Part 49 (2/2)

”G.o.d be with you, Paulina Karpovna,” said Tatiana Markovna. ”Don't put your nose outside in the darkness, or at any rate take Egorka with you to carry a lantern.”

”No, I will go alone. It is not necessary for anyone to disturb us.”

”You ought not,” intervened Tiet Nikonich politely, ”to go out after eight o'clock on these damp nights. I would not have ventured to detain you, but a physician from Dusseldorf on the Rhine, whose book I am now reading and can lend you if you like, and who gives excellent advice, says....”

Paulina Karpovna interrupted him by asking him if he would see her home, and then went into the garden before he could resume his remarks. He agreed to her request and shut the door after her.

Soon after Paulina Karpovna's exit there was a rustling and crackling on the precipice, and Raisky wearing the aspect of a restless, wounded animal, appeared out of the darkness. He sat for several minutes motionless on Vera's favourite bench, covering his eyes with his hands.

Was it dream or reality, he asked himself. He must have been mistaken.

Such a thing could not be. He stood up, then sat down again to listen.

With his hands lying listlessly on his knees, he broke into laughter over his doubts, his questionings, his secret. Again he had an access of terrible laughter. Vera--and _he_. The cloak which he himself had sent to the ”exile” lay near the arbour. The rogue had been clever enough to get two hundred and twenty roubles for the settlement of his wager, and the earlier eighty in addition. Sekleteia Burdalakov!

Again he laughed with a laugh very near a groan. Suddenly he stopped, and put his hand to his side, seized with a sudden consciousness of pain.

Vera was free, but he told himself she had dared to mock another fellow human being who had been rash enough to love her; she had mocked her friend. His soul cried for revenge.

He sprang up intent on revenge, but was checked by the question of how to avenge himself. To bring Tatiana Markovna, with lanterns, and a crowd of servants and to expose the scandal in a glare of light; to say to her, ”Here is the serpent you have carried for two and twenty years in your bosom”--that would be a vulgar revenge of which he knew himself to be incapable. Such a revenge would hit, not Vera, but his aunt, who was to him like his mother. His head drooped for a moment; then he rose and hurried like a madman down the precipice once more.

There in the depths pa.s.sion was holding her festival, night drew her curtain over the song of love, love ... with Mark. If she had surrendered to another lover, to the tall, handsome Tus.h.i.+n, the owner of land, lake, and forest, and the Olympian tamer of horses....

He could hardly breathe. Against his will there rose before him, from the depths of the precipice, the vision of Vera's figure, glorified with a seductive beauty that he had never yet seen in her, and though he was devoured by agony he could not take his eyes from the vision. At her feet, like a lion at rest, lay Mark, with triumph on his face. Her foot rested on his head. Horror seized him, and drove him onward, to destroy and mar the vision. He seemed to hear in the air the flattering words, the songs and the sighs of pa.s.sion; the vision became fainter, mist-enshrouded, and finally vanished into air, but the rage for revenge remained.

Everywhere was stillness and darkness, as he climbed the hill once more, but when he reached Vera's bench he saw a human shadow.

”Who is there?” he cried.

”Monsieur Boris, it is I, Paulina.”

”You, what are you doing here?”

”I came, because I knew, I knew that you have long had something to say to me, but have hesitated. Du courage. There is no one to see or hear us.

_Esperez tout...._”

”What do you want? Speak out.”

_”Que vous m'aimez._ I have known it for a long time. _Vous m'avez fui, mais la pa.s.sion vous a ramene ici...._”

He seized her roughly by the hand, and pushed her to the edge of the precipice.

”Ah, _de grace. Mais pas si brusquement ... qu'est-ce que vous faites ... mais laissez donc,_” she groaned.

Her anxiety was not altogether groundless, for she stood on the edge of an abrupt fall of the ground, and he grasped her hand more determinedly.

”You want love,” he cried to the terrified woman. ”Listen, to-night is love's night. Do you hear the sighs, the kisses, the breath of pa.s.sion?”

<script>