The Precipice Part 64

"And she was sought in marriage by the late Count Sergei Ivanovich--"

"I have heard that, too. She did not agree, and the Count married somebody else, but she was forbidden to marry Tiet Nikonich. I have been told all that by Va.s.silissa. What did the drunken woman say?"

"The Count is said to have surprised a rendezvous between Tatiana Markovna and Tiet Nikonich, and such a rendezvous.

"No, no!" she cried, shaking with laughter. "Tatiana Markovna! Who would believe such a thing?"

Raisky listened seriously, and surmises flitted across his mind.

"The Count gave Tiet Nikonich a box on the ears."

"That is a lie," cried Raisky, jumping up. "Tiet Nikonich would not have endured it."

"A lie naturally--he did not endure it. He seized a garden knife that he found among the flowers, struck the Count to the ground, seized him by the throat, and would have killed him."

Raisky's face changed. "Well?" he urged.

"Tatiana Markovna restrained his hand. 'You are' she said, 'a n.o.bleman, not a bandit, your weapon is a sword.' She succeeded in separating them, and a duel was not possible, for it would have compromised her. The opponents gave their word; the Count to keep silence over what had happened, and Tiet Nikonich not to marry Tatiana Markovna. That is why she remains unmarried. Is it not a shame to spread such calumnies?"

Raisky could no longer contain his agitation, but he said, "You see it is a lie. Who could possibly have seen and heard what pa.s.sed."

"The gardener, who was asleep in a corner, is said to have witnessed the whole scene. He was a serf, and fear ensured his silence, but he told his wife, the drunken widow who is now chattering about it. Of course it is nonsense, incredible nonsense. I am the first to cry that it is a lie, a lie. Our respected and saintly Tatiana Markovna!" Paulina Karpovna burst out laughing, but checked herself when she looked at Raisky.

"What is the matter? _Allons donc, oubliez tout. Vive la joie!_ Do not frown. We will send for more wine," she said, looking at him with her ridiculous, languishing air.

"No, no, I am afraid--" He broke off, fearing to betray himself, and concluded lamely, "It would not agree with me--I am not accustomed to wine."

He rose from his seat, and his hostess followed his example.

"Good-bye, for ever," he said.

"No, no," she cried.

"I must escape from these dangerous places, from your precipices and abysses. Farewell, farewell!"

He picked up his hat, and hurried away. Paulina Karpovna stood as if turned to stone, then rang the bell, and called for her carriage and for her maid to dress her, saying she had calls to pay.

Raisky perceived that there was truth in the drunken woman's story, and that he held in his hand the key to his aunt's past. He realised now how she had grown to be the woman she was, and where she had won her strength, her practical wisdom, her knowledge of life and of men's hearts; he understood why she had won Vera's confidence, and had been able to calm her niece in spite of her own distress. Perhaps Vera, too, knew the story. While he had been manoeuvring to give another turn to the gossip about Vera's relations to himself and Tushin, he had lighted by chance on a forgotten but vivid page of his family history, on another drama no less dangerous to those who took part in it, and found that his whole soul was moved by this record of what had happened forty years ago.

"Borushka!" cried Tatiana Markovna in horror, when he entered her room.

"What has come to you, my friend? You have been drinking!" She looked keenly at him for a long minute, then turned away when she read in his tell-tale face that he, too, had heard the talk about her past self.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

Against universal expectation, Marfinka's wedding was a quiet one, no one being invited except a few neighbouring landowners and the important personages in the town, about fifty guests in all. The young people were married in the village church on Sunday, after morning service, and afterwards in the hall, which had been transformed for the occasion, a formal breakfast was served without any of the gaiety and excitement usual to such occasions. The servants were most disappointed, for their mistress had taken precautions against their drinking to excess, which made the whole affair seem dull to them.

Marfinka's trousseau and her contributions to the household had already been taken across the Volga, the process having occupied a full week.

She herself shone with the charm of a rose grown to perfection; in her face a new emotion was visible which found expression now in a musing smile, now in a stray tear. Her face was shadowed with the consciousness of a new life, of a far stretching future with unknown duties, a new dignity and a new happiness. Vikentev wore an expression of modesty, almost of timidity, and was visibly affected.

Raisky looked at the pretty bride with the emotions of a brother, but he had an impulse of terror when he noticed in her sheaf of orange blossom some faded blooms.

"They are from the bouquet that Vera gave me for my birthday," she explained naively.

Raisky pretended that withered flowers were a bad omen, and helped her to pick them out.

When the time for their departure came, the bride had to be literally dragged sobbing from her aunt's breast, but her tears were tears of joy.

Tatiana Markovna was pale, only maintaining her self-restraint with difficulty, and it was plain that she could only just stand as she looked out on the Volga after her departing child. Once at home again, she gave way to her tears. She knew that she possessed the almost undivided love of her other child, the pa.s.sionate Vera, whose character had been ripened by bitter experience.

Tushin stayed with a friend in the town for the wedding. Next day he came to Tatiana Markovna, accompanied by an architect, and they spent nearly a week over plans, going over the two houses, the gardens and the servants' quarters, making sketches and talking of radical alterations in the spring. Everything of value--furniture, pictures, even the parquet flooring--had been taken out of the old house and stored, partly in the new house, partly in outhouses and on the ground.

Tatiana Markovna and Vera intended to go to Novosselovo, and later on to visit the Vikentevs; for the summer they were invited to be the guests of Anna Ivanovna, Tushin's sister, at "Smoke." Tatiana Markovna had given no definite answer to the suggestion, saying that it must be "as G.o.d wills." In any case Tushin was making the necessary arrangements with the architect, and intended to make extensive alterations in his house for the reception of the honoured visitors.

Raisky stayed in his rooms in the new house, but Leonti had returned to his own home for the time being, to return to Malinovka after the departure of Tatiana Markovna and Vera. He, too, had been invited by Tushin to "Smoke," but Leonti had answered with a sigh, "Later in the winter. Just now I am expecting...." and had broken off to look out on to the road from Moscow. He was in fact expecting a letter from his wife in answer to one he had just written. Not long before, Juliana Andreevna had written to their housekeeper and had asked her to send her winter cloak. She indicated the address, but said not a word about her husband.

Leonti dispatched the cloak himself with a glowing letter in which he asked her to come, and spoke of his love and friendship.

The poor man received no reply. Gradually he resumed his teaching, though he still betrayed his melancholy now and again during the lessons, and was apt to be absentminded and unconscious of the behaviour of his scholars, who took pitiless advantage of his helplessness.

Tushin had offered to look after Malinovka during Tatiana Markovna's absence. He called it his winter quarters and made a point of crossing the Volga every week to give an eye to the house, the farm yard and the servants, of whom only Va.s.silissa, Egor, the cook and the coachman accompanied their mistress to Novosselovo. Yakob and Savili were put especially at Tushin's disposition.

Raisky proposed to leave a week after the wedding.

Tiet Nikonich was in the most melancholy plight of all. At any other time he would have followed Tatiana Markovna to the end of the world, but after the outbreak of gossip it would have been unsuitable to follow her for the moment, because it might have given colour to the talk about them which was half-believed and already partly forgotten. Tatiana Markovna, however, said he might come at Christmas, and by that time perhaps circ.u.mstances would permit him to stay. In the meantime, he accepted Tushin's invitation to be his guest at "Smoke."

The gossip about Vera had given ground to the universal expectation of her marriage with Tushin. Tatiana Markovna hoped that time would heal all her wounds, but she recognised that Vera's case stood in a category by itself, and that ordinary rules did not apply to it. No rumour reached Vera, who continued to see in Tushin the friend of long standing, who was all the dearer to her since he had stretched out to her his helping hand.

In the last days before his departure Raisky had gone through and sorted his sketches and notebooks, and had selected from his novel those pages which bore reference to Vera. In the last night that he spent under the roof of home he decided to begin his plot then and there, and sat down to his writing-table. He determined that one chapter at least should be written. "When my pa.s.sion is past," he told himself, "when I no longer stand in the presence of these men, with their comedy and their tragedy, the picture will be clearer and in perspective. I already see the splendid form emerge fresh from the hand of its creator, I see my statue, whose majesty is undefiled by the common and the mean." He rose, walked up and down the room, and thought over the first chapter. After half an hour's meditation he sat down and rested his head on his hands.

Weariness invaded him, and as it was uncomfortable to doze in a sitting posture he lay down on the sofa. Very soon he fell asleep, and there was a sound of regular breathing.

When he woke it was beginning to get light. He sprang up hastily and looked round in astonishment, as if he had seen something new and unexpected in his dreams.

"In my dream, even, I saw a statue," he said to himself. "What does it mean? Is it an omen?"

He went to the table, read the introduction he had written, and sighed.

"What use do I make of my powers?" he cried. "Another year is gone." He angrily thrust the ma.n.u.script aside to look for a letter he had received a month ago from the sculptor Kirilov, and sat down at the table to answer it.

"In my sound and clear mind, dear Kirilov, I hasten to give you the first intimation of the new and unexpected perspective of my art and my activity. I write in answer to the letter in which you tell me that you are going to visit Italy and Rome. I am coming to St. Petersburg; so for G.o.d's sake wait for me and I will travel with you. Take me with you, and have pity on a blind, insane individual, who has only to-day had his eyes opened to his real calling. I have groped about in the darkness for a long time, and have very nearly committed suicide, that is, let my talent perish. You discovered talent in my pictures, but instead of devoting myself solely to my brush I have dabbled in music, in literature--have dissipated my energies. I meant to write a novel, and neither you nor anybody else prevented me and told me that I am a sculptor, a cla.s.sical artist. A Venus of living marble is born of my imagination. Is it then my cue to introduce psychology into my pictures, to describe manners and customs? Surely not, my art is concerned with form and beauty.

"For the novelist quite other qualities are required, and years of labour are necessary. I would spare neither time nor endeavour if I thought that my talent lay in my pen. In any case, I will keep my notes--or perhaps no!--I must not deceive myself by harbouring an uncertain hope. I cannot accomplish what I have in mind with the pen. The a.n.a.lysis of the complicated mechanism of human nature is contrary to my nature. My gift is to comprehend beauty, to model it in clear and lovely forms.... I shall keep those notes to remind me of what I have seen, experienced, and suffered.

"If the art of sculpture fails me I will humiliate myself, and seek out, wherever he may be, the man (his name is Mark Volokov) who first doubted the completion of my novel and will confess to him, 'You are right, right, I am only half a man!'

But until that time comes, I will live and hope.

"Let us go to Rome, Rome. There dwells Art, not sn.o.bbishness and empty pastime; there is work, enjoyment, life itself. To our early meeting!"

The house was early astir to bid Raisky G.o.dspeed. Tushin and the young Vikentevs had come, Marfinka, a marvel of beauty, amiability and shyness.