Family Happiness and Other Stories Read online

  In one of the chief streets fresh straw had been strewn on the road before a large, important house, where the invalid who had been in a hurry to go abroad lay dying.

  At the closed door of her room stood the invalid’s husband and an elderly woman. On the sofa a priest sat with bowed head, holding something wrapped in his stole. In a corner of the room the sick woman’s old mother lay on an invalid chair weeping bitterly: beside her stood one maidservant holding a clean handkerchief, waiting for her to ask for it; while another was rubbing her temples with something and blowing under the old lady’s cap onto her grey head.

  “Well, may Christ aid you, dear friend,” the husband said to the elderly woman who stood near him at the door. “She has such confidence in you and you know so well how to talk to her, so persuade her as well as you can, my dear—go to her.” He was about to open the door, but her cousin stopped him, pressing her handkerchief several times to her eyes and giving her head a shake.

  “Well, I don’t think I look as if I had been crying now,” said she and, opening the door herself, went in.

  The husband was in great agitation and seemed quite distracted. He walked towards the old woman, but while still several steps from her turned back, walked about the room, and went up to the priest. The priest looked at him, raised his eyebrows to heaven, and sighed: his thick, greyish beard also rose as he sighed and then came down again.

  “My God, my God!” said the husband.

  “What is to be done?” said the priest with a sigh, and again his eyebrows and beard rose and fell.

  “And her mother is here!” said the husband almost in despair. “She won’t be able to bear it. You see, loving her as she does . . . I don’t know! If you would only try to comfort her, Father, and persuade her to go away.”

  The priest got up and went to the old woman.

  “It is true, no one can appreciate a mother’s heart,” he said—“but God is merciful.”

  The old woman’s face suddenly twitched all over, and she began to hiccup hysterically.

  “God is merciful,” the priest continued when she grew a little calmer. “Let me tell you of a patient in my parish who was much worse than Mary Dmitrievna, and a simple tradesman cured her in a short time with various herbs. That tradesman is even now in Moscow. I told Vasili Dmitrich—we might try him. . . . It would at any rate comfort the invalid. To God all is possible.”

  “No, she will not live,” said the old woman. “God is taking her instead of me,” and the hysterical hiccuping grew so violent that she fainted.

  The sick woman’s husband hid his face in his hands and ran out of the room.

  In the passage the first person he met was his six-year-old son, who was running full speed after his younger sister.

  “Won’t you order the children to be taken to their mamma?” asked the nurse.

  “No, she doesn’t want to see them—it would upset her.”

  The boy stopped a moment, looked intently into his father’s face, then gave a kick and ran on, shouting merrily.

  “She pretends to be the black horse, Papa!” he shouted, pointing to his sister.

  Meanwhile in the other room the cousin sat down beside the invalid, and tried by skilful conversation to prepare her for the thought of death. The doctor was mixing a draught at another window.

  The patient, in a white dressing gown, sat up in bed supported all round by pillows, and looked at her cousin in silence.

  “Ah, my dear friend,” she said, unexpectedly interrupting her, “don’t prepare me! Don’t treat me like a child. I am a Christian. I know it all. I know I have not long to live, and know that if my husband had listened to me sooner I should now have been in Italy and perhaps—no, certainly—should have been well. Everybody told him so. But what is to be done? Evidently this is God’s wish. We have all sinned heavily. I know that, but I trust in God’s mercy everybody will be forgiven, probably all will be forgiven. I try to understand myself. I have many sins to answer for, dear friend, but then how much I have had to suffer! I try to bear my sufferings patiently . . .”

  “Then shall I call the priest, my dear? You will feel still more comfortable after receiving Communion,” said her cousin.

  The sick woman bent her head in assent.

  “God forgive me, sinner that I am!” she whispered.

  The cousin went out and signalled with her eyes to the priest.

  “She is an angel!” she said to the husband, with tears in her eyes. The husband burst into tears; the priest went into the next room; the invalid’s mother was still unconscious, and all was silent there. Five minutes later he came out again, and after taking off his stole, straightened out his hair.

  “Thank God she is calmer now,” she said, “and wishes to see you.”

  The cousin and the husband went into the sick-room. The invalid was silently weeping, gazing at an icon.

  “I congratulate you, my dear,”12 said her husband.

  “Thank you! How well I feel now, what inexpressible sweetness I feel!” said the sick woman, and a soft smile played on her thin lips. “How merciful God is! Is he not? Merciful and all powerful!” and again she looked at the icon with eager entreaty and her eyes full of tears.

  Then suddenly, as if she remembered something, she beckoned to her husband to come closer.

  “You never want to do what I ask . . .” she said in a feeble and dissatisfied voice.

  The husband, craning his neck, listened to her humbly.

  “What is it, my dear?”

  “How many times have I not said that these doctors don’t know anything; there are simple women who can heal, and who do cure. The priest told me . . . there is also a tradesman . . . Send!”

  “For whom, my dear?”

  “O God, you don’t want to understand anything!” . . . And the sick woman’s face puckered and she closed her eyes.

  The doctor came up and took her hand. Her pulse was beating more and more feebly. He glanced at the husband. The invalid noticed that gesture and looked round in affright. The cousin turned away and began to cry.

  “Don’t cry, don’t torture yourself and me,” said the patient. “Don’t take from me the last of my tranquillity.”

  “You are an angel,” said the cousin, kissing her hand.

  “No, kiss me here! Only dead people are kissed on the hand. My God, my God!”

  That same evening the patient was a corpse, and the body lay in a coffin in the music room of the large house. A deacon sat alone in that big room reading the Psalms of David through his nose in a monotonous voice. A bright light from the wax candles in their tall silver candlesticks fell on the pale brow of the dead woman, on her heavy wax-like hands, on the stiff folds of the pall which brought out in awesome relief the knees and the toes. The deacon without understanding the words read on monotonously, and in the quiet room the words sounded strangely and died away. Now and then from a distant room came the sounds of children’s voices and the patter of their feet.

  “Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled,” said the psalter. “Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever.”

  The dead woman’s face looked stern and majestic. Neither in the clear cold brow nor in the firmly closed lips was there any movement. She seemed all attention. But had she even now understood those solemn words?

  IV

  A month later a stone chapel was being erected over the grave of the deceased woman. Over the driver’s tomb there was still no stone, and only the light green grass sprouted on the mound which served as the only token of the past existence of a man.

  “It will be a sin, Sergey,” said the cook at the station house one day, “if you don’t buy a stone for Theodore. You kept saying ‘It’s winter, it’s winter!’ but why don’t you keep your word now? You know I witnessed it. He has already come back once to ask you to do it; if you don’t
buy him one, he’ll come again and choke you.”

  “But why? I’m not backing out of it,” replied Sergey. “I’ll buy a stone as I said I would, and give a ruble and a half for it. I haven’t forgotten it, but it has to be fetched. When I happen to be in town I’ll buy one.”

  “You might at least put up a cross—you ought to—else it’s really wrong,” interposed an old driver. “You know you are wearing his boots.”

  “Where can I get a cross? I can’t cut one out of a log.”

  “What do you mean, can’t cut one out of a log? You take an axe and go into the forest early, and you can cut one there. Cut down a young ash or something like that, and you can make a cross of it . . . you may have to treat the forester to vodka; but one can’t afford to treat him for every trifle. There now, I broke my splinter-bar and went and cut a new one, and nobody said a word.”

  Early in the morning, as soon as it was daybreak, Sergey took an axe and went into the wood.

  A cold white cover of dew, which was still falling untouched by the sun, lay on everything. The east was imperceptibly growing brighter, reflecting its pale light on the vault of heaven still veiled by a covering of clouds. Not a blade of grass below, nor a leaf on the topmost branches of the trees, stirred. Only occasionally a sound of wings amid the brushwood, or a rustling on the ground, broke the silence of the forest. Suddenly a strange sound, foreign to Nature, resounded and died away at the outskirts of the forest. Again the sound was heard, and was rhythmically repeated at the foot of the trunk of one of the motionless trees. A treetop began to tremble in an unwonted manner, its juicy leaves whispered something, and the robin who had been sitting in one of its branches fluttered twice from place to place with a whistle, and jerking its tail sat down on another tree.

  The axe at the bottom gave off a more and more muffled sound, sappy white chips were scattered on the dewy grass and a slight creaking was heard above the sound of the blows. The tree, shuddering in its whole body, bent down and quickly rose again, vibrating with fear on its roots. For an instant all was still, but the tree bent again, a crashing sound came from its trunk, and with its branches breaking and its boughs hanging down it fell with its crown on the damp earth.

  The sounds of the axe and of the footsteps were silenced. The robin whistled and flitted higher. A twig which it brushed with its wings shook a little and then with all its foliage grew still like the rest. The trees flaunted the beauty of their motionless branches still more joyously in the newly cleared space.

  The first sunbeams, piercing the translucent cloud, shone out and spread over earth and sky. The mist began to quiver like waves in the hollows, the dew sparkled and played on the verdure, the transparent cloudlets grew whiter, and hurriedly dispersed over the deepening azure vault of the sky. The birds stirred in the thicket and, as though bewildered, twittered joyfully about something; the sappy leaves whispered gladly and peacefully on the treetops, and the branches of those that were living began to rustle slowly and majestically over the dead and prostrate tree.

  The Three Hermits

  AN OLD LEGEND CURRENT IN THE VOLGA DISTRICT

  And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.—Matt. vi. 7, 8.

  A BISHOP was sailing from Archangel to the Solovetsk Monastery, and on the same vessel were a number of pilgrims on their way to visit the shrines at that place. The voyage was a smooth one. The wind favorable and the weather fair. The pilgrims lay on deck, eating, or sat in groups talking to one another. The bishop, too, came on deck, and as he was pacing up and down he noticed a group of men standing near the prow and listening to a fisherman, who was pointing to the sea and telling them something. The bishop stopped, and looked in the direction in which the man was pointing. He could see nothing, however, but the sea glistening in the sunshine. He drew nearer to listen, but when the man saw him, he took off his cap and was silent. The rest of the people also took off their caps and bowed.

  “Do not let me disturb you, friends,” said the bishop. “I came to hear what this good man was saying.”

  “The fisherman was telling us about the hermits,” replied one, a tradesman, rather bolder than the rest.

  “What hermits?” asked the bishop, going to the side of the vessel and seating himself on a box. “Tell me about them. I should like to hear. What were you pointing at?”

  “Why, that little island you can just see over there,” answered the man, pointing to a spot ahead and a little to the right. “That is the island where the hermits live for the salvation of their souls.”

  “Where is the island?” asked the bishop. “I see nothing.”

  “There, in the distance, if you will please look along my hand. Do you see that little cloud? Below it and a bit to the left, there is just a faint streak. That is the island.”

  The bishop looked carefully, but his unaccustomed eyes could make out nothing but the water shimmering in the sun.

  “I cannot see it,” he said. “But who are the hermits that live there?”

  “They are holy men,” answered the fisherman. “I had long heard tell of them, but never chanced to see them myself till the year before last.”

  And the fisherman related how once, when he was out fishing, he had been stranded at night upon that island, not knowing where he was. In the morning, as he wandered about the island, he came across an earth hut, and met an old man standing near it. Presently two others came out, and after having fed him and dried his things, they helped him mend his boat.

  “And what are they like?” asked the bishop.

  “One is a small man and his back is bent. He wears a priest’s cassock and is very old; he must be more than a hundred, I should say. He is so old that the white of his beard is taking a greenish tinge, but he is always smiling, and his face is as bright as an angel’s from heaven. The second is taller, but he also is very old. He wears a tattered, peasant coat. His beard is broad, and of a yellowish-grey color. He is a strong man. Before I had time to help him, he turned my boat over as if it were only a pail. He too is kindly and cheerful. The third is tall, and has a beard as white as snow and reaching to his knees. He is stern, with overhanging eyebrows; and he wears nothing but a piece of matting tied round his waist.”

  “And did they speak to you?” asked the bishop.

  “For the most part they did everything in silence, and spoke but little even to one another. One of them would just give a glance, and the others would understand him. I asked the tallest whether they had lived there long. He frowned, and muttered something as if he were angry; but the oldest one took his hand and smiled, and then the tall one was quiet. The oldest one only said: ‘Have mercy upon us,’ and smiled.”

  While the fisherman was talking, the ship had drawn nearer to the island.

  “There, now you can see it plainly, if your Lordship will please to look,” said the tradesman, pointing with his hand.

  The bishop looked, and now he really saw a dark streak—which was the island. Having looked at it a while, he left the prow of the vessel, and going to the stern, asked the helmsman:

  “What island is that?”

  “That one,” replied the man, “has no name. There are many such in this sea.”

  “Is it true that there are hermits who live there for the salvation of their souls?”

  “So it is said, your Lordship, but I don’t know if it’s true. Fishermen say they have seen them; but of course they may only be spinning yarns.”

  “I should like to land on the island and see these men,” said the bishop. “How could I manage it?”

  “The ship cannot get close to the island,” replied the helmsman, “but you might be rowed there in a boat. You had better speak to the captain.”

  The captain was sent for and came.

  “I should like to see these hermits,” said the bishop. “Could I not
be rowed ashore?”

  The captain tried to dissuade him.

  “Of course it could be done,” said he, “but we should lose much time. And if I might venture to say so to your Lordship, the old men are not worth your pains. I have heard say that they are foolish old fellows, who understand nothing, and never speak a word, any more than the fish in the sea.”

  “I wish to see them,” said the bishop, “and I will pay you for your trouble and loss of time. Please let me have a boat.”

  There was no help for it; so the order was given. The sailors trimmed the sails, the steersman put up the helm, and the ship’s course was set for the island. A chair was placed at the prow for the bishop, and he sat there, looking ahead. The passengers all collected at the prow, and gazed at the island. Those who had the sharpest eyes could presently make out the rocks on it, and then a mud hut was seen. At last one man saw the hermits themselves. The captain brought a telescope and, after looking through it, handed it to the bishop.

  “It’s right enough. There are three men standing on the shore. There, a little to the right of that big rock.”

  The Bishop took the telescope, got it into position, and he saw the three men: a tall one, a shorter one, and one very small and bent, standing on the shore and holding each other by the hand.

  The captain turned to the bishop.

  “The vessel can get no nearer in than this, your Lordship. If you wish to go ashore, we must ask you to go in the boat, while we anchor here.”

  The cable was quickly let out, the anchor cast, and the sails furled. There was a jerk, and the vessel shook. Then a boat having been lowered, the oarsmen jumped in, and the bishop descended the ladder and took his seat. The men pulled at their oars and the boat moved rapidly towards the island. When they came within a stone’s throw, they saw three old men: a tall one with only a piece of matting tied round his waist: a shorter one in a tattered peasant coat, and a very old one bent with age and wearing an old cassock—all three standing hand in hand.