on life was weak. And such a thing had never been known in those parts, a little child like that to take its life! What a sin! And what could such a little soul say to our Lord God in the world beyond?
And Maxim Ivanovitch brooded over it ever after. The man became so changed one would hardly have known him. He sorrowed grievously. He tried drinking, and drank heavily, but gave it up — it was no help. He gave up going to the factory too, he would listen to no one. If anyone spoke to him, he would be silent, or wave his hand. So he spent two months, and then he began talking to himself. He would walk about talking to himself. Vaskovo, the little village down the hill, caught fire, and nine houses were burnt; Maxim Ivanovitch drove up to look. The peasants whose cottages were burnt came round him wailing; he promised to help them and gave orders, and then he called his steward again and took it back. “There’s no need,” said he, “don’t give them anything,” and he never said why. “God has sent me to be a scorn unto all men,” said he, “like some monster, and therefore so be it. Like the wind,” said he, “has my fame gone abroad.” The archimandrite himself came to him. He was a stern man, the head of the community of the monastery. “What are you doing?” he asked sternly.
“I will tell you.” And Maxim Ivanovitch opened the Bible and pointed to the passage:
“Whoso shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Math. xviii, 6.)
“Yes,” said the archimandrite, “though it was not said directly of this, yet it fits it well. It is sad when a man loses his measure — the man is lost. And thou hast exalted thyself.”
And Maxim Ivanovitch sits as though a stupor had come upon him. The archimandrite gazed upon him.
“Listen,” said he, “and remember. It is said: ‘the word of a desperate man flies on the wind.’ And remember, also, that even the angels of God are not perfect. But perfect and sinless is one only, our Lord Jesus Christ, and Him the angels serve. Moreover, thou didst not will the death of that child, but wast only without wisdom. But this,” said he, “is marvellous in my eyes. Thou hast committed many even worse iniquities. Many men thou hast ruined, many thou hast corrupted, many thou hast destroyed, no less than, if thou hadst slain them. And did not his sisters, all the four babes, die almost before thine eyes? Why has this one only confounded thee? For all these in the past thou hast not grieved, I dare say, but hast even forgotten to think of them. Why art thou so horror-stricken for this child for whom thou wast not greatly to blame?”
“I dream at night,” Maxim Ivanovitch said.
“And what?”
But he told nothing more. He sat mute. The archimandrite marvelled, but with that he went away. There was no doing anything with him.
And Maxim Ivanovitch sent for the teacher, for Pyotr Stepanovitch; they had not met since that day.
“You remember him?” says he.
“Yes.”
“You painted a picture with oil colours, here in the tavern,” said he, “and took a copy of the chief priest’s portrait. Could you paint me a picture?”
“I can do anything, I have every talent. I can do everything.”
“Paint me a very big picture, to cover the whole wall, and paint in it first of all the river, and the slope, and the ferry, and all the people who were there, the colonel’s wife, and her daughter and the hedgehog. And paint me the other bank too, so that one can see the church and the square and the shops, and where the cabs stand — paint it all just as it is. And the boy by the ferry, just above the river, at that very place, and paint him with his two little fists pressed to his little breast. Be sure to do that. And open the heavens above the church on the further side, and let all the angels of heaven be flying to meet him. Can you do it or not?”
“I can do anything.”
“I needn’t ask a dauber like you. I might send for the finest painter in Moscow, or even from London itself, but you remember his face. If it’s not like, or little like, I’ll only give you fifty roubles. But if it’s just like, I’ll give you two hundred. You remember his eyes were blue. . . . And it must be made a very, very big picture.”
It was prepared. Pyotr Stepanovitch began painting and then he suddenly went and said:
“No, it can’t be painted like that.”
“Why so?”
“Because that sin, suicide, is the greatest of all sins. And would the angels come to meet him after such a sin?”
“But he was a babe, he was not responsible.”
“No, he was not a babe, he was a youth. He was eight years old when it happened. He was bound to render some account.”
Maxim Ivanovitch was more terror-stricken than ever.
“But I tell you what, I’ve thought something,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, “we won’t open the heaven, and there’s no need to paint the angels, but I’ll let a beam of light, one bright ray of light, come down from heaven as though to meet him. It’s all the same as long as there’s something.”
So he painted the ray. I saw that picture myself afterwards, and that very ray of light, and the river. It stretched right across the wall, all blue, and the sweet boy was there, both little hands pressed to his breast, and the little lady, and the hedgehog, he put it all in. Only Maxim Ivanovitch showed no one the picture at the time, but locked it up in his room, away from all eyes; and when the people trooped from all over the town to see it, he bade them drive every one away. There was a great talk about it. Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed as though he were beside himself. “I can do anything now,” said he. “I’ve only to set up in St. Petersburg at the court.” He was a very polite man, but he liked boasting beyond all measure. And his fate overtook him; when he received the full two hundred roubles, he began drinking at once, and showed his money to every one, bragging of it, and he was murdered at night, when he was drunk, and his money stolen by a workman with whom he was drinking, and it all became known in the morning.
And it all ended so that even now they remember it everywhere there. Maxim Ivanovitch suddenly drives up to the same widow. She lodged at the edge of the town in a working-woman’s hut; he stood before her and bowed down to the ground. And she had been ill ever since that time and could scarcely move.
“Good mother,” he wailed, “honest widow, marry me, monster as I am. Let me live again!”
She looks at him more dead than alive.
“I want us to have another boy,” said he. “And if he is born, it will mean that that boy has forgiven us both, both you and me. For so the boy has bidden me.”
She saw the man was out of his mind, and in a frenzy, but she could not refrain.
“That’s all nonsense,” she answered him, “and only cowardice. Through the same cowardice I have lost all my children. I cannot bear the sight of you before me, let alone accepting such an everlasting torture.”
Maxim Ivanovitch drove off, but he did not give in. The whole town was agog at such a marvel. Maxim Ivanovitch sent match-makers to her. He sent for two of his aunts, working women in the chief town of the province. Aunts they were not, but kinsfolk of some sort, decent people. They began trying to turn her, they kept persuading her and would not leave the cottage. He sent her merchants’ wives of the town too, and the wife of the head priest of the cathedral, and the wives of officials; she was besieged by the whole town, and she got really sick of it.
“If my orphans had been living,” she said, “but why should I now? Am I to be guilty of such a sin against my children?”
The archimandrite, too, tried to persuade her. He breathed into her ear:
“You will make a new man of him.”
She was horrified, and people wondered at her.
“How can you refuse such a piece of luck?”
And this was how he overcame her in the end.
“Anyway he was a suicide,” he said, “and not a babe, but a youth, and owing to his years he could not have been admitted to the Holy Communion, and so he must have been bound to give at least some account. If you enter into matrimony with me, I’ll make you a solemn promise, I’ll build a church of God to the eternal memory of his soul.”
She could not stand out against that, and consented. So they were married.
And all were in amazement. They lived from the very first day in great and unfeigned harmony, jealously guarding their marriage vow, and like one soul in two bodies. She conceived that winter, and they began visiting the churches, and fearing the wrath of God. They stayed in three monasteries, and consulted prophecy. He built the
