“My mother? When did she come?”
“Before vespers. She first found out where you were, and then drove to the convent.”
“Then it was she whom I saw just now in the chapel! Oh, Father in heaven!”
And his Reverence laughed for joy.
“She told me to tell you, your Reverence,” the lay brother continued, “that she would come back to-morrow. She had a little girl with her, a grandchild, I think. She is stopping at Ovsianikoff’s inn.”
“What time is it now?”
“It is after eleven.”
“What a nuisance!”
His Reverence sat down irresolutely in his sitting-room, unwilling to believe that it was already so late. His arms and legs were racked with pain, the back of his neck was aching, and he felt uncomfortable and hot. When he had rested a few moments he went into his bedroom and there, too, he sat down, and dreamed of his mother. He heard the lay brother walking away and Father Sisoi the priest coughing in the next room. The monastery clock struck the quarter.
His Reverence undressed and began his prayers. He spoke the old, familiar words with scrupulous attention, and at the same time he thought of his mother. She had nine children, and about forty grandchildren. She had lived from the age of seventeen to the age of sixty with her husband the deacon in a little village. His Reverence remembered her from the days of his earliest childhood, and, ah, how he had loved her! Oh, that dear, precious, unforgettable childhood of his! Why did those years that had vanished for ever seem so much brighter and richer and gayer than they really had been? How tender and kind his mother had been when he was ill in his childhood and youth! His prayers mingled with the memories that burned ever brighter and brighter in his heart like a flame, but they did not hinder his thoughts of his mother.