I
It was on the eve of Palm Sunday; vespers were
being sung in the Staro-Petrovski Convent. The
hour was nearly ten when the palm leaves were
distributed, and the little shrine lamps were growing dim; their wicks had burnt low, and a soft haze hung in the chapel. As the worshippers surged forward in the twilight like the waves of the sea, it seemed to his Reverence Peter, who had been feeling ill for three days, that the people who came to him for palm leaves all looked alike, and, men or women, old or young, all had the same expression in their eyes. He could not see the doors through the haze; the endless procession rolled toward him, and seemed as if it must go on rolling for ever. A choir of women's voices was singing and a nun was reading the canon.
How hot and close the air was, and how long the
prayers ! His Reverence was tired. His dry, parching
breath was coming quickly and painfully, his
shoulders were aching, and his legs were trembling. The
occasional cries of an idiot in the gallery annoyed him. And now, as a climax, his Reverence saw, as in a delirium, his own mother whom he had not seen for nine years coming toward him in the crowd. She, or an old woman exactly like her, took a palm leaf from his hands, and moved away looking at him all the while with a glad, sweet smile, until she was lost in the crowd. And for some reason the tears began to course down his cheeks. His heart was happy and peaceful, but his eyes were fixed on a distant part of the chapel where the prayers were being read, and where no human being could be distinguished among the shadows. The tears glistened on his cheeks and beard. Then some one who was standing near him began to weep, too, and then another, and then another, until little by little the chapel was filled with a low sound of weeping. Then the convent choir began to sing, the weeping stopped, and everything went on as before.
Soon afterward the service ended. The fine, jubilant
notes of the heavy chapel-bells were throbbing through
the moonlit garden as the bishop stepped into his coach
and drove away. The white walls, the crosses on the
graves, the silvery birches, and the far-away moon
hanging directly over the monastery, all seemed to be
living a life of their own, incomprehensible, but very
near to mankind. It was early in April, and a chilly
night had succeeded a warm spring day. A light frost
was falling, but the breath of spring could be felt in
the soft, cool air. The road from the monastery was
sandy, the horses were obliged to proceed at a walk, and, bathed in the bright, tranquil moonlight, a stream of pilgrims was crawling along on either side of the coach. All were thoughtful, no one spoke. Everything around them, the trees, the sky, and even the moon, looked so young and intimate and friendly that they were reluctant to break the spell which they hoped might last for ever.
Finally the coach entered the city, and rolled down
the main street. All the stores were closed but that of
Erakin, the millionaire merchant. He was trying his
electric lights for the first time, and they were flashing
so violently that a crowd had collected in front of the
store. Then came wide, dark streets in endless
succession, and then the highway, and fields, and the
smell of pines. Suddenly a white crenelated wall
loomed before him, and beyond it rose a tall belfry
flanked by five flashing golden cupolas, all bathed
in moonlight. This was the Pankratievski Monastery
where his Reverence Peter lived. Here, too, the
calm, brooding moon was floating directly above
the monastery. The coach drove through the gate, its wheels crunching on the sand. Here and there the dark forms of monks started out into the moonlight and footsteps rang along the flagstone paths.
"Your mother has been here while you were away, your Reverence," a lay brother told the bishop as he entered his room.
"My mother? When did she come?"
"Before vespers. She first found out where you
were, and then drove to the convent."
"Then it was she whom I saw just now in the
chapel! Oh, Father in heaven!"
And his Reverence laughed for joy.
"She told me to tell you, your Reverence," the lay
brother continued, "that she would come back
tomorrow. She had a little girl with her, a grandchild, I think. She is stopping at Ovsianikoff's inn."
"What time is it now?"
"It is after eleven."
"What a nuisance!"