The Precipice Part 39

"Let us part, Vera, if doubt is uppermost with you and you have no confidence in me, for in that fas.h.i.+on we cannot continue our meetings."

"Yes, let us part rather than that you should exact a blind trust in you.

In my waking hours and in my dreams I imagine that there lies between us no disturbance, no doubt. But I don't understand you, and therefore cannot trust you."

"You hide under your Aunt's skirts like a chicken under a hen, and you have absorbed her ideas and her system of morals. You, like Raisky, inshroud pa.s.sion in fantastic draperies. Let us put aside all the other questions untouched. The one that lies before us is simple and straightforward. We love one another. Is that so or not?"

"What does that lead to, Mark!"

"If you don't believe me, look around you. You have spent your whole life in the woods and fields, and do you learn nothing from what you see in all directions?" he asked, pointing to a swarm of flying pigeons, and to the nesting swallows. "Learn from them; they deal in no subtleties!"

"Yes, they circle round their nests. One has flown away, probably in search of food."

"When winter comes they will all separate."

"And return in spring to the same nest."

"I believe you when you talk reasonably, Vera. You felt injured by my rough manners, and I am making every effort. I have transformed myself to the old-fas.h.i.+oned pattern, and shall soon s.h.i.+ft my feet and smile when I make my bow like Tiet Nikonich. I don't give way to the desire to abuse or to quarrel with anybody, and draw no attention to my doings. I shall next be making up my mind to attend Ma.s.s, what else should I do?"

"You are in the mood for joking, but joking is not what I wanted,"

sighed Vera.

"What do you want me to do?"

"So far I have not even been able to persuade you to spare yourself for my sake, to cease your baptisms, to live like other people."

"But if I act in accordance with my convictions?"

"What is your aim? What do you hope to do?"

"I teach fools."

"Do you even know yourself what you teach, for what you have been struggling for a whole year? To live the life that you prescribe is not within the bounds of possibility. It is all very new and bold, but...."

"There we are again at the same old point. I can hear the old lady piping," he laughed scornfully, pointing in the direction of the house.

"You speak with her voice."

"Is that your whole answer, Mark? Everything is a lie; therefore, away with it! But the absence of any notion of what truth is to supersede the lies makes me distrustful."

"You set reflexion above nature and pa.s.sion. You are n.o.ble, and you naturally desire marriage. But that has nothing to do with love, and it is love and happiness that I seek."

Vera rose and looked at him with blazing eyes.

"If I wished only for marriage, Mark, I should naturally make another choice."

"Pardon me, I was rude," he said in real embarra.s.sment, and kissed her hand. "But, Vera, you repress your love, you are afraid, and instead of giving yourself up to the pleasure of it you are for ever a.n.a.lysing."

"I try to find out who and what you are, because love is not a pa.s.sing pleasure to me, but you look on it as a distraction."

"No, as a daily need of life, which is no matter for jesting. Like Raisky, I cannot sleep through the long nights, and I suffer nervous torture that I could not have believed possible. You say you love me; that I love you is plain? But I call you to happiness and you are afraid...."

"I do not want happiness for a month, for six months--"

"For your life long, and even after death?" asked Mark, scornfully.

"For life! I do not want to foresee an ultimate limit. I do not and will not believe in happiness with a term. But I do believe in another kind of intimate happiness, and I want...."

"To make me embrace the same belief."

"Yes, I know no other happiness, and I would scorn it if I knew it."

"Good-bye, Vera. You do not love me, but are for ever disputing, a.n.a.lysing either my character or the nature of happiness. We always get back to the point from which we started. I think it is your destiny to love Raisky. You can make what you will of him, can deck him out with all your Aunt's tags, and evolve a new hero of romance every day, for ever and ever. I haven't the time for that kind of thing. I have work to do."

"Ah work, and love, with happiness as an afterthought, a trifle...."

"Do you wish to build a life out of love after the old fas.h.i.+on, a life such as that lived by the swallows who leave their nest only to seek food."

"You would fly for a moment into a strange nest, and then forget."

"Yes, if forgetting is so easy; but if one cannot forget, one returns.

But must I return if I don't want to? Is that compatible with freedom?

Would you ask that?"

"I cannot understand a bird's life of that kind."

"Farewell, Vera. We were mistaken. I want a comrade, not a school girl."

"Yes, Mark, a comrade, strong like yourself, I agree. A comrade for the whole of life, is that not so?"

"I thought," said Mark as if he had not heard her last question, "that we should soon be united, and that whether we separated again must depend on temperament and circ.u.mstances. You make your a.n.a.lysis in advance, so that your judgment is as crooked and twisted as an old maid's could be. You don't look to the quarter whence truth and light must come. Sleep, my child. I was mistaken. Farewell once more. We will try to avoid one another in the future."

"We will try. But can we really not find happiness together? What is the hindrance?" she asked, in a low, agitated tone, touching his hand.

Mark shouldered his gun in silence, and walked out of the arbour into the brushwood. Vera stood motionless as if she were in a deep sleep.

Overcome by grief and amazement, she could not believe he was really leaving her. Where there is no trust there is no love, she thought. She did not trust him, and yet, if she did not love him, why was her grief and pain at his going so great. Why did she feel that death itself would be welcome?

"Mark!" she cried in a low voice. He did not look round, and although she repeated the cry he strode forward. "Mark!" she cried breathlessly a third time, but he still pursued his path. Her face faded, but mechanically she picked up her handkerchief and her parasol and mounted the cliff. Were truth and love to be found there where her heart called her? Or did truth lie in the little chapel that she was now approaching?

For four days Vera wandered in the park, and waited in the arbour, but Mark did not come. There was no reply to the call of her heart. She no longer hid her movements from Raisky, who came upon her from time to time in the chapel. She allowed him to accompany her to the little village church on the hill where she usually went alone. She remained on her knees with bowed head for a long time, while he stood motionless behind her. Then without a word or a glance, she took his arm, to return wearily to the old house, where they parted. Vera knew nothing of his secret suffering, of the pa.s.sionate love which attracted him to her, the double love of a man for a woman, and of an artist for his ideal.

Raisky wondered what the shots meant. It need not necessarily be love that drove her to the rendezvous. There might be a secret of another kind, but the key to the mystery lay in her heart. There was no salvation for her except in love, and he longed to give her protection and freedom.

Again he found her at twilight praying in the chapel, but this time she was calm and her eyes clear. She gave him her hand, and was plainly pleased to see him.

"You cannot imagine, Vera," he said, "how happy it makes me to see you calmer. What has given you peace?"

She glanced towards the chapel.

"You don't go down there any more?" he said, pointing to the precipice.