My sister, too, was leading a life of her own which she carefully
hid from me. She was often whispering with Masha. When I went up
to her she seemed to shrink into herself, and there was a guilty,
imploring look in her eyes; evidently there was something going on
in her heart of which she was afraid or ashamed. So as to avoid
meeting me in the garden, or being left alone with me, she always
kept close to Masha, and I rarely had an opportunity of talking to
her except at dinner.
One evening I was walking quietly through the garden on my way back
from the building. It was beginning to get dark. Without noticing
me, or hearing my step, my sister was walking near a spreading old
apple-tree, absolutely noiselessly as though she were a phantom.
She was dressed in black, and was walking rapidly backwards and
forwards on the same track, looking at the ground. An apple fell
from the tree; she started at the sound, stood still and pressed
her hands to her temples. At that moment I went up to her.
In a rush of tender affection which suddenly flooded my heart, with
tears in my eyes, suddenly remembering my mother and our childhood,
I put my arm round her shoulders and kissed her.
"What is the matter?" I asked her. "You are unhappy; I have seen
it for a long time. Tell me what's wrong?"
"I am frightened," she said, trembling.
"What is it?" I insisted. "For God's sake, be open!"
"I will, I will be open; I will tell you the whole truth. To hide
it from you is so hard, so agonizing. Misail, I love . . ." she
went on in a whisper, "I love him . . . I love him. . . . I am
happy, but why am I so frightened?"
There was the sound of footsteps; between the trees appeared Dr.
Blagovo in his silk shirt with his high top boots. Evidently they
had arranged to meet near the apple-tree. Seeing him, she rushed
impulsively towards him with a cry of pain as though he were being
taken from her.
"Vladimir! Vladimir!"
She clung to him and looked greedily into his face, and only then
I noticed how pale and thin she had become of late. It was particularly
noticeable from her lace collar which I had known for so long, and
which now hung more loosely than ever before about her thin, long
neck. The doctor was disconcerted, but at once recovered himself,
and, stroking her hair, said:
"There, there. . . . Why so nervous? You see, I'm here."
We were silent, looking with embarrassment at each other, then we
walked on, the three of us together, and I heard the doctor say to
me:
"Civilized life has not yet begun among us. Old men console themselves
by making out that if there is nothing now, there was something in
the forties or the sixties; that's the old: you and I are young;
our brains have not yet been touched by _marasmus senilis_; we
cannot comfort ourselves with such illusions. The beginning of
Russia was in 862, but the beginning of civilized Russia has not
come yet."
But I did not grasp the meaning of these reflections. It was somehow
strange, I could not believe it, that my sister was in love, that
she was walking and holding the arm of a stranger and looking
tenderly at him. My sister, this nervous, frightened, crushed,
fettered creature, loved a man who was married and had children! I
felt sorry for something, but what exactly I don't know; the presence
of the doctor was for some reason distasteful to me now, and I could
not imagine what would come of this love of theirs.