CHAPTER XXXIV
A DIVIDED HEART
Zeneida was celebrating three days of mourning in one. The first, Sophie's funeral; the second, Pushkin's marriage; the third, her own name-day.
It had been Sophie's last wish that the wedding should precede her funeral.
Her soul in its ascent to heaven would see and hear the bliss of the two she had loved so dearly on earth.
According to Russian custom the lid was only screwed down on to the coffin just before it was lowered into the grave; with face uncovered the wanderer to the Hereafter is borne to his last resting-place.
"Make the ceremony a short one!" Zeneida had said to the officiating priest.
The Patriarch of Solowetshk, whose feet had sufficient Russian understanding to suffer from a severe attack of gout that day, had sent a priest in his stead. Let his inferior have his beard shaved off if things go amiss, and not him. For if a priest rashly marry a runaway couple the marriage is legal, but the priest's beard is shaved off, and he is forced to become a soldier. During the wedding ceremony, according to custom, two doves were set flying over the heads of the bridal pair. They fluttered for a time round the veranda, then let themselves down on to the catafalque, at the head of the dead girl, where the crucifix stood; there, the one on the right hand, the other on the left, above the head of the "martyr to love," they billed and cooed through the whole ceremony.
The dead girl might well be content. All had been done as she had directed; Bethsaba wore the pink silk wedding-dress; the platinum diadem adorned her brow.
"That is over," said Zeneida. "Now follows the other—quick, quick!"