I
On a moonlight night in May, when the nightingales were singing, his
wife came to Father Ignaty who was sitting in his study. Her face was
expressive of suffering, and the small lamp trembled in her hand. She
came up to her husband, touched him on the shoulder, and said sobbing:
“Father, let us go to Verochka!”
Without turning his head, Father Ignaty frowned at his wife over his
spectacles, and looked long and fixedly, until she made a motion of
discomfort with her free hand, and sat down on a low divan.
“How pitiless you _both_ are,” said she slowly and with strong emphasis
on the word “both,” and her kindly puffed face was contorted with a
look of pain and hardness, as though she wished to express by her looks
how hard people were—her husband and her daughter.
Father Ignaty gave a laugh and stood up. Closing his book, he took off
his spectacles, put them into their case, and fell into a brown study.
His big black beard, shot with silver threads, lay in a graceful curve
upon his chest, and rose and fell slowly under his deep breathing.
“Well, then, we will go!” said he.
Olga Stepanovna rose quickly, and asked in a timid, ingratiating voice:
“Only don’t scold her, father! You know what she is.”
Vera’s room was in a belvedere at the top of the house, and the narrow
wooden stairs bent and groaned under the heavy steps of Father Ignaty.
Tall and ponderous, he was obliged to stoop so as not to hit his head
against the ceiling above, and he frowned fastidiously when his wife’s
white jacket touched his face. He knew that nothing would come of their
conversation with Vera.
“What, is that you?” asked Vera, lifting one bare arm to her eyes. The
other arm lay on the top of the white summer counterpane, from which it
was scarcely distinguishable, so white, transparent and cold was it.
“Verochka!” the mother began, but gave a sob and was silent.
“Vera!” said the father, endeavouring to soften his dry, hard voice.
“Vera, tell us what is the matter with you?”
Vera was silent.
“Vera, are your mother and I undeserving of your confidence? Do we not
love you? Have you any one nearer to you than ourselves? Speak to us of
your grief, and believe me, an old and experienced man, you will feel
the better for it. And so shall we. Look at your old mother, how she is
suffering.”
“Verochka——!”
“And to me——” his voice trembled, as though something in it had broken
in two, “and to me, is it easy, think you? As though I did not see that
you were devoured by some grief, but what is it? And I, your father, am
kept in ignorance. Is it right?”
Vera still kept silence. Father Ignaty stroked his beard with special
precaution, as though he feared that his fingers would involuntarily
begin to tear it, and continued:
“Against my wishes you went to St. Petersburg—did I curse you for your
disobedience? Or did I refuse you money? Or do you say I was not kind?
Well, why don’t you speak? See, the good your St. Petersburg has done
you!”
Father Ignaty ceased speaking, and there rose before his mind’s eye
something big, granite-built, terrible, full of unknown dangers, and of
strange callous people. And there alone and weak was his Vera, and
there she had been ruined. An angry hatred of that terrible
incomprehensible city arose in Father Ignaty’s soul, together with
anger towards his daughter, who kept silent, so obstinately silent.
“St. Petersburg has nothing to do with it,” said Vera crossly, and
closed her eyes. “But there is nothing the matter with me. You had
better go to bed, it’s late.”
“Verochka!” groaned her mother. “My little daughter, confide in me!”
“Oh! mamma!” said Vera, impatiently interrupting her.
Father Ignaty sat down on a chair and began to laugh.
“Well then, nothing is the matter after all?” he asked ironically.
“Father,” said Vera, in a sharp voice, raising herself up on her bed,
“you know that I love you and mamma. But—I do feel so dull. All this
will pass away. Really, you had better go to bed. I want to sleep, too.
To-morrow, or sometime, we will have a talk.”
Father Ignaty rose abruptly, so that his chair bumped against the wall,
and took his wife’s arm.
“Let’s go!”
“Verochka!”
“Let’s go—I tell you,” cried Father Ignaty. “If she has forgotten God,
shall we too! Why should we!”
He drew Olga Stepanovna away, almost by main force, and as they were
descending the stairs, she, dragging her steps more slowly, said in an
angry whisper:
“Ugh! pope, it’s you who have made her so. It’s from you she has got
this manner. And you’ll have to answer for it. Ah! how wretched I am——”
And she began to cry, and kept blinking her eyes, so that she could not
see the steps, and letting her feet go down as it were into an abyss
below into which she wished to precipitate herself.
From that day forward Father Ignaty ceased to talk to his daughter, and
she seemed not to notice the change. As before, she would now lie in
her room, now go about, frequently wiping her eyes with the palms of
her hands, as though they were obstructed. And oppressed by the silence
of these two people, the pope’s wife, who was fond of jokes and
laughter, became lost and timid, hardly knowing what to say or do.
Sometimes Vera went out for a walk. About a week after the conversation
related above, she went out in the evening as usual. They never saw her
again alive, for that evening she threw herself under a train, which
cut her in two.
Father Ignaty buried her himself. His wife was not present at the
church, because at the news of Vera’s death she had had a stroke. She
had lost the use of her feet and hands and tongue, and lay motionless
in a semi-darkened room, while close by her the bells tolled in the
belfry. She heard them all coming out of church, heard the choristers
singing before their house, and tried to raise her hand to cross
herself, but the hand would not obey her will. She wished to say:
“Good-bye, Vera,” but her tongue lay inert in her mouth, swollen and
heavy. She lay so still that any one who saw her would have thought
that she was resting, or asleep. Only—her eyes were open.
There were many people in the church at the funeral, both acquaintances
of Father Ignaty’s and strangers. All present compassionated Vera, who
had died such a terrible death, and they tried in Father Ignaty’s
movements and voice to find signs of profound grief. They were not fond
of Father Ignaty, because he was rough and haughty in his manners,
harsh and unforgiving with his penitents, while, himself jealous and
greedy, he availed himself of every chance to take more than his dues
from a parishioner. They all wished to see him suffering, broken-down;
they wished to see him acknowledge that he was doubly guilty of his
daughter’s death—as a harsh father, and as a bad priest, who could not
protect his own flesh and blood from sin. So they all watched him with
curiosity, but he, feeling their eyes directed on his broad powerful
back, endeavoured to straighten it, and thought not so much of his dead
daughter as of not compromising his dignity.
“A well-seasoned pope,” Karzenov the carpenter, to whom he still owed
money for some frames, said with a nod in his direction.
And so, firm and upright, Father Ignaty went to the cemetery, and came
back the same. And not till he reached the door of his wife’s room did
his back bend a little; but that might have been because the door was
not high enough for his stature. Coming in from the light he could only
with difficulty distinguish his wife’s face, and when he succeeded in
so doing, he perceived that it was perfectly still and that there were
no tears in her eyes. In them was there neither anger nor grief; they
were dumb, and painfully, obstinately silent, as was also her whole
obese feeble body that was pressed against the bed-rail.
“Well, what? How are you feeling?” Father Ignaty inquired.
But her lips were dumb, and her eyes were silent. Father Ignaty laid
his hand on her forehead; it was cold and damp, and Olga Stepanovna
gave no sign whatever that she had felt his touch. And when he removed
his hands from her forehead, two deep, grey eyes looked at him without
blinking; they seemed almost black on account of the dilation of the
pupils, and in them was neither grief nor anger.
“Well, I will go to my own room,” said Father Ignaty, who had turned
cold and frightened.
He went through the guest-chamber, where everything was clean and
orderly as ever, and the high-backed chairs stood swathed in white
covers, like corpses in their shrouds. At one of the windows hung a
wire cage, but it was empty and the door was open.
“Nastasya!” Father Ignaty called, and his voice seemed to him rough,
and he felt awkward, that he had called so loud in those quiet rooms,
so soon after the funeral of their daughter. “Nastasya,” he called more
gently, “where’s the canary?”
The cook, who had cried so much that her nose was swollen and become as
red as a beet, answered rudely:
“Don’t know. It flew away.”
“Why did you let it go?” said Father Ignaty, angrily knitting his
brows.
Nastasya burst out crying, and wiping her eyes with the ends of a print
handkerchief she wore over her head, said through her tears:
“The dear little soul of the young mistress. How could I keep it?”
And it seemed even to Father Ignaty that the happy little yellow
canary, which used to sing always with its head thrown back, was really
the soul of Vera, and that if it had not flown away it would have been
impossible to say that Vera was dead. And he became still more angry
with the cook, and shouted:
“Get along!” and when Nastasya did not at once make for the door, added
“Fool!”