A Misunderstanding

I

Vespers were drawing to a close. A young nun, Sister Helene, who had just finished her novitiate and taken the veil, stood in a dark recess, viewed from whence, the old church, with its round columns, seemed to fade away into the mysterious darkness under the cupola. She watched the black outlines of the “Sisters in Jesus” kneeling in the middle of the nave, the gilded “iconostasis” or church-screen with its blackened pictures set in frames sparkling with precious stones, its wax-tapers and lamps burning softly in the heavy incense-laden air. Each time that the deacon passed, waving his censer, they seemed to burn more brightly. But Sister Helene was lost in contemplation of a painting which had just been finished by the nun who shared her cell. The figure of the Holy Virgin seemed to stand out from the dark background; her large eyes were sadly fixed on the heads bent in devotion; the flickering flame seemed to cast light and shadow alternately on the divine features. It seemed sometimes to Helene that the sorrowful eyes of the Mother of God glowed with a misty light. Helene was not praying. Rapt in a self-forgetful reverie, her soul soared higher than the arches of the church; she had not heard the broken voice of the old priest, which sounded like a sob, any more than she heard the beatings of her own heart; she took no account of the flight of time till she felt a hand touch her arm.

“Are you going to stay there till morning?” a little misshapen old woman asked her with a discontented air.

“It is a real sin in you younger ones to stay so, absent-minded, without even making the sign of the cross. See! the wax-tapers have burnt out. You have been thinking long enough in your self-conceit, ‘Here I am alone, and all the others have gone.'”

“Pardon, Sister Seraphine,” murmured the nun.

“Very well! God will pardon you. Go now, I am closing the church. But make the sign of the cross; that will not break your arm, and then an obeisance. God be with you. All the same, it is a sin in you young ones. Ah, if they would only give us another abbess.”

Helene turned once more to look at the church-screen.

The church was now plunged in silence and darkness; the old nun hobbled before the altar, then disappeared behind the columns. Here and there were visible the little flames of the lamps which are never put out. A bunch of keys fell on the flag-stones, sounding like the clash of chains. Sister Seraphine had dropped them.

Once more she watched the young nun’s figure as it vanished in the darkness.

“One of the intellectuals!” grumbled the old woman.

“Are we not then all equal before God, those who know as well as those who are ignorant. To speak seven languages, is to multiply one’s sins sevenfold. Jesus did not seek for His apostles among the learned, but among fishermen. It is better then to be ignorant. If we had another Superior, Mother Anempodista for instance, she would not have hesitated to give you her blessing and send you to wash the dishes or knead the dough. We are one community; service and trouble, all ought to be shared. It is not French that the Apostle Peter will speak at the gate of Paradise; he will not be afraid to strike you on the forehead with his key and to say, ‘Be off, blue-stocking, to the eternal fire; go and talk French to the devils.’ No, there is something seriously wrong with these young ones. The Evil One hovers about them trying to entangle them. Certainly it was better under Mother Anempodista; in her time the blue-stockings would not have given themselves airs over the others.”

Still hobbling as she went, the old woman closed the church and went in the darkness to the clock tower where she had lived for about forty years. From the time of her first arrival at the convent and entrance on her novitiate, she had been entrusted with the duty of the portress and remained in that post. There under the bells, in a tiny cell like a niche in a wall, Sister Seraphine grew old and suffered, became bent and looked forward to die the death of the righteous. She lived half-forgotten there, the little old woman, but content. Above her boomed the great bells of the convent, close by her ear tinkled the bell of the main entrance when a visitor called. Sometimes, when gusts of wind roared in the bell-tower, Sister Seraphine would cross herself, murmuring, “Holy saints have mercy! How excited the Evil One is! Whose soul is he coming to seek? Can it be Sister Elizabeth’s? To-day a fine aroma of coffee came from her cell. What a temptation!”

Sister Seraphine’s cell was occupied almost entirely by a bed of rough planks; a mattress, a white pillow, a sheepskin coverlet constituted all her luxuries. On the narrow sill of the little window—almost a loop-hole—were placed a piece of bread, some black radishes, salt and kvass; high up in a corner a lamp burned before the icon.

On entering she made the sign of the cross and lay down on her pallet, but suddenly the gate-bell rang wildly. In a moment she was on her feet.

“I am coming! I hear! I hear! The lunatics to ring like that!” she grumbled, taking down the great key from the wall; “here is fine music.”

She descended, shivering, and opened with difficulty the large gate which grated on its hinges.

“Well, what makes you ring like that? We are not deaf,” she said to a huge footman wrapped in his fur-lined livery. “Where have you come from and from whom?” she asked, seeing a closed carriage standing a little way off.

“Let me pass first, little old woman; I shall find my way quite well.”

“Answer first; to whom are you going?”

“To the Lady Abbess, old crow of a portress! It is Madame the wife of General Khlobestovsky who sends me; don’t you recognize me? Take your eyes out of your pocket.”

“Yes, if one had time to study your face! You have all the same faces, as like each other as the curbstones of pavements. It is a sin to have to do with you. Wait till I call Sister Anastasia; she will go to our Mother. Have you a letter? Give it me. A pretty word—’crow of a portress.’ You think yourself somebody because you are covered with clothes belonging to your master. Wait! Wait! when the hour of your death strikes, you will remember that ‘crow of a portress,’ and you will repent. But God is good; He will pardon you; because you lack brains. Consider at any rate, great booby, where you are. ‘A crow’ … the idiot!”