"I will answer for it, Grandmother, that there shall be no fire, and if
I myself were to be burnt...."
"Touch wood! Do not tempt fate. Remember the saying that 'my tongue is
my enemy.'"
Suddenly Raisky sprang from the divan and ran to the window.
"There is a peasant bringing a letter from Vera," he cried, as he
hurried out of the room.
"One might think it was his father in person," said Tatiana Markovna to
herself. "How many candles he burns with his novels and plays, as many
as four in a night!"
Again Raisky received a few lines from Vera. She wrote that she was
longing to see him again, and that she wanted to ask for his services.
She added the following postscript:--
"Dear Friend and Cousin, you taught me to love and to suffer, and poured
the strength of your love into my soul. This it is that gives me courage
to ask you to do a good deed. There is here an unhappy man who has been
driven from his home and lies under the suspicion of the Government. He
has no place to lay his head, and everyone, either from indifference or
fear, avoids him. But you are kind and generous, and cannot be
indifferent; still less will you hesitate to do a deed of pure charity.
The wretched man has not a kopek, has no clothes, and autumn is coming
on.
"If your heart tells you, as I don't doubt it will, what to do, address
the wife of the acolyte, Sekleteia Burdalakov, but arrange it so that
neither Grandmother, nor anyone at home, knows anything of it. A sum of
three hundred roubles will be sufficient, I think, to provide for him
for a whole year, perhaps two hundred and fifty would suffice. Will you
put in a cloak and a warm vest (in my firm belief in your kind heart and
your love to me, I enclose the measures taken by the village tailor) to
protect him from the cold.
"I don't like to ask you for a rug for him; that would be to make an
unfair use of kindness. In the winter the poor exile will probably leave
the place, and will bless you, and to some degree me as well. I would
not have troubled you, but you know that my Grandmother has all my money,
which is therefore inaccessible."
"What on earth is the meaning of this postscript?" cried Raisky. "The
whole note is certainly not from her hand; she could not have written
like this."
He threw himself on the divan in a fit of nervous laughter. He was in
Tatiana Markovna's sitting-room, with Vikentev and Marfinka. At first
the lovers laughed, but stopped when they saw the violent character of
his mirth. Tatiana Markovna, who came in at this moment, offered him
some drops of cordial in a teaspoon.
"No, Grandmother," he cried, still laughing violently. "Don't give me
drops, but three hundred roubles."
"What do you want the money for?" said Tatiana Markovna hesitating. "Is
it for Markushka again. You had much better ask him to return the eighty
roubles he has had."
He entered into the spirit of the bargain, and eventually had to content
himself with two hundred and fifty roubles, which he dispatched next day
to the address given. He also ordered the cloak and vest, and bought a
warm rug, to be sent in a few days.
"I thank you heartily, and with tears, dear Cousin," ran the letter he
received in return for his gifts. "I cannot express in writing the
gratitude I feel. Heaven, not I, will reward you. How delighted the poor
exile was with your gift. He laughed for joy, and is wearing the new
things. He immediately paid his landlord his three months' arrears of
rent, and a month in advance. He only allowed himself to spend three
roubles in cigars, which he has not smoked for a long time, and smoking
is his only passion."
Although the apocryphal nature of this remarkable missive was quite
clear to Raisky, he did not hesitate to add a box of cigars to his gift
for the "poor exile." It was enough for him that Vera's name was
attached to this pressing request. He observed the course of his own
passion as a physician does disease. As he watched the clouds driven
before the wind, or looked at the green carpet of the earth, now taking
on sad autumnal hues, he realised that Nature was marching on her way
through never ending change, with not a moment's stagnation. He alone
brooded idly with no prize in view. He asked himself anxiously what his
duty was, and begged that Reason would shed some light on his way, give
him boldness to leap over the funeral pyre of his hopes. Reason told him
to seek safety in flight.
He drove into the town to buy some necessities for the journey, and
there met the Governor who reproached him with having hidden himself for
so long. Raisky excused himself on the ground of ill-health, and spoke
of his approaching departure.
"Where are you going?"
"It is all one to me," returned Raisky gloomily. "Here I am so bored
that I must seek some distraction. I intend going to St. Petersburg,
then to my estate in the government of R---- and then perhaps abroad."
"I don't wonder that you are bored with staying in the same spot, since
you avoid society, and must need distraction. Will you make an
expedition with me? I am starting on a tour of the district to-morrow,
why not come with me? You will see much that is beautiful, and, being a
poet, you will collect new impressions. We will travel for a hundred
versts by river. Don't forget your sketch-book."
Raisky shook the Governor's proffered hand, and accepted. The Governor
showed him his well-equipped travelling carriage, declared that his
kitchen would travel with him, and cards should not be forgotten, and
promised himself a gayer journey than would have been possible in the
sole society of a busy secretary.
Raisky felt a relief in the firm determination he now made to conquer
his passion, and decided not to return from this journey, but to have
his effects sent after him. While he was away he wrote in this sense to
Vera, telling her that his life in Malinovka had been like an evil dream
full of suffering, and that if he ever saw the place again it would be
at some distant date.
A day or two later he received a short answer from Vera dated from
Malinovka. Marfinka's birthday fell during the next week, and when the
festival was over she was to go on a long visit to her future
mother-in-law. If Raisky did not make some sacrifice and return,
a sacrifice to her grandmother and herself, Tatiana Markovna would
be terribly lonely.
Next evening he had a letter from Vera acquiescing in his intention of
leaving Malinovka without seeing her again, and saying that immediately
after the dispatch of this letter she would go over to her friend on the
other side of the Volga, but she hoped that he would go to say good-bye
to Tatiana Markovna and the rest of the household, as his departure
without any farewell must necessarily cause surprise in the town, and
would hurt Tatiana Markovna's feelings.
This answer relieved him enormously. On the afternoon of the next day,
when he alighted from the carriage in the outskirts of the town and bade
his travelling host good-bye, he was in good enough spirits as he picked
up his bag and made his way to the house.
Marfinka and Vikentev were the first to meet him, the dogs leaped to
welcome him, the servants hurried up, and the whole household showed
such genuine pleasure at his return that he was moved almost to tears.
He looked anxiously round to see if Vera was there, but one and another
hastened to tell him that Vera had gone away. He ought to have been glad
to hear this news, but he heard it with a spasm of pain. When he entered
his aunt's room she sent Pashutka out and locked the door.
"How anxiously I have been expecting you!" she said. "I wanted to send a
messenger for you."
"What is the matter?" he exclaimed, pale with terror in fear of bad news
of Vera.
"Your friend Leonti Ivanovich is ill."
"Poor fellow! What is wrong? Is it dangerous? I will go to him at once."
"I will have the horses put in. In the meantime I may as well tell you
what is known all over the town. I have kept it secret from Marfinka
only, and Vera already knows it. His wife has left him, and he has
fallen ill. Yesterday and the day before the Koslovs' cook came to fetch
you."
"Where has she gone?"
"Away with the Frenchman, Charles, who was suddenly called to St.
Petersburg. She pretended she was going to stay with her relations in
Moscow and said that Monsieur Charles would accompany her so far. She
extracted from Koslov a pass giving her permission to live alone, and is
now with Charles in St. Petersburg."
"Her relations with Charles," replied Raisky, "were no secret to anybody
except her husband. Everyone will laugh at him, but he will understand
nothing, and his wife will return."
"You have not heard the end. On her way she wrote to her husband telling
him to forget her, not to expect her return, because she could no longer
endure living with him."
"The fool! Just as if she had not made scandal enough. Poor Leonti! I
will go to him, how sorry I am for him."
"Yes, Borushka, I am sorry for him too, and should like to have gone to
see him. He has the simple honesty of a child. God has given him
learning, but no common sense, and he is buried in his books. I wonder
who is looking after him now. If you find he is not being properly cared
for, bring him here. The old house is empty, and we can establish him
there for the time being. I will have two rooms got ready for him."
"What a woman you are, Grandmother. While I am thinking, you have
acted."
When he reached Koslov's house he found the shutters of the grey house
were closed, and he had to knock repeatedly before he was admitted. He
passed through the ante-room into the dining-room and stood uncertain
before the study door, hesitating whether he should knock or go straight
in. Suddenly the door opened, and there stood before him, dressed in a
woman's dressing-gown and slippers, Mark Volokov, unbrushed, sleepy,
pale, thin and sinister.
"The evil one has brought you at last," he grumbled half in surprise and
half in vexation. "Where have you been all this time? I have hardly
slept for two nights. His pupils are about in the day time, but at night
he is alone."
"What is the matter with him?"
"Has no one told you. That she-goat has gone. I was pleased to hear it,
and came at once to congratulate him, but I found him with not a drop of
blood in his face, with dazed eyes, and unable to recognise anyone. He
just escaped brain fever. Instead of weeping for joy, the man has nearly
died of sorrow. I fetched the doctor, but Koslov sent him away, and
walked up and down the room like one demented. Now he is sleeping, so we
will not disturb him. I will go, and you must stay, and see that he does
not do himself some injury in a fit of melancholy. He listens to no one,
and I have been tempted to smack him." Mark spit with vexation. "You
can't depend on his idiot of a cook. Yesterday the woman gave him some
tooth powder instead of his proper powder. I am going to dismiss her
to-morrow."
Raisky watched him in amazement, and offered his hand.
"What favour is this?" said Mark bitterly, and without taking the
proffered hand.
"I thank you for having stood by my old friend."
Mark seized Raisky's hand and shook it.
"I have been looking for some means of serving you for a long time."
"Why, Volokov, are you for ever executing quick changes like a clown in
a circus?"
"What the devil have I to do with your gratitude? I am not here for that,
but on Koslov's account."
"God be with you and your manners, Mark Ivanovich!" replied Raisky. "In
any case, you have done a good deed."
"More praise. You can be as sentimental as you like for all I care...."
"I will take Leonti home with me," resumed Raisky. "He will be
absolutely at home there, and if his troubles do not blow over he will
have his own quiet corner all his life."
"Bravo! that is deeds, not words. Koslov would wither without a home and
without care. It is an excellent idea you have taken into your head."
"It comes not from me, but from a woman, and not from her head, but from
her heart. My Aunt...."
"The old lady has a sound heart. I must go and breakfast with her one
day. It is a pity she has amassed so many foolish ideas. Now I am going.
Look after Koslov, if not personally, through some one else. The day
before yesterday his head had to be cooled all day, and at night cabbage
leaves should be laid on it. I was a little disturbed, because in his
dazed state he got the cabbage and began to eat it. Good-bye! I have
neither slept nor eaten, though Avdotya has treated me to a horrible
brew of coffee...."
"Allow me to send the coachman home to fetch some supper," said Raisky.
"I would rather eat at home."
"Perhaps you have no money," said Raisky nervously drawing out his
pocket book.
"I have money," said Mark enigmatically, hardly able to restrain a
callous laugh, "I am going to the bath-house before I have my supper, as
I haven't been able to undress here. I have changed my quarters, and now
live with a clerical personage."
"You look ill, thin, and your eyes...."
Mark's face grew more evil and sinister than before.
"You too look worse," he said. "If you look in the glass you will see
yellow patches and hollow eyes."
"I have many causes of anxiety."
"So have I. Good-bye," said Mark, and was gone.
Raisky went into the study and walked up to the bed on tiptoe.
"Who is there?" asked Leonti feebly.
When Leonti recognised Raisky he pushed his feet out of bed, and sat up.
"Is he gone?" he asked weakly. "I pretended to be asleep. You have not
been for so long, and I have been expecting you all the time. The face
of an old comrade is the only one that I can bear to see."
"I have been away, and heard when I returned of your illness."
"It is gossip. There is a conspiracy to say I am ill, which is all
foolish talk. Mark, who even fetched a doctor, has been hanging about
here as if he were afraid I should do myself an injury," said Leonti and
paced up and down the room.
"You are weak, and walk with difficulty," said Raisky. "It would be
better for you to lie down."
"I am weak, that is true," admitted Leonti.
He bent over the chair-back to Raisky, embraced him, and laid his face
against his hair. Raisky felt hot tears on his forehead and cheeks.
"It is weakness," sobbed Leonti. "But I am not ill, and have not brain
fever. They talk, but don't understand. And I understood nothing either,
but now that I see you, I cannot keep back my tears. Don't abuse me like
Mark, or laugh at me, as they all do, my colleagues and my sympathetic
visitors. I can discern malicious laughter on all their faces."
"I respect and understand your tears and your sorrow," said Raisky,
stifling his own tears.
"You are my kind old comrade. Even at school you never laughed at me,
and do you know why I weep?"
Leonti took a letter from his desk and handed it to Raisky. It was the
letter from Juliana Andreevna of which Tatiana Markovna had spoken.
Raisky glanced through it.
"Destroy it," he said. "You will have no peace while it is in your
possession."
"Destroy it!" said Leonti, seizing the letter, and replacing it in the
desk. "How is it possible to think of such a thing, when these are the
only lines she has written me, and these are all that I have as a
souvenir?"
"Leonti! Think of all this as a malady, a terrible misfortune, and don't
succumb to it. You are not an old man, and have a long life before you."
"My life is over, unless she returns to me," he whispered.
"What! You could, you would take her back!"
"You, too, Boris, fail to understand me!" cried Leonti in despair, as he
thrust his hands into his hair and strode up and down. "People keep on
saying I am ill, they offer sympathy, bring a doctor, sit all night by
my bedside, and yet don't guess why I suffer so wildly, don't even guess
at the only remedy there is for me. She is not here," he whispered
wildly, seizing Raisky by the shoulders and shaking him violently. "She
is not here, and that is what constitutes my illness. Besides, I am not
ill, I am dead. Take me to her, and I shall rise again. And you ask
whether I will take her back again! You, a novelist, don't understand
simple things like that!"
"I did not know that you loved her like that," said Raisky tenderly.
"You used to laugh and say that you had got so used to her that you were
becoming faithless to your Greeks and Romans."
"I chattered, I boasted," laughed Leonti bitterly, "and was without
understanding. But for this I never should have understood. I thought I
loved the ancients, while my whole love was given to the living woman.
Yes, Boris, I loved books and my gymnasium, the ancients and the moderns,
my scholars, and you, Boris; I loved the street, this hedge, the service
tree there, only through my love for her. Now, nothing of all this
matters. I knew that as I lay on the floor reading her letter. And you
ask whether I would receive her. God in Heaven! If she came, how she
should be cherished!" he concluded, his tears flowing once more.
"Leonti, I come to you with a request from Tatiana Markovna, who asks
you," he went on, though Leonti walked ceaselessly up and down, dragging
his slippers and appeared not to listen, "to come over to us. Here you
will die of misery."
"Thank you," said Leonti, shaking his head. "She is a saint. But how can
a desolate man carry his sorrow into a strange house?"
"Not a strange house, Leonti, we are brothers, and our relation is
closer than the ties of blood."
Leonti lay down on the bed, and took Raisky's hand.
"Pardon my egoism," he said. "Later, later, I will come of my own accord,
will ask permission to look after your library, if no hope is left me."
"Have you any hope?"
"What! Do you think there is no hope?"
Raisky, who did not wish to deprive his friend of the last straw, nor to
stir useless hope in him, hesitated, before he answered after a pause:
"I don't know what to say to you exactly, Leonti. I know so little of
your wife that I cannot judge her character."
"You know her," said Leonti in a dull voice. "It was you who directed my
attention to the Frenchman, but then I did not understand you, because
nothing of the kind had entered my head. But if he leaves her," he said,
with a gleam of hope in his eyes, "she will perhaps remember me."
"Perhaps," said Raisky. "To-morrow I will come to fetch you. Good-bye
for the present. To-night I will either come myself or send someone who
will stay with you."
Leonti did not hear, and did not even see Raisky go.
When he reached home, Raisky gave his aunt an account of Leonti's
condition, telling her that there was no danger, but that no sympathy
would help matters. Yakob was sent to look after the sick man and
Tatiana Markovna did not forget to send an abundant supper, with tea,
rum, wine and all sorts of other things.
"What are these things for, Grandmother?" asked Raisky. "He doesn't eat
anything."
"But the other one, if he returns?"
"What other one?"
"Who but Markushka? He will want something to eat. You found him with
our invalid."
"I will go to Mark, Granny, and tell him what you say."
"For goodness' sake don't do that, Borushka. Mark will laugh at me."
"No, he will be grateful and respectful, for he understands you. He is
not like Niel Andreevich."
"I don't want his gratitude and respect. Let him eat, and be satisfied,
and God be with him. He is a ruined man. Has he remembered the eighty
roubles?"
CHAPTER XXI
Raisky laughed as he went out into the garden. He looked sadly at the
closed shutters of the old house, and stood for a long time on the edge
of the precipice, looking down thoughtfully into the depths of the
thicket and the trees rustling and cracking in the wind. Then he turned
to look at the long avenues, here forming gloomy corridors, and then
opening out into open stately spaces, at the flower gardens now fading
under the approach of autumn, at the kitchen garden, and at the distant
glimmer of the rising moon, and at the stars. He looked out over the
Volga, gleaming like steel in the distance. The evening was fresh and
cool, and the withered leaves were falling with a gentle rustle around
him. He could not take his eyes from the river, now silvered by the moon,
which separated him from Vera. She had gone without leaving a word for
him. A word from her would have brought tenderness and would have
drowned all bitterness, he thought. But she was gone without leaving a
trace or any kind remembrance. With bent head and full of anxious
thought he made his way along the dark avenues.
Suddenly delicate fingers seized his shoulders, and he heard a low laugh.
"Vera!" he cried, seizing her hand violently. "You here, and not away
over the Volga!"
"Yes, here, not over there." She put her arm in his and asked him,
laughing, whether he thought she would let him go without saying good-bye.
"Witch!" he said, not knowing whether fear or joy was uppermost. "I was
this very moment complaining that you had not left a line for me, and
now I can't understand, as everyone in the house told me you had gone
away yesterday."
"And you believed it," she said laughing. "I told them to say so, to
surprise you. They were humbugging.... To go away without two words,"
she asked triumphantly, "or to stay, which is better?"
Her gay talk, her quick gestures, the mockery in her voice, all these
things seemed unnatural, and he recognised beneath it all weariness,
strain, an effort to conceal the collapse of her strength. When they
reached the end of the avenue he tried to lead her to an open spot,
where he could see her face.
"Let me look at you! How gay and merry you are, Vera!" he said timidly.
"What is there to see?" she interrupted impatiently, and tried to draw
him into the shadow again. He felt that her hands were trembling, and
for the moment his own passion was stilled, and he shared her suffering.
"Why do you look at me like that? I am not crazy," she said, turning her
face away.
He was stricken with horror. The insane are always assuring everyone of
their sanity. What was wrong with Vera? She did not confide in him, she
would not speak out, she was determined to fight her own battles. Who
could support and shelter her? An inner voice told him that Tatiana
Markovna alone could do it.
"Vera, you are ill," he said earnestly. "Give Grandmother your
confidence."
"Silence! Not a word of Grandmother! Goodbye! To-morrow we will go for a
stroll, do some shopping, go down by the river, anything you like."
"I will go away, Vera," he cried, filled with inexpressible fear. "I am
worn out. Why do you deceive me? Why did you call me back to find you
still here? Was it to mock my sufferings?"
"So that we could suffer together," she answered. "Passion is beautiful,
as you yourself have said; it is life itself. You have taught me how to
love, have educated passion in me, and now you may admire the result of
your labour," she ended, drawing in a deep breath of the cool evening
air.
"I warned you, Vera. I told you passion was a fierce wolf."
"No, worse, it is a tiger. I could not believe what you said, but I do
now. Do you know the picture in the old house which represents a tiger
showing his teeth at a seated Cupid? I never understood the picture,
which seemed meaningless, but now I understand it. Passion is a tiger,
lying there apparently so peaceful and inviting, until he begins to howl
and to whet his teeth."
Raisky pursued the comparison in the hope that he might learn the name
of Vera's lover.
"Your comparison is false, Vera. There are no tigers in our Northern
climate. I am nearer the mark when I compare passion to a wolf."
"You are right," she said with a nervous laugh. "A real wolf. However
carefully you feed him he looks always to the woods. You are all wolves,
and _he_, too, is a wolf."
"Who?" he asked in an expressionless voice. "Tushin is a bear, a genuine
Russian bear. You may lay your hand on his shaggy head, and sleep; your
rest is sure, for he will serve you all his life."
"Which of the animals am I?" he asked gaily, noting that Tushin was not
the man. "Don't beat about the bush, Vera, you may say I am an ass."
"No," she said scornfully. "You are a fox, a nice, cunning fox, with a
gift for deception. That's what you are. Why don't you say something?"
she went on, as he kept an embarrassed silence.
"Vera, there are weapons to be used against wolves, for me, to go away;
for you, not to go down there," he said, pointing to the precipice.
"Tell me how to prevent myself from going there. Teach me, since you are
my mentor, how not to go. You first set the house on fire, and then talk
of leaving it. You sing in praise of passion, and then...."
"I meant another kind of passion. Where both parties to it are
honourable, it means the supreme happiness in life, and its storms are
full of the glow of life...."
"And where there is no dishonour, no precipice yawns? I love, and am
loved, yet passion has me in its jaws. Tell me what I should do."
"Confess all to Grandmother," whispered Raisky, pale with terror, "or
permit me to talk to her."
"To shame me and ruin me? Who told me I need not obey her?"
"At one moment you are on the point of telling your secret, at another
you hide behind it. I am in the dark, and feel my way in uncertainty.
How can I, when I do not know the whole truth, diagnose the case?"
"You know what is wrong with me? Why do you say you are in the dark.
Come," she said, leading him into the moonlight. "See what is wrong with
me."
He stood transfixed with terror and pity. Pale, haggard, with wild eyes
and tightly pressed lips, this was quite another Vera. Strands of hair
were loose from beneath her hood, and fell in gipsy-like confusion over
her forehead and temples, and covered her eyes and mouth with every
quick movement she made. Her shoulders were negligently clad in a satin
wrap trimmed with swansdown, held in place by a loosely tied knot of
silk.
"Well," she said, shaking her hair out of her eyes. "What has happened
to the beauty whose praise you sang?"
"Vera," he said, "I would die for you. Tell me how I may serve you."
"Die!" she exclaimed. "Help me to live. Give me that beautiful passion
which sheds its glorious light over the whole of life. I see no passion
but this drowning tiger passion. Give me back at least my old strength,
you, who talk of going to my Grandmother to place her and me on the same
bier. It is too late to tell me to go no more to the precipice."
She sat down on the bench and looked moodily straight before her.
"You yourself, Vera, dreamed of freedom, and you prided yourself on your
independence."
"My head burns. Have pity on your sister! I am ashamed to be so weak."
"What is it, dear Vera?"
"Nothing. Take me home, help me to mount the steps. I am afraid, and
would like to lie down. Pardon me for having disturbed you for nothing,
for having brought you here. You would have gone away and forgotten me.
I am only feverish. Are you angry with me?"
Too dejected to reply, he gave her his arm, took her as far as her room,
and struck a light.
"Send Marina or Masha to stay in my room, please. But say nothing to
Grandmother, lest she should be alarmed and come herself. Why are you
looking at me so strangely? God knows what I have been saying to you, to
plague you and to avenge myself of all my humiliations. Tell Grandmother
that I have gone to bed to be up early in the morning, and I pray you
bless me in your thoughts, do you hear?"
"I hear," he said absently, as he pressed her hand and went out in
search of Masha.
He looked forward with anxiety to Vera's awakening. He seemed to have
forgotten his own passion since his imagination had become absorbed in
the contemplation of her suffering.
"Something is wrong with Vera," said Tatiana Markovna, shaking her grey
head as she saw how grimly he avoided her questioning glance.
"What can it be?" asked Raisky negligently, with an effort to assume
indifference.
"Something is wrong, Borushka. She looks so melancholy and is so silent,
and often seems to have tears in her eyes. I have spoken to the doctor,
but he only talks the old nonsense about nerves," she said, relapsing
into a gloomy silence.
Raisky looked anxiously for Vera's appearance next morning. She came at
last, accompanied by the maid, who carried a warm coat and her hat and
shoes. She said good morning to her aunt, asked for coffee, ate her roll
with appetite, and reminded Raisky that he had promised to go shopping
with her in the town and to take a walk in the park. It amazed him that
she should be once more transformed, but there was a certain audacity in
her gestures and a haste in her speech which seemed forced and alien
from her usual manner and reminded him of her behaviour the day before.
She was plainly making a great effort to conceal her real mood. She
chatted volubly with Paulina Karpovna, who had turned up unexpectedly
and was displaying the pattern of a dress intended for Marfinka's
trousseau. That lady's visit was really directed towards Raisky, of
whose return she had heard. She sought in vain an occasion to speak with
him alone, but seized a moment to sit down beside him, when she made
eyes at him and said in a low voice: _"Je comprends; dites tout, du
courage."_
Raisky wished her anywhere, and moved away. Vera meanwhile put on her
coat and asked him to come with her. Paulina Karpovna wished to
accompany them, but Vera declined on the ground that they were walking
and had far to go, that the ground was damp, and that Paulina's elegant
dress with a long train was unsuited for the expedition.
"I want to have you this whole day for myself," she said to Raisky as
they went out together, "indeed every day until you go."
"But, Vera, how can I help you when I don't know what is making you
suffer. I only see that you have your own drama, that the catastrophe is
approaching, or is in process. What is it?" he asked anxiously, as she
shivered.
"I don't feel well, and am far from gay. Autumn is beginning. Nature
grows dark and sinister, the birds are already deserting us, and my mood,
too, is autumnal. Do you see the black line high above the Volga? Those
are the cranes in flight. My thoughts, too, fly away into the distance."
She realised halfway that this strange explanation was unconvincing, and
only pursued it because she did not wish to tell the truth.
"I wanted to ask you, Vera, about the letters you wrote to me."
"I am ill and weak; you saw what an attack I had yesterday. I cannot
remember just now all that I wrote."
"Another time then!" he sighed. "But tell me, Vera, how I can help you.
Why do you keep me back, and why do you want to spend these days in my
society? I have a right to ask this, and it is your duty to give a plain
answer unless you want me to think you false."
"Don't let us talk of it now."
"No," he cried angrily. "You play with me as a cat does with a mouse. I
will endure it no longer. You can either reveal your own secrets or keep
them as you please, but in so far as it touches me, I demand an
immediate answer. What is my part in this drama?"
"Do not be angry! I did not keep you back to wound you. But don't talk
about it, don't agitate me so that I have another attack like
yesterday's. You see that I can hardly stand. I don't want my weakness
to be seen at home. Defend me from myself. Come to me at dusk, about six,
and I will tell you why I detained you."
"Pardon me, Vera. I am not myself either," he said, struck by her
suffering. "I don't know what lies on your heart, and I will not ask. I
will come later to fetch you."
"I will tell you if I have the strength," she said.
They went into the shops, where Vera made purchases for herself and
Marfinka, she talked eagerly to the acquaintances they met, and even
visited a poor godchild, for whom she took gifts. She assented readily
to Raisky's suggestion that they should visit Koslov.
When they reached the house, Mark walked out of the door. He was plainly
startled, made no answer to Raisky's inquiry after Leonti's health, and
walked quickly away. Vera was still more disconcerted but pulled herself
together, and followed Raisky into the house.
"What is the matter with him?" asked Raisky. "He did not answer a word,
but simply bolted. You were frightened, too, Vera. Is it Mark who
signalises his presence at the foot of the precipice by a shot? I have
seen him wandering round with a gun," he said joking.
She answered in the same tone: "Of course, Cousin," but she did not look
at him.
No, thought Raisky to himself, she could not have taken for her idol a
wandering, ragged gipsy like that. Then he wondered whether the
possibility could be entirely excluded, since passion wanders where he
lists, and not in obedience to the convictions and dictates of man. He
is invincible, and master of his own inexplicable moods. But Vera had
never had any opportunity of meeting Mark, he concluded, and was merely
afraid of him as every one else was.
Leonti's condition was unchanged. He wandered about like a drunken man,
silent and listening for the noise of any carriage in the street, when
he would rush to the window to look if it bore his fugitive wife.
He would come to them in a few weeks, he said, after Marfinka's wedding,
as Vera suggested. Then he became aware of Vera's presence.
"Vera Vassilievna!" he cried in surprise, staring at her as he addressed
Raisky. "Do you know, Boris Pavlovich, who else has read your books and
helped me to arrange them?"
"Who has been reading my books?" asked Raisky.
But Leonti had been distracted by the sound of a passing carriage and
did not hear the question. Vera whispered to Raisky that they should go.
"I wanted to say something, Boris Pavlovich," said Leonti thoughtfully,
raising his head, "but I can't remember what."
"You said some one else had been reading my books."
Leonti pointed to Vera, who was looking out of the window, but who now
pulled Raisky's sleeve "Come!" she said and they left the house.
When they reached home Vera made over some of her purchases to her aunt,
and had others taken to her room. She asked Raisky to go out with her
again in the park and down by the Volga.
"Why are you tiring yourself out, Vera?" he asked, as they went. "You
are weak."
"Air, I must have air!" she exclaimed, turning her face to the wind.
She is collecting all her strength, he thought, as they entered the room
where the family was waiting for them for dinner. In the afternoon he
slept for weariness, and only awoke at twilight, when six o'clock had
already struck. He went to find Vera, but Marina told him she had gone
to vespers, she did not know whether in the village church on the hill
or in the church on the outskirts of the town. He went to the town
church first, and after studying the faces of all the old women
assembled there, he climbed the hill to the village church. Old people
stood in the corners and by the door, and by a pillar in a dark corner
knelt Vera, with a veil wrapped round her bowed head. He took his stand
near her, behind another pillar, and, engrossed in his thoughts of her
state of mind, watched her intently as she prayed motionless, with her
eyes fixed on the cross. He went sadly into the porch to wait for her,
and there she joined him, putting her hand in his arm without a word.
As they crossed the big meadow into the park he thought of nothing but
the promised explanation. His own intense desire to be freed from his
miserable uncertainty weighed with him less than his duty, as he
conceived it, of shielding her, of illuminating her path with his
experience, and of lending his undivided strength to keep her from
overstepping her moral precipice. Perhaps it was merely a remnant of
pride that prevented her from telling him why she had summoned him and
detained him.
He could not, and, even if he could, he had not the right to share his
apprehensions with anyone else. Even if he might confide in Tatiana
Markovna, if he spoke to her of his suspicion and his surmises, he was
not clear that it would help matters, for he feared that their aunt's
practical, but old-fashioned wisdom would be shattered on Vera's
obstinacy. Vera possessed the bolder mind, the quicker will. She was
level with contemporary thought, and towered above the society in which
she moved. She must have derived her ideas and her knowledge from some
source accessible to her alone. Though she took pains to conceal her
knowledge, it was betrayed by a chance word, by the mention of a name or
an authority in this or that sphere of learning, and it was betrayed
also in her speech; in the remarkable aptness of the words in which she
clothed her thoughts and feelings. In this matter she held so great an
advantage over Tatiana Markovna that the old lady's efforts in argument
were more likely to be disastrous than not.
Undoubtedly Tatiana Markovna was a wise woman with a correct judgment of
the general phenomena of life. She was a famous housewife, ruling her
little tsardom magnificently; she knew the ways, the vices and the
virtues of mankind as they are set out in the Ten Commandments and the
Gospels, but she knew nothing of the life where the passions rage and
steep everything in their colours. And even if she had known such a
world in her youth it must have been passion divorced from experience,
an unshared passion, or one stifled in its development, not a stormy
drama of love, but rather a lyric tenderness which unfolded and perished
without leaving a trace on her pure life. How could she lend a rescuing
hand to snatch Vera from the precipice, she who had no faith in passion,
but had merely sought to understand facts?
The shots in the depths of the precipice, and Vera's expeditions were
indeed facts, against which Tatiana Markovna might be able to adopt
measures. She might double the watch kept on the property, set men to
watch for the lover, while Vera, shut up in the house, endured
humiliation and a fresh kind of suffering.
Vera would not endure any such rough constraint, and would make her
escape, just as she had fled across the Volga from Raisky. These would
be, in fact, no means at all, for she had outgrown Tatiana Markovna's
circle of experience and morals. No, authority might serve with Marfinka,
but not with the clear-headed, independent Vera.
Such were Raisky's thoughts as he walked silently by Vera's side, no
longer desiring full knowledge for his own sake, but for her salvation.
Perhaps, he thought, he would best gain his end by indirect efforts to make her betray herself. |
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