The Precipice Part 43

"I will go to Mark, Granny, and tell him what you say."

"For goodness' sake don't do that, Borushka. Mark will laugh at me."

"No, he will be grateful and respectful, for he understands you. He is not like Niel Andreevich."

"I don't want his grat.i.tude and respect. Let him eat, and be satisfied, and G.o.d be with him. He is a ruined man. Has he remembered the eighty roubles?"

CHAPTER XXI

Raisky laughed as he went out into the garden. He looked sadly at the closed shutters of the old house, and stood for a long time on the edge of the precipice, looking down thoughtfully into the depths of the thicket and the trees rustling and cracking in the wind. Then he turned to look at the long avenues, here forming gloomy corridors, and then opening out into open stately s.p.a.ces, at the flower gardens now fading under the approach of autumn, at the kitchen garden, and at the distant glimmer of the rising moon, and at the stars. He looked out over the Volga, gleaming like steel in the distance. The evening was fresh and cool, and the withered leaves were falling with a gentle rustle around him. He could not take his eyes from the river, now silvered by the moon, which separated him from Vera. She had gone without leaving a word for him. A word from her would have brought tenderness and would have drowned all bitterness, he thought. But she was gone without leaving a trace or any kind remembrance. With bent head and full of anxious thought he made his way along the dark avenues.

Suddenly delicate fingers seized his shoulders, and he heard a low laugh.

"Vera!" he cried, seizing her hand violently. "You here, and not away over the Volga!"

"Yes, here, not over there." She put her arm in his and asked him, laughing, whether he thought she would let him go without saying good-bye.

"Witch!" he said, not knowing whether fear or joy was uppermost. "I was this very moment complaining that you had not left a line for me, and now I can't understand, as everyone in the house told me you had gone away yesterday."

"And you believed it," she said laughing. "I told them to say so, to surprise you. They were humbugging.... To go away without two words,"

she asked triumphantly, "or to stay, which is better?"

Her gay talk, her quick gestures, the mockery in her voice, all these things seemed unnatural, and he recognised beneath it all weariness, strain, an effort to conceal the collapse of her strength. When they reached the end of the avenue he tried to lead her to an open spot, where he could see her face.

"Let me look at you! How gay and merry you are, Vera!" he said timidly.

"What is there to see?" she interrupted impatiently, and tried to draw him into the shadow again. He felt that her hands were trembling, and for the moment his own pa.s.sion was stilled, and he shared her suffering.

"Why do you look at me like that? I am not crazy," she said, turning her face away.

He was stricken with horror. The insane are always a.s.suring everyone of their sanity. What was wrong with Vera? She did not confide in him, she would not speak out, she was determined to fight her own battles. Who could support and shelter her? An inner voice told him that Tatiana Markovna alone could do it.

"Vera, you are ill," he said earnestly. "Give Grandmother your confidence."

"Silence! Not a word of Grandmother! Goodbye! To-morrow we will go for a stroll, do some shopping, go down by the river, anything you like."

"I will go away, Vera," he cried, filled with inexpressible fear. "I am worn out. Why do you deceive me? Why did you call me back to find you still here? Was it to mock my sufferings?"

"So that we could suffer together," she answered. "Pa.s.sion is beautiful, as you yourself have said; it is life itself. You have taught me how to love, have educated pa.s.sion in me, and now you may admire the result of your labour," she ended, drawing in a deep breath of the cool evening air.

"I warned you, Vera. I told you pa.s.sion was a fierce wolf."

"No, worse, it is a tiger. I could not believe what you said, but I do now. Do you know the picture in the old house which represents a tiger showing his teeth at a seated Cupid? I never understood the picture, which seemed meaningless, but now I understand it. Pa.s.sion is a tiger, lying there apparently so peaceful and inviting, until he begins to howl and to whet his teeth."

Raisky pursued the comparison in the hope that he might learn the name of Vera's lover.

"Your comparison is false, Vera. There are no tigers in our Northern climate. I am nearer the mark when I compare pa.s.sion to a wolf."

"You are right," she said with a nervous laugh. "A real wolf. However carefully you feed him he looks always to the woods. You are all wolves, and _he_, too, is a wolf."

"Who?" he asked in an expressionless voice. "Tus.h.i.+n is a bear, a genuine Russian bear. You may lay your hand on his s.h.a.ggy head, and sleep; your rest is sure, for he will serve you all his life."

"Which of the animals am I?" he asked gaily, noting that Tus.h.i.+n was not the man. "Don't beat about the bush, Vera, you may say I am an a.s.s."

"No," she said scornfully. "You are a fox, a nice, cunning fox, with a gift for deception. That's what you are. Why don't you say something?"

she went on, as he kept an embarra.s.sed silence.

"Vera, there are weapons to be used against wolves, for me, to go away; for you, not to go down there," he said, pointing to the precipice.

"Tell me how to prevent myself from going there. Teach me, since you are my mentor, how not to go. You first set the house on fire, and then talk of leaving it. You sing in praise of pa.s.sion, and then...."

"I meant another kind of pa.s.sion. Where both parties to it are honourable, it means the supreme happiness in life, and its storms are full of the glow of life...."

"And where there is no dishonour, no precipice yawns? I love, and am loved, yet pa.s.sion has me in its jaws. Tell me what I should do."

"Confess all to Grandmother," whispered Raisky, pale with terror, "or permit me to talk to her."

"To shame me and ruin me? Who told me I need not obey her?"

"At one moment you are on the point of telling your secret, at another you hide behind it. I am in the dark, and feel my way in uncertainty.

How can I, when I do not know the whole truth, diagnose the case?"

"You know what is wrong with me? Why do you say you are in the dark.

Come," she said, leading him into the moonlight. "See what is wrong with me."

He stood transfixed with terror and pity. Pale, haggard, with wild eyes and tightly pressed lips, this was quite another Vera. Strands of hair were loose from beneath her hood, and fell in gipsy-like confusion over her forehead and temples, and covered her eyes and mouth with every quick movement she made. Her shoulders were negligently clad in a satin wrap trimmed with swansdown, held in place by a loosely tied knot of silk.

"Well," she said, shaking her hair out of her eyes. "What has happened to the beauty whose praise you sang?"

"Vera," he said, "I would die for you. Tell me how I may serve you."

"Die!" she exclaimed. "Help me to live. Give me that beautiful pa.s.sion which sheds its glorious light over the whole of life. I see no pa.s.sion but this drowning tiger pa.s.sion. Give me back at least my old strength, you, who talk of going to my Grandmother to place her and me on the same bier. It is too late to tell me to go no more to the precipice."

She sat down on the bench and looked moodily straight before her.

"You yourself, Vera, dreamed of freedom, and you prided yourself on your independence."

"My head burns. Have pity on your sister! I am ashamed to be so weak."

"What is it, dear Vera?"

"Nothing. Take me home, help me to mount the steps. I am afraid, and would like to lie down. Pardon me for having disturbed you for nothing, for having brought you here. You would have gone away and forgotten me.

I am only feverish. Are you angry with me?"