“Heavens!” whispered the people, crossing themselves. The kneeling gentleman again heaved a deep, sonorous sigh.
“Father! Semyon Yakovlevitch!” The voice of the poor lady rang out all at once plaintively, though so sharply that it was startling. Our party had shoved her back to the wall. “A whole hour, dear father, I’ve been waiting for grace. Speak to me. Consider my case in my helplessness.”
“Ask her,” said Semyon Yakovlevitch to the verger, who went to the partition.
“Have you done what Semyon Yakovlevitch bade you last time?” he asked the widow in a soft and measured voice.
“Done it! Father Semyon Yakovlevitch. How can one do it with them?” wailed the widow. “They’re cannibals; they’re lodging a complaint against me, in the court; they threaten to take it to the senate. That’s how they treat their own mother!”
“Give her!” Semyon Yakovlevitch pointed to a sugar-loaf. The boy skipped up, seized the sugar-loaf and dragged it to the widow.
“Ach, father; great is your merciful kindness. What am I to do with so much?” wailed the widow.
“More, more,” said Semyon Yakovlevitch lavishly.
They dragged her another sugar-loaf. “More, more!” the saint commanded. They took her a third, and finally a fourth. The widow was surrounded with sugar on all sides. The monk from the monastery sighed; all this might have gone to the monastery that day as it had done on former occasions.
“What am I to do with so much,” the widow sighed obsequiously. “It’s enough to make one person sick! … Is it some sort of a prophecy, father?”
“Be sure it’s by way of a prophecy,” said someone in the crowd.
“Another pound for her, another!” Semyon Yakovlevitch persisted.
There was a whole sugar-loaf still on the table, but the saint ordered a pound to be given, and they gave her a pound.
“Lord have mercy on us!” gasped the people, crossing themselves. “It’s surely a prophecy.”
“Sweeten your heart for the future with mercy and loving kindness, and then come to make complaints against your own children; bone of your bone. That’s what we must take this emblem to mean,” the stout monk from the monastery, who had had no tea given to him, said softly but self-complacently, taking upon himself the role of interpreter in an access of wounded vanity.
“What are you saying, father?” cried the widow, suddenly infuriated. “Why, they dragged me into the fire with a rope round me when the Verhishins’ house was burnt, and they locked up a dead cat in my chest. They are ready to do any villainy. …”
“Away with her! Away with her!” Semyon Yakovlevitch said suddenly, waving his hands.
The verger and the boy dashed through the partition. The verger took the widow by the arm, and without resisting she trailed to the door, keeping her eyes fixed on the loaves of sugar that had been bestowed on her, which the boy dragged after her.
“One to be taken away. Take it away,” Semyon Yakovlevitch commanded to the servant like a workman, who remained with him. The latter rushed after the retreating woman, and the three servants returned somewhat later bringing back one loaf of sugar which had been presented to the widow and now taken away from her. She carried off three, however.
“Semyon Yakovlevitch,” said a voice at the door. “I dreamt of a bird, a jackdaw; it flew out of the water and flew into the fire. What does the dream mean?”
“Frost,” Semyon Yakovlevitch pronounced.
“Semyon Yakovlevitch, why don’t you answer me all this time? I’ve been interested in you ever so long,” the lady of our party began again.
“Ask him!” said Semyon Yakovlevitch, not heeding her, but pointing to the kneeling gentleman.
The monk from the monastery to whom the order was given moved sedately to the kneeling figure.
“How have you sinned? And was not some command laid upon you?”
“Not to fight; not to give the rein to my hands,” answered the kneeling gentleman hoarsely.
“Have you obeyed?” asked the monk.
“I cannot obey. My own strength gets the better of me.”
“Away with him, away with him! With a broom, with a broom!” cried Semyon Yakovlevitch, waving his hands. The gentleman rushed out of the room without waiting for this penalty.
“He’s left a gold piece where he knelt,” observed the monk, picking up a half-imperial.
“For him!” said the saint, pointing to the rich merchant. The latter dared not refuse it, and took it.
“Gold to gold,” the monk from the monastery could not refrain from saying.
“And give him some with sugar in it,” said the saint, pointing to Mavriky Nikolaevitch. The servant poured out the tea and took it by mistake to the dandy with the pince-nez.
“The long one, the long one!” Semyon Yakovlevitch corrected him.
Mavriky Nikolaevitch took the glass, made a military half-bow, and began drinking it. I don’t know why, but all our party burst into peals of laughter.
“Mavriky Nikolaevitch,” cried Liza, addressing him suddenly. “That kneeling gentleman has gone away. You kneel down in his place.”
Mavriky Nikolaevitch looked at her in amazement.
“I beg you to. You’ll do me the greatest favour. Listen, Mavriky Nikolaevitch,” she went on, speaking in an emphatic, obstinate, excited, and rapid voice. “You must kneel down; I must see you kneel down. If you won’t, don’t come near me. I insist, I insist!”
I don’t know what she meant by it; but she insisted upon it relentlessly, as though she were in a fit. Mavriky Nikolaevitch, as we shall see later, set down these capricious impulses, which had been particularly frequent of late, to outbreaks of blind hatred for him, not due to spite, for, on the contrary, she esteemed him, loved him, and respected him, and he knew that himself—but from a peculiar unconscious hatred which at times she could not control.
In silence he gave his cup to an old woman standing behind him, opened the door of the partition, and, without being invited, stepped into Semyon Yakovlevitch’s private apartment, and knelt down in the middle of the room in sight of all. I imagine that he was deeply shocked in his candid and delicate
