III
Out of the house Father Ignaty had much talking to do: with his ecclesiastical subordinates, and with his parishioners when he was performing his duties; and sometimes with acquaintances when he played with them at “Preference.” But when he returned home he thought that he had been all the day silent. This came of the fact that with none of these people could he speak of the question which was the chief and most important of all to him, which racked his thoughts every night: Why had Vera died?
Father Ignaty was unwilling to admit to himself that it was impossible now to solve this difficulty, and kept on thinking that it was still possible.
Every night—and they were all now for him sleepless—he would recall the moment when he and his wife had stood by Vera’s bed at darkest midnight, and he had entreated her “Speak!” And when in his recollections he arrived at that word, even the rest of the scene presented itself to him as different to what it had really been. His closed eyes preserved in their darkness a vivid, unblurred picture of that night; they saw distinctly Vera lifting herself upon her bed and saying with a smile—But what did she say? And that unuttered word of hers, which would solve the whole question, seemed so near, that if he were to stretch his ear and still the beating of his heart, then, then he would hear it—and at the same time it was so infinitely, so desperately far.
Father Ignaty would rise from his bed, and stretching forth his clasped hands in a gesture of supplication, entreat:
“Vera!”
And silence was the answer he received.
One evening Father Ignaty went to Olga Stepanovna’s room, where he had not been for about a week, and sitting down near the head of her bed, he turned away from her doleful, obstinate gaze, and said:
“Mother! I want to talk to you about Vera. Do you hear?”
Her eyes were silent, and Father Ignaty raising his voice began to speak in the loud and severe tones with which he addressed his penitents:
“I know you think that I was the cause of Vera’s death. But consider, did I love her less than you? You judge strangely—I was strict, but did that prevent her from doing as she pleased? I made little of the respect due to a father; I meekly bowed my neck, when she, with no fear of my curse, went away—thither. And you—mother—did not you with tears entreat her to remain, until I ordered you to be silent. Am I responsible for her being born hard-hearted? Did I not teach her of God, of humility, and of love?”
Father Ignaty gave a swift glance into his wife’s eyes, and turned away.
“What could I do with her, if she would not open her grief to me. Command? I commanded her. Intreat? I intreated. What? Do you think I ought to have gone down on my knees before the little chit of a girl, and wept, like an old woman! What she had got in her head, and where she got it, I know not. Cruel, heartless daughter!”
Father Ignaty smote his knees with his fists.
“She was devoid of love—that’s what it was! I know well enough what she called me—a tyrant. You she did love, didn’t she? You who wept, and—humbled yourself?”
Father Ignaty laughed noiselessly.
“Lo—o—ved! That’s it, to comfort you she chose such a death—a cruel, disgraceful death! She died on the ballast, in the dirt—like a d—d—og, to which someone gives a kick on the muzzle.”
Father Ignaty’s voice sounded low and hoarse:
“I’m ashamed! I’m ashamed to go out into the street! I’m ashamed to come out of the chancel! I’m ashamed before God. Cruel, unworthy daughter! One could curse you in your grave—”
When Father Ignaty glanced again at his wife, she had fainted, and did not come to herself for some hours. And when she did come to herself her eyes were silent, and it was impossible to know whether she understood what Father Ignaty had said to her, or no.
That same night—it was a moonlight night in July, still, warm, soundless—Father Ignaty crept on tiptoe, so that his wife and her nurse should not hear him, up the stairs to Vera’s room. The window of the belvedere had not been opened since the death of Vera, and the atmosphere was dry and hot, with a slight smell of scorching from the iron roof, which had become heated during the day. There was an uninhabited and deserted feeling about the apartment from which man had been absent so long, and in which the wood of the walls, the furniture and other objects gave out a faint smell of growing decay.
The moonlight fell in a bright stripe across the window and floor, and reflected by the carefully washed white boards it illumined the corners with a dim semi-light, and the clean white bed with its two pillows, a big one and a little one, looked unearthly and ghostly. Father Ignaty opened the window, and the fresh air poured into the room in a broad stream, smelling of dust, of the neighbouring river, and the flowering lime, and bore on it a scarcely audible chorus, apparently, of people rowing a boat, and singing as they rowed.
Stepping silently on his naked feet, like a white ghost, Father Ignaty approached the empty bed, and bending his knees fell face-down on the pillows, and embraced them—the place where Vera’s face ought to have been.
He lay long so. The song became louder, and then gradually became inaudible; but he still lay there, with his long black hair dishevelled over his shoulders and on the bed.
The moon had moved on, and the room had become darker, when Father Ignaty raised his head, and throwing into his voice all the force of a long suppressed and long unacknowledged love, and listening to his words, as though not he, but Vera, were listening to them, exclaimed:
“Vera, my daughter! Do you understand what it means, daughter! Little daughter! My heart! my blood, my life! Your father, your poor old father, already grey and feeble.”
His shoulders shook, and all his heavy frame was convulsed. With a shudder Father Ignaty whispered tenderly, as to a little child:
“Your poor old father asks you. Yes, Verochka, he entreats. He weeps. He who never was so wont. Your grief, my little daughter, your suffering, are my own. More than mine.”
Father Ignaty shook his head.
“More, Verochka. What is death to me, an old man? But you—. If only you had realized, how tender, weak and timid you were! Do you remember how when you pricked your finger and the blood came, you began to cry. My little daughter! And you do indeed love me, love me dearly, I know. Every morning you kiss my hand. Speak, speak of what is grieving you—and I with these two hands will strangle your grief. They are still strong, Vera, these hands.”
His locks shook.
“Speak!”
He fixed his eyes on the wall, and stretching out his hands, cried:
“Speak!”
But the chamber was silent, and from the far distance was borne in the sound of the long and short whistles of a locomotive.
Father Ignaty, rolling his distended eyes, as though there stood before him the frightful ghost of a mutilated corpse, slowly raised himself from his knees, and with uncertain movement lifted his hand, with the fingers separated and nervously stretched out, to his head. Going out by the door, Father Ignaty sharply whispered the word:
“Speak!”
And silence was the answer he received.