Out of the house Father Ignaty had much talking to do: with his
ecclesiastical subordinates, and with his parishioners when he was
performing his duties; and sometimes with acquaintances when he played
with them at “Preference.” But when he returned home he thought that he
had been all the day silent. This came of the fact that with none of
these people could he speak of the question which was the chief and
most important of all to him, which racked his thoughts every night:
Why had Vera died?
Father Ignaty was unwilling to admit to himself that it was impossible
now to solve this difficulty, and kept on thinking that it was still
possible.
Every night—and they were all now for him sleepless—he would recall the
moment when he and his wife had stood by Vera’s bed at darkest
midnight, and he had entreated her “Speak!” And when in his
recollections he arrived at that word, even the rest of the scene
presented itself to him as different to what it had really been. His
closed eyes preserved in their darkness a vivid, unblurred picture of
that night; they saw distinctly Vera lifting herself upon her bed and
saying with a smile—— But what did she say? And that unuttered word of
hers, which would solve the whole question, seemed so near, that if he
were to stretch his ear and still the beating of his heart, then, then
he would hear it—and at the same time it was so infinitely, so
desperately far.
Father Ignaty would rise from his bed, and stretching forth his clasped
hands in a gesture of supplication, entreat:
“Vera!”
And silence was the answer he received.
One evening Father Ignaty went to Olga Stepanovna’s room, where he had
not been for about a week, and sitting down near the head of her bed,
he turned away from her doleful, obstinate gaze, and said:
“Mother! I want to talk to you about Vera. Do you hear?”
Her eyes were silent, and Father Ignaty raising his voice began to
speak in the loud and severe tones with which he addressed his
penitents:
“I know you think that I was the cause of Vera’s death. But consider,
did I love her less than you? You judge strangely——I was strict, but
did that prevent her from doing as she pleased? I made little of the
respect due to a father; I meekly bowed my neck, when she, with no fear
of my curse, went away—thither. And you——mother——did not you with tears
entreat her to remain, until I ordered you to be silent. Am I
responsible for her being born hard-hearted? Did I not teach her of
God, of humility, and of love?”
Father Ignaty gave a swift glance into his wife’s eyes, and turned
away.
“What could I do with her, if she would not open her grief to me.
Command? I commanded her. Intreat? I intreated. What? Do you think I
ought to have gone down on my knees before the little chit of a girl,
and wept, like an old woman! What she had got in her head, and where
she got it, I know not. Cruel, heartless daughter!”
Father Ignaty smote his knees with his fists.
“She was devoid of love—that’s what it was! I know well enough what she
called me—a tyrant. You she did love, didn’t she? You who wept,
and——humbled yourself?”
Father Ignaty laughed noiselessly.
“Lo—o—ved! That’s it, to comfort you she chose such a death—a cruel,
disgraceful death! She died on the ballast, in the dirt——like a d—d—og,
to which some one gives a kick on the muzzle.”
Father Ignaty’s voice sounded low and hoarse:
“I’m ashamed! I’m ashamed to go out into the street! I’m ashamed to
come out of the chancel! I’m ashamed before God. Cruel, unworthy
daughter! One could curse you in your grave——”
When Father Ignaty glanced again at his wife, she had fainted, and did
not come to herself for some hours. And when she did come to herself
her eyes were silent, and it was impossible to know whether she
understood what Father Ignaty had said to her, or no.
That same night—it was a moonlight night in July, still, warm,
soundless—Father Ignaty crept on tiptoe, so that his wife and her nurse
should not hear him, up the stairs to Vera’s room. The window of the
belvedere had not been opened since the death of Vera, and the
atmosphere was dry and hot, with a slight smell of scorching from the
iron roof, which had become heated during the day. There was an
uninhabited and deserted feeling about the apartment from which man had
been absent so long, and in which the wood of the walls, the furniture
and other objects gave out a faint smell of growing decay.
The moonlight fell in a bright stripe across the window and floor, and
reflected by the carefully washed white boards it illumined the corners
with a dim semi-light, and the clean white bed with its two pillows, a
big one and a little one, looked unearthly and ghostly. Father Ignaty
opened the window, and the fresh air poured into the room in a broad
stream, smelling of dust, of the neighbouring river, and the flowering
lime, and bore on it a scarcely audible chorus, apparently, of people
rowing a boat, and singing as they rowed.
Stepping silently on his naked feet, like a white ghost, Father Ignaty
approached the empty bed, and bending his knees fell face-down on the
pillows, and embraced them—the place where Vera’s face ought to have
been.
He lay long so. The song became louder, and then gradually became
inaudible; but he still lay there, with his long black hair dishevelled
over his shoulders and on the bed.
The moon had moved on, and the room had become darker, when Father
Ignaty raised his head, and throwing into his voice all the force of a
long suppressed and long unacknowledged love, and listening to his
words, as though not he, but Vera, were listening to them, exclaimed:
“Vera, my daughter! Do you understand what it means, daughter! Little
daughter! My heart! my blood, my life! Your father, your poor old
father, already grey and feeble.”
His shoulders shook, and all his heavy frame was convulsed. With a
shudder Father Ignaty whispered tenderly, as to a little child:
“Your poor old father asks you. Yes, Verochka, he entreats. He weeps.
He who never was so wont. Your grief, my little daughter, your
suffering, are my own. More than mine.”
Father Ignaty shook his head.
“More, Verochka. What is death to me, an old man? But you——. If only
you had realized, how tender, weak and timid you were! Do you remember
how when you pricked your finger and the blood came, you began to cry.
My little daughter! And you do indeed love me, love me dearly, I know.
Every morning you kiss my hand. Speak, speak of what is grieving
you—and I with these two hands will strangle your grief. They are still
strong, Vera, these hands.”
His locks shook.
“Speak!”
He fixed his eyes on the wall, and stretching out his hands, cried:
“Speak!”
But the chamber was silent, and from the far distance was borne in the
sound of the long and short whistles of a locomotive.
Father Ignaty, rolling his distended eyes, as though there stood before
him the frightful ghost of a mutilated corpse, slowly raised himself
from his knees, and with uncertain movement lifted his hand, with the
fingers separated and nervously stretched out, to his head. Going out
by the door, Father Ignaty sharply whispered the word:
“Speak!”
And silence was the answer he received.