IV

The road to the ruin went twisting down the steep incline into a narrow

wooded valley; at the bottom ran a stream, noisily threading its way

through the pebbles, as though in haste to flow into the great river,

peacefully shining beyond the dark ridge of the deep indented mountain

crest. Gagin called my attention to some places where the light fell

specially finely; one could see in his words that, even if not a

painter, he was undoubtedly an artist. The ruin soon came into sight.

On the very summit of the naked rock rose a square tower, black all

over, still strong, but, as it were, cleft in two by a longitudinal

crack. Mossy walls adjoined the tower; here and there ivy clung about

it; wind-twisted bushes hung down from the grey battlements and

crumbling arches. A stray path led up to the gates, still standing

entire. We had just reached them, when suddenly a girl’s figure darted

up in front of us, ran swiftly over a heap of debris, and stood on the

projecting part of the wall, right over the precipice.

‘Why, it’s Acia!’ cried Gagin; ‘the mad thing.’ We went through the

gates and found ourselves in a small courtyard, half overgrown with

crab-apple trees and nettles. On the projecting ledge, Acia actually

was sitting. She turned and faced us, laughing, but did not move.

Gagin shook his finger at her, while I loudly reproached her for her

recklessness.

‘That’s enough,’ Gagin said to me in a whisper; ‘don’t tease her; you

don’t know what she is; she’d very likely climb right up on to the

tower. Look, you’d better be admiring the intelligence of the people of

these parts!’

I looked round. In a corner, ensconced in a tiny, wooden hut, an

old woman was knitting a stocking, and looking at us through her

spectacles. She sold beer, gingerbread, and seltzer water to tourists.

We seated ourselves on a bench, and began drinking some fairly cold

beer out of heavy pewter pots. Acia still sat without moving, with her

feet tucked under her, and a muslin scarf wrapped round her head; her

graceful figure stood out distinctly and finely against the clear sky;

but I looked at her with a feeling of hostility. The evening before I

had detected something forced, something not quite natural about her.…

‘She’s trying to impress us,’ I thought; ‘whatever for? What a childish

trick.’ As though guessing my thoughts, she suddenly turned a rapid,

searching glance upon me, laughed again, leaped in two bounds from the

wall, and going up to the old woman, asked her for a glass of water.

‘Do you think I am thirsty?’ she said, addressing her brother; ‘no;

there are some flowers on the walls, which must be watered.’

Gagin made her no reply; and with the glass in her hand, she began

scrambling over the ruins, now and then stopping, bending down, and

with comic solemnity pouring a few drops of water, which sparkled

brightly in the sun. Her movements were very charming, but I felt,

as before, angry with her, even while I could not help admiring her

lightness and agility. At one dangerous place she purposely screamed,

and then laughed.… I felt still more annoyed with her.

‘Why, she climbs like a goat,’ the old woman mumbled, turning for an

instant from her stocking.

At last, Acia had emptied the glass, and with a saucy swing she walked

back to us. A queer smile was faintly twitching at her eyebrows,

nostrils, and lips; her dark eyes were screwed up with a half insolent,

half merry look.

‘You consider my behaviour improper,’ her face seemed to say; ‘all the

same, I know you’re admiring me.’

‘Well done, Acia, well done,’ Gagin said in a low voice.

She seemed all at once overcome with shame, she dropped her long

eyelashes, and sat down beside us with a guilty air. At that moment I

got for the first time a good look at her face, the most changeable

face I had ever seen. A few instants later it had turned quite pale,

and wore an intense, almost mournful expression, its very features

seemed larger, sterner, simpler. She completely subsided. We walked

round the ruins (Acia followed us), and admired the views. Meanwhile it

was getting near dinner-time. As he paid the old woman, Gagin asked for

another mug of beer, and turning to me, cried with a sly face--

‘To the health of the lady of your heart.’

‘Why, has he--have you such a lady?’ Acia asked suddenly.

‘Why, who hasn’t?’ retorted Gagin.

Acia seemed pensive for an instant; then her face changed, the

challenging, almost insolent smile came back once more.

On the way home she kept laughing, and was more mischievous again.

She broke off a long branch, put it on her shoulder, like a gun, and

tied her scarf round her head. I remember we met a numerous family of

light-haired affected English people; they all, as though at a word

of command, looked Acia up and down with their glassy eyes in chilly

amazement, while she started singing aloud, as though in defiance of

them. When she reached home, she went straight to her own room, and

only appeared when dinner was on the table. She was dressed in her

best clothes, had carefully arranged her hair, laced herself in at

the waist, and put on gloves. At dinner she behaved very decorously,

almost affectedly, hardly tasting anything, and drinking water out of

a wine-glass. She obviously wanted to show herself in a new character

before me--the character of a well-bred, refined young lady. Gagin did

not check her; one could see that it was his habit to humour her in

everything. He merely glanced at me good-humouredly now and then, and

slightly shrugged his shoulders, as though he would say--‘She’s a baby;

don’t be hard on her.’ Directly dinner was over, Acia got up, made us

a curtsey, and putting on her hat, asked Gagin if she might go to see

Frau Luise.

‘Since when do you ask leave,’ he answered with his invariable smile, a

rather embarrassed smile this time; ‘are you bored with us?’

‘No; but I promised Frau Luise yesterday to go and see her; besides, I

thought you would like better being alone. Mr. N. (she indicated me)

will tell you something more about himself.’

She went out.

‘Frau Luise,’ Gagin began, trying to avoid meeting my eyes, ‘is the

widow of a former burgomaster here, a good-natured, but silly old

woman. She has taken a great fancy to Acia. Acia has a passion for

making friends with people of a lower class; I’ve noticed, it’s always

pride that’s at the root of that. She’s pretty well spoilt with me, as

you see,’ he went on after a brief pause: ‘but what would you have me

do? I can’t be exacting with any one, and with her less than any one

else. I am _bound_ not to be hard on her.’

I was silent. Gagin changed the conversation. The more I saw of him,

the more strongly was I attracted by him. I soon understood him.

His was a typically Russian nature, truthful, honest, simple; but,

unhappily, without energy, lacking tenacity and inward fire. Youth was

not boiling over within him, but shone with a subdued light. He was

very sweet and clever, but I could not picture to myself what he would

become in ripe manhood. An artist … without intense, incessant toil,

there is no being an artist … and as for toil, I mused, watching his

soft features, listening to his slow deliberate talk, ‘no, you’ll never

toil, you don’t know how to put pressure on yourself.’ But not to love

him was an impossibility; one’s heart was simply drawn to him. We spent

four hours together, sometimes sitting on the sofa, sometimes walking

slowly up and down before the house; and in those four hours we became

intimate friends.

The sun was setting, and it was time for me to go home. Acia had not

yet come back.

‘What a reckless thing she is,’ said Gagin. ‘Shall I come along with

you? We’ll turn in at Frau Luise’s on the way. I’ll ask whether she’s

there. It’s not far out of the way.’

We went down into the town, and turning off into a narrow, crooked

little by-street, stopped before a house four storeys high, and with

two windows abreast in each storey. The second storey projected beyond

the first, the third and fourth stood out still further than the

second; the whole house, with its crumbling carving, its two stout

columns below, its pointed brick roof, and the projecting piece on the

attic poking out like a beak, looked like a huge, crouching bird.

‘Acia,’ shouted Gagin, ‘are you here?’

A window, with a light in it in the third storey, rattled and opened,

and we saw Acia’s dark head. Behind her peered out the toothless and

dim-sighted face of an old German woman.

‘I’m here,’ said Acia, leaning roguishly out with her elbows on the

window-sill; ‘I’m quite contented here. Hullo there, catch,’ she added,

flinging Gagin a twig of geranium; ‘imagine I’m the lady of your heart.’

Frau Luise laughed.

‘N. is going,’ said Gagin; ‘he wants to say good-bye to you.’

‘Really,’ said Acia; ‘in that case give him my geranium, and I’ll come

back directly.’

She slammed-to the window and seemed to be kissing Frau Luise. Gagin

offered me the twig without a word. I put it in my pocket in silence,

went on to the ferry, and crossed over to the other side of the river.

I remember I went home thinking of nothing in particular, but with

a strange load at my heart, when I was suddenly struck by a strong

familiar scent, rare in Germany. I stood still, and saw near the road a

small bed of hemp. Its fragrance of the steppes instantaneously brought

my own country to my mind, and stirred a passionate longing for it in

my heart. I longed to breathe Russian air, to tread on Russian soil.

‘What am I doing here, why am I trailing about in foreign countries

among strangers?’ I cried, and the dead weight I had felt at my heart

suddenly passed into a bitter, stinging emotion. I reached home in

quite a different frame of mind from the evening before. I felt almost

enraged, and it was a long while before I could recover my equanimity.

I was beset by a feeling of anger I could not explain. At last I sat

down, and bethinking myself of my faithless widow (I wound up every day

regularly by dreaming, as in duty bound, of this lady), I pulled out

one of her letters. But I did not even open it; my thoughts promptly

took another turn. I began dreaming--dreaming of Acia. I recollected

that Gagin had, in the course of conversation, hinted at certain

difficulties, obstacles in the way of his returning to Russia.… ‘Come,

is she his sister?’ I said aloud.

I undressed, got into bed, and tried to get to sleep; but an hour

later I was sitting up again in bed, propped up with my elbow on the

pillow, and was once more thinking about this ‘whimsical chit of a girl

with the affected laugh.…’ ‘She’s the figure of the little Galatea

of Raphael in the Farnesino,’ I murmured: ‘yes; and she’s not his

sister----’

The widow’s letter lay tranquil and undisturbed on the floor, a white

patch in the moonlight.

V

Next morning I went again to L----. I persuaded myself I wanted to see

Gagin, but secretly I was tempted to go and see what Acia would do,

whether she would be as whimsical as on the previous day. I found them

both in their sitting-room, and strange to say--possibly because I had

been thinking so much that night and morning of Russia--Acia struck me

as a typically Russian girl, and a girl of the humbler class, almost

like a Russian servant-girl. She wore an old gown, she had combed her

hair back behind her ears, and was sitting still as a mouse at the

window, working at some embroidery in a frame, quietly, demurely, as

though she had never done anything else all her life. She said scarcely

anything, looked quietly at her work, and her features wore such an

ordinary, commonplace expression, that I could not help thinking of our

Katias and Mashas at home in Russia. To complete the resemblance she

started singing in a low voice, ‘Little mother, little dove.’ I looked

at her little face, which was rather yellow and listless, I thought

of my dreams of the previous night, and I felt a pang of regret for

something.

It was exquisite weather. Gagin announced that he was going to make a

sketch to-day from nature; I asked him if he would let me go with him,

whether I shouldn’t be in his way.

‘On the contrary,’ he assured me; ‘you may give me some good advice.’

He put on a hat à la Vandyck, and a blouse, took a canvas under his

arm, and set out; I sauntered after him. Acia stayed at home. Gagin,

as he went out, asked her to see that the soup wasn’t too thin; Acia

promised to look into the kitchen. Gagin went as far as the valley I

knew already, sat down on a stone, and began to sketch a hollow oak

with spreading branches. I lay on the grass and took out a book; but

I didn’t read two pages, and he simply spoiled a sheet of paper; we

did little else but talk, and as far as I am competent to judge, we

talked rather cleverly and subtly of the right method of working, of

what we must avoid, and what one must cling to, and wherein lay the

significance of the artist in our age. Gagin, at last, decided that

he was not in the mood to-day, and lay down beside me on the grass.

And then our youthful eloquence flowed freely; fervent, pensive,

enthusiastic by turns, but consisting almost always of those vague

generalities into which a Russian is so ready to expand. When we

had talked to our hearts’ content, and were full of a feeling of

satisfaction as though we had got something done, achieved some sort of

success, we returned home. I found Acia just as I had left her; however

assiduously I watched her I could not detect a shade of coquetry,

nor a sign of an intentionally assumed rôle in her; this time it was

impossible to reproach her for artificiality.

‘Aha!’ said Gagin; ‘she has imposed fasting and penance on herself.’

Towards evening she yawned several times with obvious genuineness,

and went early to her room. I myself soon said good-bye to Gagin,

and as I went home, I had no dreams of any kind; that day was spent

in sober sensations. I remember, however, as I lay down to sleep, I

involuntarily exclaimed aloud--

‘What a chameleon the girl is!’ and after a moment’s thought I added;

‘anyway, she’s not his sister.’