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Precipice

<h2> CHAPTER XX </h2> Vera came that night to supper with a gloomy face. She eagerly drank a glass of milk, but offered no remark to anyone. “Why are you so unhappy, Veroshka?” asked her aunt. “Don’t you feel well.” “I was afraid to ask,” interposed Tiet Nikonich politely. “I could not help noticing, Vera Vassilievna, that you have been altered for some time; you seem to have grown thinner and paler. The change becomes your looks, but the symptoms ought not to be overlooked, as they might indicate the approach of illness.” “I have a little tooth-ache, but it will soon pass,” answered Vera unwillingly. Tatiana Markovna looked away sadly enough, but said nothing, while Raisky tapped his plate absently with a fork, but ate nothing, and maintained a gloomy silence. Only Marfinka and Vikentev took every dish that was offered them, and chattered without intermission. Vera soon took her leave, followed by Raisky. She went into the park, and stood at the top of the cliff looking down into the dark wood below her; then she wrapped herself in her mantilla, and sat down on the bench. Silently she acceded to Raisky’s request to be allowed to sit down beside her. “You are in trouble, and are suffering, Vera.” “I have tooth-ache.” “It is your heart that aches, Vera. Share your trouble with me.” “I make no complaint.” “You have an unhappy love affair, with whom?” She did not answer. She knew that her hopes were still not dead, mad though they might be. What if she went away for a week or two to breathe, to conjure up her strength. “Cousin,” she said at last, “to-morrow at daybreak I am going across the Volga, and may stay away longer than usual. I have not said good-bye to Grandmother. Please say it for me.” “I will go away too.” “Wait, Cousin, until I am a little calmer. Perhaps then I can confide in you, and we can part like brother and sister, but now it is impossible. Still, in case you do go away, let us say good-bye now. Forgive me my strange ways, and let me give you a sister’s kiss.” She kissed him on the forehead and walked quickly away, but she had only taken a few steps before she paused to say: “Thank you for all you have done for me. I have not the strength to tell you how grateful I am for your friendship, and above all for this place. Farewell, and forgive me.” “Vera,” he cried in painful haste. “Let me stay as long as you are here or are in the neighbourhood. Even if we don’t see one another, I yet know where you are. I will wait till you are calmer, till you fulfil your promise, and confide in me, as you have said you would. You won’t be far away, and we can at least write to one another. Give me at least this consolation, for God’s sake,” he murmured passionately. “Leave me at least that Paradise which is next door to Hell.” She looked at him with a distraught air, and bent her head in assent. But she saw the glow of delight which swept over his agitated face, and wondered sorrowfully why he did not speak like that. “I will put off my journey till the day after tomorrow. Good-night!” she said, and gave him her hand to kiss before they separated. Early next day Vera gave Marina a note with instructions to deliver it and to wait for the answer. After the receipt of the answer she grew more cheerful and went out for a walk along the riverside. That evening she told her aunt that she was going on a visit to Natalie Ivanovna, and took leave of them all, promising Raisky not to forget him. The next day a fisherman from the Volga brought him a letter from Vera, in which she called him “dear cousin,” and seemed to look forward to a happier future. Into the friendly tone of the letter he contrived to read tender feeling, and he forgot, in his delight, his doubts, his anxiety, the blue letters, and the precipice. He wrote and dispatched immediately a brief, affectionate reply. Vera’s letter aroused in him the artist sense, and drove him to set out his chaotic emotions in defined form. He sought to crystallise his thoughts and affections; his very passion took artistic shape, and assumed in the clear light Vera’s charming features. “What are you scribbling day and night?” inquired Tatiana Markovna. “Is it a play or another novel?” “I write and write, Granny, and don’t know myself how it will end.” “It doesn’t matter what the child does so long as he is amused,” she remarked, not altogether missing the character of Raisky’s occupation. “But why do you write at night, when I am so afraid of fire, and you might fall asleep over your drama. You will make yourself ill, and you often look as yellow as an over-ripe gherkin as it is.” He looked in the glass, and was struck with his own appearance. Yellow patches were visible on the nose and temples, and there were grey threads in his thick, black hair. “If I were fair,” he grumbled, “I should not age so quickly. Don’t bother about me, Granny, but leave me my freedom. I can’t sleep.” “You too ask me for freedom, like Vera. It is as if I held you both in chains,” she added with an anxious sigh. “Go on writing, Borushka, but not at night. I cannot sleep in peace, for when I look at your window the light is always burning.” “I will answer for it, Grandmother, that there shall be no fire, and if I myself were to be burnt....” “Touch wood! Do not tempt fate. Remember the saying that ‘my tongue is my enemy.’” Suddenly Raisky sprang from the divan and ran to the window. “There is a peasant bringing a letter from Vera,” he cried, as he hurried out of the room. “One might think it was his father in person,” said Tatiana Markovna to herself. “How many candles he burns with his novels and plays, as many as four in a night!” Again Raisky received a few lines from Vera. She wrote that she was longing to see him again, and that she wanted to ask for his services. She added the following postscript:— “Dear Friend and Cousin, you taught me to love and to suffer, and poured the strength of your love into my soul. This it is that gives me courage to ask you to do a good deed. There is here an unhappy man who has been driven from his home and lies under the suspicion of the Government. He has no place to lay his head, and everyone, either from indifference or fear, avoids him. But you are kind and generous, and cannot be indifferent; still less will you hesitate to do a deed of pure charity. The wretched man has not a kopek, has no clothes, and autumn is coming on. “If your heart tells you, as I don’t doubt it will, what to do, address the wife of the acolyte, Sekleteia Burdalakov, but arrange it so that neither Grandmother, nor anyone at home, knows anything of it. A sum of three hundred roubles will be sufficient, I think, to provide for him for a whole year, perhaps two hundred and fifty would suffice. Will you put in a cloak and a warm vest (in my firm belief in your kind heart and your love to me, I enclose the measures taken by the village tailor) to protect him from the cold. “I don’t like to ask you for a rug for him; that would be to make an unfair use of kindness. In the winter the poor exile will probably leave the place, and will bless you, and to some degree me as well. I would not have troubled you, but you know that my Grandmother has all my money, which is therefore inaccessible.” “What on earth is the meaning of this postscript?” cried Raisky. “The whole note is certainly not from her hand; she could not have written like this.” He threw himself on the divan in a fit of nervous laughter. He was in Tatiana Markovna’s sitting-room, with Vikentev and Marfinka. At first the lovers laughed, but stopped when they saw the violent character of his mirth. Tatiana Markovna, who came in at this moment, offered him some drops of cordial in a teaspoon. “No, Grandmother,” he cried, still laughing violently. “Don’t give me drops, but three hundred roubles.” “What do you want the money for?” said Tatiana Markovna hesitating. “Is it for Markushka again. You had much better ask him to return the eighty roubles he has had.” He entered into the spirit of the bargain, and eventually had to content himself with two hundred and fifty roubles, which he dispatched next day to the address given. He also ordered the cloak and vest, and bought a warm rug, to be sent in a few days. “I thank you heartily, and with tears, dear Cousin,” ran the letter he received in return for his gifts. “I cannot express in writing the gratitude I feel. Heaven, not I, will reward you. How delighted the poor exile was with your gift. He laughed for joy, and is wearing the new things. He immediately paid his landlord his three months’ arrears of rent, and a month in advance. He only allowed himself to spend three roubles in cigars, which he has not smoked for a long time, and smoking is his only passion.” Although the apocryphal nature of this remarkable missive was quite clear to Raisky, he did not hesitate to add a box of cigars to his gift for the “poor exile.” It was enough for him that Vera’s name was attached to this pressing request. He observed the course of his own passion as a physician does disease. As he watched the clouds driven before the wind, or looked at the green carpet of the earth, now taking on sad autumnal hues, he realised that Nature was marching on her way through never ending change, with not a moment’s stagnation. He alone brooded idly with no prize in view. He asked himself anxiously what his duty was, and begged that Reason would shed some light on his way, give him boldness to leap over the funeral pyre of his hopes. Reason told him to seek safety in flight. He drove into the town to buy some necessities for the journey, and there met the Governor who reproached him with having hidden himself for so long. Raisky excused himself on the ground of ill-health, and spoke of his approaching departure. “Where are you going?” “It is all one to me,” returned Raisky gloomily. “Here I am so bored that I must seek some distraction. I intend going to St. Petersburg, then to my estate in the government of R—— and then perhaps abroad.” “I don’t wonder that you are bored with staying in the same spot, since you avoid society, and must need distraction. Will you make an expedition with me? I am starting on a tour of the district to-morrow, why not come with me? You will see much that is beautiful, and, being a poet, you will collect new impressions. We will travel for a hundred versts by river. Don’t forget your sketch-book.” Raisky shook the Governor’s proffered hand, and accepted. The Governor showed him his well-equipped travelling carriage, declared that his kitchen would travel with him, and cards should not be forgotten, and promised himself a gayer journey than would have been possible in the sole society of a busy secretary. Raisky felt a relief in the firm determination he now made to conquer his passion, and decided not to return from this journey, but to have his effects sent after him. While he was away he wrote in this sense to Vera, telling her that his life in Malinovka had been like an evil dream full of suffering, and that if he ever saw the place again it would be at some distant date. A day or two later he received a short answer from Vera dated from Malinovka. Marfinka’s birthday fell during the next week, and when the festival was over she was to go on a long visit to her future mother-in-law. If Raisky did not make some sacrifice and return, a sacrifice to her grandmother and herself, Tatiana Markovna would be terribly lonely. Next evening he had a letter from Vera acquiescing in his intention of leaving Malinovka without seeing her again, and saying that immediately after the dispatch of this letter she would go over to her friend on the other side of the Volga, but she hoped that he would go to say good-bye to Tatiana Markovna and the rest of the household, as his departure without any farewell must necessarily cause surprise in the town, and would hurt Tatiana Markovna’s feelings. This answer relieved him enormously. On the afternoon of the next day, when he alighted from the carriage in the outskirts of the town and bade his travelling host good-bye, he was in good enough spirits as he picked up his bag and made his way to the house. Marfinka and Vikentev were the first to meet him, the dogs leaped to welcome him, the servants hurried up, and the whole household showed such genuine pleasure at his return that he was moved almost to tears. He looked anxiously round to see if Vera was there, but one and another hastened to tell him that Vera had gone away. He ought to have been glad to hear this news, but he heard it with a spasm of pain. When he entered his aunt’s room she sent Pashutka out and locked the door. “How anxiously I have been expecting you!” she said. “I wanted to send a messenger for you.” “What is the matter?” he exclaimed, pale with terror in fear of bad news of Vera. “Your friend Leonti Ivanovich is ill.” “Poor fellow! What is wrong? Is it dangerous? I will go to him at once.” “I will have the horses put in. In the meantime I may as well tell you what is known all over the town. I have kept it secret from Marfinka only, and Vera already knows it. His wife has left him, and he has fallen ill. Yesterday and the day before the Koslovs’ cook came to fetch you.” “Where has she gone?” “Away with the Frenchman, Charles, who was suddenly called to St. Petersburg. She pretended she was going to stay with her relations in Moscow and said that Monsieur Charles would accompany her so far. She extracted from Koslov a pass giving her permission to live alone, and is now with Charles in St. Petersburg.” “Her relations with Charles,” replied Raisky, “were no secret to anybody except her husband. Everyone will laugh at him, but he will understand nothing, and his wife will return.” “You have not heard the end. On her way she wrote to her husband telling him to forget her, not to expect her return, because she could no longer endure living with him.” “The fool! Just as if she had not made scandal enough. Poor Leonti! I will go to him, how sorry I am for him.” “Yes, Borushka, I am sorry for him too, and should like to have gone to see him. He has the simple honesty of a child. God has given him learning, but no common sense, and he is buried in his books. I wonder who is looking after him now. If you find he is not being properly cared for, bring him here. The old house is empty, and we can establish him there for the time being. I will have two rooms got ready for him.” “What a woman you are, Grandmother. While I am thinking, you have acted.” When he reached Koslov’s house he found the shutters of the grey house were closed, and he had to knock repeatedly before he was admitted. He passed through the ante-room into the dining-room and stood uncertain before the study door, hesitating whether he should knock or go straight in. Suddenly the door opened, and there stood before him, dressed in a woman’s dressing-gown and slippers, Mark Volokov, unbrushed, sleepy, pale, thin and sinister. “The evil one has brought you at last,” he grumbled half in surprise and half in vexation. “Where have you been all this time? I have hardly slept for two nights. His pupils are about in the day time, but at night he is alone.” “What is the matter with him?” “Has no one told you. That she-goat has gone. I was pleased to hear it, and came at once to congratulate him, but I found him with not a drop of blood in his face, with dazed eyes, and unable to recognise anyone. He just escaped brain fever. Instead of weeping for joy, the man has nearly died of sorrow. I fetched the doctor, but Koslov sent him away, and walked up and down the room like one demented. Now he is sleeping, so we will not disturb him. I will go, and you must stay, and see that he does not do himself some injury in a fit of melancholy. He listens to no one, and I have been tempted to smack him.” Mark spit with vexation. “You can’t depend on his idiot of a cook. Yesterday the woman gave him some tooth powder instead of his proper powder. I am going to dismiss her to-morrow.” Raisky watched him in amazement, and offered his hand. “What favour is this?” said Mark bitterly, and without taking the proffered hand. “I thank you for having stood by my old friend.” Mark seized Raisky’s hand and shook it. “I have been looking for some means of serving you for a long time.” “Why, Volokov, are you for ever executing quick changes like a clown in a circus?” “What the devil have I to do with your gratitude? I am not here for that, but on Koslov’s account.” “God be with you and your manners, Mark Ivanovich!” replied Raisky. “In any case, you have done a good deed.” “More praise. You can be as sentimental as you like for all I care....” “I will take Leonti home with me,” resumed Raisky. “He will be absolutely at home there, and if his troubles do not blow over he will have his own quiet corner all his life.” “Bravo! that is deeds, not words. Koslov would wither without a home and without care. It is an excellent idea you have taken into your head.” “It comes not from me, but from a woman, and not from her head, but from her heart. My Aunt....” “The old lady has a sound heart. I must go and breakfast with her one day. It is a pity she has amassed so many foolish ideas. Now I am going. Look after Koslov, if not personally, through some one else. The day before yesterday his head had to be cooled all day, and at night cabbage leaves should be laid on it. I was a little disturbed, because in his dazed state he got the cabbage and began to eat it. Good-bye! I have neither slept nor eaten, though Avdotya has treated me to a horrible brew of coffee....” “Allow me to send the coachman home to fetch some supper,” said Raisky. “I would rather eat at home.” “Perhaps you have no money,” said Raisky nervously drawing out his pocket book. “I have money,” said Mark enigmatically, hardly able to restrain a callous laugh, “I am going to the bath-house before I have my supper, as I haven’t been able to undress here. I have changed my quarters, and now live with a clerical personage.” “You look ill, thin, and your eyes....” Mark’s face grew more evil and sinister than before. “You too look worse,” he said. “If you look in the glass you will see yellow patches and hollow eyes.” “I have many causes of anxiety.” “So have I. Good-bye,” said Mark, and was gone. Raisky went into the study and walked up to the bed on tiptoe. “Who is there?” asked Leonti feebly. When Leonti recognised Raisky he pushed his feet out of bed, and sat up. “Is he gone?” he asked weakly. “I pretended to be asleep. You have not been for so long, and I have been expecting you all the time. The face of an old comrade is the only one that I can bear to see.” “I have been away, and heard when I returned of your illness.” “It is gossip. There is a conspiracy to say I am ill, which is all foolish talk. Mark, who even fetched a doctor, has been hanging about here as if he were afraid I should do myself an injury,” said Leonti and paced up and down the room. “You are weak, and walk with difficulty,” said Raisky. “It would be better for you to lie down.” “I am weak, that is true,” admitted Leonti. He bent over the chair-back to Raisky, embraced him, and laid his face against his hair. Raisky felt hot tears on his forehead and cheeks. “It is weakness,” sobbed Leonti. “But I am not ill, and have not brain fever. They talk, but don’t understand. And I understood nothing either, but now that I see you, I cannot keep back my tears. Don’t abuse me like Mark, or laugh at me, as they all do, my colleagues and my sympathetic visitors. I can discern malicious laughter on all their faces.” “I respect and understand your tears and your sorrow,” said Raisky, stifling his own tears. “You are my kind old comrade. Even at school you never laughed at me, and do you know why I weep?” Leonti took a letter from his desk and handed it to Raisky. It was the letter from Juliana Andreevna of which Tatiana Markovna had spoken. Raisky glanced through it. “Destroy it,” he said. “You will have no peace while it is in your possession.” “Destroy it!” said Leonti, seizing the letter, and replacing it in the desk. “How is it possible to think of such a thing, when these are the only lines she has written me, and these are all that I have as a souvenir?” “Leonti! Think of all this as a malady, a terrible misfortune, and don’t succumb to it. You are not an old man, and have a long life before you.” “My life is over, unless she returns to me,” he whispered. “What! You could, you would take her back!” “You, too, Boris, fail to understand me!” cried Leonti in despair, as he thrust his hands into his hair and strode up and down. “People keep on saying I am ill, they offer sympathy, bring a doctor, sit all night by my bedside, and yet don’t guess why I suffer so wildly, don’t even guess at the only remedy there is for me. She is not here,” he whispered wildly, seizing Raisky by the shoulders and shaking him violently. “She is not here, and that is what constitutes my illness. Besides, I am not ill, I am dead. Take me to her, and I shall rise again. And you ask whether I will take her back again! You, a novelist, don’t understand simple things like that!” “I did not know that you loved her like that,” said Raisky tenderly. “You used to laugh and say that you had got so used to her that you were becoming faithless to your Greeks and Romans.” “I chattered, I boasted,” laughed Leonti bitterly, “and was without understanding. But for this I never should have understood. I thought I loved the ancients, while my whole love was given to the living woman. Yes, Boris, I loved books and my gymnasium, the ancients and the moderns, my scholars, and you, Boris; I loved the street, this hedge, the service tree there, only through my love for her. Now, nothing of all this matters. I knew that as I lay on the floor reading her letter. And you ask whether I would receive her. God in Heaven! If she came, how she should be cherished!” he concluded, his tears flowing once more. “Leonti, I come to you with a request from Tatiana Markovna, who asks you,” he went on, though Leonti walked ceaselessly up and down, dragging his slippers and appeared not to listen, “to come over to us. Here you will die of misery.” “Thank you,” said Leonti, shaking his head. “She is a saint. But how can a desolate man carry his sorrow into a strange house?” “Not a strange house, Leonti, we are brothers, and our relation is closer than the ties of blood.” Leonti lay down on the bed, and took Raisky’s hand. “Pardon my egoism,” he said. “Later, later, I will come of my own accord, will ask permission to look after your library, if no hope is left me.” “Have you any hope?” “What! Do you think there is no hope?” Raisky, who did not wish to deprive his friend of the last straw, nor to stir useless hope in him, hesitated, before he answered after a pause: “I don’t know what to say to you exactly, Leonti. I know so little of your wife that I cannot judge her character.” “You know her,” said Leonti in a dull voice. “It was you who directed my attention to the Frenchman, but then I did not understand you, because nothing of the kind had entered my head. But if he leaves her,” he said, with a gleam of hope in his eyes, “she will perhaps remember me.” “Perhaps,” said Raisky. “To-morrow I will come to fetch you. Good-bye for the present. To-night I will either come myself or send someone who will stay with you.” Leonti did not hear, and did not even see Raisky go. When he reached home, Raisky gave his aunt an account of Leonti’s condition, telling her that there was no danger, but that no sympathy would help matters. Yakob was sent to look after the sick man and Tatiana Markovna did not forget to send an abundant supper, with tea, rum, wine and all sorts of other things. “What are these things for, Grandmother?” asked Raisky. “He doesn’t eat anything.” “But the other one, if he returns?” “What other one?” “Who but Markushka? He will want something to eat. You found him with our invalid.” “I will go to Mark, Granny, and tell him what you say.” “For goodness’ sake don’t do that, Borushka. Mark will laugh at me.” “No, he will be grateful and respectful, for he understands you. He is not like Niel Andreevich.” “I don’t want his gratitude and respect. Let him eat, and be satisfied, and God be with him. He is a ruined man. Has he remembered the eighty roubles?” <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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