The Precipice Part 49

"Separation! Do the ideas of love and separation exist side by side in your mind? They are extremes which should never meet. Separation must only come with death. Farewell, Mark! You can never promise me the happiness that I seek. All is at an end. Farewell!"

"Farewell, Vera!" he said in a voice quite unlike his own.

Both were pale, and avoided one another's eyes. In the white moonlight that gleamed through the trees Vera sought her mantilla, and grasped the gun instead. At last she found the mantilla, but could not put it on her shoulders. Mark helped her mechanically, but left his own belongings behind. They went silently up the path, with slow and hesitating steps, as if each expected something from the other, both of them occupied with the same mental effort to find a pretext for delay. They came at last to the spot where Mark's way lay across a low fence, and hers by the winding path through the bushes up to the park.

Vera stood still. She seemed to see the events of her whole life pa.s.s before her in quick succession, but saw none filled with bitterness like the present. Her eyes filled with tears. She felt a violent impulse to look round once more, to see him once more, to measure with her eyes the extent of her loss, and then to hurry on again. But however great her sorrow for her wrecked happiness she dare not look round, for she knew it would be equivalent to saying Yes to destiny. She took a few steps up the path.

Mark strode fiercely away towards the hedge, like a wild beast baulked of his prey. He had not lied when he said that he esteemed Vera, but it was an esteem wrung from him against his will, the esteem of the soldier for a brave enemy. He cursed the old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas which had enchained her free and vivacious spirit. His suffering was the suffering of despair; he was in the mood of a madman who would shatter a treasure of which the possession was denied him, in order that no one else might possess it. He was ready to spring, and could hardly restrain himself from laying violent hands on Vera. By his own confession to her he would have treated any other woman so, but not Vera. Then the conviction gnawed at his heart that for the sake of the woman who was now escaping him he was neglecting his "mission." His pride suffered unspeakably by the confession of his own powerlessness. He admitted that the beautiful statue filled with the breath of life had character; she acted in accordance with her own proud will, not by the influence of outside suggestion. His new conception of truth did not subdue her strong, healthy temperament; it rather induced her to submit it to a minute a.n.a.lysis and to stick closer to her own conception of the truth. And now she was going, and as the traces of her footsteps would vanish, so all that had pa.s.sed between them would be lost. And with her went all the charm and glory of life, never to return.

He stamped his feet with rage and swung himself on to the fence. He would cast one glance in her direction to see if the haughty creature was really going.

"One more glance," thought Vera. She turned, and shuddered to see Mark sitting on the fence and gazing at her.

"Farewell, Mark," she cried, in a voice trembling with despair.

From his throat there issued a low, wild cry of triumph. In a moment he was by her side, with victory and the conviction of her surrender in his heart.

"Vera!"

"You have come back, for always? You have at last understood. What happiness! G.o.d forgive...."

She did not complete her sentence, for she lay wrapt in his embrace, her sobs quenched by his kisses. He raised her in his arms, and like a wild animal carrying off his prey, ran with her back to the arbour.

G.o.d forgive her for having turned back.

CHAPTER XXIV

Raisky lay on the gra.s.s at the top of the cliff for a long time in gloomy meditation, groaning over the penalty he must pay for his generosity, suffering alike for himself and Vera. "Perhaps she is laughing at my folly, down there with him. Who is there?" he cried aloud, stung with rage. "I will have his name." He saw himself merely as a s.h.i.+eld to cover her pa.s.sion. He sprang up wildly, and hurried down the precipice, tearing his clothes in the bushes and listening in vain for a suspicious rustling. He told himself that it was an evil thing to pry into another's secret; it was robbery. He stood still a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow, but his sufferings overcame his scruples. He felt his way stealthily forward, cursing every broken branch that cracked under his feet, and unconscious of the blows he received on his face from the rebounding branches as he forced his way through. He threw himself on the ground to regain his breath, then in order not to betray his presence crept along, digging his nails into the ground as he went.

When he reached the suicide's grave he halted, uncertain which way to follow, and at length made for the arbour, listening and searching the ground as he went.

Meanwhile everything was going on as usual in Tatiana Markovna's household. After supper the company sat yawning in the hall, Tiet Nikonich alone being indefatigable in his attentions, shuffling his foot when he made a polite remark, and looking at each lady as if he were ready to sacrifice everything for her sake.

"Where is Monsieur Boris?" inquired Paulina Karpovna, addressing Tatiana Markovna.

"Probably he is paying a visit in the town. He never says where he spends his time, so that I never know where to send the carriage for him."

Inquiries made of Yakob revealed the fact that he had been in the garden up to a late hour. Vera was not in the house when she was summoned to tea. She had left word that they were not to keep supper for her, and that she would send across for some if she were hungry. No one but Raisky had seen her go.

Tatiana Markovna sighed over their perversity, to be wandering about at such hours, in such cold weather.

"I will go into the garden," said Paulina Karpovna. "Perhaps Monsieur Boris is not far away. He will be delighted to see me. I noticed," she continued confidentially, "that he had something to say to me. He could not have known I was here."

Marfinka whispered to Vikentev that he did know, and had gone out on that account.

"I will go, Marfa Va.s.silievna, and hide behind a bush, imitate Boris Pavlovich's voice and make her a declaration," suggested Vikentev.

"Stay here, Nikolai Andreevich. Paulina Karpovna might be frightened and faint. Then you would have to reckon with Grandmother."

"I am going into the garden for a moment to fetch the fugitive," said Paulina Karpovna.

"G.o.d be with you, Paulina Karpovna," said Tatiana Markovna. "Don't put your nose outside in the darkness, or at any rate take Egorka with you to carry a lantern."

"No, I will go alone. It is not necessary for anyone to disturb us."

"You ought not," intervened Tiet Nikonich politely, "to go out after eight o'clock on these damp nights. I would not have ventured to detain you, but a physician from Dusseldorf on the Rhine, whose book I am now reading and can lend you if you like, and who gives excellent advice, says...."

Paulina Karpovna interrupted him by asking him if he would see her home, and then went into the garden before he could resume his remarks. He agreed to her request and shut the door after her.

Soon after Paulina Karpovna's exit there was a rustling and crackling on the precipice, and Raisky wearing the aspect of a restless, wounded animal, appeared out of the darkness. He sat for several minutes motionless on Vera's favourite bench, covering his eyes with his hands.

Was it dream or reality, he asked himself. He must have been mistaken.

Such a thing could not be. He stood up, then sat down again to listen.

With his hands lying listlessly on his knees, he broke into laughter over his doubts, his questionings, his secret. Again he had an access of terrible laughter. Vera--and _he_. The cloak which he himself had sent to the "exile" lay near the arbour. The rogue had been clever enough to get two hundred and twenty roubles for the settlement of his wager, and the earlier eighty in addition. Sekleteia Burdalakov!

Again he laughed with a laugh very near a groan. Suddenly he stopped, and put his hand to his side, seized with a sudden consciousness of pain.

Vera was free, but he told himself she had dared to mock another fellow human being who had been rash enough to love her; she had mocked her friend. His soul cried for revenge.

He sprang up intent on revenge, but was checked by the question of how to avenge himself. To bring Tatiana Markovna, with lanterns, and a crowd of servants and to expose the scandal in a glare of light; to say to her, "Here is the serpent you have carried for two and twenty years in your bosom"--that would be a vulgar revenge of which he knew himself to be incapable. Such a revenge would hit, not Vera, but his aunt, who was to him like his mother. His head drooped for a moment; then he rose and hurried like a madman down the precipice once more.

There in the depths pa.s.sion was holding her festival, night drew her curtain over the song of love, love ... with Mark. If she had surrendered to another lover, to the tall, handsome Tus.h.i.+n, the owner of land, lake, and forest, and the Olympian tamer of horses....

He could hardly breathe. Against his will there rose before him, from the depths of the precipice, the vision of Vera's figure, glorified with a seductive beauty that he had never yet seen in her, and though he was devoured by agony he could not take his eyes from the vision. At her feet, like a lion at rest, lay Mark, with triumph on his face. Her foot rested on his head. Horror seized him, and drove him onward, to destroy and mar the vision. He seemed to hear in the air the flattering words, the songs and the sighs of pa.s.sion; the vision became fainter, mist-enshrouded, and finally vanished into air, but the rage for revenge remained.

Everywhere was stillness and darkness, as he climbed the hill once more, but when he reached Vera's bench he saw a human shadow.

"Who is there?" he cried.

"Monsieur Boris, it is I, Paulina."

"You, what are you doing here?"

"I came, because I knew, I knew that you have long had something to say to me, but have hesitated. Du courage. There is no one to see or hear us.

_Esperez tout...._"

"What do you want? Speak out."

_"Que vous m'aimez._ I have known it for a long time. _Vous m'avez fui, mais la pa.s.sion vous a ramene ici...._"

He seized her roughly by the hand, and pushed her to the edge of the precipice.

"Ah, _de grace. Mais pas si brusquement ... qu'est-ce que vous faites ... mais laissez donc,_" she groaned.

Her anxiety was not altogether groundless, for she stood on the edge of an abrupt fall of the ground, and he grasped her hand more determinedly.

"You want love," he cried to the terrified woman. "Listen, to-night is love's night. Do you hear the sighs, the kisses, the breath of pa.s.sion?"