The Precipice Part 9

"Tell me, do you love me as you used to do?"

"Why do you ask? Of course."

"Then the books shall be yours for good and all, under one condition."

"I--take these books!"

Leonti looked now at the books, now at Raisky, then made a gesture of refusal, and sighed.

"Do not laugh at me, Boris! Don't tempt me."

"I am not joking."

Here Juliana Andreevna, who had heard the last words, chimed in with, "Take what is given you."

"She is always like that," sighed Leonti. "On feast days the tradesmen come with presents, and on the eve of the examinations the parents. I send them away, but my wife receives them at the side door. She looks like Lucretia, but she has a sweet tooth, a dainty one."

Raisky laughed, but Juliana Andreevna was annoyed.

"Go to your Lucretia," she said indifferently. "He compares me with everybody. One day I am Cleopatra, then Lavinia, then Cornelia. Better take the books when they are offered you. Boris Pavlovich will give them to me."

"Don't take it on yourself to ask him for gifts," commanded Leonti. "And what can we give him? Shall I hand you over to him, for instance?" he added as he embraced her.

"Splendid! Take me, Boris Pavlovich," she cried, throwing a sparkling glance at him.

"If you don't take the books, Leonti," said Raisky, "I will make them over to the Gymnasium. Give me the catalogue, and I'll send it to the Director to-morrow."

He put his hand out for the catalogue, of which Leonti kept a tight hold.

"The Gymnasium shall never get one of them," he cried. "You don't know the Director, who cares for books just about as much as I do for perfume and pomade. They will be destroyed, torn, and worse handled than by Mark."

"Then take them."

"To give away such treasures all in a minute. It would be comprehensible if you were selling them to responsible hands. I have never wanted so much to be rich. I would give five thousand. I cannot accept, I cannot.

You are a spendthrift, or rather a blind, ignorant child--"

"Many thanks."

"I didn't mean that," cried Leonti in confusion. "You are an artist; you need pictures, statues, music; and books are nothing to you. Besides, you don't know what treasures you possess; after dinner I will show you."

"Well, in the afternoon, instead of drinking coffee, you will go over with the books to the Gymnasium for me."

"Wait, Boris, what was the condition on which you would give me the books. Will you take instalments from my salary for them? I would sell all I have, pledge myself and my wife."

"No, thank you," broke in Juliana Andreevna, "I can pledge or sell myself if I want to."

Leonti and Raisky looked at one another.

"She does not think before she speaks," said Leonti. "But tell me what the condition is."

"That you never mention these books to me again, even if Mark tears them to pieces."

"Do you mean I am not to let him have access to them?"

"He is not likely to ask you," put in Juliana Andreevna. "As if that monster cared for what you may say."

"How Ulinka loves me," said Leonti to Raisky. "Would that every woman loved her husband like that."

He embraced her. She dropped her eyes, and the smile died from her face.

"But for her you would not see a single b.u.t.ton on my clothes," continued Leonti. "I eat and sleep comfortably, and our household goes on evenly and placidly. However small my means are she knows how to make them provide for everything." She raised her eyes, and looked at them, for the last statement was true. "It's a pity," continued Leonti, "that she does not care about books. She can chatter French fast enough, but if you give her a book, she does not understand half of it. She still writes Russian incorrectly. If she sees Greek characters, she says they would make a good pattern for cotton printing, and sets the book upside down. And she cannot even read a Latin t.i.tle."

"That will do. Not another word about the books. Only on that condition, I don't send them to the Gymnasium. Now let us sit down to table, or I shall go to my Grandmother's, for I am famished."

"Do you intend to spend your whole life like this?" asked Raisky as he was sitting after dinner alone with Leonti in the study.

"Yes, what more do I need?"

"Have you no desires, does nothing call you away from this place, have you no longings for freedom and s.p.a.ce, and don't you feel cramped in this narrow frame of hedge, church spire and house, under your very nose?"

"Have I so little to look at under my nose?" asked Leonti, pointing to the books. "I have books, pupils, and in addition a wife and peace of heart, isn't that enough?"

"Are books life? This old trash has a great deal to answer for. Men strive forwards, seek to improve themselves, to cleanse their conceptions, to drive away the mist, to meet the problems of society by justice, civilisation, orderly administration, while you instead of looking at life, study books."

"What is not to be found in books is not to be found in life either, or if there is anything it is of no importance," said Leonti firmly. "The whole programme of public and private life lies behind us; we can find an example for everything."

"You are still the same old student, Leonti, always worrying about what has been experienced in the past, and never thinking of what you yourself are."

"What I am! I am a teacher of the cla.s.sics. I am as deeply concerned with the life of the past, as you with ideals and figures. You are an artist. Why should you wonder that certain figures are dear to me? Since when have artists ceased to draw water from the wells of the ancients?"

"Yes, an artist," said Raisky, with a sigh. He pointed to his head and breast. "Here are figures, notes, forms, enthusiasm, the creative pa.s.sion, and as yet I have done almost nothing."

"What restrains you? You are now painting, you wrote me, a great picture, which you mean to exhibit."

"The devil take the great pictures. I shall hardly be able to devote my whole energy to painting now. One must put one's whole being into a great picture, and then to give effect to one hundredth part of what one has put in a representation of a fleeting, irrecoverable impression.

Sometimes I paint portraits...."

"What art are you following now?"

"There is but one Art that can satisfy the artist of to-day, the art of words, of poetry, which is limitless in its possibilities."

"You write verses then?"

"Verses are children's food. In verse you celebrate a love affair, a festival, flowers, a nightingale."

"And satire. Remember the use made of it by the Romans."

With these words he would have gone to the bookshelf, but Raisky held him back. "You may," he said, "be able now and then to hit a diseased spot with satire. Satire is a rod, whose stroke stings but has no further consequences; but she does not show you figures br.i.m.m.i.n.g with life, she does not reveal the depths of life with its secret mainsprings of action, she holds no mirror before your eyes. It is only the novel that comprehends and mirrors the life of man."