The Precipice Part 3

Tiet Nikonich was a gentleman of birth and breeding. He owned in the province two or three hundred "souls"--he did not exactly know how many, and never attended to his estate, but left his peasants to do as they liked, and to pay him what dues they pleased. Shyly, and without counting it, he took the money they brought him, put it in his bureau, and signed to them to go where they pleased. He had been in the army, and old people remembered him as a handsome young officer, a modest, frank young man. In his youth he often visited his mother on the estate, and spent his leave with her. Eventually he took his discharge, and then built himself a little grey house in the town with three windows on to the street, and there established himself.

Although he had only received a moderate education in the cadet school, he liked to read, occupying himself chiefly with politics and natural science. In his speech, his manners and his gait he betrayed a gentle shyness, never obtruded his dignity, but was ready to show it if necessity arose. However intimate he might be with anyone, he always maintained a certain courtesy and reserve in word and gesture. He bowed to the Governor or a friend or a new acquaintance with the same old-fashioned politeness, drawing back one foot as he did so. In the street he addressed ladies with uncovered head, was the first to pick up a handkerchief or bring a footstool. If there were young girls in a house he visited he came armed with a pound of bonbons, a bunch of flowers, and tried to suit his conversation to their age, their tastes and their occupations. He always maintained his delicate politeness, tinged with the respectful manner of a courtier of the old school. When ladies were present he always wore his frock-coat. He neither smoked, nor used perfume, nor tried to make himself look younger, but was always spotless, and distinguished in his dress. His clothes were simple but dazzlingly neat. His nankeen trousers were freshly pressed, and his blue frock-coat looked as if it had come straight from the tailor. In spite of his fifty years, he had, with his perruque and his shaven chin, the air of a fresh, rosy-cheeked young man. With all his narrow means he gave the impression of wealth and good breeding, and put down his hundred roubles as if he had thousands to throw about.

For Tatiana Markovna he showed a respectful friendship, but one so devoted and ardent that it was evident from his manner that he loved her beyond all others. But although he was her daily guest he gave no sign of intimacy before strangers.

She showed great friendship for him, but there was more vivacity in her tone. Those who remembered them when they were young, said she had been a very beautiful girl. When she had thrown on her shawl and sat looking meditatively before her, she resembled a family portrait in the gallery of the old house. Occasionally there came over her moods which betrayed pride and a desire for domination; when this happened her face wore an earnest, dreamy expression, as if she were leading another life far from the small details of her actual existence.

Hardly a day went by that Tiet Nikonich did not bring some present for Grandmother or the little girls, a basket of strawberries, oranges, peaches, always the earliest on the market.

At one time it had been rumoured in the town--a rumour long since stilled--that Tiet Nikonich had loved Tatiana Markovna and Tatiana Markovna him, but that her parents had chosen another husband for her.

She refused to a.s.sent, and remained unmarried. What truth there was in this, none knew but herself. But every day he came to her, either at midday or in the evening.

He liked to talk over with her what was going on in the world, who was at war, and with whom, and why. He knew why bread was cheap in Russia; the names of all the n.o.ble houses; he knew by heart the names of all the ministers and the men in high commands and their past history; he could tell why one sea lay at a higher tide than another; he was the first to know what the English or the French had invented, and whether the inventions were useful or not. If there was any business to be arranged in the law courts, Tiet Nikonich arranged it, and sometimes concealed the sums that he spent in so doing. If he was found out, she scolded him; he could not conceal his confusion, begged her pardon, kissed her hand, and took his leave.

Tatiana Markovna was always at loggerheads with the bureaucracy of the neighbourhood. If soldiers were to be billeted on her, the roads to be improved, or the taxes collected, she complained of outrage, argued and refused to pay. She would hear nothing about the public interest. In her opinion everyone had his own business to mind. She strongly objected to the police, and especially to the Superintendent, who was in her view a robber. More than once Tiet Nikonich tried, without success, to reconcile her to the doctrine of the public interest; he had to be content if she was reconciled with the officials and the police.

This was the patriarchal, peaceful atmosphere which young Raisky absorbed. Grandmother and the little girls were mother and sisters to him, and Tiet Nikonich the ideal uncle.

CHAPTER IV

Boris's aunt had only just begun to give him an idea of her methods of conducting the estate when he began to yawn.

"Listen, these are all your affairs; I am only your Starost," she said.

But he could not suppress a yawn, watched the birds, the dragon-flies, picked the cornflowers, looked curiously at the peasants, and gazed up at the sky over-arching the wide horizon. Then his aunt began to talk to one of the peasants, and he hurried off to the garden, ran down to the edge of the precipice, and made his way through the undergrowth to the steep bank of the Volga.

"He is still too young, only a child, does not understand serious matters," thought his aunt, as she followed him with her eyes. "What will become of him?"

The Volga glided quietly between its overgrown banks, with here and there a sandbank or an island thickly covered with bushes. In the distance lay the sandhills and the darkening forest. Here and there shimmered a sail; gulls, with an even balancing of their wings, skimmed the water, and then rose with a more strenuous movement, while over the gardens, high in the air, the goshawks hovered.

Boris stood still for a long time, recalling his childhood. He remembered that he had sat on this spot with his mother, looking thoughtfully out at this same landscape. Then he went slowly back to the house, and climbed the precipice, with the picture of her vividly before his mind's eye.

In Malinovka and the neighbourhood there were tragic memories connected with this precipice. In the lifetime of Boris's parents a man wild with jealousy, a tailor from the town, had killed his wife and her lover there in the midst of the thicket, and had then cut his own throat. The suicide had been buried on the spot where he had committed the crime.

Among the common people, as always happens in cases of this sort, there were rumours that the murderer, all dressed in white, wandered about the wood, climbed the precipice, and looked down on town and village before he vanished into air. And for superst.i.tious reasons this part of the grounds had been left neglected. None of the servants went down the precipice, and the peasants from the outskirts of the town and from Malinovka made a detour to avoid it. The fence that divided the Raiskys'

park from the woods had long since fallen into disrepair. Pines and bushes of hawthorn and dwarf-cherry had woven themselves together into a dense growth in the midst of which was concealed a neglected arbour.

Boris vividly imagined the scene, how the jealous husband, trembling with agitation, stole through the bushes, threw himself on his rival, and struck him with his knife; how the woman flung herself at his feet and begged his forgiveness. But he, with the foam of madness on his lips, struck her again and again, and then, in the presence of the two corpses, cut his own throat. Boris shuddered. Agitated and gloomy he turned from the accursed spot. Yet he was attracted by the mysterious darkness of the tangled wood to the precipice, to the lovely view over the Volga and its banks.

He closed his eyes, abandoning himself to the contemplation of the picture; his thoughts swept over him like the waves of the Volga; the lovely landscape was ever before his eyes, mirrored in his consciousness.

Veroshka and Marfinka provided him with amus.e.m.e.nt.

Veroshka was a little girl of six, with dark, brilliant eyes and dark complexion, who was beginning to be serious and to be ashamed of her baby ways. She would hop, skip and jump, then stand still, look shyly round and walk sedately along; then she would dart on again like a bird, pick a handful of currants and stuff them into her mouth. If Boris patted her hair, she smoothed it rapidly; if he gave her a kiss, she wiped it away. She was self-willed too. When she was sent on an errand she would shake her head, then run off to do it. She never asked Boris to draw for her, but if Marfinka asked him she watched silently and more intently than her sister. She did not, like Marfinka, beg either drawings or pencils.

Marfinka, a rosy little girl of four, was often self-willed, and often cried, but before the tears were dry she was laughing and shouting again.

Veroshka rarely wept, and then quietly. She soon recovered, but she did not like to be told to beg pardon.

Boris's aunt wondered, as she saw him gay and serious by turns, what occupied his mind; she wondered what he did all day long. In answer Boris showed his sketching folio; then he would play her quadrilles, mazurkas, excerpts from opera, and finally his own improvisations.

Tatiana Markovna's astonishment remained. "Just like your mother," she said. "She was just as restless, always sighing as if she expected something to happen. Then she would begin to play and was gay again. See, Va.s.silissa, he has sketched you and me, like life! When Tiet Nikonich comes, hide yourself and make a sketch of him, and next day we will send it him, and it can hang on the study wall. What a boy you are! And you play as well as the French emigre who used to live with your Aunt. Only it is impossible to talk to you about the farm; you are still too young."

She always wished to go through the accounts with him. "The accounts for Veroshka and Marfinka are separate, you see," she said. "You need not think that a penny of your money goes to them. See...."

But he never listened. He merely watched how his aunt wrote, how she looked at him over her spectacles, observed the wrinkles in her face, her birthmark, her eyes, her smile, and then burst out laughing, and, throwing himself into her arms, kissed her, and begged to go and look at the old house. She could refuse him nothing; so she unwillingly gave him the keys and he went to look at the rooms where he was born and had spent his childhood, of which he retained only a confused memory.

"I am going with Cousin Boris," said Marfinka.

"Where, my darling? It is uncanny over there," said Tatiana Markovna.

Marfinka was frightened. Veroshka said nothing, but when Boris reached the old house, she was already standing at the door, with her hand on the latch, as if she feared she might be driven away.

Boris shuddered as he entered the ante-room, and cast an anxious glance into the neighbouring hall, supported by pillars. Veroshka had run on in front.

"Where are you off to, Veroshka?"

She stood still a moment, her hand on the latch of the nearest door, and he had only just time to follow her before she vanished. Dark, smoke-stained reception rooms adjoined the hall. In one were two ghostly figures of shrouded statues and shrouded candelabra; by the walls were ranged dark stained oak pieces of furniture with bra.s.s decorations and inlaid work; there were huge Chinese vases, a clock representing Bacchus with a barrel, and great oval mirrors in elaborate gilded frames. In the bedroom stood an enormous bed, like a magnificent bier, with a brocade cover. Boris could not imagine how any human being could sleep in such a catafalque. Under the baldachin hovered a gilded Cupid, spotted and faded, with his arrow aimed at the bed. In the corners stood carved cupboards, damascened with ebony and mother-of-pearl. Veroshka opened a press and put her little face inside, and a musty, dusty smell came from the shelves, laden with old-fashioned caftans and embroidered uniforms with big b.u.t.tons.

Raisky shivered. "Granny was right!" he laughed. "It is uncanny here."

"But everything here is so beautiful!" cried Vera, "the great pictures and the books!"

"Pictures? Books? Where? I don't remember. Bravo, little Veroshka."

He kissed her. She wiped her lips, and ran on in front to show him the books. He found some two thousand volumes, and was soon absorbed in reading the t.i.tles; many of the books were still uncut.

From this time he was not often to be seen in the wooden house. He did not even go down to the Volga, but devoured one volume after another.

Then he wrote verses, read them aloud, and intoxicated himself with the sound of them; then gave all his time to drawing. He expected something, he knew not what, from the future. He was filled with pa.s.sion, with the foretaste of pleasure; there rose before him a world of wonderful music, marvellous pictures, and the murmur of enchanting life.

"I have been wanting to ask you," said Tatiana Markovna, "why you have entered yourself for school again."

"Not the school, the University!"

"It's the same thing. You studied at your guardian's, and at the High School, you can draw, play the piano. What more do you want to learn?

The students will only teach you to smoke a pipe, and in the end--which G.o.d forbid--to drink wine. You should go into the Guards."

"Uncle says my means are not sufficient...."

"Not sufficient! What next?" She pointed to the fields and the village.

She counted out his resources in hundreds and thousands of roubles. She had had no experience of army circles, had never lived in the capital, and did not know how much money was needed.

"Your means insufficient! Why, I can send provision alone for a whole regiment. No means! What does your Uncle do with the revenues?"

"I intend to be an artist, Granny."

"What! An artist!"