A Lear of the Steppes, etc.

XII

She came back in an hour, stood in the doorway and beckoned to me.

‘Listen,’ she said; ‘if I were to die, would you be sorry?’

‘What ideas you have to-day!’ I exclaimed.

‘I fancy I shall die soon; it seems to me sometimes as though everything about me were saying good-bye. It’s better to die than live like this… Ah! don’t look at me like that; I’m not pretending, really. Or else I shall begin to be afraid of you again.’

‘Why, were you afraid of me?’

‘If I am queer, it’s really not my fault,’ she rejoined. ‘You see, I can’t even laugh now…’

She remained gloomy and preoccupied till evening. Something was taking place in her; what, I did not understand. Her eyes often rested upon me; my heart slowly throbbed under her enigmatic gaze. She appeared composed, and yet as I watched her I kept wanting to tell her not to let herself get excited. I admired her, found a touching charm in her pale face, her hesitating, slow movements, but she for some reason fancied I was out of humour.

‘Let me tell you something,’ she said to me not long before parting; ‘I am tortured by the idea that you consider me frivolous… For the future believe what I say to you, only do you, too, be open with me; and I will always tell you the truth, I give you my word of honour…’

This ‘word of honour’ set me laughing again.

‘Oh, don’t laugh,’ she said earnestly, ‘or I shall say to you to-day what you said to me yesterday, “why are you laughing?”’ and after a brief silence she added, ‘Do you remember you spoke yesterday of “wings”?.. My wings have grown, but I have nowhere to fly.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said; ‘all the ways lie open before you…’

Acia looked at me steadily, straight in the face.

‘You have a bad opinion of me to-day,’ she said, frowning.

‘I? a bad opinion of you!..’

‘Why is it you are both so low-spirited,’ Gagin interrupted me – ‘would you like me to play a waltz, as I did yesterday?’

‘No, no,’ replied Acia, and she clenched her hands; ‘not to-day, not for anything!’

‘I’m not going to force you to; don’t excite yourself.’

‘Not for anything!’ she repeated, turning pale.

‘Can it be she’s in love with me?’ I thought, as I drew near the dark rushing waters of the Rhine.

XIII

‘Can it be that she loves me?’ I asked myself next morning, directly I awoke. I did not want to look into myself. I felt that her image, the image of the ‘girl with the affected laugh,’ had crept close into my heart, and that I should not easily get rid of it. I went to L – and stayed there the whole day, but I saw Acia only by glimpses. She was not well; she had a headache. She came downstairs for a minute, with a bandage round her forehead, looking white and thin, her eyes half-closed. With a faint smile she said, ‘It will soon be over, it’s nothing; everything’s soon over, isn’t it?’ and went away. I felt bored and, as it were, listlessly sad, yet I could not make up my mind to go for a long while, and went home late, without seeing her again.

The next morning passed in a sort of half slumber of the consciousness. I tried to set to work, and could not; I tried to do nothing and not to think – and that was a failure too. I strolled about the town, returned home, went out again.

‘Are you Herr N – ?’ I heard a childish voice ask suddenly behind me. I looked round; a little boy was standing before me. ‘This is for you from Fraülein Annette,’ he said, handing me a note.

I opened it and recognised the irregular rapid handwriting of Acia. ‘I must see you to-day,’ she wrote to me; ‘come to-day at four o’clock to the stone chapel on the road near the ruin. I have done a most foolish thing to-day… Come, for God’s sake; you shall know all about it… Tell the messenger, yes.’

‘Is there an answer?’ the boy asked me.

‘Say, yes,’ I replied. The boy ran off.

XIV

I went home to my own room, sat down, and sank into thought. My heart was beating violently. I read Acia’s note through several times. I looked at my watch; it was not yet twelve o’clock.

The door opened, Gagin walked in.

His face was overcast. He seized my hand and pressed it warmly. He seemed very much agitated.

‘What is the matter?’ I asked.

Gagin took a chair and sat down opposite me. ‘Three days ago,’ he began with a rather forced smile, and hesitating, ‘I surprised you by what I told you; to-day I am going to surprise you more. With any other man I could not, most likely, bring myself … so directly… But you’re an honourable man, you’re my friend, aren’t you? Listen – my sister, Acia, is in love with you.’

I trembled all over and stood up…

‘Your sister, you say – ’

‘Yes, yes,’ Gagin cut me short. ‘I tell you, she’s mad, and she’ll drive me mad. But happily she can’t tell a lie, and she confides in me. Ah, what a soul there is in that little girl!.. but she’ll be her own ruin, that’s certain.’

‘But you’re making a mistake,’ I began.

‘No, I’m not making a mistake. Yesterday, you know, she was lying down almost all day, she ate nothing, but she did not complain… She never does complain. I was not anxious, though towards evening she was in a slight fever. At two o’clock last night I was wakened by our landlady; “Go to your sister,” she said; “there’s something wrong with her.” I ran in to Acia, and found her not undressed, feverish, and in tears; her head was aching, her teeth were chattering. “What’s the matter with you?” I said, “are you ill?” She threw herself on my neck and began imploring me to take her away as soon as possible, if I want to keep her alive… I could make out nothing, I tried to soothe her… Her sobs grew more violent, … and suddenly through her sobs I made out … well, in fact, I made out that she loves you. I assure you, you and I are reasonable people, and we can’t imagine how deeply she feels and with what incredible force her feelings show themselves; it has come upon her as unexpectedly and irresistibly as a thunderstorm. You’re a very nice person,’ Gagin pursued, ‘but why she’s so in love with you, I confess I don’t understand. She says she has been drawn to you from the first moment she saw you. That’s why she cried the other day when she declared she would never love any one but me. – She imagines you despise her, that you most likely know about her birth; she asked me if I hadn’t told you her story, – I said, of course, that I hadn’t; but her intuition’s simply terrible. She has one wish, – to get away, to get away at once. I sat with her till morning; she made me promise we should not be here to-morrow, and only then, she fell asleep. I have been thinking and thinking, and at last I made up my mind to speak to you. To my mind, Acia is right; the best thing is for us both to go away from here. And I should have taken her away to-day, if I had not been struck by an idea which made me pause. Perhaps … who knows? do you like my sister? If so, what’s the object of my taking her away? And so I decided to cast aside all reserve… Besides, I noticed something myself… I made up my mind … to find out from you …’ Poor Gagin was completely out of countenance. ‘Excuse me, please,’ he added, ‘I’m not used to such bothers.’

I took his hand.

‘You want to know,’ I pronounced in a steady voice, ‘whether I like your sister? Yes, I do like her – ’

Gagin glanced at me. ‘But,’ he said, faltering, ‘you’d hardly marry her, would you?’

‘How would you have me answer such a question? Only think; can I at the moment – ’

‘I know, I know,’ Gagin cut me short; ‘I have no right to expect an answer from you, and my question was the very acme of impropriety… But what am I to do? One can’t play with fire. You don’t know Acia; she’s quite capable of falling ill, running away, or asking you to see her alone… Any other girl might manage to hide it all and wait – but not she. It is the first time with her, that’s the worst of it! If you had seen how she sobbed at my feet to-day, you would understand my fears.’

I was pondering. Gagin’s words ‘asking you to see her alone,’ had sent a twinge to my heart. I felt it was shameful not to meet his honest frankness with frankness.

‘Yes,’ I said at last; ‘you are right. An hour ago I got a note from your sister. Here it is.’

Gagin took the note, quickly looked it through, and let his hands fall on his knees. The expression of perplexity on his face was very amusing, but I was in no mood for laughter.

‘I tell you again, you’re an honourable man,’ he said; ‘but what’s to be done now? What? she herself wants to go away, and she writes to you and blames herself for acting unwisely … and when had she time to write this? What does she wish of you?’

I pacified him, and we began to discuss as coolly as we could what we ought to do.

The conclusion we reached at last was that, to avoid worse harm befalling, I was to go and meet Acia, and to have a straightforward explanation with her; Gagin pledged himself to stay at home, and not to give a sign of knowing about her note to me; in the evening we arranged to see each other again.

‘I have the greatest confidence in you,’ said Gagin, and he pressed my hand; ‘have mercy on her and on me. But we shall go away to-morrow, anyway,’ he added getting up, ‘for you won’t marry Acia, I see.’

‘Give me time till the evening,’ I objected.

‘All right, but you won’t marry her.’

He went away, and I threw myself on the sofa, and shut my eyes. My head was going round; too many impressions had come bursting on it at once. I was vexed at Gagin’s frankness, I was vexed with Acia, her love delighted and disconcerted me, I could not comprehend what had made her reveal it to her brother; the absolute necessity of rapid, almost instantaneous decision exasperated me. ‘Marry a little girl of seventeen, with her character, how is it possible?’ I said, getting up.

XV

At the appointed hour I crossed the Rhine, and the first person I met on the opposite bank was the very boy who had come to me in the morning. He was obviously waiting for me.

‘From Fraülein Annette,’ he said in a whisper, and he handed me another note.

Acia informed me she had changed the place of our meeting. I was to go in an hour and a half, not to the chapel, but to Frau Luise’s house, to knock below, and go up to the third storey.

‘Is it, yes, again?’ asked the boy.

‘Yes,’ I repeated, and I walked along the bank of the Rhine. There was not time to go home, I didn’t want to wander about the streets. Beyond the town wall there was a little garden, with a skittle ground and tables for beer drinkers. I went in there. A few middle-aged Germans were playing skittles; the wooden balls rolled along with a sound of knocking, now and then cries of approval reached me. A pretty waitress, with her eyes swollen with weeping, brought me a tankard of beer; I glanced at her face. She turned quickly and walked away.

‘Yes, yes,’ observed a fat, red-cheeked citizen sitting by, ‘our Hannchen is dreadfully upset to-day; her sweetheart’s gone for a soldier.’ I looked at her; she was sitting huddled up in a corner, her face propped on her hand; tears were rolling one by one between her fingers. Some one called for beer; she took him a pot, and went back to her place. Her grief affected me; I began musing on the interview awaiting me, but my dreams were anxious, cheerless dreams. It was with no light heart I was going to this interview; I had no prospect before me of giving myself up to the bliss of love returned; what lay before me was to keep my word, to do a difficult duty. ‘One can’t play with her.’ These words of Gagin’s had gone through my heart like arrows. And three days ago, in that boat borne along by the current, had I not been pining with the thirst for happiness? It had become possible, and I was hesitating, I was pushing it away, I was bound to push it from me – its suddenness bewildered me. Acia herself, with her fiery temperament, her past, her bringing-up, this fascinating, strange creature, I confess she frightened me. My feelings were long struggling within me. The appointed hour was drawing near. ‘I can’t marry her,’ I decided at last; ‘she shall not know I love her.’

I got up, and putting a thaler in the hand of poor Hannchen (she did not even thank me), I directed my steps towards Frau Luise’s. The air was already overcast with the shadows of evening, and the narrow strip of sky, above the dark street, was red with the glow of sunset. I knocked faintly at the door; it was opened at once. I stepped through the doorway, and found myself in complete darkness.

‘This way.’ I heard an old woman’s voice. ‘You’re expected.’

I took two steps, groping my way, a long hand took mine.

‘Is that you, Frau Luise?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ answered the same voice, ‘’Tis I, my fine young man.’ The old woman led me up a steep staircase, and stopped on the third floor. In the feeble light from a tiny window, I saw the wrinkled visage of the burgomaster’s widow. A crafty smile of mawkish sweetness contorted her sunken lips, and pursed up her dim-sighted eyes. She pointed me to a little door; with an abrupt movement I opened it and slammed it behind me.

XVI

In the little room into which I stepped, it was rather dark, and I did not at once see Acia. Wrapped in a big shawl, she was sitting on a chair by the window, turning away from me and almost hiding her head like a frightened bird. She was breathing quickly, and trembling all over. I felt unutterably sorry for her. I went up to her. She averted her head still more…

‘Anna Nikolaevna,’ I said.

She suddenly drew herself up, tried to look at me, and could not. I took her hand, it was cold, and lay like a dead thing in mine.

‘I wished’ – Acia began, trying to smile, but unable to control her pale lips; ‘I wanted – No, I can’t,’ she said, and ceased. Her voice broke at every word.

I sat down beside her.

‘Anna Nikolaevna,’ I repeated, and I too could say nothing more.

A silence followed. I still held her hand and looked at her. She sat as before, shrinking together, breathing with difficulty, and stealthily biting her lower lip to keep back the rising tears… I looked at her; there was something touchingly helpless in her timid passivity; it seemed as though she had been so exhausted she had hardly reached the chair, and had simply fallen on it. My heart began to melt…

‘Acia,’ I said hardly audibly…

She slowly lifted her eyes to me… Oh, the eyes of a woman who loves – who can describe them? They were supplicating, those eyes, they were confiding, questioning, surrendering … I could not resist their fascination. A subtle flame passed all through me with tingling shocks; I bent down and pressed my lips to her hand…

I heard a quivering sound, like a broken sigh and I felt on my hair the touch of a feeble hand shaking like a leaf. I raised my head and looked at her face. How transformed it was all of a sudden. The expression of terror had vanished from it, her eyes looked far away and drew me after them, her lips were slightly parted, her forehead was white as marble, and her curls floated back as though the wind had stirred them. I forgot everything, I drew her to me, her hand yielded unresistingly, her whole body followed her hand, the shawl fell from her shoulders, and her head lay softly on my breast, lay under my burning lips…

‘Yours …’ she murmured, hardly above a breath.

My arms were slipping round her waist… But suddenly the thought of Gagin flashed like lightning before me. ‘What are we doing,’ I cried, abruptly moving back… ‘Your brother … why, he knows everything… He knows I am with you.’

Acia sank back on her chair.

‘Yes,’ I went on, getting up and walking to the other end of the room. ‘Your brother knows all about it… I had to tell him…’

‘You had to?’ she articulated thickly. She could not, it seemed, recover herself, and hardly understood me.

‘Yes, yes,’ I repeated with a sort of exasperation, ‘and it’s all your fault, your fault. What did you betray your secret for? Who forced you to tell your brother? He has been with me to-day, and told me what you said to him.’ I tried not to look at Acia, and kept walking with long strides up and down the room. ‘Now everything is over, everything.’

Acia tried to get up from her chair.

‘Stay,’ I cried, ‘stay, I implore you. You have to do with an honourable man – yes, an honourable man. But, in Heaven’s name, what upset you? Did you notice any change in me? But I could not hide my feelings from your brother when he came to me to-day.’

‘Why am I talking like this?’ I was thinking inwardly, and the idea that I was an immoral liar, that Gagin knew of our interview, that everything was spoilt, exposed – seemed buzzing persistently in my head.

‘I didn’t call my brother’ – I heard a frightened whisper from Acia: ‘he came of himself.’

‘See what you have done,’ I persisted. ‘Now you want to go away…’

‘Yes, I must go away,’ she murmured in the same soft voice. ‘I only asked you to come here to say good-bye.’

‘And do you suppose,’ I retorted, ‘it will be easy for me to part with you?’

‘But what did you tell my brother for?’ Acia said, in perplexity.

‘I tell you – I could not do otherwise. If you had not yourself betrayed yourself…’

‘I locked myself in my room,’ she answered simply. ‘I did not know the landlady had another key…’

This innocent apology on her lips at such a moment almost infuriated me at the time … and now I cannot think of it without emotion. Poor, honest, truthful child!

‘And now everything’s at an end!’ I began again, ‘everything. Now we shall have to part.’ I stole a look at Acia… Her face had quickly flushed crimson. She was, I felt it, both ashamed and afraid. I went on walking and talking as though in delirium. ‘You did not let the feeling develop which had begun to grow; you have broken off our relations yourself; you had no confidence in me; you doubted me…’

While I was talking, Acia bent more and more forward, and suddenly slid on her knees, dropped her head on her arms, and began sobbing. I ran up to her and tried to lift her up, but she would not let me. I can’t bear women’s tears; at the sight of them I am at my wits’ end at once.

‘Anna Nikolaevna, Acia,’ I kept repeating, ‘please, I implore you, for God’s sake, stop…’ I took her hand again…

But, to my immense astonishment she suddenly jumped up, rushed with lightning swiftness to the door, and vanished…

When, a few minutes later, Frau Luise came into the room I was still standing in the very middle of it, as it were, thunderstruck. I could not believe this interview could possibly have come to such a quick, such a stupid end, when I had not said a hundredth part of what I wanted to say, and what I ought to have said, when I did not know myself in what way it would be concluded…

‘Is Fraülein gone?’ Frau Luise asked me, raising her yellow eyebrows right up to her false front.

I stared at her like a fool, and went away.

XVII

I made my way out of the town and struck out straight into the open country. I was devoured by anger, frenzied anger. I hurled reproaches at myself. How was it I had not seen the reason that had forced Acia to change the place of our meeting; how was it I did not appreciate what it must have cost her to go to that old woman; how was it I had not kept her? Alone with her, in that dim, half-dark room I had had the force, I had had the heart to repulse her, even to reproach her… Now her image simply pursued me. I begged her forgiveness. The thought of that pale face, those wet and timid eyes, of her loose hair falling on the drooping neck, the light touch of her head against my breast maddened me. ‘Yours’ – I heard her whisper. ‘I acted from conscientious motives,’ I assured myself… Not true! Did I really desire such a termination? Was I capable of parting from her? Could I really do without her?

‘Madman! madman!’ I repeated with exasperation…

Meanwhile night was coming on. I walked with long strides towards the house where Acia lived.

XVIII

Gagin came out to meet me.

‘Have you seen my sister?’ he shouted to me while I was still some distance off.

‘Why, isn’t she at home?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘She hasn’t come back?’

‘No. I was in fault,’ Gagin went on. ‘I couldn’t restrain myself. Contrary to our agreement, I went to the chapel; she was not there; didn’t she come, then?’

‘She hasn’t been at the chapel?’

‘And you haven’t seen her?’

I was obliged to admit I had seen her.

‘Where?’

‘At Frau Luise’s. I parted from her an hour ago,’ I added. ‘I felt sure she had come home.’

‘We will wait a little,’ said Gagin.

We went into the house and sat down near each other. We were silent. We both felt very uncomfortable. We were continually looking round, staring at the door, listening. At last Gagin got up.

‘Oh, this is beyond anything!’ he cried. ‘My heart’s in my mouth. She’ll be the death of me, by God!.. Let’s go and look for her.’

We went out. It was quite dark by now, outside.

‘What did you talk about to her?’ Gagin asked me, as he pulled his hat over his eyes.

‘I only saw her for five minutes,’ I answered. ‘I talked to her as we agreed.’

‘Do you know what?’ he replied, ‘it’s better for us to separate. In that way we are more likely to come across her before long. In any case come back here within an hour.’

XIX

I went hurriedly down from the vineyard and rushed into the town. I walked rapidly through all the streets, looked in all directions, even at Frau Luise’s windows, went back to the Rhine, and ran along the bank… From time to time I was met by women’s figures, but Acia was nowhere to be seen. There was no anger gnawing at my heart now. I was tortured by a secret terror, and it was not only terror that I felt … no, I felt remorse, the most intense regret, and love, – yes! the tenderest love. I wrung my hands. I called ‘Acia’ through the falling darkness of the night, first in a low voice, then louder and louder; I repeated a hundred times over that I loved her. I vowed I would never part from her. I would have given everything in the world to hold her cold hand again, to hear again her soft voice, to see her again before me… She had been so near, she had come to me, her mind perfectly made up, in perfect innocence of heart and feelings, she had offered me her unsullied youth … and I had not folded her to my breast, I had robbed myself of the bliss of watching her sweet face blossom with delight and the peace of rapture… This thought drove me out of my mind.

‘Where can she have gone? What can she have done with herself?’ I cried in an agony of helpless despair… I caught a glimpse of something white on the very edge of the river. I knew the place; there stood there, over the tomb of a man who had been drowned seventy years ago, a stone cross half-buried in the ground, bearing an old inscription. My heart sank … I ran up to the cross; the white figure vanished. I shouted ‘Acia!’ I felt frightened myself by my uncanny voice, but no one called back.

I resolved to go and see whether Gagin had found her.

XX

As I climbed swiftly up the vineyard path I caught sight of a light in Acia’s room… This reassured me a little.