II
The fabulous vastness of the country repeated itself day after day with the persistence of eternal truth—sank into the child’s unconsciousness, coloured his childish thoughts, his young feelings, carried persuasion into his ignorance—irresistible like an unceasing whisper of a voice from Heaven. The father’s prosperity grew apace—quicker than the child. There are such fortunate hazards! They ceased to wander and the boy lived with his Ukrainian mother in riverside towns while the father travelled about, busy with his wheat transport contracts, watching, highbooted in the mire of banks, his blunt-nosed scows afloat on the muddy streams of interminable waterways. In the desolation of the antechambers of government offices he found a new ambition for his son. He saw him uniformed, embroidered, bemedalled, autocratic, called Excellency. Everything is possible in Russia; and, as the proverb says: anything may be done—only cautiously! When the boy was eight years old he put him to school in a provincial town. From there Stephen went to the capital. The elder man could not understand the ambition of the youth. … Paint! Why paint? Paint what? Where? What’s the good of it? Generals don’t paint; nor do Councillors—even the writers in chancelleries don’t paint. As to the General-Governors they would not even speak to a painter; they would not hear him if he presumed to. … The old man was afraid of such an incomprehensible form of madness. The son took his stand on the autocracy of vocation and argued his point in strange words, with bewildering arguments. The father saw only the fixedness of resolve and—in his fear of losing the favourite forever—pleaded timidly. … All the painters of which his son spoke—he understood—were dead. Well! Poor folk. God rest their souls. What’s the good then of going abroad if there was no one there to tell the secrets of the trade. They had left works? Maybe, maybe. He felt certain Stephen could paint much better than those dead fellows. Then, why go so far to look at what they left—if there was anything left to look at? He doubted it. Such a long time—long time. Things get rotten and crumble—houses and bridges—let alone paintings. And they were foreigners too! Why go so far—amongst Germans and suchlike? Was Russia not big enough to paint in—if he must! … He bowed his head at last. Heaven willed it. For his sins! For his sins! … “And do you write to us—we are old people,” he said to his son. Then added with a tremulous sense of his own cunning, “Write to us. You will be here and there—God knows! Write so that we know where to send money after you. Those foreigners are great cheats and you are young—young. Well, it’s time. Then, go with God … and come back soon.” They embraced. The son drove off, the big collar of his cloak up, without turning his head once. In the house the mother had thrown her print skirt over her head and wept in the profound darkness of her grief. The father stood at the gate and threw a rapid sign of the cross after the vanished longings of his simple heart.
For years, under the gilded domes of splendid cathedrals, in the imposing gloom of holy monasteries, or in humble village churches the bereaved father sought in vain the help of renowned saints who answered his trustful prayers by the meaningless stare of naive art. Evidently he did not deserve the mercy of the blessed. This thought dawned upon him at last, and he ceased to make himself obtrusive by his prayers but still haunted assiduously the sacred edifices in an indistinct but tenacious hope that the sight of his mute distress would, in time, move some attendant at the footstool of the Most High to a compassionate intercession. With both elbows on the little wooden table of “Traktirs” frequented by men of his class he often told his friends, while they sipped their tea, the story of his great sorrow—ending it solemnly with the words: “Our son is under the visitation of God,” and with a deep sigh. He cursed the impious Frenchmen who had, by their black arts, bewitched the boy. After consulting his wife he made a solemn vow to build a church in which the misguided son could have his peace with God by painting, on a gold background, a gorgeous altarpiece. Let him only return! The money was ready! But Providence, unlike the powers of this earth, was impervious to the offer of a splendid bribe. He did not see his son again. Reaching home, after one of his business journeys, he was seized by some violent internal disorder. He had just time in the last return of consciousness to assure his distracted wife of his belief that the Jews had poisoned all the wells in the province—and expired in her arms with the resignation of indifference. She followed him quickly. During the last months of her life she seemed to have forgotten her eldest boy in an impatient longing to rejoin the man who had charmed her youth.
Stephen grieved, and carried his grief, contained and profound, through every second of the first few weeks. In the sifted light coming with pearly purity through the white clouds of lofty skylights he wandered
