Gagin met me in friendly fashion, and overwhelmed me with affectionate
reproaches; but Acia, as though intentionally, burst out laughing for
no reason whatever, directly she saw me, and promptly ran away, as
she so often did. Gagin was disconcerted; he muttered after her that
she must be crazy, and begged me to excuse her. I confess I was very
much annoyed with Acia; already, apart from that, I was not at my
ease; and now again this unnatural laughter, these strange grimaces.
I pretended, however, not to notice anything, and began telling Gagin
some of the incidents of my short tour. He told me what he had been
doing in my absence. But our talk did not flow easily; Acia came into
the room and ran out again; I declared at last that I had urgent work
to do, and must get back home. Gagin at first tried to keep me, then,
looking intently at me, offered to see me on my way. In the passage,
Acia suddenly came up to me and held out her hand; I shook her fingers
very slightly, and barely bowed to her. Gagin and I crossed the
Rhine together, and when we reached my favourite ash-tree with the
statuette of the Madonna, we sat down on the bench to admire the view.
A remarkable conversation took place between us.
At first we exchanged a few words, then we were silent, watching the
clear river.
‘Tell me,’ began Gagin all at once, with his habitual smile, ‘what do
you think of Acia? I suppose she must strike you as rather strange,
doesn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, in some perplexity. I had not expected he would
begin to speak of her.
‘One has to know her well to judge of her,‘ he observed; ’she has a
very good heart, but she’s wilful. She’s difficult to get on with. But
you couldn’t blame her if you knew her story.…’
‘Her story?’ I broke in.… ‘Why, isn’t she your----’ Gagin glanced at me.
‘Do you really think she isn’t my sister?… No,’ he went on, paying no
attention to my confusion, ‘she really is my sister, she’s my father’s
daughter. Let me tell you about her, I feel I can trust you, and I’ll
tell you all about it.
‘My father was very kind, clever, cultivated, and unhappy. Fate treated
him no worse than others; but he could not get over her first blow. He
married early, for love; his wife, my mother, died very soon after; I
was only six months old then. My father took me away with him to his
country place, and for twelve years he never went out anywhere. He
looked after my education himself, and would never have parted with me,
if his brother, my uncle, had not come to see us in the country. This
uncle always lived in Petersburg, where he held a very important post.
He persuaded my father to put me in his charge, as my father would not
on any consideration agree to leave the country. My uncle represented
to him that it was bad for a boy of my age to live in complete
solitude, that with such a constantly depressed and taciturn instructor
as my father I should infallibly be much behind other boys of my age in
education, and that my character even might very possibly suffer. My
father resisted his brother’s counsels a long while, but he gave way
at last. I cried at parting from my father; I loved him, though I had
never seen a smile on his face … but when I got to Petersburg, I soon
forgot our dark and cheerless home. I entered a cadet’s school, and
from school passed on into a regiment of the Guards. Every year I used
to go home to the country for a few weeks, and every year I found my
father more and more low-spirited, absorbed in himself, depressed, and
even timorous. He used to go to church every day, and had quite got out
of the way of talking. On one of my visits--I was about twenty then--I
saw for the first time in our house a thin, dark-eyed little girl of
ten years old--Acia. My father told me she was an orphan whom he had
kept out of charity--that was his very expression. I paid no particular
attention to her; she was shy, quick in her movements, and silent as
a little wild animal, and directly I went into my father’s favourite
room--an immense gloomy apartment, where my mother had died, and where
candles were kept burning even in the daytime--she would hide at once
behind his big arm-chair, or behind the book-case. It so happened
that for three or four years after that visit the duties of the
service prevented my going home to the country. I used to get a short
letter from my father every month; Acia he rarely mentioned, and only
incidentally. He was over fifty, but he seemed still young. Imagine my
horror; all of a sudden, suspecting nothing, I received a letter from
the steward, in which he informed me my father was dangerously ill,
and begged me to come as soon as possible if I wanted to take leave of
him. I galloped off post-haste, and found my father still alive, but
almost at his last gasp. He was greatly relieved to see me, clasped me
in his wasted arms, and gazed at me with a long, half-scrutinising,
half-imploring look, and making me promise I would carry out his last
request, he told his old valet to bring Acia. The old man brought her
in; she could scarcely stand upright, and was shaking all over.
‘“Here,” said my father with an effort, “I confide to you my
daughter--your sister. You will hear all about her from Yakov,” he
added, pointing to the valet.
‘Acia sobbed, and fell with her face on the bed.… Half-an-hour later my
father died.
‘This was what I learned. Acia was the daughter of my father by a
former maidservant of my mother’s, Tatiana. I have a vivid recollection
of this Tatiana, I remember her tall, slender figure, her handsome,
stern, clever face, with big dark eyes. She had the character of being
a proud, unapproachable girl. As far as I could find out from Yakov’s
respectful, unfinished sentences, my father had become attached to her
some years after my mother’s death. Tatiana was not living then in my
father’s house, but in the hut of a married sister, who had charge
of the cows. My father became exceedingly fond of her, and after my
departure from the country he even wanted to marry her, but she herself
would not consent to be his wife, in spite of his entreaties.
‘“The deceased Tatiana Vassilievna,” Yakov informed me, standing in the
doorway with his hands behind him, “had good sense in everything, and
she didn’t want to do harm to your father. ‘A poor wife I should be for
you, a poor sort of lady I should make,’ so she was pleased to say, she
said so before me.” Tatiana would not even move into the house, and
went on living at her sister’s with Acia. In my childhood I used to see
Tatiana only on saints’ days in church. With her head tied up in a dark
kerchief, and a yellow shawl on her shoulders, she used to stand in
the crowd, near a window--her stern profile used to stand out sharply
against the transparent window-pane--and she used to pray sedately and
gravely, bowing low to the ground in the old-fashioned way. When my
uncle carried me off, Acia was only two years old, and she lost her
mother when she was nine.
‘Directly Tatiana died, my father took Acia into his house. He had
before then expressed a wish to have her with him, but that too Tatiana
had refused him. Imagine what must have passed in Acia’s mind when she
was taken into the master’s house. To this day she cannot forget the
moment when they first put her on a silk dress and kissed her hand.
Her mother, as long as she lived, had brought her up very strictly;
with my father she enjoyed absolute freedom. He was her tutor; she saw
no one except him. He did not spoil her, that is to say, he didn’t
fondle and pet her; but he loved her passionately, and never checked
her in anything; in his heart he considered he had wronged her. Acia
soon realised that she was the chief personage in the house; she knew
the master was her father; but just as quickly she was aware of her
false position; self-consciousness was strongly developed in her,
mistrustfulness too; bad habits took root, simplicity was lost. She
wanted (she confessed this to me once herself), to force _the whole
world_ to forget her origin; she was ashamed of her mother, and at
the same time ashamed of being ashamed, and was proud of her too. You
see she knew and knows a lot that she oughtn’t to have known at her
age.… But was it her fault? The forces of youth were at work in her,
her heart was in a ferment, and not a guiding hand near her. Absolute
independence in everything! And wasn’t it hard for her to put up with?
She wanted to be as good as other young ladies; she flew to books. But
what good could she get from that? Her life went on as irregularly
as it had begun, but her heart was not spoiled, her intellect was
uninjured.
‘And there was I left, a boy of twenty, with a girl of thirteen on my
hands! For the first few days after my father’s death the very sound of
my voice threw her into a fever, my caresses caused her anguish, and it
was only slowly and gradually that she got used to me. It is true that
later, when she fully realised that I really did acknowledge her as my
sister, and cared for her, she became passionately attached to me; she
can feel nothing by halves.
‘I took her to Petersburg. Painful as it was to part with
her, we could not live together. I sent her to one of the best
boarding-schools. Acia knew our separation was inevitable, yet she
began by fretting herself ill over it, and almost died. Later on she
plucked up more spirit, and spent four years at school; but, contrary
to my expectations, she was almost exactly the same as before. The
headmistress of the school often made complaints of her, “And we
can’t punish her,” she used to say to me, “and she’s not amenable to
kindness.” Acia was exceedingly quick-witted, and did better at her
lessons than any one; but she never would put herself on a level with
the rest; she was perverse, and held herself aloof.… I could not blame
her very much for it; in her position she had either to be subservient,
or to hold herself aloof. Of all her school-fellows she only made
friends with one, an ugly girl of poor family, who was sat upon by the
rest. The other girls with whom she was brought up, mostly of good
family, did not like her, teased her and taunted her as far as they
could. Acia would not give way to them an inch. One day at their lesson
on the law of God, the teacher was talking of the vices. ‘Servility and
cowardice are the worst vices,’ Acia said aloud. She would still go her
own way, in fact; only her manners were improved, though even in that
respect I think she did not gain a great deal.
‘At last she reached her seventeenth year. I could not keep her any
longer at school. I found myself in a rather serious difficulty.
Suddenly a blessed idea came to me--to resign my commission and go
abroad for a year or two, taking Acia with me. No sooner thought than
done; and here we are on the banks of the Rhine, where I am trying to
take up painting, and she … is as naughty and troublesome as ever. But
now I hope you will not judge her too harshly; for though she pretends
she doesn’t care, she values the good opinion of every one, and yours
particularly.’
And Gagin smiled again his gentle smile. I pressed his hand warmly.
‘That’s how it is,’ Gagin began again; ‘but I have a trying time with
her. She’s like gun-powder, always ready to go off. So far, she has
never taken a fancy to any one, but woe betide us, if she falls in
love! I sometimes don’t know what to do with her. The other day she
took some notion into her head, and suddenly began declaring I was
colder to her than I used to be, that she loved me and no one else, and
never would love any one else.… And she cried so, as she said it--’
‘So that was it,’--I was beginning, but I bit my tongue.
‘Tell me,’ I questioned Gagin, ‘we have talked so frankly about
everything, is it possible really, she has never cared for any one yet?
Didn’t she see any young men in Petersburg?’
‘She didn’t like them at all. No, Acia wants a hero--an exceptional
individual--or a picturesque shepherd on a mountain pass. But I’ve been
chattering away, and keeping you,’ he added, getting up.
‘Do you know----,’ I began; ‘let’s go back to your place, I don’t want
to go home.’
‘What about your work?’
I made no reply. Gagin smiled good-humouredly, and we went back to L.
As I caught sight of the familiar vineyard and little white house, I
felt a certain sweetness--yes, sweetness in my heart, as though honey
was stealthily dropping thence for me. My heart was light after what
Gagin had told me.