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.”