The Precipice Part 57

"Now," said Vera, "let us go across to your house, where we can both rest."

Tatiana Markovna almost carried her across to the new house, laid her on her own bed, and lay down beside her.

When Vera had fallen peacefully asleep, her aunt rose cautiously, and, in the light of the lamp, watched the marble beauty of her forehead, her closed eyes, all sculptured pure and delicate as if by a master hand, and at the expression of deep peace that lay on her face. She made the sign of the cross over Vera as she slept, touched her forehead with her lips, and sank on her knees in prayer.

"Have mercy on her!" she breathed. "If Thy anger is not yet appeased, turn it from her and strike my grey head."

Presently she lay down beside Vera, with her arm around her neck. Vera woke occasionally, opened her eyes, and closed them again. She pressed closer and closer to Tatiana Markovna as if no harm could befall her within the circle of those faithful arms.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

As the days went by Malinovka a.s.sumed its wonted calm. The quiet life which had been brought to a pause by the catastrophe, flowed evenly on.

The peaceful atmosphere was not undisturbed by anxiety. Autumn had laid her hand on men as well as on nature. The household was thoughtful, silent, and cold; smiles, laughter, and joy had vanished like the falling leaves, and even though the worst crisis was pa.s.sed, it had left behind it an atmosphere of gloom.

Tatiana Markovna ruled her little kingdom once more. Vera was busily engaged in the house, and devoted much care and taste to the choice of Marfinka's trousseau. She had determined not to avoid any task, however simple and trivial it might be, while she awaited the opportunity of some serious work that life might offer her; she recognised that with most people avoidance of the trivial and the hope of something extraordinary and unprecedented were dictated either by idleness and incompetence, or by morbid self-love and vanity.

She was paler than before, her eyes were less sparkling, and she had lost some of her vivacity of gesture; but these changes were put down by everyone to her narrow escape from nervous fever.

In fulfilment of Tatiana Markovna's insistently expressed wish, Vera had spoken to Raisky of their aunt's pa.s.sion, of which Tiet Nikonich had been the object, but she said nothing of the sin. Even this partial confidence explained to Raisky the riddle, how Tatiana Markovna, who in his eyes was an old maid, could find the strength, not only to bear the brunt of Vera's misfortune, but to soothe her, and to rescue her from moral collapse and despair.

He showed in his intercourse with her, more clearly than before, a deep and affectionate esteem, and an unbounded devotion. He now no longer contradicted her, so that an end was put to the earlier semi-comic warfare he had waged against her; even in his gestures there was a certain reserve. She inspired him with the astonishment and admiration which are called forth by women of exceptional moral strength.

The servants, too, were different, even though the cloud had pa.s.sed.

There was no sound of quarrelling, abuse or laughter. Va.s.silissa found herself in an exceptionally difficult position, since, now that her mistress was restored to health, she was called on to fulfil her vow.

One morning Yakob vanished from the yard. He had taken money from the box where the cash was kept for buying the oil for the lamps kept burning in front of the ikons, which were in his charge, and had bought the promised candle, which he set up before the sacred picture in the village church at early Ma.s.s. As there was a small surplus he crossed himself piously, then betook himself to the poorer quarter of the town, where he spent his riches, and then reeled home again on his unsteady legs, displaying a slight redness on his nose and his cheeks. Tatiana Markovna happened to meet him. She immediately smelt the brandy, and asked in surprise what he had been doing. He replied that he had been to church, bowed his head devoutly, and folded his arms on his breast.

He explained to Va.s.silissa that he had done his duty in fulfilling his vow. She looked at him in perturbation, for in her anxieties about her mistress and in the preparations for the wedding she had not thought of her own vow. Here was Yakob who had fulfilled his and was going about with a pious jubilant air, and reminding her of her promised pilgrimage to Kiev.

"I don't feel strong enough," she complained. "I have hardly any bones in me, only flesh. Lord, have mercy on me!"

For thirty years she had been steadily putting on flesh; she lived on coffee, tea, bread, potatoes and gherkins, and often fish, even at those times of the year when meat was permitted. In her distress she went to Father Va.s.sili, to ask him to set her doubts at rest. She had heard that kind priests were willing to release people from their vows or to allow subst.i.tuted vows, where weakness of body hindered the performance of the original.

"As you agreed to go, you must go," said Father Va.s.sili.

"I agreed because I was frightened, Little Father. I thought that Mistress would die, but she was well again in three days; why then should I make the long journey?"

"Yes, there is no short road to Kiev. If you had no inclination to go you should not have registered the vow."

"The inclination is there, but strength fails me. I suffer from want of breath even when I go to church. I am already in my seventh decade, Father. It would be different if Mistress had been three months in bed, if she had received the sacraments and the last unction, and then had been restored to health by G.o.d in answer to my prayer; then I would have gone to Kiev on my hands and knees."

"Well, what is to be done?" asked Father Va.s.sili, smiling.

"Now I should like to promise something different. I will lay a fast on myself, never to eat another bit of meat until I die."

"Do you like meat?"

"I can't bear the sight of it, and have weaned myself from eating it."

"A difficult vow," said Father Va.s.sili with another smile, "must be replaced by something as difficult or more difficult, but you have chosen the easiest. Isn't there anything that it would be hard for you to carry out? Think again!"

Va.s.silissa thought, and said there was nothing.

"Very well then, you must go to Kiev."

"I would gladly go, if I were not so stout."

"How can your vow be eased?" said Father Va.s.sili, thinking aloud. "What do you live on?"

"On tea, coffee, mushroom soup, potatoes...."

"Do you like coffee?"

"Yes, Little Father."

"Abstain from coffee."

"That is nearly as bad," she sighed, "as going to Kiev. What am I to live on?"

"On meat."

It seemed to her that he was laughing, and indeed he did laugh when he saw her face.

"You don't like it," he said. "But make the sacrifice."

"What good does it do me, and to eat meat is not fasting, Father."

"Eat it on the days when it may be eaten. The good it will do is that you will lay on less fat. In six months you are absolved of your vow."

She went away in some distress, and began to execute the priest's instructions the next day, turning her nose sadly away from the steaming coffee that she brought her mistress in the morning.

In about ten days Marfinka returned in company with her fiance and his mother. Vikentev and she brought their laughter, their gaiety and their merry talk into the quiet house. But within a couple of hours after their arrival they had become quiet and timid, for their gaiety had aroused a melancholy echo, as in an empty house. A mist lay on everything. Even the birds had ceased to fly to the spot where Marfinka fed them; swallows, starlings and all the feathered inhabitants of the park were gone, and not a stork was to be seen flying over the Volga.

The gardener had thrown away the withered flowers; the s.p.a.ce in front of the house, usually radiant and sweet with flowers, now showed black rings of newly-dug earth framed in yellowish gra.s.s. The branches of some of the trees had been enveloped in bast, and the trees in the park became barer with every day. The Volga grew darker and darker, as if the river were preparing for its icy winter sleep.

Nature does not create, but it does emphasise human melancholy. Marfinka asked herself what had happened to everybody in the house, as she looked doubtfully round her. Even her own pretty little room did not look so gay; it was as if Vera's nervous silence had invaded it.

Her eyes filled with tears. Why was everything so different? Why had Veroshka come over from the other house, and why did she walk no more in the field or in the thicket? Where was Tiet Nikonich?

They all looked worried, and hardly spoke to one another; they did not even tease Marfinka and her fiance. Vera and grandmother were silent.

What had happened to the whole house? It was the first trouble that Marfinka had encountered in her happy life, and she fell in unconsciously with the serious, dull tone that obtained in Malinovka.

Silence, reserve and melancholy were equally foreign to Vikentev's nature. He urged his mother to persuade Tatiana Markovna to allow Marfinka to go back with them to Kolchino until the wedding at the end of October. To his surprise permission was given easily and quickly, and the young people flew like swallows from autumn to the warmth, light, and brightness of their future home.

Raisky drove over to fetch Tiet Nikonich. He was haggard and yellow, and hardly stirred from his place, and he only gradually recovered, like a child whose toys have been restored to him, when he saw Tatiana Markovna in her usual surroundings and found himself in the middle of the picture, either at table with his serviette tucked in his collar, or in the window on the stool near her chair, with a cup of tea before him poured out by her hands.