"Boris Pavlovich, for pity's sake, be silent," whispered his aunt angrily.

But Tychkov was already looking at her with amazement, the ladies with sympathy, while the men stared and the young girls drew closer to one another. Vera looked round the company, thanking Raisky by a friendly glance, and Marfinka hid behind her aunt.

"What a confession! You admitted this Barabbas under your roof," said Niel Andreevich.

"Not I, Niel Andreevich. Borushka brought him in at night, and I did not even know who was sleeping in his room."

"You go round with him at night? Don't you know that he is a suspicious character, an enemy of the administration, a renegade from Church and Society. So he has been telling you about me?"

"Yes," Raisky said.

"By his description I am a wild beast, a devourer of men."

"No, you do not devour them, but you allow yourself, by what right G.o.d only knows, to insult them."

"And did you believe that?"

"Until to-day, no."

"And to-day?"

"To-day, I believe it," agreed Raisky to the terror and agitation of the company. Most of the officials present escaped to the hall, and stood near the door listening.

"How so," asked Niel Andreevich haughtily.

"Because you have just insulted a lady."

"You hear, Tatiana Markovna."

"Boris Pavlovich, Borushka," she said, seeking to restrain him.

"That old fashion-plate, that frivolous, dangerous woman!"

"What do her faults matter to you. Who gave you the right to judge other people?"

"Who gave you the right, young man, to reproach me? Do you know that I have been in the service for forty years, and that no minister has ever made the slightest criticism to me."

"My right is that you have insulted a lady in my house. I should be a miserable creature to permit that. If you don't understand that, the worse for you."

"If you receive a person who is, to the knowledge of the whole town, a frivolous b.u.t.terfly, dressing in a way unsuited to her age, and leaving unfulfilled her duties to her family...."

"Well, what then?"

"Then both you and Tatiana Markovna deserve to hear the truth. Yes, I have been meaning to tell you for a long time, Matushka."

"Frivolity, flightiness and the desire to please are not such terrible crimes. But the whole town knows that you have acc.u.mulated money through bribery that you robbed your own nieces and had them locked up in an asylum. Yet my Grandmother and I have received you in our house, and you take it upon yourself to lecture us."

The guests who heard this indictment were horror-stricken. The ladies hurried out into the hall without taking leave of their hostess, the rest followed them like sheep, and soon all were gone. Tatiana Markovna motioned Marfinka and Vera to the door, but Marfinka alone obeyed the indication. As for Niel Andreevich he had become deadly pale.

"Who," he cried, "who has brought you these tales? Speak! That brigand Mark? I am going straight to the Governor. Tatiana Markovna, if this young man again sets foot in your house, you and I are strangers.

Otherwise within twenty four hours, both he and you and your whole household shall be transferred to a place where not even a raven can penetrate with food. Who? Who told him? I will know. Who? Speak," he hissed, gasping for breath, and hardly knowing what he said.

"Stop talking rubbish, Niel Andreevich," commanded Tatiana Markovna, rising suddenly from her place. "You will explode with fury. Better drink some water. You ask who has said it. There is no secret about it, for I have said it, and it is common knowledge in the town."

"Tatiana Markovna!" shrieked Niel Andreevich.

"You have your deserts. Why make so much noise about it? In another person's house you attack a woman, and that is not the action of a gentleman."

"How dare you speak like that to me?"

Raisky would have thrown himself on him if his aunt had not waved him aside. Then with the commanding dignity she knew how to a.s.sume, she put on her cap, wrapt herself in her shawl, and went right up to Niel Andreevich, while Raisky looked on in amazement, with a sense of his own smallness in her majestic presence.

"Who are you?" she began. "A clerk in the chancellery, an upstart. And yet you dare to address a n.o.blewoman with violence. You have too good an opinion of yourself, and have asked for your lesson, which you shall have from me once and for all. Have you forgotten the days when you used to bring doc.u.ments from the office to my father, and did not dare to sit down in my presence, when you used to receive gifts from my hand on feast-days? If you were an honest man no one would reproach you. But you have, as my nephew says, acc.u.mulated stolen wealth, and it has been endured out of weakness. You should hold your tongue, and repent in your old age of your evil life. But you are bursting, intoxicated with pride.

Sober yourself and bow your head. Before you stands Tatiana Markovna Berezhkov, and also my nephew Boris Pavlovich Raisky. If I had not restrained him he would have thrown you out of the house, but I prefer that he should not soil his hands with you; the lackeys are good enough."

As she stood there with blazing eyes, she bore a close resemblance to a portrait of one of her ancestors that hung on the wall. Tychkov turned his eyes this way and that seemingly beside himself with rage.

"I shall write to St. Petersburg," he gasped, "the town is in danger."

Then he slunk out, so agitated by her furious aspect that he dared not raise his eyes to her face.

Tatiana Markovna maintained her proud bearing, though her fingers grasped nervously at her shawl. Raisky approached her hesitatingly, seeing in her, not his aunt, but another, and to him an almost unknown woman.

"I did not understand the majesty of your temperament. But I make my bow, not as a grandson before to an honoured grandmother, but as man to woman.

I offer you my admiration and respect, Tatiana Markovna, best of women,"

he said, kissing her hand.

"I accept your courtesy, Boris Pavlovich, as an honour which I have deserved. Do you accept for your honourable championship the kiss, not of a grandmother, but of a woman."

As she kissed him on the cheek, he received another kiss from the other side.

"This kiss is from another woman," said Vera in a low voice as she left the room, before Raisky's outstretched arms could reach her.

"Vera and I have not spoken to one another, but we have both understood you. We do, in fact, talk very little, but we resemble one another,"

said Tatiana Markovna.

"Granny, you are an extraordinary woman!" cried Raisky, looking at her with as much enthusiasm as if he saw her for the first time.

"Drive to the Governor's, Borushka, and tell him exactly what has happened so that the other party may not be first with his lying nonsense. I am going to beg Paulina Karpovna's pardon."

CHAPTER XIII

For three days the impression of this Sunday morning breakfast remained with Raisky. He had been surprised by this sudden transformation of Tatiana Markovna from grandmother and kindly hostess into a lioness, but he had been still more agitated by Vera's kiss. He could have wept for emotion, and would like to have built new hopes on it, but it was a kiss that led no further, a flash of lightning immediately extinguished.

Raisky kept his promise, and neither went to Vera's room, nor followed her; he saw her only at meals and then rarely talked to her. He succeeded in hiding from her the fact that she still occupied his thoughts; he would like to have wiped out of her recollection his hasty revelation of himself to her.

Then he began a portrait of Tatiana Markovna, and occupied himself seriously with the plan of his novel. With Vera as the central figure, and the scene his own estate and the bank of the Volga his fancy took shape and the secret of artistic creation became clear to him.