The Precipice
by
Ivan Goncharov
Part 1 out of 7
Susan Skinner, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team
THE PRECIPICE
by
IVAN GONCHAROV
Original Russian Title: _OBRYV_
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL RUSSIAN; TRANSLATOR UNKNOWN
[This text is condensed from the original.]
PREFACE
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov (1812-1891) was one of the leading members
of the great circle of Russian writers who, in the middle of the
nineteenth century, gathered around the _Sovremmenik_ (Contemporary)
under Nekrasov's editorship--a circle including Turgenev, Dostoyevsky,
Tolstoy, Byelinsky, and Herzen. He had not the marked genius of the
first three of these; but that he is so much less known to the western
reader is perhaps also due to the fact that there was nothing
sensational either in his life or his literary method. His strength was
in the steady delineation of character, conscious of, but not deeply
disturbed by, the problems which were obsessing and distracting smaller
and greater minds.
Tolstoy has a characteristically prejudiced reminiscence: "I remember
how Goncharov, the author, a very sensible and educated man but a
thorough townsman and an aesthete, said to me that, after Turgenev,
there was nothing left to write about in the life of the lower classes.
It was all used up. The life of our wealthy people, with their
amorousness and dissatisfaction with their lives, seemed to him full of
inexhaustible subject-matter. One hero kissed his lady on her palm, and
another on her elbow, and a third somewhere else. One man is
discontented through idleness, another because people don't love him.
And Goncharov thought that in this sphere there is no end of variety."
In fact, his greatest success was the portrait of Oblomov in the novel
of that name, which was at once recognised as a peculiarly national
character--a man of thirty-two years, careless, bored, untidy, lazy, but
gentle and good-natured. In the present work, now translated for the
first time into English, the type reappears with some differences.
Raisky seems to have been "born tired." He has plenty of intelligence,
some artistic gifts, charm, and an abundant kindliness, yet he achieves
nothing, either in work or in love, and in the end fades ineffectually
out of the story. "He knew he would do better to begin a big piece of
work instead of these trifles; but he told himself that Russians did not
understand hard work, or that real work demanded rude strength, the use
of the hands, the shoulders, and the back," "He is only half a man,"
says Mark Volokov, the wolfish outlaw who quotes Proudhon and talks
about "the new knowledge, the new life." This rascal, whose violent
pursuit of the heroine produces the tragedy of the book, is a much less
convincing figure, though he also represents a reality of Russian life
then, and even now.
The true contrast to Raisky of which Goncharov had deep and sympathetic
knowledge is shown in the splendid picture of the two women--Vera, the
infatuated beauty, and Aunt Tatiana, whose agony of motherly concern and
shamed remembrance is depicted with great power. The book is remarkable
as a study in the psychology of passionate emotion; for the western
reader, it is also delightful for the glimpses it gives of the old
Russian country life which is slowly passing away. The scene lies beside
one of the small towns on the Volga--"like other towns, a cemetery ...
the tranquillity of the grave. What a frame for a novel, if only he knew
what to put in the novel.... If the image of passion should float over
this motionless, sleepy little world, the picture would glow into the
enchanting colour of life." The storm of passion does break over the
edge of the hill overlooking the mighty river, and, amid the wreckage,
the two victims rise into a nobility that the reckless reformer and the
pleasant dilettante have never conceived.
Goncharov had passed many years in Governmental service and had, in fact,
reached the age of thirty-five when his first work, _"A Common
Story,"_ was published. _"The Frigate Pallada,"_ which followed,
is a lengthy descriptive account of an official expedition to Japan and
Siberia in which Goncharov took part. After the publication of _"The
Precipice,"_ its author was moved to write an essay, _"Better Late
Than Never,"_ in which he attempted to explain that the purpose of
his three novels was to present the eternal struggle between East and
West--the lethargy of the Russian and the ferment of foreign influences.
Thus he ranged himself more closely with the great figures among his
contemporaries. Two other volumes consist of critical study and
reminiscence.
CHAPTER I
Boris Pavlovich Raisky had a vivacious, unusually mobile face. At first
sight he appeared younger than his years. The high, white forehead gave
an impression of freshness and vigour; the eyes blazed one moment with
intelligence, emotion or gaiety, a moment later they wore a meditative,
dreamy expression, then again they looked young, even childlike. At
other times they evidenced knowledge of life, or looked so weary, so
bored that they betrayed their owner's age; at these times there
appeared between them three furrows, certain indications of time and
knowledge of life. Smooth black hair fell on his neck and half covered
the ears, with here and there silver threads about the temples. His
complexion had kept the tints of youth except on the temples and the
chin, which were a brownish-yellow colour.
It was easy to guess from his physiognomy that the conflict between
youth and maturity was past, that he had passed the early stages of
life's journey and that sorrow and sickness had left their marks on him.
Only the mouth, with its delicate lines, with the fresh, almost
childlike smile remained unchanged by age.
He had been left an orphan in childhood, and for some time his
indifferent, bachelor guardian had left his education to a relative,
Boris's aunt.
This lady was endowed with a rich temperament, but her horizon did not
stretch far beyond her own home, where in the tranquil atmosphere of
woods and gardens, in the environment of the family and the estate,
Boris had passed several years. When he grew older his guardian sent him
to the High School, where the family traditions of former wealth and of
the connexion with other old noble families faded.
His further development, occupations and inclinations led him still
further from the traditions of his childhood. Raisky had lived for about
ten years in St. Petersburg; that is to say he rented three pleasant
rooms from a German landlord, which he retained, although after he had
left the civil service he rarely spent two successive half-years in the
capital.
He had left the civil service as casually as he had entered it, because,
when he had had time to consider his position, he came to the conclusion
that the service is not an aim in itself, but merely a means to bring
together a number of men who would otherwise have had no justification
for their existence. If these men had not existed, the posts which they
filled need never have been created.
Now, he had already passed his thirtieth year, and had neither sowed nor
reaped. He did not follow the same path as the other ordinary arrival
from the interior of Russia, for he was neither an officer nor an
official, nor did he seek a career for himself by hard work or by
influence. He was inscribed in the registers of his police district as a
civil servant.
It would have been hard for the expert in physiognomy to decipher
Raisky's characteristics, inclinations and character from his face
because of its extraordinary mobility. Still less could his mental
physiognomy be defined. He had moments when, to use his own expression,
he embraced the whole world, so that many people declared that there was
no kinder, more amiable man in existence. Others, on the contrary, who
came across him at an unfortunate moment, when the yellow patches on his
face were most marked, when his lips were drawn in a sinister, nervous
quiver, and he returned kindness and sympathy with cold looks and sharp
words, were repelled by him and even pursued him with their dislike.
Some called him egotistic and proud, while others declared themselves
enchanted with him; some again maintained that he was theatrical, others
that he was not to be trusted. Two or three friends judged otherwise. "A
noble nature," they said, "most honourable, but with all its virtues,
nervous, passionate, excitable, fiery tempered...." So there had never
been any unanimous opinion of him.
Even in early childhood while he lived with his aunt, and later, after
his school-days had begun, he showed the same enigmatic and
contradictory traits.
It might be expected that the first effort of a new boy would be to
listen to the teacher's questions and the pupils' answers. But Raisky
stared at the teacher, as if seeking to impress on his memory the
details of his appearance, his speech, how he took snuff; he looked at
his eyebrows, his beard, then at his clothes, at the cornelian seal
suspended across his waistcoat, and so on. Then he would observe each of
the other boys and note their peculiarities, or he would study his own
person, and wonder what his own face was like, what the others thought
of him....
"What did I say just now?" interrupted the master, noticing Boris's
wandering glance.
To the teacher's amazement Boris replied word for word, "And what is the
meaning of this?" He had listened mechanically, and had caught the
actual syllables.
The master repeated his explanation, and again Boris caught the sound of
his voice, noticing that sometimes he spoke shortly, staccato--sometimes
drawled as if he were singing, and then rapped out his words smartly
like nuts.
"Well?"
Raisky blushed, perspired with anxiety, and was silent.
It was the mathematical master. He went to the blackboard, wrote up the
problem, and again began the explanation. Raisky only noticed with what
rapidity and certainty he wrote the figures, how the waistcoat with the
cornelian seal and then the snuff-spattered shirt front came
nearer--nothing, except the solution of the problem, escaped him.
Now and then a notion penetrated to his brain, but when it came to
equations he grew weary with the effort required. Sometimes the teacher
lost patience with him, and generally concluded: "Go back to your place,
you are a blockhead."
But if a whiff of originality passed over the master himself, if he
taught as if it were a game, and had recourse neither to his book nor to
the blackboard, then the solution flashed on Raisky, and he found the
answer quicker than any of the others.
He consumed passionately history, novels and tales; wherever he could he
begged for books. But he did not like facts or theories or anything that
drew him from the world of fancy towards the world of reality. In the
geography lesson he could not understand how any boy could answer in
class, but once out of class he could talk about foreign countries and
cities, or about the sea, to the amazement of his classmates. He had not
learnt it from the teacher or from a book, but he gave a picture of the
place as if he had actually been there.
"You are inventing," a sceptical listener would say. "Vassili Nikitich
never said that."
His companions did not know what to make of him, for his sympathies
changed so often that he had neither constant friends nor constant
enemies. One week he would attach himself to one boy, seek his society,
sit with him, read to him, talk to him and give him his confidence. Then,
for no reason, he would leave him, enter into close relations with
another boy, and then as speedily forget him.
If one of his companions annoyed him he became angry with him and
pursued hostilities obstinately long after the original cause was
forgotten. Then suddenly he would have a friendly, magnanimous impulse,
would carefully arrange a scene of reconciliation, which interested
everyone, himself most of all.
When he was out of school, everyday life attracted him very little; he
cared neither for its gayer side nor its sterner activities. If his
guardian asked him how the corn should be threshed, the cloth milled or
linen bleached, he turned away and went out on to the verandah to look
out on the woods, or made his way along the river to the thicket to
watch the insects at work, or to observe the birds, to see how they
alighted, how they sharpened their beaks. He caught a hedgehog and made
a playmate of it, went out fishing all day long with the village boys,
or listened to the tales about Pugachev told by a half-witted old woman
living in a mud hut, greedily drinking in the most singular of the
horrible incidents she related, while he looked into the old woman's
toothless mouth and into the caverns of her fading eyes.
For hours he would listen with morbid curiosity to the babble of the
idiot Feklusha. At home he read in the most desultory way. He deemed the
secrets of Eastern magic, Russian tales and folk-lore, skimmed Ossian,
Tasso, Homer, or wandered with Cook in strange lands. If he found
nothing to read he lay motionless all day long, as if he were exhausted
with hard work; his fancy carried him beyond Ossian and Homer, beyond
the tales of Cook, until fevered with his imaginings he rose tired,
exhausted, and unable for a long time to resume normal life.
People called him an idler. He feared this accusation, and wept over it
in secret, though he was convinced that he was no idler, but something
different, that no one but himself comprehended.
Unfortunately, there was no one to guide him in a definite direction. On
the one hand, his guardian merely saw to it that his masters came at
stated times and that Boris did not avoid school; on the other, his aunt
contented herself with seeing that he was in good health, ate and slept
well, was decently dressed, and as a well-brought-up boy should, did not
consort with every village lout.
Nobody cared to see what he read; his aunt gave him the keys of his
father's library in the old house, where he shut himself in, now to read
Spinoza, now a novel, and another day Voltaire or Boccaccio.
He made better progress in the arts than in the sciences. Here too he
had his tricks. One day the teacher set the pupils to draw eyes, but
Raisky grew tired of that, and proceeded to add a nose and a moustache.
The master surprised him, and seized him by the hair. When he looked
closer at the drawing, however, he asked: "Where did you learn to do
that?"
"Nowhere," was the reply.
"But it is well done, my lad. See yourself what this hurry to get on
leads to; the forehead and nose are good enough, but the ear you have
put in the wrong place, and the hair looks like tow."
Raisky was triumphant. The words, "But it is well done; the forehead and
nose are good enough," were for him a crown of laurel.
He walked round the school yard proud in the consciousness that he was
the best in the drawing class; this mood lasted to the next day, when he
came to grief in the ordinary lessons. But he conceived a passion for
drawing, and during the month that followed drew a curly-headed boy,
then the head of Fingal. His fancy was caught by a woman's head which
hung in the master's room; it leaned a little towards one shoulder, and
looked away into the distance with melancholy, meditative eyes. "Allow
me to make a copy," he begged with a gentle, tremulous voice, and with a
nervous quiver of the upper lip.
"Don't break the glass," the master warned him, and gave him the picture.
Boris was happy. For a whole week his masters did not secure a single
intelligent answer from him. He sat silently in his corner and drew. At
night he took the drawing to his bedroom, and as he looked into its
gracious eyes, followed the lines of the delicately bent neck, he
shivered, his heart stood still, there was a catch in his breath, and he
closed his eyes; with a faint sigh he pressed the picture to his breast
where the breath came so painfully--and then there was a crash and the
glass fell clattering on the floor.
When he had drawn the head his pride knew no bounds. His work was
exhibited with the drawings of pupils of the top class, the teacher had
made few corrections, had only here and there put broad strokes in the
shading, had drawn three or four more decided lines, had put a point in
each eye--and the eyes were now like life.
"How lifelike and bold it is!" thought Raisky, as he looked at the
strokes inserted by his master, and more especially at the points in the
eyes, which had so suddenly given them the look of life. This step
forward intoxicated him. "Talent! Talent!" sang in his ears.
He sketched the maids, the coachman, the peasants of the countryside. He
was particularly successful with the idiot Feklusha, seated in a cavern
with her bust in the shade, and the light on her wild hair; he had not
the patience nor the skill to finish bust, hands and feet. How could
anybody be expected to sit still all the morning, when the sun was
shedding its rays so gaily and so generously on stream and meadow?
Within three days the picture had faded in his imagination, and new
images were thronging his brain. He would like to have drawn a round
dance, a drunken old man, the rapid passage of a troika. For two days he
was taken up with this picture, which stood before his mind's eye in
every detail; the peasants and the women were finished, but not the
waggon with its three fleet horses.
In a week he had forgotten this picture also.
He loved music to distraction. At school he had an enduring affection
for the dull Vassyvkov, who was the laughing stock of the other boys. A
boy would seize Vassyvkov by the ear, crying, "Get out, stupid,
blockhead," but Raisky stood by him, because Vassyvkov, inattentive,
sleepy, idle, who never did his work even for the universally beloved
Russian master, would every afternoon after dinner take his violin, and
as he played, forget the school, the masters and the nose-pullings. His
eyes as they gazed into the distance, apparently seeking something
strange, enticing, and mysterious, became wild and gloomy, and often
filled with tears.
He was no longer Vassyvkov, but another creature. His pupils dilated,
his eyes ceased to blink, becoming clearer and deeper; his glance was
proud and intelligent; his breath came long and deep. Over his face
stole an expression of happiness, of gentleness; his eyes became darker
and seemed to radiate light. In a word he became beautiful.
Raisky began to think the thoughts of Vassyvkov, to see what he saw. His
surroundings vanished, and boys and benches were lost in a mist. More
notes ... and a wide space opened before him. A world in motion arose.
He heard the murmur of running streams, saw ships, men, woods, and
drifting clouds; everywhere was light, motion, and gaiety. He had the
sensation that he himself was growing taller, he caught his breath....
The dream continued just so long as the notes were heard. Suddenly he
heard a noise, he was awakened with a start, Vassyvkov had ceased to
play; the moving, musical waves vanished, and there were only the boys,
benches and tables. Vassyvkov laid aside his violin, and somebody
tweaked his ear. Raisky threw himself in a rage on the offender, struck
him--all the while possessed by the magic notes.
Every nerve in his body sang. Life, thought, emotion broke in waves in
the seething sea of his consciousness. The notes strike a chord of
memory. A cloud of recollection hovers before him, shaping the figure of
a woman who holds him to her breast. He gropes in his consciousness--it
was thus that his mother's arms cradled him, his face pressed to her
breast ... her figure grows in distinctness, as if she had risen from
the grave....
He had begun to take lessons from Vassyvkov. For a whole week he had
been moving the bow up and down, but its scratching set his teeth on
edge. He caught two strings at once, and his hand trembled with weakness.
It was clearly no use. When Vassyvkov played his hand seemed to play of
itself. Tired of the torment, Raisky begged his guardian to allow him to
take piano lessons.
"It will be easier on the pianoforte," he thought.
His guardian engaged a German master, but took the opportunity of saying
a few words to his nephew.
"Boris," he said, "for what are you preparing yourself? I have been
intending to ask you for a long time."
Boris did not understand the question, and made no answer.
"You are nearly sixteen years old, and it is time you began to think of
serious things. It is plain that you have not yet considered what
faculty you will follow in the University, and to which branch of the
service you will devote yourself. You cannot well go into the army,
because you have no great fortune, and yet, for the sake of your family,
could hardly serve elsewhere than in the Guards."
Boris was silent, and watched through the window how the hens strutted
about, how the pigs wallowed in the mire, how the cat was stalking a
pigeon....
"I am speaking to you seriously, and you stare out of the window. For
what future are you preparing yourself?"
"I want to be an artist."
"Wha-at?"
"An artist."
"The devil only knows what notions you have got into your head. Who
would agree to that? Do you even know what an artist is?"
Raisky made no answer.
"An artist ... is a man who borrows money from you, or chatters foolish
nonsense, and drives you to distraction.... Artist! ... These people
lead a wild gipsy life, are destitute of money, clothes, shoes, and all
the time they dream of wealth. Artists live on this earth like the birds
of heaven. I have seen enough of them in St. Petersburg: bold rascals
who meet one another in the evening dressed in fantastic costumes, lie
upon divans, smoke pipes, talk about trifles, read poetry, drink brandy
and declare that they are artists. Uncombed, unwashed...."
"I have heard, Uncle, that artists are now held in high esteem. You are
thinking of the past. Now, the Academy produces many famous people."
"I am not very old, and I have seen the world. You have heard the bells
ring, but do not know in what tower. Famous people! There are famous
artists as there are famous doctors. But when do they achieve fame? When
do they enter the service and reach the rank of Councillor? If a man
builds a cathedral or erects a monument in a public place, then people
begin to seek him out. But artists begin in poverty, with a crust of
bread. You will find they are for the most part freed serfs, small
tradespeople or foreigners, or Jews. Poverty drives them to art. But
you--a Raisky! You have land of your own, and bread to eat. It's
pleasant enough to have graceful talents in society, to play the piano,
to sketch in an album, and to sing a song, and I have therefore engaged
a German professor for you. But what an abominable idea to be an artist
by profession! Have you ever heard of a prince or a count who has
painted a picture, or a nobleman who has chiselled a statue? No, and
why?"
"What about Rubens? He was a courtier, an ambassador...."
"Where have you dug that out? Two hundred years ago.... Among the
Germans ... but you are going to the University, to enter the faculty of
law, then you will study for the service in St. Petersburg, try to get a
position as advocate, and your connexions will help you to a place at
court. And if you keep your eyes open, with your name and your
connexions, you will be a Governor in thirty years' time. That is the
career for you. But there seem to be no serious ideas in your head; you
catch fish with the village boors, have sketched a swamp and a drunken
beggar, but you have not the remotest idea of when this or that crop
should be sown, or at what price it is sold."
Raisky trembled. His guardian's lecture affected his nerves.
Like Vassyvkov, the music master began to bend his fingers. If Raisky
had not been ashamed before his guardian he would not have endured the
torture. As it was he succeeded in a few months, after much trouble, in
completing the first stages of his instruction. Very soon he surpassed
and surprised the local young ladies by the strength and boldness of his
playing. His master saw his abilities were remarkable, his indolence
still more remarkable.
That, he thought, was no misfortune. Indolence and negligence are native
to artists. He had been told too that a man who has talent should not
work too hard. Hard work is only for those with moderate abilities.
CHAPTER II
Raisky entered the University, and spent the summer vacation with his
aunt, Tatiana Markovna Berezhkov.
His aunt lived in a family estate which Boris had inherited from his
mother--a piece of land on the Volga, close by a little town, with fifty
souls and two residences, one built of stone and now neglected, the
other a wooden building built by Boris's father. In this newer house
Tatiana Markovna lived with two orphan girls of six and five years old
respectively, who had been left in her care by a niece whom she had
loved as a daughter.
Tatiana Markovna had an estate and a village of her own, but after the
death of Raisky's parents she had established herself on their little
estate, which she ruled like a miniature kingdom, wisely, economically,
carefully and despotically. She never permitted Boris's guardian to
interfere in her business, took no heed of documents, papers, or deeds,
but carried on the affairs of the estate according to the practice of
its former owners. She told Boris's guardian that all the documents,
papers and deeds were inscribed in her memory, and that she would render
account to Boris when he came of age; until that day came she, according
to the verbal instructions of his parents, was mistress of the estate.
Boris's guardian was content. It was an excellent estate, and could not
be better administered than by the old lady.
What a Paradise Raisky evolved for himself in this corner of the earth,
from which he had been taken away in his childhood and where he had
spent many a summer visit in his schooldays. What views in the
neighbourhood! Every window in the house framed a lovely landscape. From
one side could be seen the Volga with its steep banks; from the others
wide meadows and gorges, and the whole seemed to melt into the distant
blue hills. From the third side could be seen fields, villages, and part
of the town. The air was cool and invigorating, and as refreshing as a
bathe on a summer day.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the two houses the great park, with
its dark alleys, arbours and seats, was kept in good order, but beyond
these limits it was left wild. There were broad stretching elms, cherry
and apple trees, service trees, and there were lime trees intended to
form an avenue, which lost itself in a wood in the friendly
neighbourhood of pines and birches. Suddenly the whole ended in a
precipice, thickly overgrown with bushes, which overhung a plain about
one and a-half versts in breadth along the banks of the Volga.
Nearer the wooden house lay the vegetable garden, and just in front of
its windows lay the flower garden. Tatiana Markovna liked to have a
space clear of trees in front of the house, so that the place was
flooded with sunshine and the scent of flowers. From the other side of
the house one could watch all that was going on in the courtyard and
could see the servants' quarters, the kitchens, the hayricks, and the
stable. In the depths of the courtyard stood the old house, gloomy,
always in shadow, stained with age, with here and there a cracked window
pane, with heavy doors fastened by heavy bolts, and the path leading up
to it overgrown with grass. But on the new house the sun streamed from
morning to night; the flower garden, full of roses and dahlias,
surrounded it like a garland, and the gay flowers seemed to be trying to
force their way in through the windows. Swallows nesting under the eaves
flew hither and thither; in the garden and the trees there were
hedge-sparrows, siskins and goldfinches, and when darkness fell the
nightingale began to sing. Around the flowers there were swarms of bees,
humble-bees, dragon-flies, and glittering butterflies; and in the
corners cats and kittens stretched themselves comfortably in the
sunshine.
In the house itself peace and joy reigned. The rooms were small, but
cosy. Antique pieces of furniture had been brought over from the great
house, as had the portraits of Raisky's parents and grandparents. The
floors were painted, waxed and polished; the stoves were adorned with
old-fashioned tiles, also brought over from the other house; the
cupboards were full of plate and silver; there were old Dresden cups and
figures, Chinese ornaments, tea-pots, sugar-basins, heavy old spoons.
Round stools bound with brass, and inlaid tables stood in pleasant
corners.
In Tatiana Markovna's sitting-room stood an old-fashioned carved bureau
with a mirror, urns, lyres, and genii. But she had hung up the mirror,
because she said it was a hindrance to writing when you stared at your
own stupid face. The room also contained a round table where she lunched
and drank her tea and coffee, and a rather hard leather-covered armchair
with a high back. Grandmother [1] was old-fashioned; she did not approve
of lounging, but held herself upright and was simple and reserved in
her manners.
How beautiful Boris thought her! And indeed she was beautiful.
Tall, neither stout nor thin, a vivacious old lady ... not indeed an old
lady, but a woman of fifty, with quick black eyes, and so kind and
gracious a smile that even when she was angry, and the storm-light
flickered in her eyes, the blue sky could be observed behind the clouds.
She had a slight moustache, and, on her left cheek, near the chin, a
birth-mark with a little bunch of hairs, details which gave her face a
remarkable expression of kindness.
She cut her grey hair short, and went about in house, yard, garden with
her head uncovered, but on feast days, or when guests were expected she
put on a cap. The cap could not be kept in its place, and did not suit
her at all, so that after about five minutes she would with apologies
remove the tiresome headdress.
In the mornings she wore a wide white blouse with a girdle and big
pockets; in the afternoon she put on a brown dress, and on feast days a
heavy rustling silk dress that gleamed like silver, and over it a
valuable shawl which only Vassilissa, her housekeeper, was allowed to
take out of the press.
"Uncle Ivan Kusmich brought it from the East," she used to boast. "It
cost three hundred gold roubles, and now no money would buy it."
At her girdle hung a bunch of keys, so that Grandmother could he heard
from afar like a rattlesnake when she crossed the yard or the garden. At
the sound the coachmen hid their pipes in their boots, because the
mistress feared nothing so much as fire, and for that reason counted
smoking as the greatest of crimes. The cooks seized the knife, the spoon
or the broom; Kirusha, who had been joking with Matrona, hurried to the
door, while Matrona hurried to the byre.
If the approaching clatter gave warning that the mistress was returning
to the house Mashutka quickly took off her dirty apron and wiped her
hands on a towel or a bit of rag, as the case might be. Spitting on her
hands she smoothed down her dry, rebellious hair, and covered the round
table with the finest of clean tablecloths. Vassilissa, silent, serious,
of the same age as her mistress, buxom, but faded with much confinement
indoors, would bring in the silver service with the steaming coffee.
Mashutka effaced herself as far as possible in a corner. The mistress
insisted on cleanliness in her servants, but Mashutka had no gift for
keeping herself spotless. When her hands were clean she could do nothing,
but felt as if everything would slip through her fingers. If she was
told to do her hair on Sunday, to wash and to put on tidy clothes, she
felt the whole day as if she had been sewn into a sack. She only seemed
to be happy when, smeared and wet with washing the boards, the windows,
the silver, or the doors, she had become almost unrecognisable, and had,
if she wanted to rub her nose or her eyebrows, to use her elbow.
Vassilissa, on the contrary, respected herself, and was the only tidy
woman among all the servants. She had been in the service of her
mistress since her earliest days as her personal maid, had never been
separated from her, knew every detail of her life, and now lived with
her as housekeeper and confidential servant. The two women communicated
with one another in monosyllables. Tatiana Markovna hardly needed to
give instructions to Vassilissa, who knew herself what had to be done.
If something unusual was required, her mistress did not give orders, but
suggested that this or that should be done.
Vassilissa was the only one of her subjects whom Tatiana Markovna
addressed by her full name. If she did address them by their baptismal
names they were names that could not be compressed nor clipped, as for
example Ferapont or Panteleimon. The village elder she did indeed
address as Stepan Vassilich, but the others were to her Matroshka,
Mashutka, Egorka and so on. The unlucky individual whom she addressed
with his Christian name and patronymic knew that a storm was impending.
"Here, Egor Prokhorich! where were you all day yesterday?" Or "Simeon
Vassilich, you smoked a pipe yesterday in the hayrick. Take care!"
She would get up in the middle of the night to convince herself that a
spark from a pipe had not set fire to anything, or that there was not
someone walking about the yard or the coachhouse with a lantern.
Under no consideration could the gulf between the "people" and the
family be bridged. She was moderately strict and moderately considerate,
kindly, but always within the limits of her ideas of government. If
Irene, Matrona or another of the maids gave birth to a child, she
listened to the report of the event with an air of injured dignity, but
gave Vassilissa to understand that the necessaries should be provided;
and would add, "Only don't let me see the good-for-nothing." After
Matrona or Irene had recovered she would keep out of her mistress's
sight for a month or so; then it was as if nothing had happened, and the
child was put out in the village.
If any of her people fell sick, Tatiana got up in the night, sent him
spirits and embrocation, but next day she would send him either to the
infirmary or oftener to the "wise woman," but she did not send for a
doctor. But if one of her own relatives, her "grandchildren" showed a
bad tongue, or a swollen face, Kirusha or Vlass must immediately ride
post haste to the town for the doctor.
The "wise woman" was a woman in the suburbs who treated the "people"
with simple remedies, and rapidly relieved them of their maladies. It
did, indeed, happen that many a man remained crippled for life after her
treatment. One lost his voice and could only crow, another lost an eye,
or a piece of his jawbone, but the pain was gone and he went back to
work. That seemed satisfactory to the patient as well as the proprietor
of the estate. And as the "wise woman" only concerned herself with
humble people, with serfs and the poorer classes, the medical profession
did not interfere with her.
Tatiana Markovna fed her servants decently with cabbage soup and groats,
on feast-days with rye and mutton; at Christmas geese and pigs were
roasted. She allowed nothing out of the common on the servants' table or
in their dress, but she gave the surplus from her own table now to one
woman, now to another.
Vassilissa drank tea immediately after her mistress; after her came the
maids in the house, and last old Yakob. On feast days, on account of the
hardness of their work, a glass of brandy was handed to the coachman,
the menservants and the Starost.
As soon as the tea was cleared away in the morning a stout, chubby-faced
woman pushed her way into the room, always smiling. She was maid to the
grandchildren, Veroshka and Marfinka. Close at her heels the
twelve-year-old assistant, and together they brought the children
to breakfast.
Never knowing which of the two to kiss first, Tatiana Markovna would
begin: "Well, my birdies, how are you? Veroshka, darling, you have
brushed your hair?"
"And me, Granny, me," Marfinka would cry.
"Why are Marfinka's eyes red? Has she been crying?" Tatiana Markovna
inquired anxiously of the maid. "The sun has dazzled her. Are her
curtains well drawn, you careless girl? I must see."
In the maid's room sat three or four young girls who sat all day long
sewing, or making bobbin lace, without once stretching their limbs all
day, because the mistress did not like to see idle hands. In the
ante-room there sat idly the melancholy Yakob, Egorka, who was sixteen
and always laughing, with two or three lackeys. Yakob did nothing but
wait at table, where he idly flicked away the flies, and as idly changed
the plates. He was almost too idle to speak, and when the visitors
addressed him he answered in a tone indicating excessive boredom or a
guilty conscience. Because he was quiet, never seriously drunk, and did
not smoke, his master had made him butler; he was also very zealous at
church.
[1] Tatiana Markovna was addressed by her grand-nieces and her
grand-nephew as Grandmother.
CHAPTER III
Boris came in on his aunt during the children's breakfast. Tatiana
Markovna clapped her hands and all but jumped from her chair; the plates
were nearly shaken off the table.
"Borushka, tiresome boy! You have not even written, but descend like a
thunderclap. How you frightened me!"
She took his head in her hands, looked for a full minute into his face,
and would have wept, but she glanced away at his mother's portrait, and
sighed.
"Well, well!" she seemed to say, but in fact said nothing, but smiled
and wiped away her tears with her handkerchief. "Your mother's boy," she
cried, "her very image! See how lovely she was, look, Vassilissa! Do you
remember? Isn't he like her?"
With youthful appetite Boris devoured coffee, tea, cakes and bread, his
aunt watching all the while.
"Call the people, tell the Starost and everybody that the Master is here,
the real Master, the owner. Welcome, little father, welcome home!" she
said, with an ironic air of humility, laughing and mimicking the
pleasant speech. "Forsake us not with your favour. Tatiana Markovna
insults us, ruins us, take us over into your charge.... Ha! Ha! Here are
the keys, the accounts, at your service, demand a reckoning from the old
lady. Ask her what she has done with the estate money, why the peasants'
huts are in ruins. See how the Malinovka peasants beg in the streets of
the town. Ha! Ha! Under your guardian and uncle in the new estate, I
believe, the peasants wear polished boots and red shirts, and live in
two-storied houses. Well, Sir, why this silence? Why do you not ask for
the accounts? Have your breakfast, and then I will show you everything."
After breakfast Tatiana Markovna took her sunshade, put on her
thick-soled shoes, covered her head with a light hood, and went to
show Boris the garden.
"Now, Sir, keep your eyes wide open, and if there is anything wrong,
don't spare your Grandmother. You will see I have just planted out the
beds in front of the house. Veroshka and Marfinka play here under my
eyes, in the sand. One cannot trust any nurse."
They reached the yard.
"Kirusha, Eromka, Matroshka, where have you all hidden yourselves? One
of you come here."
Matroshka appeared, and announced that Kirusha and Eromka had gone into
the village to fetch the peasants.
"Here is Matroshka. Do you remember her? What are you staring there for,
fool. Kiss your Master's hand."
Matroshka came nearer. "I dare not," she said.
Boris shyly embraced the girl.
"You have built a new wing to the buildings, Grandmother," he said.
"You noticed that. Do you remember the old one? It was quite rotten, had
holes in the floors as broad as my hand, and the dirt and the soot! And
now look!"
They went into the new wing. His aunt showed Boris the alterations in
the stables, the horses and the separate space for fowls, the laundry
and byres.
"Here is the new kitchen which I built detached so that the kitchen
range is outside the house, and the servants have more room. Now each
has his own corner. Here is the pantry, there the new ice-cellar. What
are you standing there for?" she said, turning to Matrona. "Go and tell
Egorka to run into the village and say to the Starost that we are going
over there."
In the garden his aunt showed him every tree and every bush, led him
through the alleys, looked down from the top of the precipice into the
brushwood, and went with him into the village. It was a warm day, and
the winter corn waved gently in the pleasant breeze.
"Here is my nephew, Boris Pavlovich," she said to the Starost. "Are you
getting in the hay while the warm weather lasts? We are sure to have
rain before long after this heat. Here is the Master, the real Master,
my nephew," she said, turning to the peasants. "Have you seen him before,
Garashka? Take a good look at him. Is that your calf in the rye,
Iliusha?" she said in passing to a peasant, while her attention already
wandered to the pond.
"There they are again, hanging out the clothes on the trees," she
remarked angrily to the village elder. "I have given orders for a line
to be fixed. Tell blind Agasha so. It is she that likes to hang her
things out on the willows. The branches will break...."
"We haven't a line long enough," answered the Starost sleepily. "We
shall have to buy one in the town."
"Why did you not tell Vassilissa? She would have let me know. I go into
the town every week, and would have brought a line long ago."
"I have told her, but she forgets, or says it is not worth while to
bother the Mistress about it."
Tatiana Markovna made a knot in her handkerchief. She liked it to be
said that nothing could be done without her; a clothes-line, for
instance, could be bought by anybody, but God forbid that she should
trust anybody with money. Although by no means avaricious, she was
sparing with money. Before she brought herself to part with it she was
thoughtful, sometimes angry, but the money once spent, she forgot all
about it and did not like keeping account of it.
Besides the more important arrangements, her life was full of small
matters of business. The maids had to be put to cutting out and sewing,
or to cooking and cleaning. She arranged so that everything was carried
out before her own eyes. She herself did not touch the actual work, but
with the dignity of age she stood with one hand on her hip and the other
pointing out exactly where and how everything was to be done. The
clattering keys opened cupboards, chests, strong boxes, which contained
a profusion of household linen, costly lace yellow with age, diamonds,
destined for the dowry of her nieces, and money. The cupboards where tea,
sugar, coffee and other provisions were kept were in Vassilissa's charge.
In the morning, after coffee, when she had given her orders for the farm,
Tatiana Markovna sat down at her bureau to her accounts, then sat by the
window and looked out into the field, watched the labourers, saw what
was going on in the yard, and sent Yakob or Vassilissa when there was
anything of which she disapproved.
When necessary she drove into the town to the market hall, or to make
visits, but never was long away, returning always in time for the midday
meal. She herself received many guests; she liked to be dispensing
hospitality from morning to night.
When in winter afternoons she sat by the stove, she was silent and
thoughtful, and liked everything around her quiet. Summer afternoons she
spent in the garden, when she put on her gardening gloves and took a
spade, a rake, or a watering can, by way of obtaining a little exercise.
Then she spent the evening at the tea-table in the company of Tiet
Nikonich Vatutin, her oldest and best friend and adviser.
Tiet Nikonich was a gentleman of birth and breeding. He owned in the
province two or three hundred "souls"--he did not exactly know how many,
and never attended to his estate, but left his peasants to do as they
liked, and to pay him what dues they pleased. Shyly, and without
counting it, he took the money they brought him, put it in his bureau,
and signed to them to go where they pleased. He had been in the army,
and old people remembered him as a handsome young officer, a modest,
frank young man. In his youth he often visited his mother on the estate,
and spent his leave with her. Eventually he took his discharge, and then
built himself a little grey house in the town with three windows on to
the street, and there established himself.
Although he had only received a moderate education in the cadet school,
he liked to read, occupying himself chiefly with politics and natural
science. In his speech, his manners and his gait he betrayed a gentle
shyness, never obtruded his dignity, but was ready to show it if
necessity arose. However intimate he might be with anyone, he always
maintained a certain courtesy and reserve in word and gesture. He bowed
to the Governor or a friend or a new acquaintance with the same
old-fashioned politeness, drawing back one foot as he did so. In the
street he addressed ladies with uncovered head, was the first to pick up
a handkerchief or bring a footstool. If there were young girls in a house
he visited he came armed with a pound of bonbons, a bunch of flowers,
and tried to suit his conversation to their age, their tastes and their
occupations. He always maintained his delicate politeness, tinged with
the respectful manner of a courtier of the old school. When ladies were
present he always wore his frock-coat. He neither smoked, nor used
perfume, nor tried to make himself look younger, but was always spotless,
and distinguished in his dress. His clothes were simple but dazzlingly
neat. His nankeen trousers were freshly pressed, and his blue frock-coat
looked as if it had come straight from the tailor. In spite of his fifty
years, he had, with his perruque and his shaven chin, the air of a fresh,
rosy-cheeked young man. With all his narrow means he gave the impression
of wealth and good breeding, and put down his hundred roubles as if he
had thousands to throw about.
For Tatiana Markovna he showed a respectful friendship, but one so
devoted and ardent that it was evident from his manner that he loved her
beyond all others. But although he was her daily guest he gave no sign
of intimacy before strangers.
She showed great friendship for him, but there was more vivacity in her
tone. Those who remembered them when they were young, said she had been
a very beautiful girl. When she had thrown on her shawl and sat looking
meditatively before her, she resembled a family portrait in the gallery
of the old house. Occasionally there came over her moods which betrayed
pride and a desire for domination; when this happened her face wore an
earnest, dreamy expression, as if she were leading another life far from
the small details of her actual existence.
Hardly a day went by that Tiet Nikonich did not bring some present for
Grandmother or the little girls, a basket of strawberries, oranges,
peaches, always the earliest on the market.
At one time it had been rumoured in the town--a rumour long since
stilled--that Tiet Nikonich had loved Tatiana Markovna and Tatiana
Markovna him, but that her parents had chosen another husband for her.
She refused to assent, and remained unmarried. What truth there was in
this, none knew but herself. But every day he came to her, either at
midday or in the evening.
He liked to talk over with her what was going on in the world, who was
at war, and with whom, and why. He knew why bread was cheap in Russia;
the names of all the noble houses; he knew by heart the names of all the
ministers and the men in high commands and their past history; he could
tell why one sea lay at a higher tide than another; he was the first to
know what the English or the French had invented, and whether the
inventions were useful or not. If there was any business to be arranged
in the law courts, Tiet Nikonich arranged it, and sometimes concealed
the sums that he spent in so doing. If he was found out, she scolded him;
he could not conceal his confusion, begged her pardon, kissed her hand,
and took his leave.
Tatiana Markovna was always at loggerheads with the bureaucracy of the
neighbourhood. If soldiers were to be billeted on her, the roads to be
improved, or the taxes collected, she complained of outrage, argued and
refused to pay. She would hear nothing about the public interest. In her
opinion everyone had his own business to mind. She strongly objected to
the police, and especially to the Superintendent, who was in her view a
robber. More than once Tiet Nikonich tried, without success, to
reconcile her to the doctrine of the public interest; he had to be
content if she was reconciled with the officials and the police.
This was the patriarchal, peaceful atmosphere which young Raisky
absorbed. Grandmother and the little girls were mother and sisters to
him, and Tiet Nikonich the ideal uncle.
CHAPTER IV
Boris's aunt had only just begun to give him an idea of her methods of
conducting the estate when he began to yawn.
"Listen, these are all your affairs; I am only your Starost," she said.
But he could not suppress a yawn, watched the birds, the dragon-flies,
picked the cornflowers, looked curiously at the peasants, and gazed up
at the sky over-arching the wide horizon. Then his aunt began to talk to
one of the peasants, and he hurried off to the garden, ran down to the
edge of the precipice, and made his way through the undergrowth to the
steep bank of the Volga.
"He is still too young, only a child, does not understand serious
matters," thought his aunt, as she followed him with her eyes. "What
will become of him?"
The Volga glided quietly between its overgrown banks, with here and
there a sandbank or an island thickly covered with bushes. In the
distance lay the sandhills and the darkening forest. Here and there
shimmered a sail; gulls, with an even balancing of their wings, skimmed
the water, and then rose with a more strenuous movement, while over the
gardens, high in the air, the goshawks hovered.
Boris stood still for a long time, recalling his childhood. He
remembered that he had sat on this spot with his mother, looking
thoughtfully out at this same landscape. Then he went slowly back to the
house, and climbed the precipice, with the picture of her vividly before
his mind's eye.
In Malinovka and the neighbourhood there were tragic memories connected
with this precipice. In the lifetime of Boris's parents a man wild with
jealousy, a tailor from the town, had killed his wife and her lover
there in the midst of the thicket, and had then cut his own throat. The
suicide had been buried on the spot where he had committed the crime.
Among the common people, as always happens in cases of this sort, there
were rumours that the murderer, all dressed in white, wandered about the
wood, climbed the precipice, and looked down on town and village before
he vanished into air. And for superstitious reasons this part of the
grounds had been left neglected. None of the servants went down the
precipice, and the peasants from the outskirts of the town and from
Malinovka made a detour to avoid it. The fence that divided the Raiskys'
park from the woods had long since fallen into disrepair. Pines and
bushes of hawthorn and dwarf-cherry had woven themselves together into a
dense growth in the midst of which was concealed a neglected arbour.
Boris vividly imagined the scene, how the jealous husband, trembling
with agitation, stole through the bushes, threw himself on his rival,
and struck him with his knife; how the woman flung herself at his feet
and begged his forgiveness. But he, with the foam of madness on his lips,
struck her again and again, and then, in the presence of the two corpses,
cut his own throat. Boris shuddered. Agitated and gloomy he turned from
the accursed spot. Yet he was attracted by the mysterious darkness of
the tangled wood to the precipice, to the lovely view over the Volga and
its banks.
He closed his eyes, abandoning himself to the contemplation of the
picture; his thoughts swept over him like the waves of the Volga; the
lovely landscape was ever before his eyes, mirrored in his consciousness.
Veroshka and Marfinka provided him with amusement.
Veroshka was a little girl of six, with dark, brilliant eyes and dark
complexion, who was beginning to be serious and to be ashamed of her
baby ways. She would hop, skip and jump, then stand still, look shyly
round and walk sedately along; then she would dart on again like a bird,
pick a handful of currants and stuff them into her mouth. If Boris
patted her hair, she smoothed it rapidly; if he gave her a kiss, she
wiped it away. She was self-willed too. When she was sent on an errand
she would shake her head, then run off to do it. She never asked Boris
to draw for her, but if Marfinka asked him she watched silently and more
intently than her sister. She did not, like Marfinka, beg either
drawings or pencils.
Marfinka, a rosy little girl of four, was often self-willed, and often
cried, but before the tears were dry she was laughing and shouting again.
Veroshka rarely wept, and then quietly. She soon recovered, but she did
not like to be told to beg pardon.
Boris's aunt wondered, as she saw him gay and serious by turns, what
occupied his mind; she wondered what he did all day long. In answer
Boris showed his sketching folio; then he would play her quadrilles,
mazurkas, excerpts from opera, and finally his own improvisations.
Tatiana Markovna's astonishment remained. "Just like your mother," she
said. "She was just as restless, always sighing as if she expected
something to happen. Then she would begin to play and was gay again. See,
Vassilissa, he has sketched you and me, like life! When Tiet Nikonich
comes, hide yourself and make a sketch of him, and next day we will send
it him, and it can hang on the study wall. What a boy you are! And you
play as well as the French emigre who used to live with your Aunt. Only
it is impossible to talk to you about the farm; you are still too
young."
She always wished to go through the accounts with him. "The accounts for
Veroshka and Marfinka are separate, you see," she said. "You need not
think that a penny of your money goes to them. See...."
But he never listened. He merely watched how his aunt wrote, how she
looked at him over her spectacles, observed the wrinkles in her face,
her birthmark, her eyes, her smile, and then burst out laughing, and,
throwing himself into her arms, kissed her, and begged to go and look at
the old house. She could refuse him nothing; so she unwillingly gave him
the keys and he went to look at the rooms where he was born and had
spent his childhood, of which he retained only a confused memory.
"I am going with Cousin Boris," said Marfinka.
"Where, my darling? It is uncanny over there," said Tatiana Markovna.
Marfinka was frightened. Veroshka said nothing, but when Boris reached
the old house, she was already standing at the door, with her hand on
the latch, as if she feared she might be driven away.
Boris shuddered as he entered the ante-room, and cast an anxious glance
into the neighbouring hall, supported by pillars. Veroshka had run on in
front.
"Where are you off to, Veroshka?"
She stood still a moment, her hand on the latch of the nearest door, and
he had only just time to follow her before she vanished. Dark,
smoke-stained reception rooms adjoined the hall. In one were two ghostly
figures of shrouded statues and shrouded candelabra; by the walls were
ranged dark stained oak pieces of furniture with brass decorations and
inlaid work; there were huge Chinese vases, a clock representing Bacchus
with a barrel, and great oval mirrors in elaborate gilded frames. In the
bedroom stood an enormous bed, like a magnificent bier, with a brocade
cover. Boris could not imagine how any human being could sleep in such a
catafalque. Under the baldachin hovered a gilded Cupid, spotted and
faded, with his arrow aimed at the bed. In the corners stood carved
cupboards, damascened with ebony and mother-of-pearl. Veroshka opened a
press and put her little face inside, and a musty, dusty smell came from
the shelves, laden with old-fashioned caftans and embroidered uniforms
with big buttons.
Raisky shivered. "Granny was right!" he laughed. "It is uncanny here."
"But everything here is so beautiful!" cried Vera, "the great pictures
and the books!"
"Pictures? Books? Where? I don't remember. Bravo, little Veroshka."
He kissed her. She wiped her lips, and ran on in front to show him the
books. He found some two thousand volumes, and was soon absorbed in
reading the titles; many of the books were still uncut.
From this time he was not often to be seen in the wooden house. He did
not even go down to the Volga, but devoured one volume after another.
Then he wrote verses, read them aloud, and intoxicated himself with the
sound of them; then gave all his time to drawing. He expected something,
he knew not what, from the future. He was filled with passion, with the
foretaste of pleasure; there rose before him a world of wonderful music,
marvellous pictures, and the murmur of enchanting life.
"I have been wanting to ask you," said Tatiana Markovna, "why you have
entered yourself for school again."
"Not the school, the University!"
"It's the same thing. You studied at your guardian's, and at the High
School, you can draw, play the piano. What more do you want to learn?
The students will only teach you to smoke a pipe, and in the end--which
God forbid--to drink wine. You should go into the Guards."
"Uncle says my means are not sufficient...."
"Not sufficient! What next?" She pointed to the fields and the village.
She counted out his resources in hundreds and thousands of roubles. She
had had no experience of army circles, had never lived in the capital,
and did not know how much money was needed.
"Your means insufficient! Why, I can send provision alone for a whole
regiment. No means! What does your Uncle do with the revenues?"
"I intend to be an artist, Granny."
"What! An artist!"
"When I leave the University, I intend to enter the Academy."
"What's the matter with you, Borushka? Make the sign of the cross! Do
you want to be a teacher!"
"All artists are not teachers. Among artists there are great geniuses,
who are famous and receive large sums for pictures or music."
"And do you intend to sell your pictures for money, or to play the piano
for money in the evenings? What a disgrace!"
"No, Grandmother, an artist...."
"No, Borushka, don't anger your Grandmother; let her have the joy of
seeing you in your Guard's uniform."
"Uncle says I ought to go into the Civil Service."
"A clerk! Good heavens! To stoop over a desk all day, bathed in ink, run
in and out of the courts! Who would marry you then? No, no; come home to
me as an officer, and marry a rich woman!"
Although Boris shared neither his uncle's nor his aunt's views, yet for
a moment there shimmered before his eyes a vision of his own figure in a
hussar's or a court uniform. He saw how well he sat his horse, how well
he danced. That day he made a sketch of himself, negligently seated in
the saddle, with a cloak over his shoulders.
CHAPTER V
In Moscow Raisky spent his time partly in the University, partly in the
Kremlin gardens. In the evening he sat in the club with his friends,
hot-headed, good-hearted individuals. Every one of them made a great
to-do, and confidently expected a great future.
At the University, as at school, Raisky paid little attention to the
rules of grammar, but observed intently the professor and the students.
But as soon as the lecture touched actual life and brought living men,
Romans, Germans or Russians on the scene, whether in history or
literature, he involuntarily gave the lecturer his attention, and the
personages and their doings became real to him.
In his second year he made friends with a poor student named Koslov, the
son of a deacon, who had been sent first of all to a seminary, but had
taught himself Latin and Greek at home, and thus gained admission to the
Gymnasium. He zealously studied the life of antiquity, but understood
nothing of the life going on around him. Raisky felt himself drawn to
this young man, at first because of his loneliness, his reserve,
simplicity and kindness; later he discovered in him passion, the sacred
fire, profundity of comprehension and austerity of thought and delicacy
of perception--in all that pertained to antiquity. Koslov on his side
was devoted to Raisky, whose vivacious temperament could not be
permanently bound by anything. The outcome was the great gift of an
intimate friendship.
In summer Raisky liked to explore the neighbourhood of Moscow. He
explored old convents, examined their dark recesses, the blackened
pictures of the saints and martyrs; his imagination interpreted old
Russia for him better than the lectures of his professors.
The tsars, monks, warriors and statesmen of the past filed before him as
they lived and moved. Moscow seemed to him to be a miniature tsardom.
Here was conflict, here the death punishment was carried out; he saw
Tatars, Cossacks of the Don. The varied life attracted him.
In spite of obstacles he passed from one course to another at the
University. He was helped by the reputation for talent he had won by
certain poems and essays, the subjects of which were drawn from Russian
history.
"Which service do you mean to enter?" the Dean asked him one day. "In a
week's time you will be leaving the University. What are you going to
do?"
Raisky was silent.
"What profession have you selected?"
Raisky almost answered that he meant to be an artist, but he remembered
in time the reception that this proposition had received from his
guardian and his aunt. "I shall write verses," he answered in a low tone.
"But that is not a profession. You may write verses and yet...."
"Stories too."
"Naturally, you can write stories as well. You have talent and means to
develop it. But what profession--profession, I asked."
"For the moment I shall enter the Guards, later on the Civil Service--I
mean to be a barrister, a governor...."
The Dean smiled. "You begin by being an ensign, that is comprehensible.
You and Leonid Koslov are exceptions; every other man has made his
decision."
When Koslov was asked his intentions he replied that he would like to be
a schoolmaster somewhere in the interior, and from this intention he
refused to be turned aside.
Raisky moved among the golden youth of St. Petersburg society, first as
young officer, then as bureaucrat, fulfilled his duties in devotion to
the beauty of many an Armide, suffering to some degree, and gaining some
experience in the process. After a time his dreams and his artistic
consciousness revived. He seemed to see the Volga flowing between its
steep banks, the shady garden, and the wooded precipice. He abandoned
the Civil Service in its turn to enter the Academy of Arts. His
education would never be finished, but he was determined to be a
creative artist. His aunt scolded him by letter for having left the
Guards; his guardian advised him to seek a position in the Senate, and
sent him letters of recommendation.
But Raisky did not enter the Senate, but indolently pursued his artistic
studies, read a great deal, wrote poems and prose, danced, went into
society and to the theatre, indulged in wild dissipation, and at the
same time did some musical composition, and drew a portrait of a lady.
He would spend one week in dissipation and the next in diligent study at
the Academy. Life knocked at the door and tore him from his artist's
dreams to a dissolute existence of alternating pleasure and boredom.
The universal summer exodus from the capital had driven him abroad. But
one day when he came home he found two letters awaiting him, one from
Tatiana Markovna, the other from his comrade at the University, Leonid
Koslov, who had been installed in Raisky's native place as a master in
the Gymnasium.
During all these years his aunt had often written to him, and sent him
statements of accounts. His answers were short but affectionate; the
accounts he tore up without having even looked at them.
"Is it not a sin," she wrote, "to forget an old woman like me, when I am
all the family you have? But in these days it seems that old people have,
in the judgment of youth, become superfluous. But I have not even
leisure to die; I have two grown-up nieces, and until their future is
settled to my satisfaction, I shall pray God to spare my life--and then
His will be done. I do not complain that you forget me. But if I were
not here my little girls, your sisters, would be alone. You are their
next of kin and their natural protector. Think, too, of the estate. I am
old, and can no longer be your bailiff. To whom do you intend to entrust
the estate? The place will be ruined and the estate dissipated. It
breaks my heart to think that your family silver, bronzes, pictures,
diamonds, lace, china and glass will come into the hands of the servants,
or the Jews, or the usurers. So long as your Grandmother lives, you may
be sure that not a thread goes astray, but after that I can give no
guarantee. And my two nieces, what is to become of them? Vera is a good,
sensible, but retiring girl, and does not concern herself with domestic
matters at all. Marfinka will be a splendid manager, but she is still
young; although she ought to have been married before now, she is still
such a child in her ideas, thank God! She will mature with experience,
and meantime I shelter her. She appreciates this and does nothing
against her Grandmother's will, for which may God reward her. In the
house she is a great help, but I do not let her do anything on the
estate; that is no work for a young girl.
"Do not defer your coming, but gladden your Grandmother's heart. She is
devoted to you, not merely because of the relationship, but from her
heart. You were conscious of the sympathy between us when you were a
child. I don't know what you are in manhood, but you were then a good
nephew. Come, if only to see your sisters, and perhaps happiness will
reward your coming. If God grants me the joy of seeing you married and
laying the estate in your hands I shall die happy. Marry, Borushka; you
are long since of an age to do so. Then my little girls will still have
a home. So long as you remain unmarried they cannot live in your house.
Marry, please your Grandmother, and God will not forsake you. I wait
your coming; let me know when to expect you.
"Tiet Nikonich desires to be remembered to you. He has aged, but is
still hale and hearty, he has the same smile, still talks well and has
such pleasant manners that none of the young dandies can hold a candle
to him. Bring him, please, a vest and hose of Samian leather; it is worn
now, I hear, as a specific against rheumatism. It will be a surprise for
him. I enclose the account for the last two years. Accept my blessing."
CHAPTER VI
In a _kibitka_ covered with bast, drawn by three lean and sleepy
nags, Raisky drove slowly to his estate. It was not without agitation
that he saw the smoke curling up from the chimneys of his own roof, the
fresh, delicate green of the birches and the limes which overshadowed
this place of refuge, the gables of the old house and the pale line of
the Volga now gleaming between the trees and now hidden from view. He
approached nearer and nearer; now he could see the shimmer of the
flowers in the garden, the avenues of lime and acacia became visible,
the old elm emerged, and there, more to the left, lay the orchard. There
were dogs in the yard, cats sunning themselves, on the roof of the new
house flocked the pigeon and the swallows flitted around the eaves.
Behind the house, on the side towards the village, linen lay out to
bleach. One woman was rolling a cask, the coachman was chopping wood, a
peasant got into the _telega_ and gathered up the reins--Boris saw
only unfamiliar faces. But Yakob was there and looked sleepily round.
One familiar face, but how aged!
Raisky observed the scene intently. He alighted from the _kibitka_,
and walked along the fence which divided house, yard, garden and park
from the road, feasting his eyes on the well-remembered prospect, when
suddenly his eye was caught by an unexpected apparition.
On the verandah, which led down to the garden and was decorated by lemon
and pomegranate trees in tubs, and with cactus and aloe and flowering
plants, stood a young girl of about twenty, scattering millet from two
plates held by a barefooted child of twelve. At her feet were assembled
hens, turkeys, ducks, pigeons, sparrows and daws. She called to the
birds to come to breakfast, and cocks, hens and pigeons fell to, looking
round every moment as if they feared treason, and then again falling to.
As the morning sun shed a fierce light on the busy group of birds and on
the young girl herself, Raisky saw her large, dark grey eyes, her round,
healthy cheeks, her narrow white teeth, her long light-brown tresses
wound twice round her head, and the strong young breasts rising and
sinking underneath her white blouse. Her white, slightly tanned neck was
innocent of collar or scarf. A hasty movement loosened one plait of hair
over her head and back, but she took no notice, but continued to scatter
the corn, taking care that all received their share and that sparrows
and daws did not obtrude too much, and looking as fresh and happy as the
morning itself.
"Didn't you see the goose?" she asked the little girl in a loud clear
voice.
"No," answered the child, "it is the cat's fault. Afimua says it will
die."
"I shall look after it myself. Afimua has no pity."
Motionless, Raisky watched the scene without his presence being
suspected. This must be his cousin, and how charming! But which one,
Veroshka or Marfinka? Without waiting for the _kibitka_ to turn in
through the gate, he ran forward, and stood before the young girl.
"Cousin," he cried, extending his arms.
In a moment both girls had vanished as if by magic, the sparrows were
away on the roof, and the pigeons in flight. The servants in the yard
stopped their work. Raisky looked in amazement on the emptiness and at
the corn scattered at his feet.
Then he heard in the house bustle, murmurs, movement, the clatter of
keys, and his aunt's voice, "Where is he?" Her face lighted up when she
saw Raisky and she opened her arms, to press him to her breast.
She had aged, but in so even, so healthy a fashion, that there were no
unwholesome patches, no deep hanging pockets about the eyes and mouth,
no sadness or gloom in her eyes. Life had not conquered her; she
conquered life, and only slowly laid down her weapons in the combat. Her
voice was not so clear as of old, and she leaned on a stick, but she
made no complaint. She still wore no cap on her short hair. Health and
kindliness shone from her eyes, and not only from her eyes, from her
whole figure.
"Borushka, my friend!" Three times she embraced him. Tears stood in her
eyes. In her embrace, her voice, in the sudden grip of joy, there was
tenderness, affection, and ardour.
He felt that he was almost a criminal, that he had been playing with his
emotions and seeking forbidden fruit, wandering homelessly in the world,
while Nature himself had been preparing for him a nest where sympathy
and happiness awaited him.
"Marfinka, where are you, come here," cried her grandmother. "She was so
terrified when she saw you, and terrified me too. Let me look at you,
Borushka."
She led him to the light and looked at him long and earnestly.
"How ill you look," she said. "But no, you are sunburnt. The moustache
suits you, why do you grow a beard? Shave it off, Borushka, I can't
endure it. Ah! grey hairs here and there already. You are beginning to
age too soon."
"It's not with age, Granny."
"Why then? Are you in good health?"
"I'm well enough. Let us talk of something else. You, thank God, are
always the same."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't alter a bit, are still as beautiful as ever. I never saw an
old lady whose age adorned her so."
"Thanks for the compliment, my child. It would be better for you to
spend your admiration on your sisters. I will whisper the truth to you.
Two such beauties you will not find in the town, especially the
other...."
"Where is my other sister?"
"On a visit to the pope's wife on the other side of the Volga. It is a
pity. The pope's wife has been ill and sent for her, of course just now.
A messenger shall go."
"No! No! Why should anyone be disturbed on my account?"
"And you have come on your Grandmother so suddenly. We waited, waited,
in vain. The peasants sat up for you at night, I have just sent Egorka
on to the highway to look for you and Savili into the town. Now you must
have your breakfast. Why is it so long in coming? The master has come,
and there is nothing ready, just as if the house was nothing better than
a station. Serve what is ready."
"I need nothing, Granny. I am stuffed with food. At one station I drank
tea, milk at another, and at the third there was a wedding, and I was
treated to wine, meat and gingerbread."
"You are on your way home to your Grandmother, and are not ashamed to
eat and drink all sorts of things. Gingerbread in the morning! Marfinka
ought to have been there; she loves weddings and gingerbread. Come in.
Marfinka, don't be so shy. She is ashamed because you caught her in her
morning gown. Come here, darling; he is your brother."
Tea and coffee appeared, and finally breakfast. However much he
protested Raisky had to eat, for otherwise his aunt's morning would have
been spoiled.
"Marfinka, come here and entertain us."
After about five minutes the door opened slowly and quietly, and
Marfinka entered, blushing with confusion and with downcast eyes. At her
heels followed Vassilissa with a tea-tray full of sweets, preserves,
cakes, etc. Marfinka stood still, betraying in her confusion a certain
curiosity. She wore lace at her neck and wrists; her hair was plaited
firmly around her head and the waist of her barege dress encircled by a
blue ribbon.
Raisky threw down his napkin, and jumped up, to stand before her in
admiration. "How lovely," he cried. "This is my little sister, Marfa
Vassilievna. And is the goose still alive?"
Marfinka became still more embarrassed, returned his greeting awkwardly,
and retired to a corner.
"You have both gone mad," interrupted their aunt. "Is that the way to
greet one another?"
"Marfa Vassilievna," said Raisky, as he sought to kiss Marfinka's hand.
"Vassilievna!" cried Tatiana Markovna. "Don't you love her any more?
Marfinka, not Marfa Vassilievna! You will be addressing me as Tatiana
Markovna next! Kiss one another. Are you not brother and sister?"
"I won't, Grandmama. He is teasing me about the goose. It is not polite
to spy on people," she said severely.
Everybody laughed. Raisky kissed her on both cheeks, embraced her, and
overcame her confusion. She kissed him in return, and her shyness
vanished.
"Do you remember, Marfinka, how we used to run about and draw, and how
you cried?"
"No ... but yes. I do remember as if in a dream."
"How should she remember, when she was only five?" interrupted her aunt.
"But I do, Grandmama, as in a dream."
Raisky had hardly captured his old memories when Marfinka disappeared.
Soon she returned with sketch books, drawings and toys, and sitting down
by Raisky in friendly fashion began, "Granny says that I don't remember.
I remember how you used to draw, and how I sat on your knee. Granny has
all your drawings, portraits and sketch books. She has kept them all in
the dark room where the silver, the diamonds and the lace are. She got
them out, and gave them to me a little time ago, when she heard you were
coming. Here is my portrait. How funny I looked! And here is Veroshka,
and Granny, and Vassilissa. Do you remember how you held me, and
Veroshka sat on your shoulder, and you carried us over the water?"
"Do you remember that too?" asked her aunt. "Boastful child! Veroshka
said the other day...."
"This is how I draw now," said Marfinka, handing him a drawing of a
bunch of flowers.
"Splendid, little sister! Is it done from nature?"
"Yes, from nature. I can make wax-flowers, too."
"And do you play or sing?"
"I play the piano."
"And does Veroshka draw and play?"
Marfinka shook her head.
"Does she like needlework? No? Then is she fond of reading?"
"Yes, she reads a great deal. But she does not tell us what she reads,
nor show us the book, nor even say where she got it."
"She hides herself from everybody, does my strange child," sighed
Tatiana Markovna. "God only knows what will become of her. Now, Marfinka,
don't waste your brother's time any longer with your chatter about
trifles. We will talk about serious matters, about the estate."
The old lady had worn a serious expression while she watched Boris as he
talked to Marfinka. She recognised his mother's features, but the
changes in his face did not escape her--the indications of vanishing
youth, the premature furrows; and she was baffled by the original
expression of his eyes. Formerly she had always been able to read his
face, but now there was much inscribed on it that was undecipherable for
her. Yet his temperament was open and affectionate and his words frankly
interpreted his thoughts.
Now his aunt stood before him wearing a most business-like expression;
in her hand were accounts and a ledger.
"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 snatched 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 God, 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?"
"God forbid! How could such a thing happen. Who ever imagined such
nonsense?"
"Granny," laughed Raisky.
Happily "Granny" had not heard the words. Marfinka was embarrassed, 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.
"Don't tease me," said Tatiana Markovna.
"Marfinka, you don't want to leave home?" asked Boris.
"Not for anything in the world. How could such a thing be?"
"What would Veroshka say about it?"
"She would never be separated from the old house."
"She loves the old house?"
"Yes. She is only happy when she is here. If she were taken away from it
she would die. We both should."
"That matter is settled then, little sister. You two, Veroshka and you,
will accept the gift from me, won't you?"
"I will if Veroshka agrees."
"Agreed, dear sister. You are not so proud as Granny," he said, as he
kissed her forehead.
"What is agreed?" suddenly grumbled Tatiana Markovna. "You have accepted?
Who told you you might accept? Grandmother will never permit you to live
at a stranger's expense. Be so kind, Boris Pavlovich, as to take over
books, accounts, inventories and sales. I am not your paid servant." She
pushed papers and books towards him.
"Granny!"
"Granny! My name is Tatiana Markovna Berezhkov." She stood up, and
opened the door into the servants' room. "Send Savili here."
A quarter of an hour later, a peasant of almost forty-five years of age
opened the door with a casual greeting. He was strongly-built, big boned,
and was robust, without being fat. His eyes with their overhanging brows
and wide heavy lids, wasted no idle glances; he neither spoke an
unnecessary word, nor made a superfluous gesture.
"The proprietor is here," said Tatiana Markovna, indicating Raisky. "You
must now make your reports to him. He intends to administer the estate
himself."
Savili looked askance at Raisky.
"At your orders," he said stiffly, slowly raising his eyes. "What orders
are you pleased to give?" he asked, lowering his eyes again.
Raisky thought for a moment before he replied:
"Do you know an official who could draw up a document for the transfer
of the estate?"
"Gavril Ivanov Meshetshnikov draws up the papers we require," he said.
"Send for him."
As Savili bowed, and slowly retired, Raisky followed him with his eyes.
"An anxious rascal," was his comment.
"How should he be other than anxious," said his aunt, "when he is tied
to a wife like Marina Antipovna? Do you remember Antip? Well, she is his
daughter. But for his marriage he is a treasure. He does my important
business, sells the corn, and collects the money. He is honest and
practical, but fate deals her blows where she will, and every man must
bear his own burden. But what idea have you in your head now? Are you
beside yourself?"
"Something must be done. I am going away, and you will not administer
the estate, so some arrangement must be made."
"And is that your reason for going? I thought you were now going to take
over the management of your estate. You have done enough gadding about.
Why not marry and settle here?"
She was visibly struggling with herself. It had never entered her head
to give up the administration; she would not have known what to do with
herself. Her idea had been to alarm Raisky, and he was taking her
seriously.
"What is to be done?" she said. "I will see after the estate as long as
I have the strength to do so. How else should you live, you strange
creature?"
"I receive two thousand roubles from my other estate, and that is a
sufficient income. I want to work, to draw, to write, to travel for a
little; and for that purpose I might mortgage or sell the other estate."
"God bless you, Borushka, what next? Are you so near beggary? You talk
of drawing, writing, alienating your land; next it will be giving
lessons or school teaching. Instead of arriving with four horses and a
travelling carriage you sneak in, without a servant, in a miserable
_kibitka_, you, a Raisky. Look at the old house, at the portraits
of your ancestors, and take shame to yourself. Shame, Borushka! How
splendid it would have been if you had come epauletted like Sergei
Ivanovich, and had married a wife with a dowry of three thousand souls."
Raisky burst out laughing.
"Why laugh? I am speaking seriously when I tell you what a joy it would
have been for your Grandmother. Then you would have wanted the lace and
the silver, and not be flinging it away."
"But as I am not marrying, I don't need these things. Therefore it is
settled that Veroshka and Marfinka shall have them."
"Your decision is final?"
"It is final. And it is further settled that if you do not like this
arrangement, everything passes into the hands of strangers. You have my
word for it."
"Your word for it," cried his aunt. "You are a lost man. Where have you
lived, and what have you done. Tell me, for Heaven's sake, what your
purpose in life is, and what you really are?"
"What I am, Grandmother? The unhappiest of men!" He leaned his head back
on the cushion as he spoke.
"Never say such a thing," she interrupted. "Fate hears and exacts the
penalty, and you will one day be unhappy. Either be content or feign
content."
She looked anxiously round, as if Fate were already standing at her
shoulder.
Raisky rose from the divan.
"Let us be reconciled," he said. "Agree to keep this little corner of
God's earth under your protection."
"It is an estate, not a 'corner.'"
"Resign yourself to my gift of this old stuff to the dear girls. A
lonely man like me has no use for it, but they will be mistresses of a
house. If you don't agree, I will present it to the school...."
"The school-children! Those rascals who steal our apples, shall not have
it."
"Come to the point, Granny! You don't really want to leave this nest in
your old age."
"We'll see, we'll see. Give them the lace on their wedding-day. I can do
nothing with you; talk to Tiet Nikonich who is coming to dinner." And
she wondered what would come of such strangeness.
Raisky took his cap to go out, and Marfinka went with him. She showed
him the park, her own garden, the vegetable and flower gardens, and the
arbours. When they came to the precipice she looked anxiously over the
edge, and drew back with a shudder. Raisky looked down on the Volga,
which was in flood, and had overflowed into the meadows. In the distance
were ships which appeared to be motionless, and above hung heaped banks
of cloud. Marfinka drew closer to Raisky, and looked down indifferently
on the familiar picture.
"Come down!" he said suddenly, and seized her hand.
"No, I am afraid," she answered trembling, and drew back.
"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 passion 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 passion should float
over this motionless sleeping little world, the picture would glow with
the enchanting colour of life. Where was he to find the passion, the
colour?
"Passion!" 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 God 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,
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