As the days went by Malinovka assumed 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 passed, 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 passion, 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 passed.
There was no sound of quarrelling, abuse or laughter. Vassilissa 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 Mass. 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 Vassilissa 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 Vassili, 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
substituted vows, where weakness of body hindered the performance of the
original.
“As you agreed to go, you must go,” said Father Vassili.
“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 God 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 Vassili, 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 Vassili 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!”
Vassilissa 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 Vassili, 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 fiancé 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 space in front of
the house, usually radiant and sweet with flowers, now showed black
rings of newly-dug earth framed in yellowish grass. 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 fiancé. 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.
Another member was added to the family circle at Malinovka, for Raisky
brought Koslov to dinner one day, to receive the heartiest of welcomes.
Tatiana Markovna had the tact not to let the poor forsaken man see that
she was aware of his trouble. She greeted him with a jest.
“Why have you not been near us for so long, Leonti Ivanovich? Borushka
says that I don’t know how to entertain you, and that you don’t like my
table. Did you tell him so?”
“How should I not like it? When did I say such a thing?” he asked Raisky
severely. “You are joking!” he went on, as everybody laughed, and he
himself had to smile.
He had had time to find his own bearings, and had begun to realise the
necessity of hiding his grief from others.
“Yes, it is a long time since I was here. My wife has gone to Moscow to
visit her relations, so that I could not....”
“You ought to have come straight to us,” observed Tatiana Markovna,
“when it was so dull by yourself at home.”
“I expect her, and am always afraid she may come when I am not at home.”
“You would soon hear of her arrival, and she must pass our house. From
the windows of the old house we can see who comes along the road, and we
will stop her.”
“It is true that the road to Moscow can be seen from there,” said Koslov,
looking quickly, and almost happily, at his hostess.
“Come and stay with us,” she said.
“I simply will not let you go to-day,” said Raisky. “I am bored by
myself, and we will move over into the old house. After Marfinka’s
wedding I am going away, and you will be Grandmother’s and Vera’s first
minister, friend and protector.”
“Thank you. If I am not in the way....”
“How can you talk like that. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Forgive me, Tatiana Markovna.”
“Better eat your dinner; the soup is getting cold.”
“I am hungry too,” he said suddenly, seizing his spoon. He ate his soup
silently, looking round him as if he were seeking the road to Moscow,
and he preserved the same demeanour all through the meal.
“It is so quiet here,” he said after dinner, as he looked out of the
window. “There is still some green left, and the air is so fresh. Listen,
Boris Pavlovich, I should like to bring the library here.”
“As you like. To-morrow, as far as I am concerned. It is your possession
to do as you please with.”
“What should I do with it now? I will have it brought over, so that I
can take care of it; else in the end that man Mark will....”
Raisky strode about the room, Vera’s eyes were fixed on her needlework,
and Tatiana Markovna went to the window. Shortly after this Raisky took
Leonti to the old house, to show him the room that Tatiana Markovna had
arranged for him. Leonti went from one window to another to see which of
them commanded a view of the Moscow road.