CHAPTER XXIX

A YOKE OF BONDAGE

THE long white line of the road to Knishi, running straight up to the distant horizon, lay before Father Cyril, as he drove slowly along it, lost in thought. He was very unhappy, and his heart felt like lead. There was not a home in Knishi where he would not rather have placed Velia than with the old Matoushka. He knew her to be a hard, mean, and hypocritical woman; very devout, for she never failed to be present at mass every day. But he felt that she hated him for the many changes he had made in Father Vasili's slovenly performance of his duties, though she paid him exaggerated deference as her priest. She came often to confession— a religious duty more painful to him than to her. How could he give up the dear child, Velia, to her?

There was, too, a painful sense that he was held in the iron hand of tyranny. He had never felt it before, and the touch penetrated to his very soul. It was a sin against humanity to give the child up to this woman; his conscience rebelled against it. Was it not also a sin against God?

Father Cyril dropped his reins, and let his horse crawl on slowly at its own pace. Here was the question of questions—the question that had sent his parishioners into banishment. The tyranny man exercised over man, piercing to the very thoughts of the heart—was it a thing to be endured? "No!" said the Stundist. "We stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free."

But Father Cyril found himself bound fast under a yoke of bondage. It made him very miserable to feel its weight as he had never done before. He knew there was no help for him. He must do a thing which his soul and his conscience abhorred. The child would be taken from him by force, if he did not give her up.

It was heartrending to him to tell Velia of the doom that was pronounced against her. He took her on his knee, and pressed her head tenderly against his breast, not daring to look upon her face as he broke the painful news to her. He felt the little heart beating fast against his encircling arm, and the convulsive clasp of her small hand. At last she spoke.

"Father Cyril, is it true?" she asked.

"Yes, yes!" he said.

"Oh, if father and Michael only knew!" she cried. "They'd save me."

"They could not, my darling," he answered, tears stealing down his cheeks; "the Government is too strong, and the Church is too strong, for feeble folks like us to resist them. We must submit. I will do all I can for you, and watch over you; and you shall come here as often as possible."

"The old Matoushka will not let it be!" cried Velia in despair.

Father Vasili's widow lived a little way on the other side of the church, near to the cemetery, in a log-hut she had had built for herself when her husband died. She was very well off, thanks to her own thrift, and her clever faculty for squeezing gifts and dues out of the parishioners during Father Vasili's life. But she chose to live as if she was in the deepest penury. She had never kept a servant, but now she was growing old, she had to pay a woman—when she could get one—to do her washing and cleaning. To give her her due, her house was far cleaner than the peasants' huts. For some months she had coveted the possession of Velia and the three roubles a month paid for her maintenance. Now she had got her, her chief aim was to make her do as much work and to cost as small a sum as possible.

She had a secondary aim—that of making Velia into an Orthodox Christian. She never missed going to church, and thither Velia was bound to accompany her. Father Cyril, at the altar, saw the strong old woman take hold of Velia's reluctant hand, and make the sign of the cross with it, and force the girl to bend her head before the icon. The action scandalised him, and Velia's miserable face tormented him. It was in vain he remonstrated with the old Matoushka; she was only too glad to be able to wring his heart.

Father Cyril found himself powerless to soften Velia's lot. The woman was cruel, but not with such manifest cruelty as to arouse the indignation of the neighbours, and give him sufficient ground for a representation to the archbishop, and a petition to get Velia placed elsewhere. He knew she suffered from a want of nourishing food; and as the winter passed by he saw that she went shivering about in very deficient clothing. He felt that he should have to stand by, his hands tied, and his tongue silenced, whilst the child he loved was dying by inches. He made an effort to induce the old Matoushka to allow Velia to come to his home once a week, by promising to provide her with wood split ready for her stove—a task too heavy for the little girl.

"She may go if she'll go to confession," said the old Matoushka.

"That, of course, you could not forbid," replied Father Cyril.

But Velia could not be prevailed upon to go to confession. Her father had thought it wrong, she hardly knew why, but that was enough.

Father Cyril appealed to Yarina; and Yarina, who was the richest woman in Knishi, invited the old Matoushka to spend a day with her, and bring Velia to play with her children. The old Matoushka went, but she locked Velia up in a closet to which there was no window. The girl was her slave, and no one should interfere between them. The Starosta, Okhrim, was on her side, and both of them triumphed over Father Cyril. They held fast a scourge to flog him with. For Velia's sake, he gave up the useless conflict.

It was almost a relief to Father Cyril when he, found himself, through the influence of his wife's relatives, transferred to a larger and more important parish on the other side of Kovylsk. He could do nothing for Velia, and her misery was greater than he could bear to witness. No letter had reached him from Alexis, and he did not know how to find out his place of exile. Besides, what could Alexis do? The knowledge of his child's position would only torture him.

Father Cyril could not even bid the girl farewell, except in the presence of the old Matoushka, who would not let Velia go out of her sight. He drew the child to him, looked into her appealing eyes, kissed her forehead, and tearing himself away took refuge in his church, where, before the altar, he prayed long and fervently for the conversion of the misguided Stundists to the Orthodox faith.

After Father Cyril was gone, Velia's life was a blank despair. To children there is no hope in the future, for they can foresee nothing. The daily glimpse of Father Cyril in church, the fond and pitying glance he never failed to give to the eager, miserable little face always turned to him; the sight of the young Matoushka and her children—all these had been something to look forward to, day by day. They had been what Velia lived by, the scanty food on which her young heart fed. Now this food was taken away, she grew hungry, with a desperate hunger, for the sight of a beloved face. There was no face to be seen in her world save the harsh, forbidding visage of her mistress.

It was the gossip of the village that the old Matoushka was about to marry Okhrim, the Starosta. This was not true, though Okhrim went often to visit the widow. Neither could ever arrive at a satisfactory knowledge of how much property the other possessed. Their conversation was always of money, or of the almost as interesting topic—the Stundist heresy. Both were supremely Orthodox. When Okhrim was there, Velia hardly dared to breathe. She crept into the darkest corners, and made herself as small as possible. Nothing amused Okhrim more than to force the trembling child to make a profound obeisance to the "Mother of God," a really handsome icon which occupied the place of honour in the hut. It proved how devout the priest's widow was.

"She'll make a good Christian yet," he was wont to say, with a sneering smile which frightened Velia more than his worst oath.

"She's a stubborn little toad!" responded the mistress viciously.

By day Velia scarcely knew a moment's rest. The old Matoushka was a strong old woman, and she had never had a child of her own. She did not know, and she did not wish to know, the limits of a child's strength. As long as Velia could move, she must be kept to work. When she could work no longer it was time for her to go to bed, on a ragged mattress behind the oven. It was warm, but it swarmed with crickets and cockroaches. Velia worked till her young limbs ached, and her eyes grew dim with sleep, before she could resolve to seek rest. But every night nature compelled her to succumb, and creep exhausted to her dreaded bed.

So the long dreary months of the winter wore slowly away—those bitter days and nights when her father and brother were marching across the icebound wastes of Siberia, often congratulating themselves that Velia was safe, and cherished as a daughter in Father Cyril's home. The girl cried after them incessantly in her heart, though her tyrant knew nothing of it. It is terrible, but children are sometimes too sad for tears or cries.