The Precipice Part 37

She looked at him curiously, but without fear, as she drew back a little.

"Who are you?" she said severely. "And why do you climb on to other people's fences."

"What can it matter to you who I am. I can easily tell you why I climb on other people's fences. It is to eat apples."

"Aren't you ashamed to take other people's apples?" she asked.

"They are my apples, not theirs; they have been stolen from me. You certainly have not read Proudhon. But how beautiful you are!" he added in amazement. "Do you know what Proudhon says?" he concluded.

"_La propriete c'est le vol_."

"Ah, you have read Proudhon." He stared at her, and as she shook her head, he continued, "Anyway, you have heard it. Indeed, this divine truth has gone all round the world nowadays. I have a copy of Proudhon, and will bring it to you."

"You are not a boy, and yet you steal apples. You think it is not theft to do so because of that saying of Proudhon's."

"You believe, then, everything that was told you at school? But please tell me who you are. This is the Berezhkovs' garden. They tell me the old lady has two beautiful nieces."

"I too say what can it matter to you who I am?"

"Then you believe what your Grandmother tells you?"

"I believe in what convinces me."

"Exactly like me," he said, taking off his cap. "Is it criminal in your eyes to take apples?"

"Not criminal, perhaps, but not good manners."

"I make you a present of them," he said, handing her the remaining four apples and taking another bite out of his own.

He raised his cap once more and bid her an ironic good-day.

"You have a double beauty, you are beautiful to look at and sensible into the bargain. It is a pity that you are destined to adorn the life of an idiot. You will be given away, poor girl."

"No pity, if you please. I shall not be given away like an apple."

"You remember the apples; many thanks for the gift. I will bring you books in exchange, as you like books."

"Proudhon?"

"Yes, Proudhon and others. I have all the new ones. Only you must not tell your Grandmother and her stupid visitors, for although I do not know who they are, I don't think they would have anything to do with me."

"How do you know? You have only seen me for five minutes."

"The stag's breed is never hidden, one sees at once that you belong to the living, not to the dead-alive, and that is the main point. The rest comes with opportunity...."

"I have a free mind, as you yourself say, and you immediately want to overpower it. Who are you that you should take upon yourself to instruct me?"

He looked at her in amazement.

"You are neither to bring me books, nor to come here again yourself,"

she said, rising to go. "There is a watchman here, and he will seize you."

"That is like the Grandmother again. It smells of the town and the Lenten oil, and I thought that you loved the wide world and freedom. Are you afraid of me, and who do you think I am?"

"A seminarist, perhaps," she said laconically.

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, seminarists are unconventional, badly dressed, and always hungry.

Go into the kitchen, and I will tell them to give you something to eat."

"That's very kind. Did anything else about the seminarists strike you?"

"I am not acquainted with any of them, and have seen very little of them at all; they are so unpolished, and talk so queerly...."

"They are our real missionaries, and what does it matter if they talk queerly? While we laugh at them they attack the enemy, blindly perhaps, but at any rate with enthusiasm."

"What enemy?"

"The world; they fight for the new knowledge, the new life. Healthy, virile youth needs air and food, and we need such men."

"We? Who?"

"The new-born strength of the world."

"Do you then represent the 'new-born strength of the world,'" she said, looking at him with observant, curious eyes, but without irony, "or is your name a secret?"

"Would it frighten you if I named it?"

"What could it mean to me if you did disclose it? What is it?"

"Mark Volokov. In this silly place my name is heard with nearly as much terror as if it were Pugachev or Stenka Razin."

"You are that man?" she said, looking at him with rising curiosity. "You boast of your name, which I have heard before. You shot at Niel Andreevich, and let a couple of dogs loose on an old lady. There are the manifestations of your 'new strength.' Go, and don't be seen here again."

"Otherwise you will complain to Grandmama?"

"I certainly shall. Good-bye."

She left the arbour and walked away without listening to his rejoinder.

He followed her covetously with his eyes, murmuring as he sprang to the ground a wish that those apples also could be stolen. Vera, for her part, said not a word to her aunt of this meeting, but she confided nevertheless in her friend Natalie Ivanovna after exacting a promise of secrecy.

CHAPTER XIX

After leaving Raisky, Vera listened for a while to make sure he was not following her, and then, pus.h.i.+ng the branches of the undergrowth aside with her parasol, made her way by the familiar path to the ruined arbour, whose battered doorway was almost barricaded by the fallen timbers. The steps of the arbour and the planks of the floor had sunk, and rotten planks cracked under her feet. Of its original furniture there was nothing left but two moss-grown benches and a crooked table.