The Precipice Part 38

Mark was already in the arbour, and his rifle and huntsman's bag lay on the table. He held out his hand to Vera, and almost lifted her in over the shattered steps. By way of welcome he merely commented on her lateness.

"The weather detained me," she said. "Have you any news?"

"Did you expect any?"

"I expect every day that you will be sent for by the military or the police."

"I have been more careful since Raisky played at magnanimity and took upon himself the fuss about the books."

"I don't like that about you, Mark, your callousness and malice towards everyone except yourself. My cousin made no parade of what he had done; he did not even mention it to me. You are incapable of appreciating a kindness."

"I do appreciate it in my own way."

"Just as the wolf in the fable appreciated the kindness of the crane.

Why not thank him with the same simplicity with which he served you. You are a real wolf; you are for ever disparaging, detracting, or blaming someone, either from pride or...."

"Or what?"

"Or by way of cultivating the 'new strength.'"

"Scoffer!" he laughed, as he sat down beside her. "You are young, and still too inexperienced to be disillusioned of all the charm of the good old times. How can I instruct you in the rights of mankind?"

"And how am I to cure you of the slandering of mankind?"

"You have always a retort handy, and n.o.body could complain of dullness with you, but," he said, clutching meditatively at his head, "if I...."

"Am locked up by the police," she finished. "That seems to be all that your fate still lacks."

"But for you, I should long ago have been sent off somewhere. You are a disturbing element."

"Are you tired of living peaceably, and already craving for a storm? You promised me to lead a different life. What have you not promised me? And I was so happy that they even noticed my delight at home. And now you have relapsed into your old mood," she protested, as he seized her hand.

"Pretty hand!" he said, kissing it again and again without any objection from her, but when he sought to kiss her cheek she drew back.

"You refuse again. Is your reserve never to end? Perhaps you keep your caresses for...."

She drew her hand away hastily.

"You know I do not like jests of that kind. You must break yourself of this tone, and of wolfish manners generally; that would be the first step towards unaffected manhood."

"Tone and manners! You are a child still occupied with your ABC. Before you lie freedom, life, love, happiness, and you talk of tone and manners.

Where is the human soul, the woman in you? What is natural and genuine in you?"

"Now you are talking like Raisky."

"Ah, Raisky! Is he still so desperate?"

"More than ever, so that I really don't know how to treat him."

"Lead him by the nose."

"How hideous! It would be best to tell him the truth about myself. If he knew all he would be reconciled and would go away, as he said he intended to do long ago."

"He will hate you, read you a lecture, and perhaps tell your Aunt."

"G.o.d forbid that she should hear the truth except from ourselves. Should I go away for a time?"

"Why? It could not be arranged for you to be away long, and if your absence was short he would be only the more agitated. When you were away what good did it do. There is only one way and that is to conceal the truth from him, to put him on a wrong track. Let him cherish his pa.s.sion, read verses, and gape at the moon, since he is an incurable Romanticist.

Later on he will sober down and travel once more."

"He is not a Romanticist in the sense you mean," sighed Vera. "You may fairly call him poet, artist. I at least begin to believe in him, in his delicacy and his truthfulness. I would hide nothing from him if he did not betray his pa.s.sion for me. If he subdues that, I will be the first to tell him the whole truth."

"We did not meet," interrupted Mark, "to talk so much about him."

"Well, what have you done since we last met?" she asked gaily. "Whom have you met? Have you been discoursing on the 'new strength' or the 'dawn of the future,' or 'young hopes?' Every day I live in anxious expectation."

"No, no," laughed Mark. "I have ceased to bother about the people here; it is not worth while to tackle them."

"G.o.d grant it were so. You would have done well if you had acted up to what you say. But I cannot be happy about you. At the Sfogins, the youngest son, Volodya, who is fourteen, declared to his mother that he was not going any more to Ma.s.s. When he was whipped, and questioned, he pointed to his eldest brother, who had sneaked into the servants' room and there preached to the maids the whole evening that it was stupid to observe the fasts of the Church, to go through the ceremony of marriage, that there was no G.o.d...."

Mark looked at her in horror.

"In the servants' room! And yet I talked to him for a whole evening as if he were a man capable of reason, and gave him books...."

"Which he took straight to the bookseller. 'These are the books you ought to put on sale,' he said. Did you not give me your promise," she said reproachfully, "when we parted and you begged to see me again?"

"All that is long past. I have had nothing more to do with those people since I gave you that promise. Don't be angry, Vera. But for you I would escape from this neighbourhood to-morrow."

"Escape--where? Everywhere there are the same opportunities; boys who would like to see their moustaches grow quicker, servants' rooms, if independent men and women will not listen to your talk. Are you not ashamed of the part you play?" she asked after a brief pause. "Do you look on it as your mission?"

She stroked his bent head affectionately as she spoke. At her last words he raised his head quickly.

"What part do I play? I give a baptism of pure water."

"Are you convinced of the pureness of the water?"

"Listen, Vera. I am not Raisky," said Mark, rising. "You are a woman, or rather one should say a bud which has yet to unfold into womanhood. When that unfolding comes many secrets will be clear to you that have no part in a girl's dreams and that cannot be explained; experience is the sole key to these secrets. I call you to your initiation, Vera; I show you the path of life. But you stand hesitating on the threshold, and your advance is slow. The serious thing is that you don't even believe me."

"Do not be vexed," begged Vera affectionately. "I agree with you in everything that I recognise as right and honourable. If I cannot always follow you in life and in experience it is because I desire to know and see for myself the goal for which I am making."

"That is to say, that you wish to judge for yourself."

"And do you desire that I should not judge for myself?"

"I love you, Vera. Put your trust in me, and obey. Does the flame of pa.s.sion burn in me less strongly than in your Raisky, for all his poetry.

Pa.s.sion is chary of words. But you will neither trust nor obey me."

"Would you have me not stand at the level of my personality? You yourself preached freedom to me, and now the tyrant in you appears because I do not show a slavish submission."