CHAPTER I
Alexis had his eyes fixed on the door through which Peter was expected to enter.
The yellow February sun flooded the small reception room of the Preobrazhensky Palace, a house almost as white and plain as the Tsar’s house in Petersburg. The windows opened on a landscape familiar to Alexis from earliest childhood; a snow-covered field dotted with black crows, grey walls of barracks, prison buildings, earth ramparts with pyramids of cannon balls, sentry houses and motionless sentinels outlined against the transparent emerald sky. Sparrows were chirping on the window-sill, just as in spring; clear drops fell like tears from stalactites of ice. It was nearing midday, an odour betrayed the cooking of a cabbage pie. The monotonous ticking of a clock’s pendulum alone broke the silence.
The Tsarevitch had been calm, almost gay, throughout the journey from Naples back to Russia: a kind of insensibility seemed to have possessed him; he had been unable to realize what was happening to him, or why and whither he was being taken back.
Only now, sitting waiting with Tolstoi in the reception room and gazing, just as on that nervous night in Naples, at a fatal door, he seemed to awake and begin at last to understand. Just as then he trembled as in a fever, now crossing himself with muttering prayers, now gripping Tolstoi’s hand:
“Peter Andreitch! Peter Andreitch! what will happen? I confess I am afraid!”
Tolstoi tried to pacify him with his velvety voice “Courage, your Highness! A sin confessed is half forgiven. With God’s help everything will arrange itself, slowly, gently and peacefully——”
The Tsarevitch did not listen, he was rehearsing the speech he had prepared:—
“Father, I can justify nothing. I only pray with tears for your gracious forgiveness and fatherly dispensation. I have no other hope save God and you; and I give myself up into your hands.”
Familiar steps approached the door. It opened. Peter came in.
Alexis jumped up, stumbled and would have fallen had not Tolstoi supported him.
As in the momentary metamorphosis of a were-wolf, two faces flashed before Alexis, a strange, terrible one like a death-mask, and also the familiar one, his father’s face as he remembered it in his earliest childhood.
The Tsarevitch came forward and was going to fall on his knees, but Peter stretched out his arms to meet him and pressed him to his bosom.
“Welcome, Aliósha, thank the Lord! thank the Lord! we have met at last——”
Alexis felt the familiar touch of his father’s plump, clean-shaven cheek, the old smell of strong tobacco and sweaty clothes; he saw the large, dark, lucid eyes, dear and yet so terrible; the winning, slightly cunning, smile on the thin, curved, almost feminine lips. Forgetting his long speech, he only stammered out:—
“Forgive me, father!”
And bursting into irrepressible sobs, he repeated again and again: “Forgive, forgive!”
His heart had melted suddenly, like ice before fire.
“Aliósha, quiet, quiet, my boy, quiet!”
The father was stroking his son’s hair, kissing his forehead and eyes with the tenderness of a loving mother.
Meanwhile Tolstoi witnessing this tenderness, said to himself, “The hawk will kiss the chicken till the last feather has gone.”
The Tsar made a sign and he disappeared.
Peter took his son into the dining-room. The dog Lisette growled at first, but, recognizing the Tsarevitch, wagged her tail in confusion and licked his hand. The table was set for two; an orderly brought in the dishes together and left the room. They remained alone. Peter poured out two glasses of anisette cordial.
“Your health, Aliósha!”
They clinked glasses. The hand of the Tsarevitch trembled so violently that he upset half his liquor.
Peter had prepared “zakouska,” a favourite dish of his, a slice of black bread with butter, spread with minced onion and garlic; he halved the piece, one part for himself, one for his son.
“You have grown thin abroad,” he said, looking at his son, “wait a bit, we’ll soon fill you out. Russian bread is better feeding than the German.”
He pressed him to eat and drink with many a jocular saying.
“Bumper on bumper is not like blow on blow!” “All good things go in threes!” “To multiply himself by four makes the guest more cheerful than before!”
The Tsarevitch ate little, but he drank much and soon became over-exhilarated, more from joy, however, than wine.
He was still timid, he had not fully recovered his senses, he could hardly trust his eyes and ears. Yet his father’s talk was so simple and good humoured that it was impossible not to hope. He inquired after everything, wanted to know all about Italy, the fleet, the Pope, and the Emperor. He joked with him like a comrade.
“Your taste is not bad, sir,” he winked at Alexis. “Afrossinia is a strapping—a superb wench; were I ten years younger it might have happened (who knows?) that you’d have had to beware of me. I might have put horns on ye! It’s evident the apple does not fall far from the tree! The father with a washerwoman, the son with a charwoman, for they say Afrossinia washed floors formerly at the Viasemski’s house. Eh, but what of it? Catenka washed clothes. Do you want to get married?”
“If you would permit it, father.”
“What else can I do? I promised you, and can’t help myself now.”
Peter poured some red wine into crystal goblets; they raised and clinked them, the crystal rang, the wine glowed like blood in the sunshine.
“To peace and eternal friendship!” said Peter.
They drained their glasses to the last drop.
Alexis turned giddy. His spirits took wild wings; his heart now sank, now throbbed, as if it would burst; he thought he would die of joy. Present, Past and Future—all had disappeared. He remembered, saw, felt, only one thing, his father’s love. It might only be for a moment. What of it? To pay for the happiness of this moment, a whole life of torment would be nothing. He longed to speak out and confess everything.
Peter, as if divining his thought, touched his hand with a gentle caress.
“Tell me, Aliósha, all about your flight.”
The Tsarevitch felt that the moment had come which would decide his fate, and that suddenly what he had tried to ignore, ever since he had first resolved to return to his father, lay clearly before him. A choice was inevitable; he had either to relate everything without restraint, name his accomplices, and betray his friends; or else deny everything, and so doing allow the insurmountable barrier-wall to grow up, the bottomless abyss between himself and his father to open anew.
He remained silent, his eyes cast down, afraid lest the unfamiliar, terrible death-mask face had taken the place of the loved one. At last he got up, approached his father and fell on his knees before him. Lisette, who had been sleeping on a cushion at Peter’s feet, woke up, rose and went away leaving her place to Alexis. He sank down on the cushion. Were it but possible to remain for ever at his father’s feet, like a dog, looking into his eyes, waiting to be fondled, petted.
“I will tell you everything, only forgive them all, as you have forgiven me,” said he, with a look of intense adoration. His father stooped and laid his hands on Alexis’ shoulders with the same gentle tenderness:—
“Listen, Aliósha! How can I forgive while ignorant of both the innocent and the guilty? I can forgive so far as I myself am concerned, but not a crime against the country. God will ask me to account for this. He who tolerates evil, works evil himself. One thing I can promise, I will pardon all those you name, but terrible penalties will fall on those whose names you conceal. Therefore, be not a traitor, but the protector of your friends, conceal nothing from me, tell me everything. Don’t be afraid, I will hurt no one. We will think it all over between us.”
Alexis remained silent. Peter embraced him, pressed his head against his breast, and added with a heavy sigh:—
“Aliósha, Aliósha, could you but see my heart, know my grief! It fares sadly with me! I have no one to help me, I am always alone. All are enemies, evildoers, you at least have compassion on me. Be my friend, or do you not want to? Do you not love me?”
“I love you, my dearest father!” whispered Alexis with that same timid tenderness, as in his childhood, when his father would sometimes secretly come at night and take his sleeping boy up in his arms. “I will tell you all, all, ask me?”
And he told everything; named everybody.
Yet when he ended Peter was still waiting for the main point. He had expected a plot, and found none; only words, rumours, gossip, illusory suggestions, on which it was impossible to base real inquiry. Alexis took the whole fault upon himself, and exonerated all the rest.
“When I was drunk I used to say all sorts of things; I could not control my tongue before others, I troubled them by my vain fancies and seditious conversation.”
“But apart from talk, there was no thought for action; for stirring up the people to revolt? Did they not desire to put you in my place by force?”
“No, father, I swear it! Nothing of the sort was ever contemplated. There were words only—words!”
“Did your mother know about the flight?”
“I don’t think she did,” then after a pause he added: “I can say nothing definite about that.”
He stopped short and cast down his eyes. He remembered the visions and prophecies of Bishop Dositheus of Rostoff and other monks, prophecies which his mother believed in and rejoiced at; the fall of Petersburg, the death of Peter, the ascendancy of Alexis. Should he mention this too? Betray his mother? Mortal anguish gripped his heart, he felt he could not speak about this. Besides, his father did not ask for it. What did it matter to him? Could such a man as he be moved by women’s babble?
“Is this all, or have you something else upon your mind?” asked Peter.
“I have, only I know not how to word it. I am afraid.”
He pressed close to his father, and hid his face upon his father’s bosom.
“Speak, it will ease you. Speak out and clear yourself, as in a confession.”
“When you were ill,” Alexis whispered into his ear, “I thought you would not live, and I rejoiced! I wished you dead.”
Peter slowly, gently pushed him back and looked straight into his eyes. He saw there what he had never seen before in human eyes.
“Did you contemplate my death with any one?”
“No, no, no!” exclaimed Alexis, with such terror on his face and in his voice that his father believed him.
In silence they gazed at one another, their look had the same expression, and these two faces, so different, were suddenly alike. They reflected and fathomed one another like two mirrors.
Suddenly the Tsarevitch smiled feebly and said simply, but with a voice so strange, so altered that it seemed that, not he, but some one else was speaking through him:—
“I know father, it is perhaps impossible for you to forgive me. So be it, have me beaten, killed. I would die for you, only love me! love me always. Let no one know about this—you and I alone will know, you and I——”
His father did not answer, but covered his face with his hands.
Alexis looked at him as if expecting something.
At last Peter uncovered his face, again stooped to his son, took his head between his hands and silently kissed him. For the first time in his life the Tsarevitch saw tears in his father’s eyes. Alexis wanted to say something more, but Peter rose and hurriedly left the room.
The same day in the evening, his new confessor, Father Varlaam, came to the Tsarevitch.
On his return to Moscow, Alexis had begged to have his former confessor, Father James Ignatief. He was refused, and Father Varlaam was appointed instead. He was an old man, “without guile,” “quite a chicken,” according to Tolstoi’s expression.
The Tsarevitch was glad, however, to have even him; he longed for an opportunity of confessing as soon as possible. He repeated in confession all he had said to his father. He also added what he had held back from him, as to his mother, the Tsaritsa Eudoxia, his aunt the Tsarevna Marya, and his uncle, Abraham Lopoukhin, and their united wish for a “speedy fulfilment,”—his father’s death.
“You ought to have spoken the whole truth to your father,” remarked Father Varlaam, who appeared somewhat agitated. Something strange, hasty and mysterious seemed to have passed between them, yet so instantaneously that Alexis could not say whether it was real or only a fancy.