Next day, on Palm Sunday, his Reverence officiated at the cathedral in
the city. Then he went to the diocesan bishop’s, then to see a general’s
wife who was very ill, and at last he drove home. At two o’clock two
beloved guests were having dinner with him, his aged mother, and his
little niece Kitty, a child of eight. The spring sun was peeping
cheerily in through the windows as they sat at their meal, and was
shining merrily on the white tablecloth, and on Kitty’s red hair.
Through the double panes they heard the rooks cawing, and the magpies
chattering in the garden.
“It is nine years since I saw you last,” said the old mother, “and yet
when I caught sight of you in the convent chapel yesterday I thought to
myself: God bless me, he has not changed a bit! Only perhaps you are a
little thinner than you were, and your beard has grown longer. Oh, holy
Mother, Queen of Heaven! Everybody was crying yesterday. As soon as I
saw you, I began to cry myself, I don’t know why. His holy will be
done!”
In spite of the tenderness with which she said this, it was clear that
she was not at her ease. It was as if she did not know whether to
address the bishop by the familiar “thee” or the formal “you,” and
whether she ought to laugh or not. She seemed to feel herself more of a
poor deacon’s wife than a mother in his presence. Meanwhile Kitty was
sitting with her eyes glued to the face of her uncle the bishop as if
she were trying to make out what manner of man this was. Her hair had
escaped from her comb and her bow of velvet ribbon, and was standing
straight up around her head like a halo. Her eyes were foxy and bright.
She had broken a glass before sitting down, and now, as she talked, her
grandmother kept moving first a glass, and then a wine glass out of her
reach. As the bishop sat listening to his mother, he remembered how,
many, many years ago, she had sometimes taken him and his brothers and
sisters to visit relatives whom they considered rich. She had been busy
with her own children in those days, and now she was busy with her
grandchildren, and had come to visit him with Kitty here.
“Your sister Varenka has four children”—she was telling him—“Kitty is
the oldest. God knows why, her father fell ill and died three days
before Assumption. So my Varenka has been thrown out into the cold
world.”
“And how is my brother Nikanor?” the bishop asked.
“He is well, thank the Lord. He is pretty well, praise be to God. But
his son Nikolasha wouldn’t go into the church, and is at college instead
learning to be a doctor. He thinks it is best, but who knows? However,
God’s will be done!”
“Nikolasha cuts up dead people!” said Kitty, spilling some water into
her lap.
“Sit still child!” her grandmother said, quietly taking the glass out of
her hands.
“How long it is since we have seen one another!” exclaimed his
Reverence, tenderly stroking his mother’s shoulder and hand. “I missed
you when I was abroad, I missed you dreadfully.”
“Thank you very much!”
“I used to sit by my window in the evening listening to the band
playing, and feeling lonely and forlorn. Sometimes I would suddenly grow
so homesick that I used to think I would gladly give everything I had in
the world for a glimpse of you and home.”
His mother smiled and beamed, and then immediately drew a long face and
said stiffly:
“Thank you very much!”
The bishop’s mood changed. He looked at his mother, and could not
understand where she had acquired that deferential, humble expression of
face and voice, and what the meaning of it might be. He hardly
recognised her, and felt sorrowful and vexed. Besides, his head was
still aching, and his legs were racked with pain. The fish he was eating
tasted insipid and he was very thirsty.
After dinner two wealthy lady landowners visited him, and sat for an
hour and a half with faces a mile long, never uttering a word. Then an
archimandrite, a gloomy, taciturn man, came on business. Then the bells
rang for vespers, the sun set behind the woods, and the day was done. As
soon as he got back from church the bishop said his prayers, and went to
bed, drawing the covers up closely about his ears. The moonlight
troubled him, and soon the sound of voices came to his ears. Father
Sisoi was talking politics with his mother in the next room.
“There is a war in Japan now,” he was saying. “The Japanese belong to
the same race as the Montenegrins. They fell under the Turkish yoke at
the same time.”
And then the bishop heard his mother’s voice say:
“And so, you see, when we had said our prayers, and had our tea, we went
to Father Yegor——”
She kept saying over and over again that they “had tea,” as if all she
knew of life was tea-drinking.
The memory of his seminary and college life slowly and mistily took
shape in the bishop’s mind. He had been a teacher of Greek for three
years, until he could no longer read without glasses, and then he had
taken the vows, and had been made an inspector. When he was thirty-two
he had been made the rector of a seminary, and then an archimandrite. At
that time his life had been so easy and pleasant, and had seemed to
stretch so far, far into the future that he could see absolutely no end
to it. But his health had failed, and he had nearly lost his eyesight.
His doctors had advised him to give up his work and go abroad.
“And what did you do next?” asked Father Sisoi in the adjoining room.
“And then we had tea,” answered his mother.
“Why, Father, your beard is green!” exclaimed Kitty suddenly. And she
burst out laughing.
The bishop remembered that the colour of Father Sisoi’s beard really did
verge on green, and he, too, laughed.
“My goodness! What a plague that child is!” cried Father Sisoi in a loud
voice, for he was growing angry. “You’re a spoiled baby you are! Sit
still!”
The bishop recalled the new white church in which he had officiated when
he was abroad, and the sound of a warm sea. Eight years had slipped by
while he was there; then he had been recalled to Russia, and now he was
already a bishop, and the past had faded away into mist as if it had
been but a dream.
Father Sisoi came into his room with a candle in his hand.
“Well, well!” he exclaimed, surprised. “Asleep already, your Reverence?”
“Why not?”
“It’s early yet, only ten o’clock! I bought a candle this evening and
wanted to rub you with tallow.”
“I have a fever,” the bishop said, sitting up. “I suppose something
ought to be done. My head feels so queer.”
Sisoi began to rub the bishop’s chest and back with tallow.
“There—there—” he said. “Oh, Lord God Almighty! There! I went to town
to-day, and saw that—what do you call him?—that archpresbyter Sidonski.
I had tea with him. I hate him! Oh, Lord God Almighty! There! I hate
him!”