Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [70]
Smiling, her eyes sparkling, she made a threatening gesture with her finger at the green stain, and then she crept up to the cradle and bent over the baby. She strangled him. Then she fell on the floor, laughing with joy because now at last it was given to her to be able to sleep. A moment later, she was fast asleep.
January 1888
The Princess
A CARRIAGE drawn by four plump, beautiful horses drove through the so-called Red Gate of the N–– — Monastery, and the monks and lay brothers crowding round the rooms of the hostel reserved for the gentry recognized the coachman and the horses from afar, and they knew that the lady sitting in the carriage was their own dear, familiar Princess Vera Gavrilovna.
An old man in livery jumped off the box and helped the Princess down. She raised her dark veil, and without hurrying went up to the priests to receive their blessing, and then with a gracious nod to the lay brothers she made her way into the hostel.
“I suppose you have missed your Princess,” she said to the monk who brought in her things. “I haven’t come to see you for a whole month! Well, here I am! Behold your princess! And where is the archbishop? Dear God, I am burning with impatience to see him. Such a wonderful, wonderful old man! You should be proud to have such an archbishop!”
When the archbishop came to see her, the Princess uttered an excited squeal, crossed her hands over her breasts, and went up to him to receive his blessing.
“No, no! Let me kiss your hand!” she said, seizing his hand and greedily kissing it three times. “How glad I am, holy father, to see you at last! No doubt you forgot your Princess, but I assure you not a moment passed when I was not thinking about your dear monastery. How good it is to be here! This surrender of life to God, far from the vanities of the world, has a special charm of its own, holy father, and I feel this with all my soul, though I cannot put it into words!”
The Princess’s cheeks reddened, and tears came to her eyes. She went on talking fervently while the archbishop, an old man of seventy, grave, homely, and timid, remained silent, only occasionally interrupting with some abrupt soldierlike sentences: “Certainly, Your Highness … Quite so … I understand …”
“Will Your Highness deign to spend some time with us?” he asked.
“I shall stay the night with you, and tomorrow I’m going to stay with Claudia Nikolayevna—it’s a long time since I’ve visited her—and the day after tomorrow I shall come back to you for three or four days. I want to rest my soul among you, holy father.”
The Princess loved to stay at the N–– — Monastery. For the last two years it had been her favorite resort, and every summer she spent some part of every month there, sometimes staying for two or three days, sometimes for a whole week. The gentle lay brothers, the silence, the low ceilings, the smell of cypresses, the unpretentious meals, the cheap curtains on the windows—all these things touched her, moved her, and disposed her to contemplation and good thoughts. It was enough for her to spend half an hour in the hostel and then she would feel that she too was weak and unassuming and that she smelled of cypress wood; and the past vanished into the distance, losing its significance. Although she was only twenty-nine, it occurred to the Princess that she resembled the archbishop and that, like him, she was not created for the enjoyment of wealth or of love or of earthly splendors, but for the sake of a tranquil, secluded life, as full of shadows as the hostel.
So it happens that quite suddenly and unexpectedly a ray of light will gleam in the dark cell of a monk given over to fasting and absorbed in prayer, or a bird will alight on the window of his cell and sing its song, and the stern monk will find himself involuntarily smiling, and there will flow into his heart, from underneath the heavy burden of his sorrows for all the sins he has committed, a joy which is entirely without