IV. A Lady of Little Faith

The visiting lady, the landowner, watching the whole scene of the talk with the common people and of their blessing, shed quiet tears and wiped them away with her handkerchief. She was a sensitive society lady with inclinations that were in many ways sincerely kind. When the elder at last came up to her as well, she met him rapturously.

“I have gone through so much, so much, watching this whole touching scene…” She could not finish for emotion. “Oh, I understand that the people love you, I love the people too, I wish to love them, and how can one not love the people, our splendid Russian people, so simple-hearted in their greatness!”

“How is your daughter’s health? You wished to talk with me again?”

“Oh, I asked insistently, I begged, I was ready to go down on my knees and stay on my knees for three days before your windows, until you let me in. We have come to you, great healer, to express all our rapturous gratitude. You have healed my Liza, you know, healed her completely, and how? By praying over her on Thursday and laying your hands on her. We hurried here to kiss those hands, to pour out all our feeling and reverence!”

“How do you mean, healed? She is still lying in her chair, is she not?”

“But the night fevers have disappeared completely, for two days and nights now, ever since Thursday,” the lady hurried on nervously. “More than that: her legs have grown stronger. This morning she got up well, she slept the whole night, look at her color, at her shining little eyes. She used to cry all the time, and now she laughs, she is cheerful, joyful. Today she absolutely insisted on being stood up on her feet, and she stood a whole minute by herself without any support. She is betting me that in two weeks she will be dancing a quadrille. I called in the local doctor, Herzenstube; he shrugs his shoulders and says: I wonder, I am at a loss. And you want us not to trouble you, not to fly here, not to thank you? Lise, thank him, do thank him!”

Lise’s sweet, laughing little face suddenly turned serious; she raised herself in her chair as much as she could and, looking at the elder, folded her little hands before him, but she could not hold out and suddenly burst out laughing…

“It’s at him, at him!” She pointed at Alyosha, with a childish vexation at herself for not having held out and having laughed. Anyone who had looked at Alyosha, standing a step behind the elder, would have noticed a quick flush that in an instant flooded his cheeks. His eyes flashed and dropped.

“She has a message for you, Alexei Fyodorovich… How is your health?” the mamma went on, turning suddenly to Alyosha and holding out to him her exquisitely gloved little hand. The elder looked around and suddenly gave Alyosha an attentive look. Alyosha went up to Liza and, smiling somehow strangely and awkwardly, held out his hand to her too. Lise put on an important face.

“Katerina Ivanovna sends you this through me.” She handed him a small note. “She especially asks you to call on her, and soon, soon, and not to let her down, but to come without fail.”

“She asks me to call? Me, to her… But why?” Alyosha muttered in deep astonishment. His face suddenly grew quite anxious.

“Oh, it is all about Dmitri Fyodorovich and… all these recent events,” the mamma explained in passing. “Katerina Ivanovna has now settled on a certain decision… but for that she absolutely must see you… why? Of course I don’t know, but she asked you to come as soon as possible. And you will do it, you will surely do it, even Christian feeling demands it.”

“I have seen her only once,” Alyosha went on, still in the same bewilderment.

“Oh, she is such a lofty, such an unattainable being!… If only for her sufferings… Think what she has gone through, what she is going through now, think what awaits her… it is all terrible, terrible!”

“Very well, I will come,” Alyosha decided, after running his eyes over the short and mysterious little note, which contained no explanations apart from an urgent request to come.

“Oh, how sweet and splendid that will be of you!” Lise cried, suddenly all animated. “And I was telling Mama: he won’t go for anything, he’s working out his salvation. How wonderful, how wonderful you are! I always thought you were wonderful, and that’s what I’m pleased to tell you now!”

“Lise!” the mamma said impressively, though she smiled at once.

“You have forgotten us too, Alexei Fyodorovich, you don’t want to visit us at all: and yet Lise has told me twice that she feels good only with you.” Alyosha raised his lowered eyes, again suddenly blushed, and again suddenly smiled, not knowing why himself. However, the elder was no longer watching him. He had begun to talk with the visiting monk who, as we have already said, was waiting for him to come out, beside Lise’s chair. He was, it seemed, one of the simplest of monks, that is, of humble origin, with a short, unshakable view of the world, but a believer and in his own way stubborn. He said that he came from somewhere in the far north, from Obdorsk, from St. Silvester’s, a poor monastery of only nine monks. The elder blessed him and invited him to call at his cell whenever he liked.

“How do you dare to do such things?” the monk asked suddenly, pointing impressively and solemnly at Lise. He was alluding to her “healing.”

“It is too early, of course, to speak of that. Relief is not yet complete healing, and could have come from other causes. But if there was anything, it was by no one’s power but God’s will. Everything is from God. Visit me, Father,” he added to the monk, “for I am not able to at every hour: I am ill, and I know that my days are numbered.”

“Oh no, no, God won’t take you from us, you’ll live for a long, long time still,” the mamma cried. “And what is your illness? You look so healthy, so cheerful, so happy.”

“I am uncommonly better today, but I already know that it is only for a moment. I understand my illness unerringly now. And if I seem so cheerful to you, you could never have gladdened me so much as by making such a remark. For people are created for happiness, and whoever is completely happy is directly worthy of saying to himself: ‘On this earth I have fulfilled God’s commandment.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs, all of them were happy.”

“Oh, how you speak, what bold and lofty words!” cried the mamma. “You say something and it is as though you pierce one through. And yet happiness, happiness, where is it to be found? Who can say he is happy? Oh, since you were so kind as to let us see you once more today, then hear all that I did not finish telling you last time, that I did not dare to say, all that I suffer from so, and for so long, so long! I suffer, forgive me, I suffer…” And in a sort of hot, impulsive feeling she clasped her hands before him.

“From what in particular?”

“I suffer… from lack of faith…”

“Lack of faith in God?”

“Oh no, no, I wouldn’t dare even think of that, but the life to come, it is such a riddle! And no one, no one at all answers it! Listen, you are a healer, you know the human soul; of course I dare not claim that you should believe me completely, but I assure you on my most solemn word that I am not speaking out of frivolity now, that this thought about the life to come beyond the grave troubles me to the point of suffering, to the point of horror and fright… And I don’t know whom to turn to, all my life I didn’t dare… And now I am daring to turn to you… Oh God, what will you think of me now!” She threw up her hands.

“Do not worry about my opinion,” answered the elder. “I fully believe in the sincerity of your anguish.”

“Oh, how grateful I am to you! You see, I shut my eyes and think: if everyone believes, where did it come from? And then they assure us that it all came at first from fear of the menacing phenomena of nature, and that none of it exists. Well, I think, all my life I have believed, I will die, and suddenly there is nothing, and only ‘a burdock will grow on my grave,’ as I read in a certain writer. It’s terrible! How, how can one get back one’s faith? However, I believed only when I was a little child, mechanically, without thinking about anything… How, how can it be proved? I have come now to throw myself at your feet and ask you about it. For if I let this chance slip too, then no one will ever answer me for the rest of my life. How can it be proved, how can one be convinced? Oh, misery! I stand and see all around that everyone is indifferent, almost everyone, nobody troubles about this now, and I alone cannot bear it. It is deadly, deadly!”

“No doubt it is deadly. But nothing can be proved here, though one can be convinced.”

“How? By what?”

“By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. As you succeed in love, you will become convinced both of the existence of God and of the immortality of your soul. And if you reach complete self-forgetfulness in the love of your neighbor, then you will undoubtedly believe, and no doubt will even be able to enter your soul. This has been tested, this is certain.”

“Active love? There’s another question again, and such a question, such a question! You see, I love mankind so much that, would you believe it, I sometimes dream of leaving everything, everything I have, leaving Lise, and going off to be a sister of mercy. I shut my eyes, I think and dream, and at those moments I feel an irresistible strength in myself. No wounds, no festering sores could frighten me. I would bind them and wash them with my own hands, I would nurse these sufferers, I am ready to kiss those sores…”

“It is already much, and good, that your mind dreams of this and not of something else. Now and then, by chance, you will really do some good deed.”

“Yes, but how long could I last in such a life?” the lady went on hotly and almost frenziedly. “That is the most important question! That is the most tormenting of my questions. I shut my eyes and ask myself: how long would you hold out on this path? And if the patient whose sores you are washing does not respond at once with gratitude, but on the contrary starts tormenting you with his whims, not valuing or noticing your philanthropic service, starts shouting at you, making rude demands, even complaining to some superior (as often happens with people who are suffering very much), what then? Will your love go on or not? And so, imagine, I have already decided, with a shudder: if there is anything that could cool my ‘active’ love for mankind at once, it is ingratitude alone. In a word, I am a hired laborer, I demand payment at once, that is, praise for myself and payment for love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone!”

She was in a fit of the most sincere self-flagellation, and when she had finished she looked at the elder with defiant resolve.

“That is exactly what a doctor once told me, a long time ago, it is true,” remarked the elder. “He was a man already advanced in years and unquestionably intelligent. He spoke as frankly as you, though jokingly, but jokingly in sorrow; I love mankind, he said, but I am amazed at myself: the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is, separately, as individual persons. In my dreams, he said, I often went so far as to think passionately of serving mankind, and perhaps I really would have gone to the cross for people if it had somehow suddenly been required, and yet I am unable to live in the same room with anyone for two days, I know that from experience. As soon as someone is close to me, his personality presses on my self-esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can come to hate even the best of men: one because he takes a long time eating his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps blowing his nose. I become the enemy of people, he said, the moment they touch me. On the other hand, it has always happened that the more I hated people in particular, the more ardent became my love for mankind in general.”

“But what is to be done? What is to be done in that case? Must one despair?”

“No, for it is enough that you grieve over it. Do what you can, and it will be counted to you. Much has already been done by you, for you have been able to know yourself so deeply and sincerely! But if you have spoken so sincerely with me now only in order to receive, as you just have from me, praise for your truthfulness, then of course you will get nowhere in the feats of active love; everything will remain only in your dreams, and your whole life will flit by like a phantom. Then, naturally, you will forget about the life to come too, and in the end you will somehow calm down of your own accord.”

“You have crushed me! Only now, this very instant, while you were speaking, I understood that I really was waiting only for your praise of my sincerity when I told you that I could not bear ingratitude. You have prompted me to myself, you have caught me and explained me to myself!”

“Do you really mean it? Well, now, after such a confession from you, I believe that you are sincere and kind at heart. If you do not reach happiness, remember always that you are on a good road, and try not to leave it. Above all, flee from lies, every kind of lie, the lie to yourself especially. Watch your own lie and look into it every hour, every minute. Flee from squeamishness, too, toward others and toward yourself: what seems to you foul within yourself is already cleansed by the mere fact that you have noticed it in yourself. Flee from fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every lie. Never be frightened of your own faint-heartedness in attaining love; do not be very frightened even of your bad acts in the course of it. I am sorry that I can say nothing more comforting to you, for active love, compared with love in dreams, is a harsh and fearful thing. Love in dreams thirsts for a quick great deed, quickly gratified, and for everyone to watch it. It truly comes to the point where people even give their lives, so long as it does not drag on, but is accomplished quickly, as if on a stage, and everyone watches and praises. Whereas active love is labor and perseverance, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science. But I predict that at the very moment when you see, horrified, that for all your efforts not only have you not come closer to your goal but have even, as it were, gone farther from it, at that very moment, I predict it to you, you will suddenly reach the goal and will see clearly above you the miraculous power of the Lord, who has loved you all along and all along has mysteriously guided you. Forgive me for not being able to stay with you longer; they are waiting for me. Goodbye.”

The lady was weeping.

“Lise, Lise, bless her, do bless her!” She suddenly fluttered up all over.

“But she doesn’t deserve to be loved. I saw how she was being naughty the whole time,” the elder said playfully. “Why were you laughing at Alexei the whole time?”

And Lise really had been occupied with this prank the whole time. She had noticed long before, since the last time, that Alyosha was shy of her and tried not to look at her, and this began to amuse her terribly. She waited intently to catch his eye: unable to bear a gaze so stubbornly fixed on him, Alyosha every now and then would suddenly look at her himself, involuntarily, by an irresistible force, and at once she would smile a triumphant smile right into his eyes. Alyosha was embarrassed and still more vexed. Finally he turned his back on her entirely and hid behind the elder. A few minutes later, pulled by that same irresistible force, he turned around again to see whether she was looking at him or not, and saw that Lise, almost hanging out of her chair, was peeping at him from the side and waiting with all her might for him to look; and catching his eye, she burst out laughing so that even the elder could not help himself:

“Why do you shame him so, you naughty girl?”

Lise suddenly, quite unexpectedly, blushed, her little eyes flashed, her face became terribly serious, and with a hot, indignant complaint she suddenly began to speak quickly, nervously:

“And why has he forgotten everything? He carried me in his arms when I was little, we played together. He used to come to teach me to read, you know that? Two years ago, when he said goodbye, he said that he would never forget, that we were friends forever, forever, forever! And now suddenly he’s afraid of me, am I going to eat him, or what? Why won’t he come near, why won’t he talk? Why won’t he come to see us? Is it you who won’t let him? We know he goes everywhere. It isn’t proper for me to invite him, he should have been the first to remember, if he hasn’t forgotten. No, sir, he’s working out his salvation now! Why have you put that long-skirted little robe on him… He’ll run and fall down…”

And suddenly, unable to hold out, she covered her face with her hand and laughed terribly, irrepressibly, with her long, nervous, shaking, and soundless laughter. The elder listened to her smiling and blessed her tenderly; but when she began to kiss his hand, she suddenly pressed it to her eyes and burst into tears:

“Don’t be angry with me, I’m a fool, I’m worthless… and Alyosha may be right, very right, not to want to visit such a ridiculous girl.”

“I will send him without fail,” the elder decided.