Peasant Tales of Russia Part 9

Helene had not yet reached her door, when she saw approaching her, like a red point in the darkness, some one carrying a lantern.

"Who comes there?" she asked.

"Is it you, Sister?" answered a youthful voice whose musical tones sounded strange in the blackness of the night.

"What! Is it you? You come to meet me?"

"Yes, I have prepared the samovar (tea-urn). As you did not come, I feared something had happened, and here I am."

"I had forgotten in the church how time pa.s.sed, and Sister Seraphine made me come out."

"It was time; it has struck seven."

"And you--what have you been doing? I have not seen you the whole day."

"I have been painting; then I tried to read, but my head felt heavy. I think my John the Baptist is not a success."

"Why?"

"I cannot give him the aspect of an ascetic; his eyes, his smile are too sweet; the desert sun had bronzed him, his features must have been harsher."

"Paint him as G.o.d inspires you. This evening, during vespers, I looked at your Holy Virgin the whole time."

"You think it good."

"It is perfect. Her sad eyes, her inspired face seem to say that she knows her divine Son will suffer for humanity."

"Well, but Sister Seraphine is not pleased with it."

"What does she say?" asked Helene with a smile.

"That it is hardly befitting to have beautiful pictures in convents, that the eyes of nuns ought not to dwell on the works of sinners."

"G.o.d bless her! She grumbles, but she is good at bottom. When I was ill, before you came, she hardly ever left me. Here we are at my door."

Helene and the novice Olia rapidly ascended the steps of the staircase, shaking the water from their cloaks. When they reached her well-warmed room, Helene took off her short black pelisse and the cap which concealed her hair. Her dwelling had two stages; Olia, her guest, lodged and worked on the ground floor; Helene occupied the upper one. The furniture was very simple--a table of white wood, a small very hard sofa covered with brown holland, two old arm-chairs and straw-bottomed chairs ranged along the wall. Above the sofa hung the portrait of some unknown nun with dark eyes shadowed by a black veil and pale wrinkled lips. In one corner, a lamp burned before an icon in a gold frame.

Helene was not yet thirty years old; her face, pale and thin, had already a.s.sumed the monastic expression, but her refined features were still beautiful; her large proud eyes recalled by their sadness and their pa.s.sionate expression Carlo Dolce's martyrs. One could guess that in this soul which had already long suffered, the sacrifice was not yet consummated, and the struggle still continued. In those dark eyes there often came also the poignant look of physical suffering; her face showed signs of sleepless nights, suppressed tears and sobs choked down.

Olia, with her sharp ear, heard her sometimes leap from her bed, run to the window, open it and fall on her knees in prayer. It was not the conventual life which weighed on Helene, but that which she had left outside the walls. Her life in the convent was pleasant and easy; the inmates had for her the regard which a sister deserves who brings a considerable fortune, and who was, moreover, highly cultured, a fact which lent peculiar distinction to the community. When ill.u.s.trious benefactresses visited the convent, Sister Helene was immediately sent for in order to talk French; these ladies departed delighted, and in aristocratic circles talked of "our convent," in order to distinguish it from the other at the opposite end of the town, which was humble and poverty-stricken, without cultured nuns and unvisited by grand ladies.

This time also, scarcely had Helene sat down to her tea than she was sent for by the abbess.

"May I come in?" said a voice behind the door.

"Certainly," answered Helene. "Ah, it is you, Sister Athanasia."

"Peace be with you, and G.o.d bless you; will you come to our Mother Varlaama."

"What is it?"

"Nothing; only a note for you, and they are waiting."

The abbess was a stout, heavy woman, with a plain but honest face such as is often seen in tradesmen's widows who have lived a quiet life with a sober and affectionate husband. She received Helene with a tender kiss:

"General Khlobestovsky's lady asks me to let you go to her this evening; she is particularly anxious about it and has sent the carriage."

"But it was just this evening that I did not want to go out."

"And why, may I ask? She is one of your old school-fellows, and what is more, rich and a fine lady. Go then for our sakes. Yesterday again her husband has sent us from the country two carts full of meal, flour and oil. We cannot refuse anything to such benefactors; he would regard it as a want of respect and would become indifferent to us. Make this sacrifice, Sister Helene, for the great advantage of us all. Finally I exact it as an act of obedience, as part of your conventual service. Go!

Go!"

So saying, she embraced and dismissed her.

III

Helene felt ill at ease every time that she entered the Khlobestovsky's drawing-room, not exactly because she disliked the mistress of the house; they had been school-fellows and had remained friends. The general was always absent; he preferred country life and the superintendence of his estate, in the first place because his affairs got on the better for it, and secondly he was thus out of reach of the sentimental and romantic claims of his wife, claims which his personal appearance did little to justify.

Each time that the general's wife saw Helene again, she applied a fine cambric handkerchief to her eyes to wipe away some tears, her flabby cheeks quivered, and innumerable wrinkles appeared round her chin and mouth.

"What self-sacrifice!" she invariably exclaimed, pressing her friend's hands. "How happy you are, my darling! while we are--how does one say it?--drowned in sin."

"Plunged," corrected her children's governess.

"Yes, plunged. Exactly so! You, on the other, are saving your soul, and are quite absorbed in G.o.d."

Then she took Helene's hand and said, "You are tired; take my arm."

"No, I am not, I a.s.sure you."

"Still, do it, dear Sister."

It was one of the general's wife's principles on commencing the conversation to speak with deference to her friend, though she was the younger of the two.

"These matins, these vespers, these ma.s.ses! ... It will indeed be well with you up there." And she lifted her large green eyes to the ceiling.

This time also she did not omit the inevitable comedy, and taking Helene's arm, she drew her to her boudoir, where the sound of several voices was audible.

"Come, dear, I have absolute confidence in you."

The "lady bountiful," a friend of General Khlobestovsky, was already seated in the boudoir. Her goggle eyes and projecting jaws well adapted to frighten poor people, opened wide at Helene's arrival, and in a high-pitched voice, imitating a famous actress, she exclaimed with a sigh, "How happy I am! How delighted! Holy woman!" and then turning towards a young girl very simply dressed who was also smiling at the nun, said, "Ah, Sacha, how long have you been here?"

Sacha was a niece of the general, and had been taking a course of music lessons at Petrograd. When she saw her, Helene's face lighted up.

"My course was over a fortnight ago, and I took advantage of it to come home again."

"You would do much better," said the "benefactress," looking at Helene, "to follow her example than to follow your course; I tell her so in your presence, Sister, because I tell her so when you are not there to hear.