IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

BY

HESBA STRETTON

AUTHOR OF

"JESSICA'S FIRST PRAYER," "ALONE IN LONDON," "BEDE'S CHARITY," ETC., ETC.

LONDON

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY

4 BOUVERIE STREET AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD

PREFACE

THE most extraordinary and inexplicable phase of Christianity is the persecution of Christians by Christians. Persecution is absolutely opposed to the nature and teaching of the Lord, who said to His disciples, when they desired to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who refused them hospitality, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." In my former story, "The Highway of Sorrow," I attempted to set forth the religious principles of the Stundist men, and their steadfast courage in maintaining them. I have received a letter from Russia saying that this narrative "is true to fact." "In the Hollow of His Hand" endeavours to show the bitter sufferings of women and children in the storm of persecution now raging in Russia. The latest suggestion made for the complete stamping out of Stundism is that all children should be taken from their Stundist parents and brought up in the Orthodox Church. When this was done, in the Middle Ages, to the Jews

in Spain, many parents adopted the awful alternative of slaying their children. In writing both stories I have drawn largely from two sources. One is a pamphlet, called "The Stundists: the Story of a Great Religious Revolt," published in 1893 by James Clarke & Co. The other is a most valuable work, entitled "Siberia and the Exile System," by George Kennan, from whose volumes I have drawn many of the details of the protracted journey to Eastern Siberia. Both of these stories are sorrowful, but they are true. And I would earnestly ask my readers to ponder over the words of our Lord, "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. 'Rejoice,' and be 'exceeding glad:' for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." This blessing the Stundists realise. HESBA STRETTON. 1897.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. THE SCOTCH COVENANTERS

II. THE RUSSIAN STUNDISTS

III. AT HOME

IV. ESTRANGED FRIENDS

V. IN THE FOREST

VI. THE CHILDREN'S SERVICE

VII. FATHER CYRIL

VIII. A CRUEL BLOW

IX. ORTHODOX REASONING

X. MOTHERS AND CHILDREN

XI. A HARD WINTER

XII. A FRIENDLY JAILER

XIII. DENYING THE FAITH

XIV. LITTLE CLAVA

XV. BLESSING THE HERETICS

XVI. IN KOVYLSK.

XVII. FATHER CYRIL'S LETTER

XVIII. THE FORWARDING PRISON

XIX. THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD

XX. SERGIUS

XXI. MARFA'S FUNERAL

XXII. THE PRISON HOSPITAL

XXIII. MONTH AFTER MONTH

XXIV. THE EXILES' BEGGING SONG

XXV. SLEEP AND DEATH

XXVI. THE END OF THE JOURNEY

XXVII. DEMYAN'S TIDINGS

XXVIII. THE SEED OF THE CHURCH

XXIX. A YOKE OF BONDAGE

XXX. VELIA'S TYRANTS

XXXI. RESCUED

XXXII. A LETTER PROM SIBERIA

IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND

CHAPTER I

THE SCOTCH COVENANTERS

"BEHOLD, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

The boy who was reading in a clear, low voice, though with a foreign accent, felt the pressure of his mother's feeble hands, and lifted up his eyes to her white and placid face. He was kneeling beside her bed, and she pushed back the thick curls of his brown hair, and looked with a very tender gaze into his frank, boyish face.

"That's true, my laddie," she said; "true for you, but not for me. He calls me home, but He sends your father and you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Ah! The Lord Jesus knew; and He knows now. Never think He's away, and not minding your troubles. You'll go back to your father, when I'm gone home—not to Knishi, never again to Knishi. Oh, if I'd only known, I'd have gone home to heaven from there!"

The feeble, gasping voice ceased for a minute or two. But the mother's eyes still rested fondly and anxiously on her boy.

"And, oh, my Michael," she said, "be wise! Don't anger the neighbours more than you can help. You're only a boy yet, and they'll leave you alone if you keep quiet. Be 'harmless as doves,' says our Lord."

"But you wouldn't have me a coward, mother," answered the boy somewhat hotly.

"Me, Michael? Me?" she cried, a faint colour flushing her pallid face. "No, no! Weren't my ain forebears among the Covenanters? Both on father's and mother's sides! Didn't they suffer the loss o' all things—eh! and die for conscience' sake? Nay, Michael, I'd send you to death, if need be, for the truth. But it's hard to think of young little ones having to suffer cruelly because their parents must act according to their conscience. Oh, my Michael! And my little Velia!"

She sank back on her pillows with closed eyelids, through which the tears were slowing oozing. Michael did not go on with his reading. They were both thinking of the last twelve months, when Catherine Ivanoff had left her Russian home to try if her native air in Scotland would restore her health. Michael had accompanied her, being old enough to be a help and comfort to her during the long voyage from Odessa to Glasgow, and through her sojourn among her own kinsfolk. It had been on the whole a happy year, filled at first with delusive hopes. But all hope was gone now. She would never be able to bear the voyage and the inland journey homewards.

Her brother's house, where she lay dying, was a small Scotch farm, not unlike the homestead she had left in Russia. She lay still, thinking longingly of it now. The thick walls of dried mud, with their deep window-sills; the large house-place, with its oak table, and oak benches standing along the walls, which she had kept beautifully polished; the huge stove, which seemed to fill half the room; and the great barns and stables built round the fold-yard. Oh, if she had only been there now!—dying in the little bedroom which opened out of the roomy house-place, where she could watch her husband going to and fro, and have her little Velia in her sight. Her house in Knishi had been the best in the village, almost equal to the church-house; and she had cherished a secret pride in it. The garden on the eastern side was even better than the priest's garden, for her husband as well as herself took great pleasure in it. It was already near the end of February; and the snow would be melting, and the buds swelling on the fruit-trees,

and the earliest flowers pushing their first shoots through the moist earth. Oh, how happy she and her husband had been in Knishi!

It was eight years since they had gone there, with their two young children, to rent a farm belonging to her husband's cousin, Paul Rodenko, who had been exiled to Siberia for holding fast to his Stundist faith. A sharp outbreak of persecution had taken place, during which three of the leading Stundists had been imprisoned—one of them dying in prison. And the mother of Paul Rodenko had fallen a martyr to the uncurbed violence of a mob. There had been some official inquiries into the cause of her death. And though no one was punished, the peasants, after their wild excess of savagery, were ashamed of the crime.

Since then the Stundists had been unmolested, left very much to themselves, and practically cut off from all village intercourse. Alexis Ivanoff was their presbyter; and though they had no stated hour or place of worship, it was well-known they maintained their own religious views.

Alexis Ivanoff's letters to his wife told her that this tranquil state of affairs showed signs of coming to an end. Although there was a good and kind-hearted priest, Father Cyril, appointed in the place of the old Batoushka, who had fomented the persecution eight years ago, there were symptoms of hard times coming for the Stundists. The Starosta, who was the chief layman in the village, was a fierce bigot and a churlish miser; and it lay in his power to injure those whom he disliked. Already Alexis had been compelled to pay sundry fines for himself and his poorer fellow Stundists; and the exactions were increasing. It was no use appealing to any court of law against these unjust and vexatious taxes; were they not Stundists? But he hoped the oppression would be confined to monetary forfeits.

"I would send Velia to you out of the way," he wrote, "if I thought Okhrim would do more than tax us unjustly. But he is fond of money, and will be content to fleece us; when the sheep are slain, there is no more to be gained. Velia is the treasure I value most—my only earthly joy, now you and Michael are away. Yet, if the Lord required it, you and I would give up our children, precious as they are. My Catherine, this life is only a journey, and a short one at the longest. What matters it if we come to the end soon, or travel on a little longer? If we walk in smooth paths or rough ones? Let us work while it is called to-day; 'the night cometh when no man can work.' And at nightfall we go home and rest with our beloved ones."

This was his last letter. It lay under her pillow.

Michael had risen from his knees beside his mother, and gone to the little lattice window, through which he could see the distant mountains still capped with snow. Below the house lay a pleasant valley, which had been the resort of the Covenanters in times long gone by, when they must needs worship God in secret. In the room below, on one side of the wide, old open hearth, there was a little closet four feet square, cunningly contrived behind the wainscot, where many a time godly men had hidden whilst their persecutors searched the homely farmstead for them, or sat round the fire cursing their fruitless efforts. The whole place and neighbourhood were full of legends of the Covenanters, and Michael had heard of them, and listened to them with avidity, for the last twelve months.

He was longing to be home again with his father and Velia, especially now when there was a threatening of renewed oppression. He loved his fatherland, Russia, with a boy's hot patriotism. He had fretted inwardly at his long exile, though he fancied he had concealed his home-sickness successfully from his mother. It would soon be over now, and the tears fell fast down his cheeks. For it was only when his beloved mother passed through the gates of death, already opening slowly before her, that he could be free to hasten away home.

"Michael!" cried his mother in a strong and happy voice.

He sprang towards her.

She had half-raised herself in bed, and her face was full of radiant gladness, such as he had never seen before.

"I'm dying! And it's beautiful!" she said. "Tell your father death is beautiful! And I'm not alone—no, not alone!"

CHAPTER II

THE RUSSIAN STUNDISTS

THREE weeks later Michael set out on his return home in a vessel sailing from Glasgow to Odessa. Sandy Gordon, his uncle, accompanied him to Glasgow, loath to part with the boy who had become very dear to his Scotch kindred. They urged him to stay with them, but he could not bear the thought of it. His home-sickness had greatly increased since his mother's death, and he had an intense longing to be once more in his own country, to cross the limitless steppes, and taste again the spring breezes full of the scent of flowers. He pined for the familiar sound of his own language, and the songs in which his people delighted. And underneath this natural love of his own country lay a boy's desire to share with his father and sister any perils which might be hanging over them.

"No, Uncle Sandy," he said, with his arms round Sandy Gordon's neck, and his brown head resting on his uncle's grizzled hair, "no! I'm a Russian, and I ought to live in my own country, and help my own people."

"And if they send your father to Siberia, my laddie," said Sandy Gordon, "as they did his cousin Paul Rodenko, what will you and Velia do then?"

"We'll do what father says," answered Michael; "if he goes, I shall want to go too. But there is little Velia! Father must settle for us. She's a tender little thing is Velia."

"My lad," said Sandy earnestly, "remember there's always a home for you and Velia here with us. For Catherine's sake—and your own sake, Michael—you'll be welcome. And there's one of your own kin in Odessa, a well-to-do man, dealing in corn, John Gordon by name. In any trouble think of him, my boy; and he'll help you, for he has the means and the will."

Sandy Gordon gave Michael a letter addressed to his kinsman in Odessa, to be delivered between leaving the port and reaching the railway station of the line which was to carry him to about fifty miles from Knishi, the village where his home had been since his early childhood, and where his father was to meet him. It seemed to him an almost intolerable interruption to stay some hours in Odessa, but the elderly merchant was pleased with the boy, and with the news he brought from Scotland. He promised to be ready with any help he could give, if the troubles anticipated by Alexis Ivanoff should break out.

The short spring-tide of Russia was in its fullest beauty when Michael reached the railway station, where his father was to meet him with a telega, and the old mare whom he had so often fed. The past winter with its bitter winds was already forgotten, and the scorching heat of summer lurked still in the future. The boy's heart was torn with conflicting emotions. His mother's death still filled it with profound grief, but the joy of coming home again to his father and Velia was as strong as his sorrow. He had felt no fatigue from his long and tedious journey, and though his heart leaped at the sound of the Russian tongue spoken by all about him, he had sat almost speechless, and absorbed in memories, during the many hours since he had left Odessa.

His father was standing by the telega, outside the barrier, a tall, strong, middle-aged man, with a grave and handsome face, and a dignified carriage, very unlike the uncouth and rough aspect of most Russian farmers. He had the look of a leader among men. Michael recognised it for the first time, and he felt a new sensation of pride in him. When he left home a year before, he did not understand all his father was as a man. But in Scotland, having his mind filled with stories of the unconquerable courage of the Covenanters, who defied the power of king and soldiers when they sought to interfere with freedom of conscience, he discovered that his father was such a man as they had been. Now he saw it with his eyes.

He threw himself into his father's arms, and felt his kisses mingled with hot tears falling from his father's eyes. The thought of the lost wife and mother, who had been buried so far away from them, was in both of their minds. Silently they got into the telega, and drove away from the noisy crowd gathered about the station.

Everything about him seemed so new, yet so familiar to Michael, that he felt that it must be a dream, one of those many dreams of Russia that had haunted his sleep whilst he had been in Scotland. His father sitting silent beside him, the noisy creaking of the cart-wheels, which might be heard half a mile off, the jolting over the rough road, the slow jog-trot of the old mare—were these real? Or would he awake by and by, and find himself gazing out down the gentle valley under his window at his uncle's farmhouse?

Presently there was nothing to be seen around them but leagues upon leagues of apparently level land, with an unbroken horizon lying low, like the sky-line at sea. Wherever the ground could be cultivated, a brilliant yet delicate green carpeted the rich brown soil, showing the young corn, which would soon be waving under the summer sun. In the untilled portions of the plain, innumerable flowers were in blossom, and butterflies and bees fluttered in clouds above them. The cry of the curlew that loves lonely places followed them mile after mile. Not a barn or a dwelling was visible in all the vast expanse. The father and son drove on in almost unbroken silence, only speaking a word or two now and then. There was so much to say that they knew not where to begin. At length a soft, gentle breeze just touched Michael's cheek, which seemed to him as if his mother had kissed it.

"Father," he said, looking up into the sad yet serene face beside him, "my mother told me to tell you death is beautiful! And her face said it too; it was full of gladness. Yes, until we laid her in the coffin."

"Thank God!" said Alexis Ivanoff, lifting up his eyes to the cloudless sky above them. "I praise Thee, O Lord, that Thou halt taken her away from the troubles to come. She was too tender to bear them. We men, Michael, can bear hardness as soldiers of our Lord Christ, but when we think of our women and children—it is that which breaks our hearts."

The boy's whole frame thrilled with delight as his father uttered the words, "We men." Then he was no longer to be considered a child; this was a summons to enter the ranks of manhood. He was ready to obey the call, and eager to endure hardships. Yet, as if he were already a man, the moment of delight was quickly followed by a sharp sense of dread piercing him, as he recollected Velia, his little sister, who must share whatever sorrows and perils befell them. How was it he had never experienced this vague terror before? Was it because he was almost a man?

"But could not God save us?" he asked after a while.

"What do you mean by being saved?" inquired his father.

Michael did not answer immediately. He meant that God should give them the freedom of conscience, and liberty to worship as they believed best, for which the Scotch Covenanters had fought so long and so stubbornly. But he knew the tenets of the Stundists forbade all resistance by force, and taught simple submission to authority in everything, except coercion in religious matters. Moreover, he had seen too much of life in Scotland to be able to convince himself that the Scotch, as a people, were saved. Had he not seen drunkenness there as bad as in Russia? Were there not lying and dishonesty and quarrelling, and all the long list of sins which he ran through in his mind?

"I cannot tell what I mean," he said at last.

"Christ came to save us from our sins," answered his father, "not from sorrow. 'In the world ye shall have tribulation,' He said; and the history of His people has been the same through all generations, and in all countries. The Church has always been built on the graves of the martyrs. As we beat out the grain from the straw with our flails, stroke after stroke, so will the world smite us. But God will gather His corn into His granary; not one grain lost, only the chaff left. The flail is the world, my son, but God's hand holds it."

"Are they beginning the persecution, father?" asked Michael.

"It has never ceased," answered Alexis, "but now it is growing hotter. Okhrim has been made Starosta in Savely's room, and there is not a harder or more cruel man in all Knishi. Father Cyril can do little to control him. He is a saint and a Christian, our Batoushka, but Okhrim is his enemy. Khariton Kondraty was taken to Kovylsk, and thrown into prison there last week. I expect to be the next. But he leaves me alone, because I pay every fine he imposes; and the farm is not mine, I only pay rent for it. It belongs to Paul Rodenko, who was exiled years ago. Old Karpo will take care it is not confiscated, because it will go to his daughter, Paul's wife, if he dies first. Still, the hour must come for me at last."

Silence fell upon them again. Michael had a vivid idea of what persecution meant in Knishi. Instead of the fairy tales and ballads which other children heard from their elders, he had listened all through his childhood to stories of martyrs—martyrs in Scotland, and martyrs in his own country. Even the dear home in which they dwelt had been the scene of martyrdom; and the bench on which they sat beside the stove had been the deathbed of Paul Rodenko's mother. But hitherto he had thought of persecution as a thing of the past, or far-off in other villages; now it stood face to face with him.