CHAPTER III

AT HOME

THE last night was spent at Kovylsk. This place was the chief town of the province. Here the governor lived. Here also was the dwelling of the archbishop. The law courts, the consistory, and the jail were here. Civil law and ecclesiastical law held their high courts in Kovylsk. Alexis was very busy, but also very cautious in this town of the governor and archbishop.

They took up their quarters in the abode of Markovin, a secret disciple, more timid than Nicodemus, but a very useful friend to the Stundists. He was in abject terror all the time a Stundist was under his roof, but he never refused to shelter them. Alexis and Michael left their telega and horse at a little inn quite at the other side of the town, and did not go near him till dusk.

Markovin had means of succouring the men in prison, of receiving news from them, and of smuggling in letters to them. One of the warders who was favourably inclined towards Stundism came occasionally to his house, bringing information about them. He had been several years in the prison wards, and was trusted greatly by the authorities, as he seemed always a stupid but well-principled man. His name was Pafnutitch, and he had formerly been a soldier. He happened to look in whilst Alexis and Michael were in Markovin's room.

"Look here!" he said, after giving them all the news he could. "There's poor Kondraty would give his ears to have a sight of one of you. I daren't take you, Alexis, but if Michael didn't mind running a little bit of a risk, just put his head for a moment in the jaws of the lion, I'd pass him in—ay! and out again, unless we were very unlucky. Let him bring a bag o' tools with him, and I'll say he's my sister's son learning to be a carpenter. What do you say?"

"I'm ready!" cried Michael, springing eagerly to his feet.

"No! No! No!" exclaimed Markovin, in terrified accents. "Not from my house. Not from here!"

"Not now," said Alexis quietly. "It would be useless. We have no important news yet to send to Kondraty. But another time, Pafnutitch, I may send Michael to you."

It was the first call upon his courage and sympathy, and Michael rejoiced to feel that he had not for a moment hesitated to answer it; no cowardice or indifference had made him fail.

It was evening when Alexis and Michael drove slowly, with their tired horse, along the grass-grown village street of Knishi. Each cottage, built of wood or mud, stood at the back of fold-yards large or small, according to the number of sheep or cattle possessed by the owner. Only on the eastern side of the dwellings were any doors or windows to be seen, for the Oukrainian houses are built always to face the east. But though on one side of the road, the inmates looked out through their doors and windows to see who was passing, as they heard the creaking of the telega wheels, not one gave them a smile or a word of welcome. On the other side, some of the people, curious to know who was coming, peeped round the corner of the huts, but they, too, only stared and frowned.

Michael felt a lump in his throat, and tears burning under his eyelids. It was not in this way he had dreamed of coming home. He had been absent only a year, and he knew all their names, and recollected their faces. Some of the women had kissed him when he went away; and the children had followed them as far as the barrier, calling farewell after them as long as they were in sight. But now the boys, his playfellows, slouched away, as if they were ashamed or afraid to recognise him, or stood and stared at him with unconcealed animosity in their manner. This was not what he had looked forward to.

In his trunk lying at the bottom of the telega were a number of little keepsakes, which he had bought with great pleasure in Scotland. He had often thought of how he should go round the village, from house to house, giving them away, and telling strange tales of his voyage and his sojourn in a foreign country. He had all the strong desire of a traveller to narrate his adventures. He had not even forgotten his enemies, Father Vasili, the Batoushka, and his wife, but now Father Vasili was dead, and only the Matoushka was left. Was it possible that nobody would accept his keepsakes?

Presently they were past Knishi, and on the road to Ostron, half a mile farther on, where their home was. Michael could no longer bear the wearied jog-trot of the old mare. He sprang from the telega with a shout, and ran eagerly towards the farmstead. Yes! There it was! The very home which had haunted his dreams, by night and day, during all his long absence.

The front was in shadow, for it was evening, but the setting sun shone slantwise on the barns and stables, and made golden tracks down each side of the fold-yard. The buds on the lilac trees at the corner of the house stood out against the low light. In the doorway stood Paraska, her usually sad face kindled into a look of glad welcome; and on the turf seat by her, outside the door, was Velia, her long pretty hair pushed back from her eyes and forehead. With a loud cry of delight, she flew across the yard and threw herself into his open arms.

"Never go away again, brother!" she cried. "Never leave little Velia again!"

For a few moments Michael was silent, gazing with dreamy eyes at the open doorway. For it seemed to him that just within the shadow, behind Paraska, he saw dimly a vague form, like his mother, with such a smile upon her face as had lingered there to the last, when they closed her coffin. Was it possible she was there to take a share in the joy of the home-coming? He clasped Velia more closely to him, and kissed her tenderly. When he lifted up his head again, the vision had vanished.

Paraska, too, was gone. She threw her apron over her head, and ran away to the little room that had been made for her in a corner of the granary. She was the wife of Demyan, a Stundist, who had been sentenced to exile at the same time as Paul Rodenko, to whom the farm at Ostron belonged. He was now living at Irkutsk, in Eastern Siberia, thousands of miles away. When he went away, she had chosen to stay behind with her two babies, who were too young to bear the privations and perils of the long journey, made chiefly on foot. But when her children were four and five years of age, they had been taken from her by the Church authorities, to be brought up in the Orthodox faith, and she had never been able to find out where they were. Catherine Ivanoff had taken the broken-hearted mother, penniless and friendless, and almost maddened, into their house, and treated her as an old and cherished friend. But the forlorn woman was a prey to grief, and went through her daily life almost speechlessly.

"Let us run after Paraska and speak to her," said Velia.

Up the rude ladder and across the granary floor they ran to Paraska's little room, but so piteous were the sobs and cries they heard beyond the closed door, that they crept quietly away again.

Yet, in spite of all, that evening was a very happy one. Alexis sat by the great stove, for it was still cool at night, with Velia on his knee, and his right arm round his son. Michael had much to tell them, and they had a thousand questions to ask. They did not avoid talking of the mother, whom they spoke of not as one dead and lost to them, but only as having reached the end of a journey, and entered the heavenly home before them.

To Michael and Velia, if not to Alexis himself, heaven was as real as if it had been another land on the face of this earth. They seemed to know as much about it as they did of Siberia, or the Transcaucasus, whither so many of the Stundists had been banished, and where they might go themselves some day. Only there was this difference: they had no doubt of going to heaven, and they were not sure of going to Siberia.