I came home at the end of the third day: I forgot to say that in my anger with the Gagins I tried to revive the image of my cruel-hearted widow, but my efforts were fruitless. I remember when I applied myself to musing upon her, I saw a little peasant girl of five years old, with a round little face and innocently staring eyes. She gazed with such childish directness at me. . . . I felt ashamed before her innocent stare, I could not lie in her presence, and at once, and once for all, said a last good-bye to my former flame.
At home I found a note from Gagin. He wondered at the suddenness of my plan, reproached me, asked why I had not taken him with me, and pressed me to go and see him directly I was back. I read this note with dissatisfaction; but the next day I set off to the Gagins. VIII
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 maid-servant 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
'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,
