And so he did.
There were but few people in church. The country people were in the habit of going to communion in the first and in the fourth week. Now there were only forty men and women present, who had not had time to go to communion before, a few old peasant women, the church servants, and the manorial people of the Apýkhtins and his rich neighbours, the Chernýshevs. There was also there an old woman, a relative of the Chernýshevs, who was living with them, and a deacon's widow, whose son the Chernýshevs, in the goodness of their hearts, had educated and made a man of, and who now was serving as an official in the Senate. Between the matins and the mass there were even fewer people left in the church. There were left two beggar women, who were sitting in the corner and conversing with each other and looking at Iván Petróvich with the evident desire to congratulate him and talk with him, and two lackeys,—one his own, in livery, and the other, Chernýshev's, who had come with the old woman. These two were also whispering in an animated manner to each other, just as Iván Petróvich came out from the altar-place; when they saw him, they grew silent. There was also a woman in a tall head-gear with a pearl face-ornament and in a white fur coat, with which she covered up a sick child, who was crying, and whom she was attempting to quiet; and another, a stooping old woman, also in a head-gear, but with a woollen face-ornament and a white kerchief, which was tied in the fashion of old women, and in a gray gathered coat with an iris-design on the back, who, kneeling in the middle of the church, and turning to an old image between two latticed windows, over which hung a new scarf with red edges, was praying so fervently, solemnly, and impassionately that one could not fail directing one's attention to her.
Before reaching the elder, who, standing at the little safe, was kneading over the remnants of some tapers into one piece of wax, Iván Petróvich stopped to take a look at the praying woman. The old woman was praying well. She knelt as straight as it was possible to kneel in front of the image; all the members of her body were mathematically symmetrical; her feet behind her pressed with the tips of her bast shoes at the same angle against the stone floor; her body was bent back, to the extent to which her stooping shoulders permitted her to do so; her hands were quite regularly placed below her abdomen; her head was thrown back, and her face, with an expression of bashful commiseration, wrinkled, and with a dim glance, was turned straight toward the image with the scarf. Having remained in an immobile position for a minute or less,—evidently a definite space of time,—she heaved a deep sigh and, taking her right hand away, swung it above her head-gear, touched the crown of her head with folded fingers, and made ample crosses by carrying her hand down again to her abdomen and to her shoulders; then she swayed back and dropped her head on her hands, which were placed evenly on the floor, and again raised herself, and repeated the same.
"Now she is praying," Iván Petróvich thought, as he looked at her. "She does it differently from us sinners: this is faith, though I know that she is praying to her own image, or to her scarf, or to her adornment on the image, just like the rest of them. All right. What of it?" he said to himself, "every person has his own faith: she prays to her image, and I consider it necessary to beg the peasant's forgiveness."
And he walked over to the elder, instinctively scrutinizing the church in order to see who was going to see his deed, which both pleased and shamed him. It was disagreeable to him, because the old beggar women would see it, and more disagreeable still, because Míshka, his lackey, would see it. In the presence of Míshka,—he knew how wide-awake and shrewd he was,—he felt that he should not have the strength to walk up to Iván Fedótov. He beckoned to Míshka to come up to him.
"What is it you wish?"
"Go, my dear, and bring me the rug from the carriage, for it is too damp here for my feet."
"Yes, sir."