Aratov went back the same day to the Milovidovs and spent three whole hours
in conversation with Anna Semyonovna. Madame Milovidov was in the habit
of lying down directly after dinner--at two o’clock--and resting till
evening tea at seven. Aratov’s talk with Clara’s sister was not exactly a
conversation; she did almost all the talking, at first with hesitation,
with embarrassment, then with a warmth that refused to be stifled. It was
obvious that she had adored her sister. The confidence Aratov had inspired
in her grew and strengthened; she was no longer stiff; twice she even
dropped a few silent tears before him. He seemed to her to be worthy to
hear an unreserved account of all she knew and felt ... in her own secluded
life nothing of this sort had ever happened before!... As for him ... he
drank in every word she uttered.
This was what he learned ... much of it of course, half-said ... much he
filled in for himself.
In her early years, Clara had undoubtedly been a disagreeable child; and
even as a girl, she had not been much gentler; self-willed, hot-tempered,
sensitive, she had never got on with her father, whom she despised for
his drunkenness and incapacity. He felt this and never forgave her for
it. A gift for music showed itself early in her; her father gave it no
encouragement, acknowledging no art but painting, in which he himself was
so conspicuously unsuccessful though it was the means of support of himself
and his family. Her mother Clara loved,... but in a careless way, as though
she were her nurse; her sister she adored, though she fought with her
and had even bitten her.... It is true she fell on her knees afterwards
and kissed the place she had bitten. She was all fire, all passion, and
all contradiction; revengeful and kind; magnanimous and vindictive; she
believed in fate--and did not believe in God (these words Anna whispered
with horror); she loved everything beautiful, but never troubled herself
about her own looks, and dressed anyhow; she could not bear to have young
men courting her, and yet in books she only read the pages which treated of
love; she did not care to be liked, did not like caresses, but never forgot
a caress, just as she never forgot a slight; she was afraid of death and
killed herself! She used to say sometimes, ‘Such a one as I want I shall
never meet ... and no other will I have!’ ‘Well, but if you meet him?’ Anna
would ask. ‘If I meet him ... I will capture him.’ ‘And if he won’t let
himself be captured?’ ‘Well, then ... I will make an end of myself. It will
prove I am no good.’ Clara’s father--he used sometimes when drunk to ask
his wife, ‘Who got you your blackbrowed she-devil there? Not I!’--Clara’s
father, anxious to get her off his hands as soon as possible, betrothed
her to a rich young shopkeeper, a great blockhead, one of the so-called
‘refined’ sort. A fortnight before the wedding-day--she was only sixteen
at the time--she went up to her betrothed, her arms folded and her fingers
drumming on her elbows--her favourite position--and suddenly gave him a
slap on his rosy cheek with her large powerful hand! He jumped and merely
gaped; it must be said he was head over ears in love with her.... He asked:
‘What’s that for?’ She laughed scornfully and walked off. ‘I was there in
the room,’ Anna related, ‘I saw it all, I ran after her and said to her,
“Katia, why did you do that, really?” And she answered me: “If he’d been a
real man he would have punished me, but he’s no more pluck than a drowned
hen! And then he asks, ‘What’s that for?’ If he loves me, and doesn’t bear
malice, he had better put up with it and not ask, ‘What’s that for?’ I will
never be anything to him--never, never!” And indeed she did not marry him.
It was soon after that she made the acquaintance of that actress, and left
her home. Mother cried, but father only said, “A stubborn beast is best
away from the flock!” And he did not bother about her, or try to find her
out. My father did not understand Katia. On the day before her flight,’
added Anna, ‘she almost smothered me in her embraces, and kept repeating:
“I can’t, I can’t help it!... My heart’s torn, but I can’t help it! your
cage is too small ... it cramps my wings! And there’s no escaping one’s
fate....”
‘After that,’ observed Anna, ‘we saw each other very seldom.... When my
father died, she came for a couple of days, would take nothing of her
inheritance, and vanished again. She was unhappy with us ... I could see
that. Afterwards she came to Kazan as an actress.’
Aratov began questioning Anna about the theatre, about the parts in which
Clara had appeared, about her triumphs.... Anna answered in detail, but
with the same mournful, though keen fervour. She even showed Aratov a
photograph, in which Clara had been taken in the costume of one of her
parts. In the photograph she was looking away, as though turning from the
spectators; her thick hair tied with a ribbon fell in a coil on her bare
arm. Aratov looked a long time at the photograph, thought it like, asked
whether Clara had taken part in public recitations, and learnt that she had
not; that she had needed the excitement of the theatre, the scenery ... but
another question was burning on his lips.
‘Anna Semyonovna!’ he cried at last, not loudly, but with a peculiar force,
‘tell me, I implore you, tell me why did she ... what led her to this
fearful step?’...
Anna looked down. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, after a pause of some instants.
‘By God, I don’t know!’ she went on strenuously, supposing from Aratov’s
gesture that he did not believe her.... ‘since she came back here certainly
she was melancholy, depressed. Something must have happened to her in
Moscow--what, I could never guess. But on the other hand, on that fatal day
she seemed as it were ... if not more cheerful, at least more serene than
usual. Even I had no presentiment,’ added Anna with a bitter smile, as
though reproaching herself for it.
‘You see,’ she began again, ‘it seemed as though at Katia’s birth it had
been decreed that she was to be unhappy. From her early years she was
convinced of it. She would lean her head on her hand, sink into thought,
and say, “I shall not live long!” She used to have presentiments. Imagine!
she used to see beforehand, sometimes in a dream and sometimes awake, what
was going to happen to her! “If I can’t live as I want to live, then I
won’t live,”... was a saying of hers too.... “Our life’s in our own hands,
you know.” And she proved that!’
Anna hid her face in her hands and stopped speaking. ‘Anna Semyonovna,’
Aratov began after a short pause, ‘you have perhaps heard to what the
newspapers ascribed ... “To an unhappy love affair?”’ Anna broke in,
at once pulling away her hands from her face. ‘That’s a slander, a
fabrication!... My pure, unapproachable Katia ... Katia!... and unhappy,
unrequited love? And shouldn’t I have known of it?... Every one was in love
with her ... while she ... And whom could she have fallen in love with
here? Who among all the people here, who was worthy of her? Who was up to
the standard of honesty, truth, purity ... yes, above all, of purity which
she, with all her faults, always held up as an ideal before her?... She
repulsed!... she!...’
Anna’s voice broke.... Her fingers were trembling. All at once she flushed
crimson ... crimson with indignation, and for that instant, and that
instant only, she was like her sister.
Aratov was beginning an apology.
‘Listen,’ Anna broke in again. ‘I have an intense desire that you should
not believe that slander, and should refute it, if possible! You want
to write an article or something about her: that’s your opportunity for
defending her memory! That’s why I talk so openly to you. Let me tell you;
Katia left a diary ...’
Aratov trembled. ‘A diary?’ he muttered.
‘Yes, a diary ... that is, only a few pages. Katia was not fond of writing
... for months at a time she would write nothing, and her letters were so
short. But she was always, always truthful, she never told a lie.... She,
with her pride, tell a lie! I ... I will show you this diary! You shall
see for yourself whether there is the least hint in it of any unhappy love
affair!’
Anna quickly took out of a table-drawer a thin exercise-book, ten pages,
no more, and held it out to Aratov. He seized it eagerly, recognised the
irregular sprawling handwriting, the handwriting of that anonymous letter,
opened it at random, and at once lighted upon the following lines.
‘Moscow, Tuesday ... June.--Sang and recited at a literary matinée. To-day
is a vital day for me. _It must decide my fate._ (These words were twice
underlined.) I saw again....’ Here followed a few lines carefully erased.
And then, ‘No! no! no!.... Must go back to the old way, if only ...’
Aratov dropped the hand that held the diary, and his head slowly sank upon
his breast.
‘Read it!’ cried Anna. ‘Why don’t you read it? Read it through from the
beginning.... It would take only five minutes to read it all, though the
diary extends over two years. In Kazan she used to write down nothing at
all....’
Aratov got up slowly from his chair and flung himself on his knees before
Anna.
She was simply petrified with wonder and dismay.
‘Give me ... give me that diary,’ Aratov began with failing voice, and he
stretched out both hands to Anna. ‘Give it me ... and the photograph ...
you are sure to have some other one, and the diary I will return.... But I
want it, oh, I want it!...’
In his imploring words, in his contorted features there was something so
despairing that it looked positively like rage, like agony.... And he was
in agony, truly. He could not himself have foreseen that such pain could be
felt by him, and in a frenzy he implored forgiveness, deliverance ...
‘Give it me,’ he repeated.
‘But ... you ... you were in love with my sister?’ Anna said at last.
Aratov was still on his knees.
‘I only saw her twice ... believe me!... and if I had not been impelled
by causes, which I can neither explain nor fully understand myself,... if
there had not been some power over me, stronger than myself.... I should
not be entreating you ... I should not have come here. I want ... I must
... you yourself said I ought to defend her memory!’
‘And you were not in love with my sister?’ Anna asked a second time.
Aratov did not at once reply, and he turned aside a little, as though in
pain.
‘Well, then! I was! I was--I’m in love now,’ he cried in the same tone of
despair.
Steps were heard in the next room.
‘Get up ... get up ...’ said Anna hurriedly. ‘Mamma is coming.’
Aratov rose.
‘And take the diary and the photograph, in God’s name! Poor, poor Katia!...
But you will give me back the diary,’ she added emphatically. ‘And if you
write anything, be sure to send it me.... Do you hear?’
The entrance of Madame Milovidov saved Aratov from the necessity of a
reply. He had time, however, to murmur, ‘You are an angel! Thanks! I will
send anything I write....’
Madame Milovidov, half awake, did not suspect anything. So Aratov left
Kazan with the photograph in the breast-pocket of his coat. The diary he
gave back to Anna; but, unobserved by her, he cut out the page on which
were the words underlined.
On the way back to Moscow he relapsed again into a state of petrifaction.
Though he was secretly delighted that he had attained the object of his
journey, still all thoughts of Clara he deferred till he should be back at
home. He thought much more about her sister Anna. ‘There,’ he thought, ‘is
an exquisite, charming creature. What delicate comprehension of everything,
what a loving heart, what a complete absence of egoism! And how girls like
that spring up among us, in the provinces, and in such surroundings too!
She is not strong, and not good-looking, and not young; but what a splendid
helpmate she would be for a sensible, cultivated man! That’s the girl I
ought to have fallen in love with!’ Such were Aratov’s reflections ... but
on his arrival in Moscow things put on quite a different complexion.