His thoughts of themselves took a serious turn, and there was no other desire in his heart than complete silence.
In this mood the evenings were no longer spent in wild drinking, but passed in gloomy silence.
Porfiry Vladimirych and Anninka were sitting all alone in the dining-room.
The evening service, accompanied by the reading of the gospel, had just ended, and the odor of incense still lingered in the room.
The clock struck ten, the servants had retired, and deep, pensive quiet settled over the house.
Anninka, her hands clasping her head, was deep in thought. Porfiry Vladimirych sat opposite, silent and sad.
Upon Anninka the Passion Week evening service always made an overwhelming impression.
As a child she had wept bitterly at the priest's words:
"And when they plaited a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head, and a reed in His right hand," and in a tremulous treble she used to sing after the sexton:
"Glory be to Thy long-suffering, oh, Lord! Glory be to Thee!"
After the service she used to run, all a-quiver with emotion, to the maids' room, and there, in the growing twilight (Arina Petrovna allowed no candles in that room when there was no work being done), she related "The Passion of our Lord" to the servants.
Silent tears flowed from the eyes of the slaves, and they heaved deep sighs.
The poor servants felt their Master and Redeemer with their whole hearts and believed He would arise from the dead, arise from the dead in truth.
Anninka, too, felt and believed.
Beyond the gloom of their life of suffering and persecution, all these poor in spirit beheld the radiant kingdom of freedom.
Even the old lady, usually so redoubtable, was gentle during Passion Week. She did not grumble or remind Anninka that she was an orphan. On the contrary, she fondled her and soothed her with kindly words.
But Anninka was restless even in bed, she tossed about and talked to herself in her sleep.
Then came her school years and wanderings, the first empty, the second painful.
But even as a nomadic actress, Anninka had jealously observed the "holy days," calling back echoes of her distant past and moods of childlike devotion.
But now when she saw her life clearly to its last detail, when she had cursed her life and when it became obvious that the future promised neither repentance nor forgiveness, when the source of devotion and the well-spring of tears had dried up, the effect of the tale of the Crucifixion upon her was truly overwhelming.
In childhood a gloomy night had surrounded her, but beyond the darkness she had sensed the presence of light.
Now nothing but interminable everlasting night stretched ahead endlessly.
She neither sighed, nor was agitated, nor even thought. She merely sank into a state of profound torpor.
Porfiry Vladimirych, too, from his very childhood, had revered the "holy days," but, true idol-worshipper that he was, he had observed merely the rites.
Every year on the eve of Good Friday he had had the priest come and read the gospel, had sighed, lifted up his arms, touched the ground with his forehead, marked the number of chapters read by means of wax balls, but had understood nothing.
Not until now, when his conscience was awakened, had he grasped the fact that the gospel contained the story of how Untruth visited a bloody judgment on Truth.
Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say that this discovery led him to definite conclusions about his own life, yet there is no doubt that it produced in him a commotion bordering on despair.
This state of mind was the more painful the more unconsciously he lived through the past which was the source of his commotion.
There was something terrible in his past, he could not tell exactly what.
It was as if a mountainous mass, hitherto motionless and hidden by an impenetrable veil, had suddenly moved upon him, threatening every moment to crush him. What he feared was that he might not be crushed, and he felt he must hasten the climax. He had been brooding over the idea for quite some time.
"We shall have communion on Saturday," suddenly flashed through his mind. "It would be well to visit dear mother's grave and take leave of her."
"Shall we walk over to the cemetery?" he turned to Anninka and explained his idea to her.
"Why, if you wish, we'll drive out there."
"No, not drive, but——" started Porfiry Vladimirych, but halted abruptly, as if struck by the thought that Anninka might be in his way.
"I have sinned against my dear departed mother. I, I was the cause of her death!" The thought preyed on him, and the desire to "take leave" grew stronger in his heart, to take leave not by mere conventional words, but by throwing himself on her grave and bursting out in the sobs of a death agony.
"So you say no one is to be blamed for Lubinka's death?" he suddenly asked, as if trying to cheer himself up.
At first Anninka paid no attention to his question. Two or three minutes later, however, she felt an irresistible impulse to return to the subject of Lubinka's death and torment herself with it.
"And her words were, 'Drink, you street-walker,'" he said, after she had repeated the story in detail.
"Yes, her very words."
"And you didn't drink?"
"I didn't. I am alive, as you see."
He rose and paced up and down the room several times, visibly affected.
At last he went over to Anninka and stroked her head.
"My poor, poor Anninka!" he said softly.
At the touch of his hands a startling change took place in her.
At first she was amazed, then her face began to work, and suddenly a violent torrent of hysterical, inhuman sobs burst from her chest.
"Uncle, are you good? Tell me, are you good?" she fairly shrieked.
In a broken voice, through tears and sobs, she kept on reiterating her query, the same she had asked him the day of her return to Golovliovo, to which he had given such an absurd reply.
"You are good? Tell me, answer me, are you good?"
"Did you hear what the priest read at the evening service?" he said, when she finally grew calm. "Oh, what sufferings He underwent!