The Precipice Part 48

"What a desperate war you wage against yourself, Mark, and how you ruin your own life!" she cried, wringing her hands.

"Let us cease to quarrel, Vera. Your Grandmother speaks through you, but with another voice. That was all very well once, but now we are in the flood of another life where neither authority nor preconceived ideas will help us, where truth alone a.s.serts her power."

"Where is truth?"

"In happiness, in the joy of love. And I love you. Why do you torture me.

Why do you fight against me and against yourself, and make two victims?"

"It is a strange reproach. Look at me. It is only a few days since we saw one another, and have I not changed?"

"I see that you suffer, and that makes it the more senseless. Now, I too ask what has induced you to come down here for all this time?"

"Because I had not earlier realised the horror of my position, you will say," she said, with a look that was almost hostile. "We might have asked one another this question, and made this reproach, long ago, and might have ceased to meet here. Better late than never! To-day we must answer the question, What is it that we wanted and expected from one another?"

"Here is my irrefragable opinion--I want your love, and I give you mine.

In love I recognise solely the principle of reciprocation, as it obtains in Nature. The law that I acknowledge is to follow unfettered our strong impression, to exchange happiness for happiness. This answers your question of why I came here. Is sacrifice necessary? Call it what you will there is no sacrifice in my scheme of life. I will no longer wander in this mora.s.s, and don't understand how I have wasted my strength so long, certainly not for your sake, but essentially for my own. Here I will stay so long as I am happy, so long as I love. If my love grows cold, I shall tell you so, and go wherever Life leads me, without taking any baggage of duties and privileges with me; those I leave here in the depths below the precipice. You see, Vera, I don't deceive you, but speak frankly. Naturally you possess the same rights as I. The mob above there lies to itself and others, and calls these his principles. But in secret and by cunning it acts in the same way, and only lays its ban on the women. Between us there must be equality. Is that fair or not?"

"Sophistry!" she said, shaking her head. "You know my principles, Mark."

"To hang like stones round one another's necks."

"Love imposes duties, just as life demands them. If you had an old, blind mother you would maintain and support her, would remain by her. An honourable man holds it to be his duty and his pleasure too."

"You philosophise, Vera, but you do not love."

"You avoid my argument, Mark. I speak my opinion plainly, for I am a woman, not an animal, or a machine."

"Your love is the fantastic, elaborate type described in novels. Is what you ask of me honourable? Against my convictions I am to go into a church, to submit to a ceremony which has no meaning for me. I don't believe any of it and can't endure the parson. Should I be acting logically or honourably?"

Vera hastily wrapped herself in her mantilla, and stood up to go.

"We met, Mark, to remove all the obstacles that stand in the way of our happiness, but instead of that we are increasing them. You handle roughly things that are sacred to me. Why did you call me here? I thought you had surrendered, that we should take one another's hands for ever. Every time I have taken the path down the cliff it has been in this hope, and in the end I am disappointed. Do you know, Mark, where true life lies?"

"Where?"

"In the heart of a loving woman. To be the friend of such a woman...."

Tears stifled her voice, but through her sobs she whispered: "I cannot, Mark. Neither my intellect nor my strength are sufficient to dispute with you. My weapon is weak, and has no value except that I have drawn it from the armoury of a quiet life, not from books or hearsay. I had thought to conquer you with other weapons. Do you remember how all this began?" she said, sitting down once more. "At first I was sorry for you.

You were here alone, with no one to understand you, and everyone fled at the sight of you. I was drawn to you by sympathy, and saw something strange and undisciplined in you. You had no care for propriety, you were incautious in speech, you played rashly with life, cared for no human being, had no faith of your own, and sought to win disciples. From curiosity I followed your steps, allowed you to meet me, took books from you. I recognised in you intellect and strength, but strangely mixed and directed away from life. Then, to my sorrow, I imagined that I could teach you to value life, I wanted you to live so that you should be higher and better than anyone else, I quarrelled with you over your undisciplined way of living. You submitted to my influence, and I submitted to yours, to your intellect, your audacity, and even adopted part of your sophistry."

"But you soon," put in Mark, "retraced your steps, and were seized with fear of your Grandmother. Why did you not leave me when you first became aware of my sophistry? Sophistry!"

"It was too late, for I had already taken your fate too intimately to heart. I believed with all possible ardour that you would for my sake comprehend life, that you would cease to wander about to your own injury and without advantage to anyone else, that you would accept a substantial position of some kind...."

"Vice-governor, Councillor or something of the kind," he mocked.

"What's in the name? Yes, I thought that you would show yourself a man of action in a wide sphere of influence."

"As a well-disposed subject and as jack of all trades, and what else?"

"My lifelong friend. I let my hopes of you take hold on me, and was carried away by them, and what are my gains in the terrible conflict?

One only, that you flee from love, from happiness, from life, and from your Vera." She drew closer to him and touched his shoulder. "Don't fly from us, Mark. Look in my eyes, listen to my voice, which speaks with the voice of truth. Let us go to-morrow up the hill into the garden, and to-morrow there will be no happier pair than we are. You love me, Mark.

Mark, do you hear? Look at me."

She stooped, and looked into his eyes.

He got sharply to his feet, and shook his ma.s.s of hair.

Vera took up her black mantilla once more, but her hands refused to obey her, and the mantilla fell on the floor. She took a step towards the door, but sank down again on the bench. Where could she find strength to hold him, when she had not even strength to leave the arbour, she wondered. And even if she could hold him, what would be the consequences?

Not one life, but two separate lives, two prisons, divided by a grating.

"We are both brusque and strong, Vera; that is why we torture one another, why we are separating."

"If I were strong, you would not leave Malinovka; you would ascend the hill with me, not clandestinely, but boldly by my side. Come and share life and happiness with me. It is impossible that you should not trust me, impossible that you are insincere, for that would be a crime. What shall I do? How shall I bring home to you the truth?"

"You would have to be stronger than I, but we are of equal strength.

That is why we dispute and are not of one mind. We must separate without bringing our struggle to an issue, one must submit to the other. I could take forcible possession of you as I could of any other woman. But what in another woman is prudery, or petty fear, or stupidity, is in you strength and womanly determination. The mist that divided us is dispersed; we have made our position clear. Nature has endued you with a powerful weapon, Vera. The antiquated ideas, morality, duty, principles, and faiths that do not exist for me are firmly established with you. You are not easily carried away, you put up a desperate fight and will only confess yourself conquered under terms of equality with your opponent.

You are wrong, for it is a kind of theft. You ask to be conquered, and to carry off all the spoils! I, Vera, cannot give everything, but I respect you."

Vera gave him a glance in which there was a trace of pride, but her heart beat with the pain of parting. His words were a model of what a farewell should be.

"We have gone to the bottom of the matter," said Mark dully, "and I leave the decision in your hands." He went to the other side of the arbour, keeping his eyes fixed upon her. "I am not deceiving you even now, in this decisive moment, when my head is giddy--I cannot. I do not promise you an unending love, because I do not believe in such a thing.

I will not be your betrothed. But I love you more than anything else in the world. If, after all I have told you, you come to my arms, it means that you love me, that you are mine."

She looked across at him with wide open eyes, and felt that her whole body was trembling. A doubt shot through her mind. Was he a Jesuit, or was the man who brought her into this dangerous dilemma in reality of unbending honour?

"Yours for ever?" she said in a low voice. If he said, "yes," it would, she knew, be a bridge for the moment to help her over the abyss that divided them, but that afterwards she would be plunged into the abyss.

She was afraid of him.

Mark was painfully agitated, but he answered in a subdued tone, "I do not know. I only know what I am doing now, and do not see even into the near future. Neither can you. Let us give love for love, and I remain here, quieter than the waters of the pool, humbler than gra.s.s. I will do what you will, and what do you ask more. Or," he added suddenly, coming nearer, "we will leave this place altogether...."

In a lightning flash the wide world seemed to smile before her, as if the gates of Paradise were open. She threw herself in Mark's arms and laid her hand on his shoulder. If she went away into the far distance with him, she thought, he could not tear himself from her, and once alone with her he must realise that life was only life in her presence.

"Will you decide!" he asked seriously. She said nothing, but bowed her head. "Or do you fear your Grandmother?"

The last words brought her to her senses, and she stepped back.

"If I do not decide," she whispered, "it is only because I fear her."

"The old lady would not let you go."

"She would let me go, and would give me her blessing, but she herself would die of grief. That is what I fear. To go away together," she said dreamily, "and what then?" She looked up at him searchingly.

"And then? How can I know, Vera?"

"You will suddenly be driven from me; you will go and leave me, as if I were merely a log?"

"Why a log? We could separate as friends."