The Precipice Part 6

"Are you not weary with your journey?" she said. "You are yawning and perhaps you would like a little sleep. Business can wait till to-morrow."

"I slept a good deal on the journey. But you are giving yourself useless trouble, Grandmother, for I am not going to look at your accounts."

"What? You have surely come to take over the estate and to ask for an account of my stewardship. The accounts and statements that I sent you--"

"I have never even read, Grandmother."

"You haven't read them. I have sent you precise information about your income and you don't even know how your money is spent."

"And I don't want to know," answered Raisky, looking out of the window away towards the banks of the Volga.

"Imagine, Marfinka," he said, "I remember a verse I learnt as a child--

"'Oh Volga, proudest of rivers, Stem thy hurrying flood; Oh Volga, hearken, hearken, To the ringing song of the poet, The unknown, whose life thou hast spared.'"

"Don't be vexed with me, Borushka," cried Tatiana Markovna, "but I think you are mad. What have you done with the papers I sent you? Have you brought them?"

"Where are they?" she continued, as he shook his head.

"Granny, I tore up all the accounts, and I swear I will do the same with these if you worry me with them."

He seized the paper, but she s.n.a.t.c.hed them away, exclaiming, "You dare to tear up my accounts."

He laughed, suddenly embraced her, and kissed her lips as he had done when he was a child. She shook herself free and wiped her mouth.

"I toil till midnight, adding up and writing down every kopek, and he tears up my work. That is why you never wrote about money matters, gave any orders, made any preparations, or did anything of the kind. Did you never think of your estate?"

"Not at all, Granny. I forgot all about it. If I thought at all I thought of these rooms in which lives the only woman who loves me and is loved by me, you alone in the whole world. And now," he said, turning to Marfinka, "I want to win my sisters too."

His aunt took off her spectacles and gazed at him.

"In all my days I have never seen anything like it," she said. "Here the only person with no roots like that is Markushka."

"What sort of person is this Markushka. Leonti Koslov writes about him.

How is Leonti, Granny? I must look him up."

"How should he be? He crouches in one spot with a book, and his wife in another. But he does not even see what goes on under his nose, and can any good come from his friendship with this Markushka. Only the other day your friend came here to complain that that Markushka was destroying books from your library. You know, don't you, that the library from the old house has been installed in Koslov's house?"

Raisky hummed an air from _"Il Barbiere."_

"You are an extraordinary man," cried his aunt angrily. "Why did you come at all? Do talk sensibly."

"I came to see you, Granny, to live here for a little while, to breathe freely, to look out over the Volga, to write, to draw...."

"But the estate? If you are not tired we will drive out into the field, to look at the sowing of the winter-corn."

"Later on, Granny."

"Will you take over the management of the estate?"

"No, Granny, I will not."

"Who then is to look after it? I am old and can no longer do all the work. Do you wish me to put the estate into strange hands?"

"Farm it yourself, Granny, so long as you take any pleasure in it."

"And if I die?"

"Then leave everything as it is."

Tatiana Markovna looked at the portrait of Raisky's mother, for a long time she looked at the languishing eyes, the melancholy smile.

"Yes," she whispered. "I honour the memory of the departed, but hers is the fault. She kept you by her side, talked to you, played the piano, read out of books and wept as she did so. And this is the result.

Singing and painting. Now tell me, Borushka," she went on in her ordinary tone, "what is to become of the house, of the linen, the silver, the diamonds? Shall you order them to be given to the peasants?"

"Do I possess diamonds and silver?"

"How often have I told you so? From your mother you have inherited all these things; what is to be done with them. I will show you the inventory of them."

"Don't do that, for Heaven's sake. I can believe they are mine. And so I can dispose of them as I please?"

"Of course; you are the proprietor. We live here as your guests, though we do not eat your bread. See here are my receipts and expenditure," she said, thrusting towards another big ledger which he waved away.

"But I believe all you say, Granny," he said. "Send for a clerk and tell him to make out a deed, by which I give the house, the land, and all that belongs to it to my dear cousins, Veroshka and Marfinka, as dowry."

The old lady wrinkled her brow, and waited impatiently till he should finish speaking. "So long as you live, dear Granny," he continued, "the estate naturally remains under your control; the peasants must have their freedom...."

"Never," interrupted his aunt, "Veroshka and Marfinka are not beggars--each of them has her fifty thousand roubles--and after my death three times that sum, perhaps more. All I have is for my little girls, and, thank G.o.d, I am not a pauper. I have a corner of my own, a bit of land, and a roof to cover them. One would think you were a millionaire.

You make gifts; you will have this, and you won't have that. Here, Marfinka! where have you hidden yourself?"

"Directly!" cried Marfinka's clear voice from a neighbouring room. Happy, gay, smiling and frank, she fluttered into the room, looked hesitatingly, first at Raisky, then at her aunt, who was nearly beside herself.

"Your cousin, Marfinka, is pleased to present you with a house, silver, and lace. You are, he thinks, a beggared, dowerless girl. Make a curtsey, thank your benefactor, kiss his hand--Well?"

Marfinka, who did not know what to say, squeezed herself flat against the stove and looked at her two relatives. Her aunt pushed papers and books on one side, crossed her hands over her breast, and looked out of the window, while Raisky sat down beside Marfinka, and took her hand.

"Would you like to go away from here, Marfinka, into a strange house, perhaps in an altogether different district?"

"G.o.d forbid! How could such a thing happen. Who ever imagined such nonsense?"

"Granny," laughed Raisky.

Happily "Granny" had not heard the words. Marfinka was embarra.s.sed, and looked out of the window.

"Here I have everything I want, the lovely flowers in the garden, the birds. Who would look after the birds? I will never go away from here, never!"

"But Granny wants to go and take you with her."

"Granny! Where? Why?" she asked her aunt in her caressing, coaxing way.