‘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 Dmítrievna, and a simple tradesman cured her in a short time with various herbs. That tradesman is even now in Moscow. I told Vasíli Dmítrich – 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,’1 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, Sergéy,’ 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 Sergéy. ‘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.’