Raisky’s patience had to suffer a hard trial in Vera’s indifference. His
courage failed him, and he fell into a dull, fruitless boredom. In this
idle mood he drew village scenes in his sketch album--he had already
sketched nearly every aspect of the Volga to be seen from the house or
the cliff--and he made notes in his note books. He hoped by these
occupations to free himself from his obsessing thoughts of Vera. He knew
he would do better to begin a big piece of work, instead of these
trifles. But he told himself that Russians did not understand hard work,
or that real work demanded rude strength, the use of the hands, the
shoulders and the back. He thought that in work of this kind a man lost
consciousness of his humanity, and experienced no pleasures in his
exertions; he shouldered his burden like a horse that seeks to ward off
the whip with his tail. Rough manual labour left no place for boredom.
Yet no one seeks distractions in work, but in pleasure. Work, not
appearances, he repeated, oppressed by the overpowering dulness which
drove him nearly mad, and created a frame of mind quite contrary to his
gentle temperament. I have no work, I cannot create as do artists who
are absorbed in their work, and are ready to die for it.
He took his cap and strolled into the outlying parts of the town, then
into the town, where he observed every passer-by, stared into the houses,
down the streets, and at last found himself standing before the Koslov’s
house. Being told that Koslov was at the school, he inquired for Juliana
Andreevna. The woman who had opened the door to him, looked at him
askance, blew her nose with her apron, wiped it with her finger, and
vanished into the house for good. He knocked again, the dogs barked, and
then appeared a little girl, holding her finger to her mouth, who stared
at him and departed. He was about to knock again, but, instead, turned
to go. As he passed through the little garden he heard voices, Parisian
French, and a woman’s voice; he heard laughter and even a kiss.
“Poor Leonti!” he whispered. “Or rather, blind Leonti!”
He stood uncertain whether to go or stay, then hastened his steps, and
determined to have speech with Mark. He sought distraction of some kind
to rid himself of his mood of depression, and to drive away the
insistent thoughts of Vera. Passing the warped houses, he left the town
and passed between two thick hedges beyond which stretched on both sides
vegetable gardens.
“Where does the market gardener, Ephraim, live?” he asked, addressing a
woman over the hedge who was working in the beds.
Silently, without pausing in her work, she motioned with her elbow to a
hut standing isolated in the field. As he climbed over the fence, two
dogs barked furiously at him. From the door of the hut came a healthy
young woman with sunburnt face and bare arms, holding a baby.
She called off the dogs with curses, and asked Raisky whom he wished to
see. He was looking curiously round, since he did not understand how
anyone except the peasant and his wife could be living there. The hut,
against which were propped spades, rakes and other tools, planks and
pails, had neither yard nor fence; two windows looked out on the
vegetable garden, two others on the field. In the shed were two horses,
here was a pig surrounded by a litter of young, and a hen wandered
around with her chickens. A little further off stood some cars and a big
telega.
“Does Mark Volokov live here?” asked Raisky.
The woman pointed to the telega in silence.
“That’s his room,” she said, pointing to one of the windows. “He sleeps
in the telega.”
“At this time of day?”
“He only came home this morning, probably rather drunk.”
Raisky approached the telega.
“What do you want of him?” asked the woman.
“To visit him.”
“Let him sleep.”
“Why?”
“I am frightened here alone with him, and my husband won’t be here yet.
I hope he’ll sleep.”
“Does he insult you?”
“No, it would be wicked to say such a thing. But he is so restless and
peculiar that I am afraid of him.”
She rocked the child in her arms, and Raisky looked curiously under the
straw covering. Suddenly Mark’s tangled hair and beard emerged and the
woman vanished into the hut as he cried, “Fool, you don’t know how to
receive visitors.”
“Good-day! What has brought you here?” cried Mark as he crawled out of
the telega and stretched himself. “A visit, perhaps.”
“I was taking a walk out of sheer boredom.”
“Bored! with two beautiful girls at home. You, an artist, and you are
taking a walk out of sheer boredom. Don’t your affections prosper?” he
winked. “They are lovely children, especially Vera?”
“How do you know my cousins, and in what way do they concern you?” asked
Raisky drily.
“Don’t be vexed. Come into my drawing-room.”
“Tell me rather why you sleep in the telega. Are you playing at
Diogenes?”
“Yes, because I must.”
They entered the hut and went into a boarded compartment, where stood
Mark’s bed with a thin old mattress, a thin wadded bed-cover and a tiny
pillow. Scattered on a shelf on the wall, and on the table lay books,
two guns hung on the wall, linen and clothes were tumbled untidily on
the only chair.
“This is my salon, sit down on the bed, and I will sit on the chair. Let
us take off our coats, for it is infernally hot. No ceremony, as there
are no ladies. That’s right. Do you want anything? There is nothing but
milk and eggs. If you don’t want any, give me a cigar.”
“Many thanks. I have already breakfasted, and it will presently be
dinner time.”
“Yes! You live with your Aunt. Weren’t you expelled after having
harboured me in the night?”
“On the contrary, she reproached me with having allowed you to go to bed
without any dessert, and for not having demanded pillows.”
“And didn’t she rail against me?”
“As usual, but....”
“I know it is habit and does not come from her heart. She has the best
heart one can wish for, better than any here. She is bold, full of
character, and with a solid understanding; now indeed her brain is
weakening....”
“That is your opinion? You have found someone for whom you have
sympathy?”
“Yes, especially in one respect. She cannot endure the Governor any more
than I can. I don’t know what her reasons are; his position is enough
for me. We neither of us like the police; we are oppressed by them. The
old lady is compelled by them to carry out all sorts of repairs; to me
they pay far too much attention, find out where I live, whether I go far
from the town, and whom I visit.”
Both fell silent.
“Now we have nothing more to talk about. Why did you come here?” asked
Mark.
“Because I was bored.”
“Fall in love.”
Raisky was silent.
“With Vera,” continued Mark. “Splendid girl, and she is related to you.
It must be easy for you to begin a romance with her.”
Raisky made an angry gesture, to which Mark replied by a burst of
laughter.
“Call the ancient wisdom to your help,” he said. “Show outward coldness
when you are inwardly consumed, indifference of manner, pride,
contempt--every little helps. Parade yourself before her as suits
your calling.”
“My calling?”
“Isn’t it your calling to be eccentric?”
“Perhaps,” remarked Raisky indifferently.
“I, for instance,” said Mark, “should make direct for my goal, and
should be sure of victory. You may do the same, but you would do so
penetrated by the conviction that you stood on the heights and had drawn
her up to you, you idealist. Show that you understand your calling, and
you may succeed. It’s no use to wear yourself out with sighs, to be
sleepless, to watch for the raising of the lilac curtain by a white hand,
to wait a week for a kindly glance.”
Raisky rose, furious.
“Ah, I have hit the bull’s eye.”
Raisky put compulsion on himself to restrain his rage, for every
involuntary expression or gesture of anger would have meant nothing less
than acquiescence.
“I should very well like to fall in love, but I cannot,” he yawned,
counterfeiting indifference. “It is unsuited to my years and doesn’t
cure my boredom.”
“Try it,” teased Mark. “Let us have a wager that in a week you will be
as enamoured as a young cat. And within two months, or perhaps one, you
will have perpetrated so many follies that you will not know how to get
away from here.”
“If I am, with what will you pay?” asked Raisky in a tone bordering on
contempt.
“I will give you my trousers or my gun. I possess only two pairs of
trousers. The tailor has recovered a third pair for debt. Wait, I will
try on your coat. Why, it fits as if I were poured into a mould. Try
mine.”
“Why?”
“I should like to see whether it suits you. Please try it on, do.”
Raisky was indulgent enough to allow himself to be persuaded, and put on
Mark’s worn, dirty coat.
“Well, does it suit?”
“It fits!”
“Wear it then. You don’t wear a coat long, while for me it lasts for two
years. Besides, whether you are contented or not I shan’t take yours off
my shoulders. You would have to steal it from me.”
Raisky shrugged his shoulders.
“Does the wager hold!” asked Mark.
“What put you on to that--you will excuse me--ridiculous idea?”
“Don’t excuse yourself. Does it hold?”
“The wager is not equal. You have no possessions.”
“Don’t be disturbed on that account. I shall not have to pay. If my
prophecy comes true, then you will pay me three hundred roubles, which
would come in very conveniently.”
“What nonsense,” said Raisky, as he stood up and reached for his cap and
stick.
“At the latest you will be in love in a fortnight. In a month you will
be groaning, wandering about like a ghost, playing your part in a drama,
or possibly in a tragedy, and ending, as all your like do, with some
piece of folly. I know you, I can see through you.”
“But if, instead my falling in love with her, she were to fall in love
with me....”
“Vera! with you!”
“Yes, Vera, with me.”
“Then I will find a double pledge, and bring it to you.”
“You are a madman!” said Raisky, and went without bestowing a further
glance on Mark.
“In one month’s time I shall have won three hundred roubles,” Mark cried
after him.
Raisky walked angrily home. “I wonder where our charmer is now,” he
wondered gloomily. “Probably sitting on her favourite bench, admiring
the view. I will see.” As he knew Vera’s habits, he could say with
nearly complete certainty where she would be at any hour of the day. He
went over to the precipice, and saw her, as he had thought, sitting on
the bench with a book in her hand. Instead of reading she looked out,
now over the Volga, now into the bushes. When she saw Raisky, she rose
slowly and walked over to the old house. He signed to her to wait for
him, but she either did not perceive the sign, or did not wish to do so.
When she reached the courtyard she quickened her steps, and disappeared
within the door of the old house.
Raisky could hardly control his rage. “And a stupid girl like that
thinks that I am in love with her,” he thought. “She has not the
remotest conception of manners.” In offering the wager, Mark had stirred
up all the bitterness latent in him. He hardly looked at Vera when he
sat opposite her at dinner. If he happened to raise his eyes, it was as
if he were dazed by a flash of lightning. Once or twice she had looked
at him in a kind, almost affectionate way, but his wild glance betrayed
to her the agitation, of which she deemed herself to be the cause, and
to avoid meeting his eyes she bent her head over her empty plate.
“After dinner, I shall drive with Marfinka to the hay harvest,” said
Tatiana Markovna to Raisky. “Will you bestow on your meadows the honour
of your presence, Sir?”
“I have no inclination to go,” he murmured.
“Does the world go so hard with you?” asked Tatiana Markovna. “You are
indeed weighed down with work.”
He looked at Vera, who was mixing red wine with water. She emptied her
glass, rose, kissed her aunt’s hand, and went out.
Raisky too rose, and went to his room. His aunt, Marfinka, and Vikentev,
who had just happened to turn up, drove to the hay harvest, and the
afternoon peace soon reigned over the house. One man crawled into the
hayrick, another in the outhouse, another slept in the family carriage
itself, while others took advantage of the mistress’s absence to go into
the outskirts of the town.
Raisky’s thoughts were filled with Vera. Although he had sworn to
himself to think of her no more, he could not conquer his thoughts.
Where was she? He would go to her and talk it all over. He was inspired
only with curiosity, he assured himself. He took his cap and hurried out.
Vera was neither in the room nor in the old house; he searched for her
in vain on the field, in the vegetable garden, in the thicket on the
cliff, and went to look for her down along the bank of the Volga. When
he found no one he turned homewards, and suddenly came across her a few
steps from him, not far from the house.
“Ah!” he cried, “there you are. I have been hunting for you everywhere.”
“And I have been waiting for you here,” she returned.
He felt as if he were suddenly enveloped in winter in the soft airs of
the South.
“You--waiting for me,” he said in a strange voice, and looked at her in
astonishment.
“I wanted to ask you why you pursue me?”
Raisky looked at her fixedly.
“I hardly ever speak to you.”
“It is true that you rarely talk to me, but you look at me in such a
wild and extraordinary fashion that it constitutes a kind of pursuit.
And that is not all; you quietly follow my steps. You get up earlier
than I do, and wait for me to wake, draw my curtains back, and open the
window; whatever way I take in the park, and wherever I sit down, I must
meet you.”
“Very rarely.”
“Three or four times a week. It would not be often and would not annoy
me, quite the reverse, if it occurred without intention. But in your
eyes and steps I see only one thing, the continual effort to give me no
peace, to master my every glance, word and thought.”
He was amazed at her boldness and independence, at the freedom of her
speech. He saw before him, as he imagined, the little girl who had
nervously concealed herself from him for fear that her egoism might
suffer through the inequality of her brains, her ideas and her education.
This was a new figure, a new Vera.
“What if all this exists only in your imagination?” he said undecidedly.
“Don’t lie to me,” she interrupted. “If you are successful in observing
my every footstep, my every moment, at least permit me to be conscious
of the discomfort of such observation. I tell you plainly that it
oppresses me; it is slavery; I feel like a prisoner.”
“What do you ask of me?”
“My freedom.”
“Freedom--I am your chevalier--therefore....”
“Therefore you will not leave a poor girl room to breathe. Tell me, what
reason have I given you to regard me differently from any other girl?”
“Beauty adores admiration; it is her right.”
“Beauty has also a right to esteem and freedom. Is it an apple hanging
on the other side of the hedge, that every passer-by can snatch at?”
“Don’t agitate yourself, Vera!” he begged, taking her hands. “I confess
my guilt. I am an artist, have a susceptible temperament, and perhaps
abandoned myself too much to my impressions. Then I am no stranger. Let
us be reconciled, Vera. Tell me your wishes, and they shall be sacredly
fulfilled. I will do what pleases you, will avoid what offends you, in
order to deserve your friendship.”
“I told you from the beginning, you remember, how you could show me your
sympathy, by not observing me, by letting me go my way and taking no
notice of me. Then I will come of myself, and we will fix the hours that
we will spend together, reading or walking.”
“You ask me, Vera, to be utterly indifferent to you?”
“Yes.”
“Not to notice how lovely you are? To look at you as if you were
Grandmother. But even if I adore your beauty in silence from a distance,
you would know it, and can you forbid me that? Passion may melt the
surface and there may steal into your heart an affection for me. Don’t
let me leave you without any hope. Can you not give me any?”
“I cannot!”
“How can you tell? There may come a time.”
“No, Cousin, never.”
Unmanned by terror, he collected his strength to say breathlessly:
“You are no longer free? You love?”
She knit her brow and looked down on the Volga.
“And is there any sin if I do? Will you not permit it, Cousin?” she
asked ironically.
“I! I, who bring you the lofty philosophy of freedom, how should I not
permit you to love. Love independently of everybody, conceal nothing,
fear neither Granny nor anyone else. The dawn of freedom is red in the
sky, and shall woman alone be enslaved? You love. Say so boldly, for
passion is happiness, and allow others at least to envy you.”
“I concede no one the right to call me to account; I am free.”
“But you are afraid of Grandmother.”
“I am afraid of no one. Grandmother knows it, and respects my freedom.
And my wish is that you should follow her example. That is all I wanted
to say,” she concluded as she rose from the bench.
“Yes, Vera, now I understand, and am in accord with you,” he replied,
rising also. “Here is my hand on it, that from to-day you will neither
hear nor notice my presence.”
She gave her hand, but drew it rapidly back as he pressed it to his lips.
“We will see,” she said. “But if you don’t keep your word, we will see--”
“Say all you have to say, Vera, or my head will go to pieces.”
Vera looked long at the prospect before her before she ended with
decision:
“Then however dearly I love this place, I will leave it.”
“To go where?”
“God’s world is wide. Au revoir, Cousin!”
A few days later Raisky got up about five o’clock. The sun was already
full on the horizon, a wholesome freshness rose from garden and park,
flowers breathed a deeper perfume, and the dew glittered on the grass.
He dressed quickly and went out into the garden, when he suddenly met
Vera.
“It is not intentional, not intentional, I swear,” he stammered in his
first surprise.
They both laughed. She picked a flower, threw it to him, and gave him
her hand; and in reply to the kiss he gave she kissed him on the
forehead.
“It was not intentional, Vera,” he repeated. “You see yourself.”
“I see you are good and kind.”
“Generous,” he added.
“We have not got to generosity yet,” she said laughing, and took his arm.
“Let us go for a walk; it’s a lovely morning.”
He felt unspeakably happy.
“What coat are you wearing?” she asked in surprise as they walked. “It
is not yours.”
“Ah, it is Mark’s.”
“Is he here? How did you come by his coat?”
“Are you frightened? The whole house fears him like fire?” And he
explained how he got the coat. She listened absently as they went
silently down the main path of the garden, Vera with her eyes on the
ground.
Against his will he felt impelled to seek another argument with her.
“You seem to have something on your mind,” she began, “which you do not
wish to tell.”
“I did wish to, but I feared the storm I might draw upon myself.”
“You did not wish to discuss beauty once more?”
“No, no, I want to explain what my feeling for you is. I am convinced
that this time I am not in error. You have opened to me a special door
of your heart, and I recognise that your friendship would bring great
happiness, and that its soft tones would bring colour into my dull life.
Do you think, Vera, that friendship is possible between a man and a
woman?”
“Why not? If two such friends can make up their minds to respect one
another’s freedom, if one does not oppress the other, does not seek to
discover the secret of the other’s heart, if they are in constant,
natural intercourse, and know how to respect secrets....”
His eyes blazed. “Pitiless woman,” he broke in.
She had seen the glance, and lowered her eyes.
“We will go in to Grandmother. She has just opened the window, and will
call us to tea?”
“One word more, Vera. You have wisdom, lucidity, decision....”
“What is wisdom?” she asked mischievously.
“Observation and experience, harmoniously applied to life.”
“I have hardly any experience.”
“Nature has bestowed on you a sharp eye and a clear brain.”
“Is not such a possession disgraceful for a girl?”
“Your wholesome ideas, your cultivated speech....”
“You are surprised that a drop of village wisdom should have descended
on your poor sister. You would have preferred to find a fool in my place,
wouldn’t you, and now you are annoyed?”
“No, Vera, you intoxicate me. You do indeed forbid me to mention your
beauty by so much as a syllable, and will not hear why I place it so
high. Beauty is the aim and at the same time the driving power of art,
and I am an artist. The beauty of which I speak is no material thing,
she does not kindle her fires with the glow of passionate desire alone;
more especially she awakens the man in man, arouses thought, inspires
courage, fertilises the creative power of genius, even when that genius
stands at the culmination of its dignity and power; she does not scatter
her beams for trifles, does not besmirch purity--she is womanly wisdom.
You are a woman, Vera, and understand what I mean. Your hand will not be
raised to punish the man, the artist, for this worship of beauty.”
“According to you wisdom lies in keeping these rules before one’s eyes
as the guiding thread of life, in which case I am not wise, I have not
‘received this baptism.’”
An emotion closely related to sadness shone in her eyes, as she gazed
upwards for a moment before she entered the house. Raisky anxiously told
himself that she was as enigmatic as night itself, and he wondered what
was the origin of these foreign ideas and whether her young life was
already darkened.