING THE HERETICS
XVI. IN KOVYLSK.
XVII. FATHER CYRIL'S LETTER
XVIII. THE FORWARDING PRISON
XIX. THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD
XX. SERGIUS
XXI. MARFA'S FUNERAL
XXII. THE PRISON HOSPITAL
XXIII. MONTH AFTER MONTH
XXIV. THE EXILES' BEGGING SONG
XXV. SLEEP AND DEATH
XXVI. THE END OF THE JOURNEY
XXVII. DEMYAN'S TIDINGS
XXVIII. THE SEED OF THE CHURCH
XXIX. A YOKE OF BONDAGE
XXX. VELIA'S TYRANTS
XXXI. RESCUED
XXXII. A LETTER PROM SIBERIA
IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
THE SCOTCH COVENANTERS
"BEHOLD, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye
therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
The boy who was reading in a clear, low voice, though with a foreign
accent, felt the pressure of his mother's feeble hands, and lifted up
his eyes to her white and placid face. He was kneeling beside her bed,
and she pushed back the thick curls of his brown hair, and looked with
a very tender gaze into his frank, boyish face.
"That's true, my laddie," she said; "true for you, but not for me.
He calls me home, but He sends your father and you forth as sheep in
the midst of wolves. Ah! The Lord Jesus knew; and He knows now. Never
think He's away, and not minding your troubles. You'll go back to your
father, when I'm gone home—not to Knishi, never again to Knishi. Oh, if
I'd only known, I'd have gone home to heaven from there!"
The feeble, gasping voice ceased for a minute or two. But the mother's
eyes still rested fondly and anxiously on her boy.
"And, oh, my Michael," she said, "be wise! Don't anger the neighbours
more than you can help. You're only a boy yet, and they'll leave you
alone if you keep quiet. Be 'harmless as doves,' says our Lord."
"But you wouldn't have me a coward, mother," answered the boy somewhat
hotly.
"Me, Michael? Me?" she cried, a faint colour flushing her pallid
face. "No, no! Weren't my ain forebears among the Covenanters? Both
on father's and mother's sides! Didn't they suffer the loss o' all
things—eh! and die for conscience' sake? Nay, Michael, I'd send you
to death, if need be, for the truth. But it's hard to think of young
little ones having to suffer cruelly because their parents must act
according to their conscience. Oh, my Michael! And my little Velia!"
She sank back on her pillows with closed eyelids, through which the
tears were slowing oozing. Michael did not go on with his reading. They
were both thinking of the last twelve months, when Catherine Ivanoff
had left her Russian home to try if her native air in Scotland would
restore her health. Michael had accompanied her, being old enough to
be a help and comfort to her during the long voyage from Odessa to
Glasgow, and through her sojourn among her own kinsfolk. It had been on
the whole a happy year, filled at first with delusive hopes. But all
hope was gone now. She would never be able to bear the voyage and the
inland journey homewards.
Her brother's house, where she lay dying, was a small Scotch farm, not
unlike the homestead she had left in Russia. She lay still, thinking
longingly of it now. The thick walls of dried mud, with their deep
window-sills; the large house-place, with its oak table, and oak
benches standing along the walls, which she had kept beautifully
polished; the huge stove, which seemed to fill half the room; and the
great barns and stables built round the fold-yard. Oh, if she had only
been there now!—dying in the little bedroom which opened out of the
roomy house-place, where she could watch her husband going to and fro,
and have her little Velia in her sight. Her house in Knishi had been
the best in the village, almost equal to the church-house; and she had
cherished a secret pride in it. The garden on the eastern side was even
better than the priest's garden, for her husband as well as herself
took great pleasure in it. It was already near the end of February; and
the snow would be melting, and the buds swelling on the fruit-trees,
and the earliest flowers pushing their first shoots through the moist
earth. Oh, how happy she and her husband had been in Knishi!
It was eight years since they had gone there, with their two young
children, to rent a farm belonging to her husband's cousin, Paul
Rodenko, who had been exiled to Siberia for holding fast to his
Stundist faith. A sharp outbreak of persecution had taken place,
during which three of the leading Stundists had been imprisoned—one
of them dying in prison. And the mother of Paul Rodenko had fallen a
martyr to the uncurbed violence of a mob. There had been some official
inquiries into the cause of her death. And though no one was punished,
the peasants, after their wild excess of savagery, were ashamed of the
crime.
Since then the Stundists had been unmolested, left very much to
themselves, and practically cut off from all village intercourse.
Alexis Ivanoff was their presbyter; and though they had no stated
hour or place of worship, it was well-known they maintained their own
religious views.
Alexis Ivanoff's letters to his wife told her that this tranquil state
of affairs showed signs of coming to an end. Although there was a good
and kind-hearted priest, Father Cyril, appointed in the place of the
old Batoushka, who had fomented the persecution eight years ago, there
were symptoms of hard times coming for the Stundists. The Starosta, who
was the chief layman in the village, was a fierce bigot and a churlish
miser; and it lay in his power to injure those whom he disliked.
Already Alexis had been compelled to pay sundry fines for himself and
his poorer fellow Stundists; and the exactions were increasing. It was
no use appealing to any court of law against these unjust and vexatious
taxes; were they not Stundists? But he hoped the oppression would be
confined to monetary forfeits.
"I would send Velia to you out of the way," he wrote, "if I thought
Okhrim would do more than tax us unjustly. But he is fond of money, and
will be content to fleece us; when the sheep are slain, there is no
more to be gained. Velia is the treasure I value most—my only earthly
joy, now you and Michael are away. Yet, if the Lord required it, you
and I would give up our children, precious as they are. My Catherine,
this life is only a journey, and a short one at the longest. What
matters it if we come to the end soon, or travel on a little longer? If
we walk in smooth paths or rough ones? Let us work while it is called
to-day; 'the night cometh when no man can work.' And at nightfall we go
home and rest with our beloved ones."
This was his last letter. It lay under her pillow.
Michael had risen from his knees beside his mother, and gone to the
little lattice window, through which he could see the distant mountains
still capped with snow. Below the house lay a pleasant valley, which
had been the resort of the Covenanters in times long gone by, when they
must needs worship God in secret. In the room below, on one side of
the wide, old open hearth, there was a little closet four feet square,
cunningly contrived behind the wainscot, where many a time godly men
had hidden whilst their persecutors searched the homely farmstead for
them, or sat round the fire cursing their fruitless efforts. The whole
place and neighbourhood were full of legends of the Covenanters, and
Michael had heard of them, and listened to them with avidity, for the
last twelve months.
He was longing to be home again with his father and Velia, especially
now when there was a threatening of renewed oppression. He loved
his fatherland, Russia, with a boy's hot patriotism. He had fretted
inwardly at his long exile, though he fancied he had concealed his
home-sickness successfully from his mother. It would soon be over
now, and the tears fell fast down his cheeks. For it was only when
his beloved mother passed through the gates of death, already opening
slowly before her, that he could be free to hasten away home.
"Michael!" cried his mother in a strong and happy voice.
He sprang towards her.
She had half-raised herself in bed, and her face was full of radiant
gladness, such as he had never seen before.
"I'm dying! And it's beautiful!" she said. "Tell your father death is
beautiful! And I'm not alone—no, not alone!"