"Listen to me, Russian! I can never requite you this kindness. I do not dare to wish for you that you may find yourself one day in my position and chance upon a Turk as good as yourself. But know well there is only one God. Religions are diverse, but God is One. I promise you that I and my children, as long as we are alive, will pray God to preserve you for your children as you have preserved me for mine. May the sun shine on you for many years! Farewell, Russian, farewell!"
Then as though fearing that the Major might change his mind, he whipped up his horse and disappeared.
After waiting some minutes to allow him to get to some distance, the Major returned. When he arrived at the Russian outposts, he met the same Cossack who had wished to accompany him and said, "Your prediction is fulfilled. The Turk has escaped."
The Cossack studied the Major's face and said, "I wish him luck. It is not prisoners we are in want of. We shall soon not know where to put them."
When the Major rejoined the Colonel, he found him walking up and down the room in a state of great agitation.
"Well?"
"Arrest me! I have let the prisoner go!"
The Colonel hastened towards him, and embraced him nervously.
"There! Volodia has his New Year's gift! Let us hope that now he will let me sleep in peace."
"But ought not a report to be made?"
"Why?"
"And the papers dealing with the prisoner's case?"
"The papers? There are their ashes in the stove. I have burnt them. Poor wretch! He will have to hurry – he will have to hurry to find his family."
A MISUNDERSTANDING
I
Vespers were drawing to a close. A young nun, Sister Helene, who had just finished her novitiate and taken the veil, stood in a dark recess, viewed from whence, the old church, with its round columns, seemed to fade away into the mysterious darkness under the cupola. She watched the black outlines of the "Sisters in Jesus" kneeling in the middle of the nave, the gilded "iconostasis" or church-screen with its blackened pictures set in frames sparkling with precious stones, its wax-tapers and lamps burning softly in the heavy incense-laden air. Each time that the deacon passed, waving his censer, they seemed to burn more brightly. But Sister Helene was lost in contemplation of a painting which had just been finished by the nun who shared her cell. The figure of the Holy Virgin seemed to stand out from the dark background; her large eyes were sadly fixed on the heads bent in devotion; the flickering flame seemed to cast light and shadow alternately on the divine features. It seemed sometimes to Helene that the sorrowful eyes of the Mother of God glowed with a misty light. Helene was not praying. Rapt in a self-forgetful reverie, her soul soared higher than the arches of the church; she had not heard the broken voice of the old priest, which sounded like a sob, any more than she heard the beatings of her own heart; she took no account of the flight of time till she felt a hand touch her arm.
"Are you going to stay there till morning?" a little misshapen old woman asked her with a discontented air.
"It is a real sin in you younger ones to stay so, absent-minded, without even making the sign of the cross. See! the wax-tapers have burnt out. You have been thinking long enough in your self-conceit, 'Here I am alone, and all the others have gone.'"
"Pardon, Sister Seraphine," murmured the nun.
"Very well! God will pardon you. Go now, I am closing the church. But make the sign of the cross; that will not break your arm, and then an obeisance. God be with you. All the same, it is a sin in you young ones. Ah, if they would only give us another abbess."
Helene turned once more to look at the church-screen.
The church was now plunged in silence and darkness; the old nun hobbled before the altar, then disappeared behind the columns. Here and there were visible the little flames of the lamps which are never put out. A bunch of keys fell on the flag-stones, sounding like the clash of chains. Sister Seraphine had dropped them.
Once more she watched the young nun's figure as it vanished in the darkness.
"One of the intellectuals!" grumbled the old woman.
"Are we not then all equal before God, those who know as well as those who are ignorant. To speak seven languages, is to multiply one's sins sevenfold. Jesus did not seek for His apostles among the learned, but among fishermen. It is better then to be ignorant. If we had another Superior, Mother Anempodista for instance, she would not have hesitated to give you her blessing and send you to wash the dishes or knead the dough. We are one community; service and trouble, all ought to be shared. It is not French that the Apostle Peter will speak at the gate of Paradise; he will not be afraid to strike you on the forehead with his key and to say, 'Be off, blue-stocking, to the eternal fire; go and talk French to the devils.' No, there is something seriously wrong with these young ones. The Evil One hovers about them trying to entangle them. Certainly it was better under Mother Anempodista; in her time the blue-stockings would not have given themselves airs over the others."
Still hobbling as she went, the old woman closed the church and went in the darkness to the clock tower where she had lived for about forty years. From the time of her first arrival at the convent and entrance on her novitiate, she had been entrusted with the duty of the portress and remained in that post. There under the bells, in a tiny cell like a niche in a wall, Sister Seraphine grew old and suffered, became bent and looked forward to die the death of the righteous. She lived half-forgotten there, the little old woman, but content. Above her boomed the great bells of the convent, close by her ear tinkled the bell of the main entrance when a visitor called. Sometimes, when gusts of wind roared in the bell-tower, Sister Seraphine would cross herself, murmuring, "Holy saints have mercy! How excited the Evil One is! Whose soul is he coming to seek? Can it be Sister Elizabeth's? To-day a fine aroma of coffee came from her cell. What a temptation!"
Sister Seraphine's cell was occupied almost entirely by a bed of rough planks; a mattress, a white pillow, a sheepskin coverlet constituted all her luxuries. On the narrow sill of the little window – almost a loop-hole – were placed a piece of bread, some black radishes, salt and kvass; high up in a corner a lamp burned before the icon.
On entering she made the sign of the cross and lay down on her pallet, but suddenly the gate-bell rang wildly. In a moment she was on her feet.
"I am coming! I hear! I hear! The lunatics to ring like that!" she grumbled, taking down the great key from the wall; "here is fine music."
She descended, shivering, and opened with difficulty the large gate which grated on its hinges.
"Well, what makes you ring like that? We are not deaf," she said to a huge footman wrapped in his fur-lined livery. "Where have you come from and from whom?" she asked, seeing a closed carriage standing a little way off.
"Let me pass first, little old woman; I shall find my way quite well."
"Answer first; to whom are you going?"
"To the Lady Abbess, old crow of a portress! It is Madame the wife of General Khlobestovsky who sends me; don't you recognize me? Take your eyes out of your pocket."
"Yes, if one had time to study your face! You have all the same faces, as like each other as the curbstones of pavements. It is a sin to have to do with you. Wait till I call Sister Anastasia; she will go to our Mother. Have you a letter? Give it me. A pretty word – 'crow of a portress.' You think yourself somebody because you are covered with clothes belonging to your master. Wait! Wait! when the hour of your death strikes, you will remember that 'crow of a portress,' and you will repent. But God is good; He will pardon you; because you lack brains. Consider at any rate, great booby, where you are. 'A crow' … the idiot!"
II
Sister Helene, after having left the empty church, turned to the left to reach her cell. A row of little windows, constructed at different heights, illuminated the darkness here and there, and were reflected in the pools of water formed by the last rain-fall. A pavement formed of planks ran along the length of these little dwellings; there was no uniformity in their design, but some of them were picturesque; by daylight the convent presented an original aspect. None of these dwellings resembled each other; some were two stories, others a story and a half high. In these lived the sisters who were well-to-do. They were painted different colours – grey, rose, white, etc. In summer lime trees and birches sheltered them from the sun. To-day the wind whistled through the naked branches.
Helene had not yet reached her door, when she saw approaching her, like a red point in the darkness, some one carrying a lantern.
"Who comes there?" she asked.
"Is it you, Sister?" answered a youthful voice whose musical tones sounded strange in the blackness of the night.
"What! Is it you? You come to meet me?"
"Yes, I have prepared the samovar (tea-urn). As you did not come, I feared something had happened, and here I am."
"I had forgotten in the church how time passed, and Sister Seraphine made me come out."
"It was time; it has struck seven."
"And you – what have you been doing? I have not seen you the whole day."
"I have been painting; then I tried to read, but my head felt heavy. I think my John the Baptist is not a success."
"Why?"
"I cannot give him the aspect of an ascetic; his eyes, his smile are too sweet; the desert sun had bronzed him, his features must have been harsher."
"Paint him as God inspires you. This evening, during vespers, I looked at your Holy Virgin the whole time."
"You think it good."
"It is perfect. Her sad eyes, her inspired face seem to say that she knows her divine Son will suffer for humanity."
"Well, but Sister Seraphine is not pleased with it."
"What does she say?" asked Helene with a smile.
"That it is hardly befitting to have beautiful pictures in convents, that the eyes of nuns ought not to dwell on the works of sinners."
"God bless her! She grumbles, but she is good at bottom. When I was ill, before you came, she hardly ever left me. Here we are at my door."
Helene and the novice Olia rapidly ascended the steps of the staircase, shaking the water from their cloaks. When they reached her well-warmed room, Helene took off her short black pelisse and the cap which concealed her hair. Her dwelling had two stages; Olia, her guest, lodged and worked on the ground floor; Helene occupied the upper one. The furniture was very simple – a table of white wood, a small very hard sofa covered with brown holland, two old arm-chairs and straw-bottomed chairs ranged along the wall. Above the sofa hung the portrait of some unknown nun with dark eyes shadowed by a black veil and pale wrinkled lips. In one corner, a lamp burned before an icon in a gold frame.
Helene was not yet thirty years old; her face, pale and thin, had already assumed the monastic expression, but her refined features were still beautiful; her large proud eyes recalled by their sadness and their passionate expression Carlo Dolce's martyrs. One could guess that in this soul which had already long suffered, the sacrifice was not yet consummated, and the struggle still continued. In those dark eyes there often came also the poignant look of physical suffering; her face showed signs of sleepless nights, suppressed tears and sobs choked down.
Olia, with her sharp ear, heard her sometimes leap from her bed, run to the window, open it and fall on her knees in prayer. It was not the conventual life which weighed on Helene, but that which she had left outside the walls. Her life in the convent was pleasant and easy; the inmates had for her the regard which a sister deserves who brings a considerable fortune, and who was, moreover, highly cultured, a fact which lent peculiar distinction to the community. When illustrious benefactresses visited the convent, Sister Helene was immediately sent for in order to talk French; these ladies departed delighted, and in aristocratic circles talked of "our convent," in order to distinguish it from the other at the opposite end of the town, which was humble and poverty-stricken, without cultured nuns and unvisited by grand ladies.
This time also, scarcely had Helene sat down to her tea than she was sent for by the abbess.
"May I come in?" said a voice behind the door.
"Certainly," answered Helene. "Ah, it is you, Sister Athanasia."
"Peace be with you, and God bless you; will you come to our Mother Varlaama."
"What is it?"
"Nothing; only a note for you, and they are waiting."
The abbess was a stout, heavy woman, with a plain but honest face such as is often seen in tradesmen's widows who have lived a quiet life with a sober and affectionate husband. She received Helene with a tender kiss:
"General Khlobestovsky's lady asks me to let you go to her this evening; she is particularly anxious about it and has sent the carriage."
"But it was just this evening that I did not want to go out."
"And why, may I ask? She is one of your old school-fellows, and what is more, rich and a fine lady. Go then for our sakes. Yesterday again her husband has sent us from the country two carts full of meal, flour and oil. We cannot refuse anything to such benefactors; he would regard it as a want of respect and would become indifferent to us. Make this sacrifice, Sister Helene, for the great advantage of us all. Finally I exact it as an act of obedience, as part of your conventual service. Go! Go!"
So saying, she embraced and dismissed her.
III
Helene felt ill at ease every time that she entered the Khlobestovsky's drawing-room, not exactly because she disliked the mistress of the house; they had been school-fellows and had remained friends. The general was always absent; he preferred country life and the superintendence of his estate, in the first place because his affairs got on the better for it, and secondly he was thus out of reach of the sentimental and romantic claims of his wife, claims which his personal appearance did little to justify.
Each time that the general's wife saw Helene again, she applied a fine cambric handkerchief to her eyes to wipe away some tears, her flabby cheeks quivered, and innumerable wrinkles appeared round her chin and mouth.
"What self-sacrifice!" she invariably exclaimed, pressing her friend's hands. "How happy you are, my darling! while we are – how does one say it? – drowned in sin."
"Plunged," corrected her children's governess.
"Yes, plunged. Exactly so! You, on the other, are saving your soul, and are quite absorbed in God."
Then she took Helene's hand and said, "You are tired; take my arm."
"No, I am not, I assure you."
"Still, do it, dear Sister."
It was one of the general's wife's principles on commencing the conversation to speak with deference to her friend, though she was the younger of the two.
"These matins, these vespers, these masses! … It will indeed be well with you up there." And she lifted her large green eyes to the ceiling.
This time also she did not omit the inevitable comedy, and taking Helene's arm, she drew her to her boudoir, where the sound of several voices was audible.
"Come, dear, I have absolute confidence in you."
The "lady bountiful," a friend of General Khlobestovsky, was already seated in the boudoir. Her goggle eyes and projecting jaws well adapted to frighten poor people, opened wide at Helene's arrival, and in a high-pitched voice, imitating a famous actress, she exclaimed with a sigh, "How happy I am! How delighted! Holy woman!" and then turning towards a young girl very simply dressed who was also smiling at the nun, said, "Ah, Sacha, how long have you been here?"
Sacha was a niece of the general, and had been taking a course of music lessons at Petrograd. When she saw her, Helene's face lighted up.
"My course was over a fortnight ago, and I took advantage of it to come home again."
"You would do much better," said the "benefactress," looking at Helene, "to follow her example than to follow your course; I tell her so in your presence, Sister, because I tell her so when you are not there to hear. To think that at your age, with your beauty, you have been able to go through such severe tests in order to overcome sin!"
"Why did you send for me?" Helene asked.
"Because, dear, we have decided to make a blue altar-cloth embroidered with gold and silk for your convent. Without your advice we do not know how to set about it; it is impossible for us to choose the design and the colours."
The table was already covered with the velvet cloth in question which reached down to the ground; on it were lying skeins of silk, fringes and gold thread. As soon as Helene had taken her seat the ladies began an earnest discussion on the question whether they should embroider the flowers flame-colour, the stalks white, the leaves red, and at the top in gold a border of moss-roses.
"But would it look natural?" said the nun.
"Then what are we to do?" answered the "benefactress" in an agitated way. "Enlighten us, dear Sister; without you we are in darkness."
When the consultation was over, Sacha, who had waited impatiently, approached Helene, took her arm, and led her to the drawing-room.
"I have been to your church to-day," she said. "I have looked for you everywhere without seeing you."
"I generally stand on the right in a corner."
"In the shadow?"
"Yes; one feels more comfortable out of observation."
"It is a pity; I was looking forward so much to meeting you again, and did not succeed."
"Why regret it?"
"Ah well! As a devotee you are simply superb; one would say you had stepped out of the frame of a holy picture. And how they sing at your convent! You have a magnificent voice."
"Who says so?"
"My aunt in the first place. At school it seems that you already held every one under a spell."
"Your aunt is too kind."
"Not at all; she is only just. But tell me why do you not take part in the convent choirs?"
"I do not wish to," said Helene, and a shadow passed over her face.
"Pardon me," murmured Sacha, taking her hand. "I have perhaps vexed you; I am so foolish."
"Not at all," answered Helene. "It is not that. But you see, I ought not to sing. Doubtless, you do not understand me. Anna Petrovna declares in her kindness that I have overcome all sins, but it is not so. A nun ought to seek before all things to forget the world where she has lived. It ought not to attract her any more. No one knows anything of our struggles and our mental distresses. If I recommenced to sing, the past would rise again at once. Ah! I have experienced it already; one day I was singing a church chant in my room; all the past came up in my heart, and I nearly choked. That which I had fled from, that which I believed dead and buried, returned. You see a spiritual victory is not won so easily. Till one is 'dead to the world' one has many trials to pass through. It is only outsiders who imagine that peace reigns in a convent. If people could glance into our souls, they would see troubles and storms at the bottom of each. But these are only words! Come and see me, won't you?"
"Yes, certainly!" answered Sacha, stretching out her hand.
"I love you much, Sacha; you are honest. Au revoir. God be with you."
"Where are you going?" exclaimed the general's wife. "What! Without taking tea. I won't let you go. After tea they will put up for you a basket of preserves to take to the abbess, that good soul. She prefers quince-preserve. As for you, I don't offer you any; you have renounced all these luxuries; you no longer belong to this world!"
And once more her cheeks began to quiver and her green eyes grew moist.
"How charming you were at school! Tall, well-shaped, like a figure in Dresden china. Do you ever remember the school, Sister Helene?"
"Yes, of course," said Helene, with an abstracted air, only half-attending to her.
"I remember they had brought you from far away – the Caucasus, wasn't it? They had written to me, I remember."
The nun bent her head in order to hide her disturbance of mind. When she raised it again, she had grown still paler, and her sad eyes showed physical pain controlled with difficulty. But the general's wife, who never paused to notice anything, did not guess at her trouble. She had risen, and stuttering very fast, said, "This evening we will give you a musical treat. I know you love music, Helene, and that is not a sin. I think there was a saint – what was her name?"
"Saint Cecilia," said the governess.
"Yes, precisely. She was a musician, and yet she has been canonized; you will find it in books."
Helene remained. She felt an irresistible desire to hear music – something besides the human voice or the voice of her heart.
"Is it you who will play?" she said, approaching Sacha.
"Yes; tell me what you prefer; I only warn you that I don't play anything very serious."
"Play something that I have not yet heard; all that calls up associations of the past makes me feel poorly. During the four years that I have been at the convent you must have learnt many things which I don't know. You know, perhaps, Beethoven's Sonata 'Quasi una fantasia.'"
"Certainly. Would you like to hear it? 'It is an old piece that is always new,' our musical professor used to say."
"Yes. To-day I feel drawn to it, though I know it will make me suffer."
"Do you know that it is a little alarming to see you as a nun? Why should it be? Our family has been always given to religion; my grandmother entered a convent at the close of her days; and my mother spent her days in visiting the Holy Places."
Sacha went to the piano and the general's wife came and sat by Helene. She took her hands and said to her in a sentimental tone, "Do you remember how often we used to play duets at school?"
"We must confess that we played very badly," answered Helene with a smile.
"Yes, but the recollection is a delightful one. Do you remember the venerable Father who used to come to listen to us? Do you know I was quite in love with him! But pardon me; I forgot that before you… Ah, you are quite removed from all that to-day, happy woman!"
"But are not you happy?"
"Non. Life is not what it appeared to us through the rose-coloured curtains of the school. I do not complain of my husband, but he is quite incapable of letting himself go or of becoming enthusiastic."
For a moment or two she shed tears, which she wiped away as Sacha struck her first notes.
Helene listened as though in a trance. God only knew how much the music recalled to her of that past which she thought had been blotted out. She saw once more her country, whose soil she would never tread again; she heard the murmurs of the plane-trees, the low warbling of the brooks; a more brilliant sun glowed in a deeper sky; she closed her eyes and would have liked to withdraw into herself, and see no more of her surroundings. The unutterable yearning and burning passion of the sonata struck painfully and without cessation on her suffering heart. For a long time she had believed that a day would come when the old story which she had confided to no one would be finally forgotten, when she would be able to look at her past with the same indifference with which one contemplates the mists of autumn or the snows of winter; then she would return to her own people content and serene; they would receive her with joy, not guessing what she had sacrificed for them. To-day, alas! she understood that it would be vain to seek to bury that past; it would always rise again as vivid and sad as ever. No, she would never be able to see her country again. Moreover time, solitude and mental sufferings would not be long in putting an end to her physical life. A few more years, and she would rest in her coffin with a visage as immovable as that of the Sister dead yesterday in the convent, who also had known suffering. But those happy people down there, happy in the country she loved so well, did they still remember her? Perhaps they had forgotten her or thought her already dead.
Under the stress of these thoughts her heavy black garb became insupportable, and her head-dress weighed upon her like lead. She rose suddenly, before the sonata was finished.
"I will see you to-morrow," said the general's wife without attempting to detain her; "the carriage is there. This large packet is for the abbess, and the one wrapped up in a newspaper is for you."
"For me?" asked Helene in a reproachful tone. "You know that I do not like…"
"Well, give it from me to poor Olia."
"Thanks. God be with you!"
After warmly embracing Sacha, Helene took her leave. When she had settled herself in a corner of the carriage, she felt an inexpressible depression overwhelm her. She would have liked to open the carriage-door, to plunge into the cold fog, and to run into the infinite darkness, far away for ever.