The Precipice Part 41

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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion."

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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.s 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. G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude? I am not here for that, but on Koslov's account."

"G.o.d 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."