The deacon silently shoved the decanter and the glass toward Father Anastasy, unfolded the letter, and began to read it aloud. The letter pleased him just as much as it had when the archdeacon was dictating it. He beamed
with satisfaction and wagged his head as though he had
just savored something very sweet.
"Well, what a letter!" he said. "Petruha never can have dreamt of such a letter. Just what he needs, some- thing to throw him into a fever . . . the very thing!"
"You know what, deacon? Don't send it!" said Anas- tasy, pouring out another glass with seeming absent- mindedness. "Forgive him, let him be! I am speaking to you . . . from the heart. If his own father will not for- give him, who will? And is he to live so, unforgiven? Figure it out for yourself, deacon: there will be enough to mete out punishment without you, but you'd better seek out those who will show mercy to your own son! I'll . . . I'll . . . just have another little one, brother . . . the last . . . Now you just sit down and write to him: 'I forgive you, Pyotrl' He'll understa-and! He'll fee-eel it! I know it from my own experience, brother . . . deacon, I mean. When I lived like other people there was little to fret me, but now that I have betrayed the image and likeness of God, all I crave is that good people should forgive me. Judge for yourself, it isn't the righteous that should be forgiven, but the sinners. Why should you forgive the old one in there, if she is no sin- ner? No, you should forgive a man who is a pitiful sight . . . that's it."
Anastasy propped his head on his fist and grew thoughtful.
"It is dreadful, deacon," he sighed, obviously strug- gling with the desire to have another drink. "Dreadful! In sin my mother brought me into the world, in sin I lived, in sin I shall die . . . Lord forgive me, sinner that I am. I have strayed from the path, deacon! I am beyond salvation! And it isn't as though I had strayed from the path in the prime of life, but in my old age, on the brink of the grave . . . I . . ."
With a hopeless wave of the hand the old man drank one more glass, then went and sat down in another chair. The deacon, still clutching the letter, started pac- ing the room. He was thinking of his son. Dissatisfac- tion, sorrow, and anxiety no longer fretted him: all that had vented itself in the letter. Now he was simply call- ing up the image of Pyotr, picturing his face, remember- ing the years when his son would come home for the holidays. His mind dwelt only on what was good, heart- warming, touched with melancholy, on what one could contemplate for a lifetime without getting tired. Missing his son, he read the letter through once more and looked questioningly at Anastasy.
"Don't send it!" said the latter, with a wave of the hand.
"No, all the same . . • I must. All the same, it will • . . I mean . . . have a good effect on him . . . It can't hurt . . ."
The deacon got an envelope from a drawer, but be- fore placing the letter in it, he sat down at the table, smiled, and added these words of his o^ at the bottom of the letter: "They have sent us a new school super- visor. He is spryer than the old one. He is a dancer, a talker, and a jack-of-all-trades, so that the Govorov girls are wild about him. The army chief Kostyrev, too, will soon be sent packing, they say. High time!" Well pleased with himself, and not realizing that his postscript had completely spoiled the stern missive, he addressed the envelope and laid the letter in the most conspicuous place on the table.
Tke Kiss
AT EIGHT o'clock on the evening of the twentieth
/V of May all the six batteries of the N Reserve
Artillery Brigade halted for the night in the village of Mestechki on their way to camp. At the height of the general commotion, while some officers were busily oc- cupied around the guns, and others, gathered together in the square near the church enclosure, were receiving the reports of the quartermasters, a man in civilian dress, riding a queer horse, came into sight round the church. The little dun-colored horse with a fine neck and a short tail came, moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs. When he reached the officers the man on the horse took off his hat and said:
"His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbeck, a local landowner, invites the officers to have tea with him this minute. , , ,"
The horse bowed, danced, and retired sideways; the rider raised his hat once more and in an instant disap- peared with his strange horse behind the church.
"What the devil does it mean?" grumbled some of the officers, dispersing to their quarters. "One is sleepy, and here this von Rabbeck with his tea! We know what tea means."
The officers of all the six batteries remembered vividly an incident of the previous year, when during maneu- vers they, together with the officers of a Cossack regi- ment, were in the same way invited to tea by a count who had an estate in the neighborhood and was a re- tired army officer; the hospitable and genial count made much of them, dined and wined them, refused to let them go to their quarters in the village, and made them stay the night. All that, of course, was very nice—noth- ing better could be desired, but the worst of it was, the old army officer was so carried away by the pleasure of the young men's company that till sunrise he was telling the officers anecdotes of his glorious past, taking them over the house, showing them expensive pictures, old engravings, rare guns, reading them autograph letters from great people, while the weary and exhausted of- ficers looked and listened, longing for their beds and yawning in their sleeves; when at last their host let them go, it was too late for sleep.
Might not this von Rabbeck be just such another? Whether he were or not, there was no help for it. The officers changed their uniforms, brushed themselves, and went all together in search of the gentleman's house. In the square by the church they were told they could get to his Excellency's by the lower road—going downwn behind the church to the river, walking along the bank to the garden, and there the alleys would take them to the house; or by the upper way—straight from the church by the road which, half a mile from the vil- lage, led right up to his Excellency's barns. The officers decided to go by the upper road.
"Which von Rabbeck is it?" they wondered on the way. "Surely not the one who was in command of the N cavalry division at Plevna?"
"No, that was not von Rabbeck, but simply Rabbe and no 'von.' "
'What lovely weather!"
At the first of the barns the road divided in two: one branch went straight on and vanished in the evening darkness, the other led to the owner's house on the right. The officers turned to the right and began to speak more softly. . . . On both sides of the road stretched stone barns with red roofs, heavy and sullen-looking, very much like barracks in a district town. Ahead of them gleamed the windows of the manor house.
"A good omen, gentlemen," said one of the officers. "Our setter leads the way; no doubt he scents game ahead of us! . . ."
Lieutenant Lobytko, who was walking in front, a tall and stalwart fellow, though entirely without mustache (he was over twenty-five, yet for some reason there was no sign of hair on his round, well-fed face), renowned in the brigade for his peculiar ability to divine the pres- ence of women at a distance, turned round and said:
"Yes, there must be women here; I feel that by in- stinct."
On the threshold the officers were met by von Rab- beck himself, a comely looking man of sixty in civilian dress. Shaking hands with his guests, he said that he was very glad and happy to see them, but begged them earnestly for God's sake to excuse him for not asking them to stay the night; two sisters with their children, his brothers, and some neighbors, had come on a visit to him, so that he had not one spare room left.