“I don’t mean Masha,” he replied, “but perhaps she sees Him coming. He may be getting nearer and nearer every moment, and Masha may see the glory brighter and brighter. Masha always was our most religious.”
At this point the grocer’s wife, in a red petticoat and a jacket and a shawl, rushed in, and exclaimed:
“Just think, friends, Marya Petrovna is dead! I am absolutely the first person to give the news, I had it from the priest just as he left the house. He watched with her all night—but pardon me, I must be going.”
With that she rushed out to be the first to give the news to the rest of the village.
The cobbler and his wife exclaimed together, “Bozhe moï! Oh, Lord!” And Katusha slipped out after the grocer’s wife, intending evidently to have her share in the glory of gossip. The cobbler threw aside his last, and went out as he was, in his apron and without his hat, and his wife went with him. They swelled the little crowd that was already collected outside Masha’s dwelling.
It was indeed as the grocer’s wife had indicated. Marya Petrovna had died. Of what she had died everyone could say something. Some peasants ascribed it to the Devil and some to God. The majority held that God had taken her to heaven. The priest’s explanation was that the woman’s life had been very acceptable to God, and that He had blessed her with a vision of His glory. The vision had been a promise; it had perhaps shown her her glorious place in heaven. The vision of God had entered her eyes, so that she could not put it aside and look at the ordinary things of life. She could not see a samovar—she saw God. She couldn’t make tea with the samovar; that would have been sacrilege. She could not eat soup, she couldn’t sit down, she couldn’t lie down, she couldn’t touch anything. To do these things was sacrilege. So she died. She died from utter exhaustion and from starvation. No doubt God had taken this means to bring her from the world.
Such was the story that the priest communicated to his superiors and to St Petersburg, hoping that it might perhaps be thought fit to honour the mortal memory of this new Mary whom the Lord had honoured. No canonisation, however, followed, though to the inhabitants of the village of Celo the woman remains a saint and a wonder, and the moujiks cross themselves as they pass the cottage where she used to live.
CHAPTER XXXI
ALI PASHA
THE Persian nation, which numbers seven or eight millions of dwellers on its own soil, has many thousands scattered over the rich valleys of the Caucasus. In Tiflis, in Baku, Batum, Kutais, the Persian, clad in vermilion or crimson or slate-blue, is a familiar figure in the streets. Their wares, their inlaid guns and swords and belts, their rugs and cloaks, are the glory of all the bazaars of Trans-Caucasia. One’s eye rests with pleasure on their leisurely movements, their gentle forms and open, courteous gait; and they give an atmosphere of peace and serenity to streets where otherwise the knives of hillmen, and the sullen accoutrements of Cossacks, would continually impress one with the notion of impending storm.