On Thursday he held a service in the cathedral. It was the festival of
the Washing of Feet. When the service was over, and the people had gone
to their several homes, the sun was shining brightly and cheerily, and
the air was warm. The gutters were streaming with bubbling water, and
the tender songs of larks came floating in from the fields beyond the
city, bringing peace to his heart. The trees were already awake, and
over them brooded the blue, unfathomable sky.
His Reverence went to bed as soon as he reached home, and told the lay
brother to close his shutters. The room grew dark. Oh, how tired he was!
As on the day before, the sound of voices and the tinkling of glasses
came to him from the next room. His mother was gaily recounting some
tale to Father Sisoi, with many a quaint word and saying, and the old
man was listening gloomily, and answering in a gruff voice:
“Well, I never! Did they, indeed? What do you think of that!”
And once more the bishop felt annoyed, and then hurt that the old lady
should be so natural and simple with strangers, and so silent and
awkward with her own son. It even seemed to him that she always tried to
find some pretext for standing in his presence, as if she felt uneasy
sitting down. And his father? If he had been alive, he would probably
not have been able to utter a word when the bishop was there.
Something in the next room fell to the floor with a crash. Kitty had
evidently broken a cup or a saucer, for Father Sisoi suddenly snorted,
and cried angrily:
“What a terrible plague this child is! Merciful heavens! No one could
keep her supplied with china!”
Then silence fell. When he opened his eyes again, the bishop saw Kitty
standing by his bedside staring at him, her red hair standing up around
her head like a halo, as usual.
“Is that you, Kitty?” he asked. “Who is that opening and shutting doors
down there?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
He stroked her head.
“So your cousin Nikolasha cuts up dead people, does he?” he asked, after
a pause.
“Yes, he is learning to.”
“Is he nice?”
“Yes, very, only he drinks a lot.”
“What did your father die of?”
“Papa grew weaker and weaker, and thinner and thinner, and then came his
sore throat. And I was ill, too, and so was my brother Fedia. We all had
sore throats. Papa died, Uncle, but we got well.”
Her chin quivered, her eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, your Reverence!” she cried in a shrill voice, beginning to weep
bitterly. “Dear Uncle, mother and all of us are so unhappy! Do give us a
little money! Help us, Uncle darling!”
He also shed tears, and for a moment could not speak for emotion. He
stroked her hair, and touched her shoulder, and said:
“All right, all right, little child. Wait until Easter comes, then we
will talk about it. I’ll help you.”
His mother came quietly and timidly into the room, and said a prayer
before the icon. When she saw that he was awake, she asked:
“Would you like a little soup?”
“No, thanks,” he answered. “I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t believe you are well—I can see that you are not well. You
really mustn’t fall ill! You have to be on your feet all day long. My
goodness, it makes one tired to see you! Never mind, Easter is no longer
over the hills and far away. When Easter comes you will rest. God will
give us time for a little talk then, but now I’m not going to worry you
any more with my silly chatter. Come, Kitty, let his Lordship have
another forty winks——”
And the bishop remembered that, when he was a boy, she had used exactly
the same half playful, half respectful tone to all high dignitaries of
the church. Only by her strangely tender eyes, and by the anxious look
which she gave him as she left the room could any one have guessed that
she was his mother. He shut his eyes, and seemed to be asleep, but he
heard the clock strike twice, and Father Sisoi coughing next door. His
mother came in again, and looked shyly at him. Suddenly there came a
bang, and a door slammed; a vehicle of some kind drove up to the front
steps. The lay brother came into the bishop’s room, and called:
“Your Reverence!”
“What is it?”
“Here is the coach! It is time to go to our Lord’s Passion——”
“What time is it?”
“Quarter to eight.”
The bishop dressed, and drove to the cathedral. He had to stand
motionless in the centre of the church while the twelve gospels were
being read, and the first and longest and most beautiful of them all he
read himself. A strong, valiant mood took hold of him. He knew this
gospel, beginning “The Son of Man is risen to-day—,” by heart, and as he
repeated it, he raised his eyes, and saw a sea of little lights about
him. He heard the sputtering of candles, but the people had disappeared.
He felt surrounded by those whom he had known in his youth; he felt that
they would always be here until—God knew when!
His father had been a deacon, his grandfather had been a priest, and his
great grandfather a deacon. He sprang from a race that had belonged to
the church since Christianity first came to Russia, and his love for the
ritual of the church, the clergy, and the sound of church-bells was
inborn in him, deeply, irradicably implanted in his heart. When he was
in church, especially when he was taking part in the service himself, he
felt active and valorous and happy. And so it was with him now. Only,
after the eighth gospel had been read, he felt that his voice was
becoming so feeble that even his cough was inaudible; his head was
aching, and he began to fear that he might collapse. His legs were
growing numb; in a little while he ceased to have any sensation in them
at all, and could not imagine what he was standing on, and why he did
not fall down.
It was quarter to twelve when the service ended. The bishop went to bed
as soon as he reached home, without even saying his prayers. As he
pulled his blanket up over him, he suddenly wished that he were abroad;
he passionately wished it. He would give his life, he thought, to cease
from seeing these cheap, wooden walls and that low ceiling, to cease
from smelling the stale scent of the monastery.
If there were only some one with whom he could talk, some one to whom he
could unburden his heart!
He heard steps in the adjoining room, and tried to recall who it might
be. At last the door opened, and Father Sisoi came in with a candle in
one hand, and a teacup in the other.
“In bed already, your Reverence?” he asked. “I have come to rub your
chest with vinegar and vodka. It is a fine thing, if rubbed in good and
hard. Oh, Lord God Almighty! There—there—I have just come from our
monastery. I hate it. I am going away from here to-morrow, my Lord. Oh,
Lord, God Almighty—there——”
Sisoi never could stay long in one place, and he now felt as if he had
been in this monastery for a year. It was hard to tell from what he said
where his home was, whether there was any one or anything in the world
that he loved, and whether he believed in God or not. He himself never
could make out why he had become a monk, but then, he never gave it any
thought, and the time when he had taken the vows had long since faded
from his memory. He thought he must have been born a monk.
“Yes, I am going away to-morrow. Bother this place!”
“I want to have a talk with you—I never seem to have the time—”
whispered the bishop, making a great effort to speak. “You see, I don’t
know any one—or anything—here——”
“Very well then, I shall stay until Sunday, but no longer! Bother this
place!”
“What sort of a bishop am I?” his Reverence went on, in a faint voice.
“I ought to have been a village priest, or a deacon, or a plain monk.
All this is choking me—it is choking me——”
“What’s that? Oh, Lord God Almighty! There—go to sleep now, your
Reverence. What do you mean? What’s all this you are saying? Good
night!”
All night long the bishop lay awake, and in the morning he grew very
ill. The lay brother took fright and ran first to the archimandrite, and
then for the monastery doctor who lived in the city. The doctor, a
stout, elderly man, with a long, grey beard, looked intently at his
Reverence, shook his head, knit his brows, and finally said:
“I’ll tell you what, your Reverence; you have typhoid.”
The bishop grew very thin and pale in the next hour, his eyes grew
larger, his face became covered with wrinkles, and he looked quite small
and old. He felt as if he were the thinnest, weakest, puniest man in the
whole world, and as if everything that had occurred before this had been
left far, far behind, and would never happen again.
“How glad I am of that!” he thought. “Oh, how glad!”
His aged mother came into the room. When she saw his wrinkled face and
his great eyes, she was seized with fear, and, falling down on her knees
by his bedside, she began kissing his face, his shoulders, and his
hands. He seemed to her to be the thinnest, weakest, puniest man in the
world, and she forgot that he was a bishop, and kissed him as if he had
been a little child whom she dearly, dearly loved.
“Little Paul, my dearie!” she cried. “My little son, why do you look
like this? Little Paul, oh, answer me!”
Kitty, pale and severe, stood near them, and could not understand what
was the matter with her uncle, and why granny wore such a look of
suffering on her face, and spoke such heartrending words. And he, he was
speechless, and knew nothing of what was going on around him. He was
dreaming that he was an ordinary man once more, striding swiftly and
merrily through the open country, a staff in his hand, bathed in
sunshine, with the wide sky above him, as free as a bird to go wherever
his fancy led him.
“My little son! My little Paul! Answer me!” begged his mother.
“Don’t bother his Lordship,” said Sisoi. “Let him sleep. What’s the
matter?”
Three doctors came, consulted together, and drove away. The day seemed
long, incredibly long, and then came the long, long night. Just before
dawn on Saturday morning the lay brother went to the old mother who was
lying on a sofa in the sitting-room, and asked her to come into the
bedroom; his Reverence had gone to eternal peace.
Next day was Easter. There were forty-two churches in the city, and two
monasteries, and the deep, joyous notes of their bells pealed out over
the town from morning until night. The birds were carolling, the bright
sun was shining. The big market place was full of noise; barrel organs
were droning, concertinas were squealing, and drunken voices were
ringing through the air. Trotting races were held in the main street
that afternoon; in a word, all was merry and gay, as had been the year
before and as, doubtless, it would be the year to come.
A month later a new bishop was appointed, and every one forgot his
Reverence Peter. Only the dead man’s mother, who is living now in a
little country town with her son the deacon, when she goes out at sunset
to meet her cow, and joins the other women on the way, tells them about
her children and grandchildren, and her boy who became a bishop.
And when she mentions him she looks at them shyly, for she is afraid
they will not believe her.
And, as a matter of fact, not all of them do.
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