Chapter II

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!”