A YOKE OF BONDAGE
THE long white line of the road to Knishi, running straight up to the
distant horizon, lay before Father Cyril, as he drove slowly along it,
lost in thought. He was very unhappy, and his heart felt like lead.
There was not a home in Knishi where he would not rather have placed
Velia than with the old Matoushka. He knew her to be a hard, mean, and
hypocritical woman; very devout, for she never failed to be present at
mass every day. But he felt that she hated him for the many changes he
had made in Father Vasili's slovenly performance of his duties, though
she paid him exaggerated deference as her priest. She came often to
confession— a religious duty more painful to him than to her. How could
he give up the dear child, Velia, to her?
There was, too, a painful sense that he was held in the iron hand of
tyranny. He had never felt it before, and the touch penetrated to
his very soul. It was a sin against humanity to give the child up to
this woman; his conscience rebelled against it. Was it not also a sin
against God?
Father Cyril dropped his reins, and let his horse crawl on slowly at
its own pace. Here was the question of questions—the question that
had sent his parishioners into banishment. The tyranny man exercised
over man, piercing to the very thoughts of the heart—was it a thing
to be endured? "No!" said the Stundist. "We stand fast in the liberty
wherewith Christ has made us free."
But Father Cyril found himself bound fast under a yoke of bondage. It
made him very miserable to feel its weight as he had never done before.
He knew there was no help for him. He must do a thing which his soul
and his conscience abhorred. The child would be taken from him by
force, if he did not give her up.
It was heartrending to him to tell Velia of the doom that was
pronounced against her. He took her on his knee, and pressed her head
tenderly against his breast, not daring to look upon her face as he
broke the painful news to her. He felt the little heart beating fast
against his encircling arm, and the convulsive clasp of her small hand.
At last she spoke.
"Father Cyril, is it true?" she asked.
"Yes, yes!" he said.
"Oh, if father and Michael only knew!" she cried. "They'd save me."
"They could not, my darling," he answered, tears stealing down his
cheeks; "the Government is too strong, and the Church is too strong,
for feeble folks like us to resist them. We must submit. I will do all
I can for you, and watch over you; and you shall come here as often as
possible."
"The old Matoushka will not let it be!" cried Velia in despair.
Father Vasili's widow lived a little way on the other side of the
church, near to the cemetery, in a log-hut she had had built for
herself when her husband died. She was very well off, thanks to her
own thrift, and her clever faculty for squeezing gifts and dues out of
the parishioners during Father Vasili's life. But she chose to live as
if she was in the deepest penury. She had never kept a servant, but
now she was growing old, she had to pay a woman—when she could get
one—to do her washing and cleaning. To give her her due, her house was
far cleaner than the peasants' huts. For some months she had coveted
the possession of Velia and the three roubles a month paid for her
maintenance. Now she had got her, her chief aim was to make her do as
much work and to cost as small a sum as possible.
She had a secondary aim—that of making Velia into an Orthodox
Christian. She never missed going to church, and thither Velia was
bound to accompany her. Father Cyril, at the altar, saw the strong old
woman take hold of Velia's reluctant hand, and make the sign of the
cross with it, and force the girl to bend her head before the icon. The
action scandalised him, and Velia's miserable face tormented him. It
was in vain he remonstrated with the old Matoushka; she was only too
glad to be able to wring his heart.
Father Cyril found himself powerless to soften Velia's lot. The
woman was cruel, but not with such manifest cruelty as to arouse the
indignation of the neighbours, and give him sufficient ground for a
representation to the archbishop, and a petition to get Velia placed
elsewhere. He knew she suffered from a want of nourishing food; and
as the winter passed by he saw that she went shivering about in very
deficient clothing. He felt that he should have to stand by, his hands
tied, and his tongue silenced, whilst the child he loved was dying by
inches. He made an effort to induce the old Matoushka to allow Velia
to come to his home once a week, by promising to provide her with wood
split ready for her stove—a task too heavy for the little girl.
"She may go if she'll go to confession," said the old Matoushka.
"That, of course, you could not forbid," replied Father Cyril.
But Velia could not be prevailed upon to go to confession. Her father
had thought it wrong, she hardly knew why, but that was enough.
Father Cyril appealed to Yarina; and Yarina, who was the richest woman
in Knishi, invited the old Matoushka to spend a day with her, and bring
Velia to play with her children. The old Matoushka went, but she locked
Velia up in a closet to which there was no window. The girl was her
slave, and no one should interfere between them. The Starosta, Okhrim,
was on her side, and both of them triumphed over Father Cyril. They
held fast a scourge to flog him with. For Velia's sake, he gave up the
useless conflict.
It was almost a relief to Father Cyril when he, found himself, through
the influence of his wife's relatives, transferred to a larger and more
important parish on the other side of Kovylsk. He could do nothing for
Velia, and her misery was greater than he could bear to witness. No
letter had reached him from Alexis, and he did not know how to find out
his place of exile. Besides, what could Alexis do? The knowledge of his
child's position would only torture him.
Father Cyril could not even bid the girl farewell, except in the
presence of the old Matoushka, who would not let Velia go out of her
sight. He drew the child to him, looked into her appealing eyes,
kissed her forehead, and tearing himself away took refuge in his
church, where, before the altar, he prayed long and fervently for the
conversion of the misguided Stundists to the Orthodox faith.
After Father Cyril was gone, Velia's life was a blank despair.
To children there is no hope in the future, for they can foresee
nothing. The daily glimpse of Father Cyril in church, the fond and
pitying glance he never failed to give to the eager, miserable little
face always turned to him; the sight of the young Matoushka and her
children—all these had been something to look forward to, day by day.
They had been what Velia lived by, the scanty food on which her young
heart fed. Now this food was taken away, she grew hungry, with a
desperate hunger, for the sight of a beloved face. There was no face to
be seen in her world save the harsh, forbidding visage of her mistress.
It was the gossip of the village that the old Matoushka was about to
marry Okhrim, the Starosta. This was not true, though Okhrim went
often to visit the widow. Neither could ever arrive at a satisfactory
knowledge of how much property the other possessed. Their conversation
was always of money, or of the almost as interesting topic—the Stundist
heresy. Both were supremely Orthodox. When Okhrim was there, Velia
hardly dared to breathe. She crept into the darkest corners, and made
herself as small as possible. Nothing amused Okhrim more than to force
the trembling child to make a profound obeisance to the "Mother of
God," a really handsome icon which occupied the place of honour in the
hut. It proved how devout the priest's widow was.
"She'll make a good Christian yet," he was wont to say, with a sneering
smile which frightened Velia more than his worst oath.
"She's a stubborn little toad!" responded the mistress viciously.
By day Velia scarcely knew a moment's rest. The old Matoushka was
a strong old woman, and she had never had a child of her own. She
did not know, and she did not wish to know, the limits of a child's
strength. As long as Velia could move, she must be kept to work. When
she could work no longer it was time for her to go to bed, on a ragged
mattress behind the oven. It was warm, but it swarmed with crickets and
cockroaches. Velia worked till her young limbs ached, and her eyes grew
dim with sleep, before she could resolve to seek rest. But every night
nature compelled her to succumb, and creep exhausted to her dreaded bed.
So the long dreary months of the winter wore slowly away—those bitter
days and nights when her father and brother were marching across the
icebound wastes of Siberia, often congratulating themselves that Velia
was safe, and cherished as a daughter in Father Cyril's home. The girl
cried after them incessantly in her heart, though her tyrant knew
nothing of it. It is terrible, but children are sometimes too sad for
tears or cries.