Against universal expectation, Marfinka’s wedding was a quiet one, no
one being invited except a few neighbouring landowners and the important
personages in the town, about fifty guests in all. The young people were
married in the village church on Sunday, after morning service, and
afterwards in the hall, which had been transformed for the occasion, a
formal breakfast was served without any of the gaiety and excitement
usual to such occasions. The servants were most disappointed, for their
mistress had taken precautions against their drinking to excess, which
made the whole affair seem dull to them.
Marfinka’s trousseau and her contributions to the household had already
been taken across the Volga, the process having occupied a full week.
She herself shone with the charm of a rose grown to perfection; in her
face a new emotion was visible which found expression now in a musing
smile, now in a stray tear. Her face was shadowed with the consciousness
of a new life, of a far stretching future with unknown duties, a new
dignity and a new happiness. Vikentev wore an expression of modesty,
almost of timidity, and was visibly affected.
Raisky looked at the pretty bride with the emotions of a brother, but he
had an impulse of terror when he noticed in her sheaf of orange blossom
some faded blooms.
“They are from the bouquet that Vera gave me for my birthday,” she
explained naively.
Raisky pretended that withered flowers were a bad omen, and helped her
to pick them out.
When the time for their departure came, the bride had to be literally
dragged sobbing from her aunt’s breast, but her tears were tears of joy.
Tatiana Markovna was pale, only maintaining her self-restraint with
difficulty, and it was plain that she could only just stand as she
looked out on the Volga after her departing child. Once at home again,
she gave way to her tears. She knew that she possessed the almost
undivided love of her other child, the passionate Vera, whose character
had been ripened by bitter experience.
Tushin stayed with a friend in the town for the wedding. Next day he
came to Tatiana Markovna, accompanied by an architect, and they spent
nearly a week over plans, going over the two houses, the gardens and the
servants’ quarters, making sketches and talking of radical alterations
in the spring. Everything of value--furniture, pictures, even the
parquet flooring--had been taken out of the old house and stored, partly
in the new house, partly in outhouses and on the ground.
Tatiana Markovna and Vera intended to go to Novosselovo, and later on to
visit the Vikentevs; for the summer they were invited to be the guests
of Anna Ivanovna, Tushin’s sister, at “Smoke.” Tatiana Markovna had
given no definite answer to the suggestion, saying that it must be “as
God wills.” In any case Tushin was making the necessary arrangements
with the architect, and intended to make extensive alterations in his
house for the reception of the honoured visitors.
Raisky stayed in his rooms in the new house, but Leonti had returned to
his own home for the time being, to return to Malinovka after the
departure of Tatiana Markovna and Vera. He, too, had been invited by
Tushin to “Smoke,” but Leonti had answered with a sigh, “Later in the
winter. Just now I am expecting....” and had broken off to look out on to
the road from Moscow. He was in fact expecting a letter from his wife in
answer to one he had just written. Not long before, Juliana Andreevna
had written to their housekeeper and had asked her to send her winter
cloak. She indicated the address, but said not a word about her husband.
Leonti dispatched the cloak himself with a glowing letter in which he
asked her to come, and spoke of his love and friendship.
The poor man received no reply. Gradually he resumed his teaching,
though he still betrayed his melancholy now and again during the lessons,
and was apt to be absentminded and unconscious of the behaviour of his
scholars, who took pitiless advantage of his helplessness.
Tushin had offered to look after Malinovka during Tatiana Markovna’s
absence. He called it his winter quarters and made a point of crossing
the Volga every week to give an eye to the house, the farm yard and the
servants, of whom only Vassilissa, Egor, the cook and the coachman
accompanied their mistress to Novosselovo. Yakob and Savili were put
especially at Tushin’s disposition.
Raisky proposed to leave a week after the wedding.
Tiet Nikonich was in the most melancholy plight of all. At any other
time he would have followed Tatiana Markovna to the end of the world,
but after the outbreak of gossip it would have been unsuitable to follow
her for the moment, because it might have given colour to the talk about
them which was half-believed and already partly forgotten. Tatiana
Markovna, however, said he might come at Christmas, and by that time
perhaps circumstances would permit him to stay. In the meantime, he
accepted Tushin’s invitation to be his guest at “Smoke.”
The gossip about Vera had given ground to the universal expectation of
her marriage with Tushin. Tatiana Markovna hoped that time would heal
all her wounds, but she recognised that Vera’s case stood in a category
by itself, and that ordinary rules did not apply to it. No rumour
reached Vera, who continued to see in Tushin the friend of long standing,
who was all the dearer to her since he had stretched out to her his
helping hand.
In the last days before his departure Raisky had gone through and sorted
his sketches and notebooks, and had selected from his novel those pages
which bore reference to Vera. In the last night that he spent under the
roof of home he decided to begin his plot then and there, and sat down
to his writing-table. He determined that one chapter at least should be
written. “When my passion is past,” he told himself, “when I no longer
stand in the presence of these men, with their comedy and their tragedy,
the picture will be clearer and in perspective. I already see the
splendid form emerge fresh from the hand of its creator, I see my statue,
whose majesty is undefiled by the common and the mean.” He rose, walked
up and down the room, and thought over the first chapter. After half an
hour’s meditation he sat down and rested his head on his hands.
Weariness invaded him, and as it was uncomfortable to doze in a sitting
posture he lay down on the sofa. Very soon he fell asleep, and there was
a sound of regular breathing.
When he woke it was beginning to get light. He sprang up hastily and
looked round in astonishment, as if he had seen something new and
unexpected in his dreams.
“In my dream, even, I saw a statue,” he said to himself. “What does it
mean? Is it an omen?”
He went to the table, read the introduction he had written, and sighed.
“What use do I make of my powers?” he cried. “Another year is gone.” He
angrily thrust the manuscript aside to look for a letter he had received
a month ago from the sculptor Kirilov, and sat down at the table to
answer it.
“In my sound and clear mind, dear Kirilov, I hasten to give you
the first intimation of the new and unexpected perspective of
my art and my activity. I write in answer to the letter in which
you tell me that you are going to visit Italy and Rome. I am
coming to St. Petersburg; so for God’s sake wait for me and I
will travel with you. Take me with you, and have pity on a blind,
insane individual, who has only to-day had his eyes opened to his
real calling. I have groped about in the darkness for a long time,
and have very nearly committed suicide, that is, let my talent
perish. You discovered talent in my pictures, but instead of
devoting myself solely to my brush I have dabbled in music, in
literature--have dissipated my energies. I meant to write a novel,
and neither you nor anybody else prevented me and told me that I
am a sculptor, a classical artist. A Venus of living marble is
born of my imagination. Is it then my cue to introduce psychology
into my pictures, to describe manners and customs? Surely not, my
art is concerned with form and beauty.
“For the novelist quite other qualities are required, and years
of labour are necessary. I would spare neither time nor endeavour
if I thought that my talent lay in my pen. In any case, I will
keep my notes--or perhaps no!--I must not deceive myself by
harbouring an uncertain hope. I cannot accomplish what I have in
mind with the pen. The analysis of the complicated mechanism of
human nature is contrary to my nature. My gift is to comprehend
beauty, to model it in clear and lovely forms.... I shall keep
those notes to remind me of what I have seen, experienced, and
suffered.
“If the art of sculpture fails me I will humiliate myself,
and seek out, wherever he may be, the man (his name is Mark
Volokov) who first doubted the completion of my novel and will
confess to him, ‘You are right, right, I am only half a man!’
But until that time comes, I will live and hope.
“Let us go to Rome, Rome. There dwells Art, not snobbishness
and empty pastime; there is work, enjoyment, life itself. To our
early meeting!”
The house was early astir to bid Raisky Godspeed. Tushin and the young
Vikentevs had come, Marfinka, a marvel of beauty, amiability and shyness.
Tatiana Markovna looked sad, but she pulled herself together and avoided
sentiment.
“Stay with us,” she said reproachfully. “You do not even know, yourself,
where you are going.”
“To Rome, Grandmother.”
“What for? To see the Pope?”
“To be a sculptor.”
“Wha-at?”
Marfinka also begged him to stay. Vera did not add her voice to the
request, because she knew he would not stay; she thought sorrowfully
that his manifold talents had not developed so far to give the pleasure
they should do to himself and others.
“Cousin,” she said, “if ever you grow weary of your existence abroad,
will you come back to glance at this place where you are now at last
understood and loved?”
“Certainly I will, Vera. My heart has found a real home here.
Grandmother, Marfinka and you are my dear family; I shall never form new
domestic ties. You will always be present with me wherever I go, but now
do not seek to detain me. My imagination drives me away, and my head is
whirling with ideas, but in less than a year I shall have completed a
statue of you in marble.”
“What about the novel?” she asked, laughing.
“When I am dead anyone who has a fancy for them may examine my papers,
and will find material enough. But my immediate intention is to
represent your head and shoulders in marble.”
“Before the year is out you will fall in love with somebody else, and
will not know which to choose as your model.”
“I may fall in love, but I shall never love anyone as I do you. I will
carve your statue in marble, for you always stand vividly before my eyes.
That is certain,” he concluded emphatically, as he caught her smiling
glance.
“Certain again!” interrupted Tatiana Markovna. “I don’t know what you
are discussing there, but I know that when you say ‘certain,’ Boris, it
is safe to say that nothing will come of it.”
Raisky went up to Tushin, who was sitting in a corner silently watching
the scene.
“I hope, Ivan Ivanovich, that what we all wish will be accomplished,” he
said.
“All of us, Boris Pavlovich? Do you think it will be accomplished?”
“I think so; it could hardly be otherwise. Promise to let me know
wherever I am, because I wish to hold the marriage crown over Vera’s
head at the ceremony.”
“I promise.”
“And I promise to come.”
Leonti took Raisky on one side, gave him a letter for Juliana Andreevna,
and begged him to seek her out.
“Speak to her conscience,” he said. “If she agrees to return, telegraph
to me, and I will travel to Moscow to meet her.”
Raisky promised, but advised him, in the meantime, to rest and to spend
the winter with Tushin.
The whole party surrounded the travelling carriage. Marfinka wept
copiously, and Vikentev had already provided her with no less than five
handkerchiefs. When Raisky had taken his seat he looked out once more,
and exchanged glances with Tatiana Markovna, with Vera and with Tushin.
The common experience and suffering of the six months, which had drawn
them so closely together, passed before his vision with the rapidity,
the varying tone and colour, and the vagueness of a dream.