The Precipice Part 8

"I won't let you fall. Do you think I can't take care of you?"

"Not at all, but I am afraid. Veroshka has no fear, but goes down alone, even in the dusk. Although a murderer lies buried there, she is not afraid."

"Try, shut your eyes, and give me your hand. You will see how carefully I take you down."

Marfinka half closed her eyes, but she had hardly taken his hand and made one step, when she found herself standing on the edge of the precipice. Shuddering she withdrew her hand.

"I would not go down for anything in the world," she cried as she ran back. "Where are you going to!"

No answer reached her. She approached the edge and looked timidly over.

She saw how the bushes were bent noisily aside, as Raisky sprang down, step by step. How horrible! she thought as she returned to the house.

CHAPTER VII

Raisky went nearly all round the town, and when he climbed the cliffs once more, he was on the extreme boundary of his estate. A steep path led down to the suburbs, and the town lay before him as in the palm of a hand. Stirred with the pa.s.sion aroused by his memories of childhood, he looked at the rows of houses, cottages and huts. It was not a town, but, like other towns, a cemetery. Going from street to street, Raisky saw through the windows, how in one house the family sat at dinner, and in another the amovar had already been brought in. In the empty streets, every conversation could be heard a _verst_ away; voices and footsteps re-echoed on the wooden pavement. It seemed to Raisky a picture of dreamy peace, the tranquillity of the grave. What a frame for a novel, if only he knew what to put in the novel. The houses fell into their places in the picture that filled his mind, he drew in the faces of the towns-people, grouped the servants with his aunt, the whole composition centring in Marfinka. The figures stood sharply outlined in his mind; they lived and breathed. If the image of pa.s.sion should float over this motionless sleeping little world, the picture would glow with the enchanting colour of life. Where was he to find the pa.s.sion, the colour?

"Pa.s.sion!" he repeated to himself. If her burning fire could but be poured out upon him, and engulf the artist in her destroying waves.

As he moved forward he remembered that his stroll had an aim. He wondered how Leonid Koslov was, whether he had changed, or whether he had remained what he had been before, a child for all his learning. He too was a good subject for an artist. Raisky thought of Leonti's beautiful wife, whose acquaintance he had made during his student days in Moscow, when she was a young girl. She used to call Leonti her fiance, without any denial on his part, and five years after he had left the University he made the journey to Moscow, and married her. He loved his wife as a man loves air and warmth; absorbed in the life and art of the ancients, his lover's eyes saw in her the antique ideal of beauty. The lines of her neck and bosom charmed him, and her head recalled to him Roman heads seen on bas-reliefs and cameos.

Leonti did not recognise Raisky, when his friend suddenly entered his study.

"I have not the honour," he began.

But when Boris Pavlovich opened his lips he embraced him.

"Wife! Ulinka!" he cried into the garden. "Come quickly, and see who has come to see us."

She came hastily, and kissed Raisky.

"What a man you have grown, and how much more handsome you are!" she said, her eyes flashing.

Her eyes, her mien, her whole figure betrayed audacity. Just over thirty years old, she gave the impression of a splendidly developed specimen of blooming womanhood.

"Have you forgotten me?" she asked.

"How should he forget you?" broke in Leonti. "But Ulinka is right. You have altered, and are hardly recognisable with your beard. How delighted your Aunt must have been to see you."

"Ah! his Aunt!" remarked Juliana Andreevna in a tone of displeasure. "I don't like her."

"Why not?"

"She is despotic and censorious."

"Yes, she is a despot," answered Raisky. "That comes from intercourse with serfs. Old customs!"

"According to Tatiana Markovna," continued Juliana Andreevna, "everybody should stay on one spot, turn his head neither to right nor left, and never exchange a word with his neighbours. She is a past mistress in fault-finding; nevertheless she and Tiet Nikonich are inseparable, he spends his days and nights with her."

Raisky laughed and said, "She is a saint nevertheless, whatever you may find to say about her."

"A saint perhaps, but nothing is right for her. Her world is in her two nieces, and who knows how they will turn out? Marfinka plays with her canaries and her flowers, and the other sits in the corner like the family ghost, and not a word can be got from her. We shall see what will become of her."

"Veroshka? I haven't seen her yet. She is away on a visit on the other side of the Volga."

"And who knows what her business is there?"

"I love my Aunt as if she were my Mother," said Raisky emphatically.

"She is wise, honourable, just! She has strength and individuality, and there is nothing commonplace about her."

"You will believe everything she says?" asked Juliana Andreevna, drawing him away to the window, while Leonti collected the scattered papers, laid them in cupboards and put the books on the shelves.

"Yes, everything," she said.

"Don't believe her. I know she will tell you all sorts of nonsense--about Monsieur Charles."

"Who is he?"

"A Frenchman, a teacher, and a colleague of my husband's. They sit there reading till all hours. How can I help it? Yet G.o.d knows what they make out of it in the town, as if I.... Don't believe it," she went on, as she saw Raisky was silent. "It is idle talk, there is nothing," she concluded, with a false smile intended to be allowing.

"What business is it of mine?" returned Raisky, turning away from her.

"Shall we go into the garden?"

"Yes, we will have dinner outside," said Leonti. "Serve what there is, Ulinka. Come, Boris, now we can talk." Then as an idea struck him, he added, "What shall you have to say to me about the library?"

"About what library? You wrote to me about it, but I did not understand what you were talking about. I think you said some person called Mark, had been tearing the books."

"You cannot imagine, Boris, how vexed I was about it," he said as he took down some books with torn backs from the shelves.

Raisky pushed the books away. "What does it matter to me?" he said. "You are like my grandmother; she bothers me about accounts, you about books."

"But Boris, I don't know what accounts she bothered you about, but these books are your most precious possession. Look!" he said, pointing with pride to the rows of books which filled the study to the ceiling.

"Only on this shelf nearly everything is ruined by that accursed Mark!

The other books are all right. See, I drew up a catalogue, which took a whole year to do," and he pointed self-consciously to a thick bound volume of ma.n.u.script. "I wrote it all with my own hand," he continued.

"Sit down, Boris, and read out the names. I will get on the ladder, and show you the books; they are arranged according to their numbers."

"What an idea!"

"Or better wait till after dinner; we shall not be able to finish before."

"Listen, should you like to have a library like that?" asked Raisky.

"I!--a library like that?"

Sunshine blazed from Leonti's eyes, he smiled so broadly that even the hair on his brow stirred with the dislocation caused. "A library like that?" He shook his head. "You must be mad."