A Lear of the Steppes and Other Stories

"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." VI

A WHOLE fortnight passed by. I visited the Gagins every day. Acia seemed to avoid me, but she did not permit herself one of the mischievous tricks which had so surprised me the first two days of our acquaintance. She seemed secretly wounded or embarrassed; she even laughed less than at first. I watched her with curiosity.

She spoke French and German fairly well; but one could easily see, in everything she did, that she had not from childhood been brought up under a woman's care, and that she had had a curious, irregular education that had nothing in common with Gagin's bringing up. He was, in spite of the Vandyck hat and the blouse, so thoroughly every inch of him the soft, half-effeminate Great Russian nobleman, while she was not like the young girl of the same class. In all her movements there was a certain restlessness. The wild stock had not long been grafted, the new wine was still fermenting. By nature modest and timid, she was exasperated by her own shyness, and in her exasperation tried to force herself to be bold and free and easy, in which she was not always successful. I sometimes began to talk to her about her life in Russia, about her past; she answered my questions reluctantly. I found out, however, that before going abroad she had lived a long while in the country. I came upon her once, intent on a book, alone. With her head on her hands and her fingers thrust into her hair, she was eagerly devouring the lines.

"Bravo!" I said, going up to her; "how studious you are!" She raised her head, and looked gravely and severely at me. "You think I can do nothing but laugh," she said, and was about to go away. . . .

I glanced at the title of the book; it was some French novel.

"I can't commend your choice, though," I observed.

"What am I to read then?" she cried; and flinging the book on the table, she added--"so I'd better go and play the fool," and ran out into the garden.

That same day, in the evening, I was reading Gagin Hermann und Dorothea. Acia at first kept fidgeting about us, then all at once she stopped, listened, softly sat down by me, and heard the reading through to the end. The next day I hardly knew her again, till I guessed it had suddenly occurred to her to be as domestic and discreet as Dorothea. In fact I saw her as a half-enigmatic creature. Vain, self-conscious to the last degree, she attracted me even when I was irritated by her. Of one thing only I felt more and more convinced; and that was, that she was not Gagin's sister. His manner with her was not like a brother's, it was too affectionate, too considerate, and at the same time a little constrained.

A curious incident apparently confirmed my suspicions.

One evening, when I reached the vineyard where the Gagins lived, I found the gate fastened. Without losing much time in deliberation, I made my way to a broken-down place I had noticed before in the hedge and jumped over it. Not far from this spot there was a little arbour of acacias on one side of the path. I got up to it and was just about to pass it. . . . Suddenly I was struck by Acia's voice passionately and tearfully uttering the following words:

"No, I"ll love no one but you, no, no, I will love you only, for ever!"

"Come, Acia, calm yourself," said Gagin; "you know I believe you."

Their voices came from the arbour. I could see them both through the thin net-work of leaves. They did not notice me.

"You, you only," she repeated, and she flung herself on his neck, and with broken sobs began kissing him and clinging to his breast.

"Come, come," he repeated, lightly passing his hand over her hair.

For a few instants I stood motionless . . . Suddenly I started--should I go up to them?--"On no consideration," flashed through my head. With rapid footsteps I turned back to the hedge, leaped over it into the road, and almost running, went home. I smiled, rubbed my hands, wondered at the chance which had so suddenly confirmed my surmises (I did not for one instant doubt their accuracy) and yet there was a great bitterness in my heart. What accomplished hypocrites they are, though, I thought. And what for? Why should he try to take me in? I shouldn't have expected it of him . . . And what a touching scene of reconciliation! VII

I SLEPT badly, and next morning got up early, fastened a knapsack on my back, and telling my landlady not to expect me back for the night, set off walking to the mountains, along the upper part of the stream on which Z. is situated. These mountains, offsets of the ridge known as the Hundsrück, are very interesting from a geological point of view. They are especially remarkable for the purity and regularity of the strata of basalt; but I was in no mood for geological observations. I did not take stock of what was passing within me. One feeling was clear to me; a disinclination to see the Gagins. I assured myself that the sole reason of my sudden distaste for their society was anger at their duplicity. Who forced them to pass themselves off as brother and sister? However, I tried not to think about them; I sauntered in leisurely fashion about the mountains and valleys, sat in the village inns, talking peacefully to the innkeepers and people drinking in them, or lay on a flat stone warmed by the sun, and watched the clouds floating by. Luckily it was exquisite weather. In such pursuits I passed three days, and not without pleasure, though my heart did ache at times. My own mood was in perfect harmony with the peaceful nature of that quiet countryside.

I gave myself up entirely to the play of circumstances, of fleeting impressions; in slow succession they flowed through my soul, and left on it at last one general sensation, in which all I had seen, felt, and heard in those three days was mingled--all; the delicate fragrance of resin in the forest, the call and tap of the woodpeckers, the never-ceasing chatter of the clear brooks, with spotted trout lying in the sand at the bottom, the somewhat softened outlines of the mountains, the surly rocks, the little clean villages, with respectable old churches and trees, the storks in the meadows, the neat mills with swiftly turning wheels, the beaming faces of the villagers, their blue smocks and grey stockings, the creaking, deliberately-moving wagons, drawn by sleek horses, and sometimes cows, the long-haired young men, wandering on the clean roads, planted with apple and pear trees. . . .

Even now I like to recall my impressions of those days. Good luck go with thee, modest nook of Germany, with thy simple plenty, with traces everywhere of busy hands, of patient though leisurely toil. . . . Good luck and peace to thee!

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 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 gunpowder, 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. IX

ACIA met us in the very doorway of the house. I expected a laugh again; but she came to meet us, pale and silent, with downcast eyes.

"Here he is again," Gagin began, "and he wanted to come back of his own accord, observe."

Acia looked at me inquiringly. It was my turn now to hold out my hand, and this time I pressed her chilly fingers warmly. I felt very sorry for her. I understood now a great deal in her that had puzzled me before; her inward restlessness, her want of breeding, her desire to be striking--all became clear to me. I had had a peep into that soul; a secret scourge was always tormenting her, her ignorant self-consciousness struggled in confused alarm, but her whole nature strove towards truth. I understood why this strange little girl attracted me; it was not only by the half-wild charm of her slender body that she attracted me; I liked her soul.

Gagin began rummaging among his canvases. I suggested to Acia that she should take a turn with me in the vineyard. She agreed at once, with cheerful and almost humble readiness. We went half-way down the mountain, and sat down on a broad stone.

"And you weren't dull without us?" Acia began.

"And were you dull without me?" I queried.

Acia gave me a sidelong look.

"Yes," she answered. "Was it nice in the mountains?" she went on at once. "Were they high ones? Higher than the clouds? Tell me what you saw. You were telling my brother, but I didn't hear anything."

"It was of your own accord you went away," I remarked.

"I went away . . . because . . .--I'm not going away now," she added with a confiding caress in her voice. "You were angry to-day."

"I?"

"Yes, you."

"Upon my word, whatever for?"

"I don't know, but you were angry, and you went away angry. I was very much vexed that you went away like that, and I'm so glad you came back."

"And I'm glad I came back," I observed.

Acia gave herself a little shrug, as children often do when they are very pleased.

"Oh, I'm good at guessing!" she went on. "Sometimes, simply from the way papa coughed, I could tell in the next room whether he was pleased with me or not."

Till that day Acia had never once spoken to me of her father. I was struck by it.

"Were you fond of your father?" I said, and suddenly, to my intense annoyance, I felt I was reddening.

She made no answer, and blushed too. We were both silent. In the distance a smoking steamer was scudding along on the Rhine. We began watching it.

"Why don't you tell me about your tour?" Acia murmured.

"Why did you laugh to-day directly you saw me?" I asked.

"I don't know really. Sometimes I want to cry, but I laugh. You mustn't judge me--by what I do. Oh, by-the-bye, what a story that is about the Lorelei! Is that her rock we can see? They say she used to drown every one, but as soon as she fell in love she threw herself in the water. I like that story. Frau Luise tells me all sorts of stories. Frau Luise has a black cat with yellow eyes. . . ."

Acia raised her head and shook her curls.

"Ah, I am happy," she said.

At that instant there floated across to us broken, monotonous sounds. Hundreds of voices in unison and at regular intervals were repeating a chanted litany. The crowd of pilgrims moved slowly along the road below with crosses and banners. . . .

"I should like to go with them," said Acia, listening to the sounds of the voices gradually growing fainter.

"Are you so religious?"

"I should like to go far away on a pilgrimage, on some great exploit," she went on. "As it is, the days pass by, life passes by, and what have we done?"

"You are ambitious," I observed. "You want to live to some purpose, to leave some trace behind you. . . ."

"Is that impossible, then?"

"Impossible," I was on the point of repeating. . . . But I glanced at her bright eyes, and only said:

"You can try."

"Tell me," began Acia, after a brief silence during which shadows passed over her face, which had already turned pale, "did you care much for that lady? . . . You remember my brother drank her health at the ruins the day after we first knew you."

I laughed.

"Your brother was joking. I never cared for any lady; at any rate, I don't care for one now."

"And what do you like in women?" she asked, throwing back her head with innocent curiosity.

"What a strange question!" I cried.

Acia was a little disconcerted.

"I ought not to ask you such a question, ought I? Forgive me, I'm used to chattering away about anything that comes into my head. That's why I'm afraid to speak."

"Speak, for God's sake, don't be afraid," I hastened to intervene; "I'm so glad you're leaving off being shy at last."

Acia looked down, and laughed a soft light-hearted laugh; I had never heard such a laugh from her.

"Well, tell me about something," she went on, stroking out the skirt of her dress, and arranging the folds over her legs, as though she were settling herself for a long while; "tell me or read me something, just as you read us, do you remember, from Oniegin. . ."

She suddenly grew pensive-- "Where now is the cross and the branches' shade

Over my poor mother's grave!"

She murmured in a low voice.

"That's not as it is in Pushkin," I observed.

"But I should like to have been Tatiana," she went on, in the same dreamy tone. "Tell me a story," she suddenly added eagerly.

But I was not in a mood for telling stories. I was watching her, all bathed in the bright sunshine, all peace and gentleness. Everything was joyously radiant about us, below, and above us--sky, earth, and waters; the very air seemed saturated with brilliant light.

"Look, how beautiful!" I said, unconsciously sinking my voice.

"Yes, it is beautiful," she answered just as softly, not looking at me. "If only you and I were birds--how we would soar, how we would fly. . . . We'd simply plunge into that blue . . . But we're not birds."

"But we may grow wings," I rejoined.

"How so?"

"Live a little longer--and you'll find out. There are feelings that lift us above the earth. Don't trouble yourself, you will have wings."

"Have you had them?"

"How shall I say . . . I think up till now I never have taken flight."

Acia grew pensive once more. I bent a little towards her.

"Can you waltz?" she asked me suddenly.

"Yes," I answered, rather puzzled.

"Well, come along then, come along . . . I'll ask my brother to play us a waltz. . . . We'll fancy we are flying, that our wings have grown."

She ran into the house. I ran after her, and in a few minutes, we were turning round and round the narrow little room, to the sweet strains of Lanner. Acia waltzed splendidly, with enthusiasm. Something soft and womanly suddenly peeped through the childish severity of her profile. Long after, my arm kept the feeling of the contact of her soft waist, long after I heard her quickened breathing close to my ear, long after I was haunted by dark, immobile, almost closed eyes in a pale but eager face, framed in by fluttering curls. X

ALL that day passed most delightfully. We were as merry as children. Acia was very sweet and simple. Gagin was delighted, as he watched her. I went home late. When I had got out into the middle of the Rhine, I asked the ferryman to let the boat float down with the current. The old man pulled up his oars, and the majestic river bore us along. As I looked about me, listened, brooded over recollections, I was suddenly aware of a secret restlessness astir in my heart . . . I lifted my eyes skywards, but there was no peace even in the sky; studded with stars, it seemed all moving, quivering, twinkling; I bent over to the river--but even there, even in those cold dark depths, the stars were trembling and glimmering; I seemed to feel an exciting quickening of life on all sides--and a sense of alarm rose up within me too. I leaned my elbows on the boat's edge . . . The whispering of the wind in my ears, the soft gurgling of the water at the rudder worked on my nerves, and the fresh breath of the river did not cool me; a nightingale was singing on the bank, and stung me with the sweet poison of its notes. Tears rose into my eyes, but they were not the tears of aimless rapture. . . . What I was feeling was not the vague sense I had known of late of all-embracing desire when the soul expands, resounds, when it feels that it grasps all, loves all. . . . No! it was the thirst for happiness aflame in me. I did not dare yet to call it by its name--but happiness, happiness full and overflowing--that was what I wanted, that was what I pined for. . . . The boat floated on, and the old ferryman sat dozing as he leant on his oars. XI

As I set off next day to the Gagins, I did not ask myself whether I was in love with Acia, but I thought a great deal about her, her fate absorbed me, I rejoiced at our unexpected intimacy. I felt that it was only yesterday I had got to know her; till then she had turned away from me. And now, when she had at last revealed herself to me, in what a seductive light her image showed itself, how fresh it was for me, what secret fascinations were modestly peeping out. . . .

I walked boldly up the familiar road, gazing continually at the cottage, a white spot in the distance. I thought not of the future--not even of the morrow--I was very happy.

Acia flushed directly I came into the room; I noticed that she had dressed herself in her best again, but the expression of her face was not in keeping with her finery; it was mournful. And I had come in such high spirits! I even fancied that she was on the point of running away as usual, but she controlled herself and remained. Gagin was in that peculiar condition of artistic heat and intensity which seizes amateurs all of a sudden, like a fit, when they imagine they are succeeding in "catching nature and pinning her down." He was standing with dishevelled locks, and besmeared with paint, before a stretched canvas, and flourishing the brush over it; he almost savagely nodded to me, turned away, screwed up his eyes, and bent again over his picture. I did not hinder him, but went and sat down by Acia. Slowly her dark eyes turned to me.

"You're not the same to-day as yesterday," I observed, after ineffectual efforts to call up a smile on her lips.

"No, I'm not," she answered, in a slow and dull voice. "But that means nothing. I did not sleep well, I was thinking all night."

"What about?"

"Oh, I thought about so many things. It's a way I have had from childhood; ever since I used to live with mother--"

She uttered the word with an effort, and then repeated again--

"When I used to live with mother . . . I used to think why it was no one could tell what would happen to him; and sometimes one sees trouble coming--and one can't escape; and how it is one can never tell all the truth . . . Then I used to think I knew nothing, and that I ought to learn. I want to be educated over again; I'm very badly educated. I can't play the piano, I can't draw, and even sewing I do very badly. I have no talent for anything; I must be a very dull person to be with."

"You're unjust to yourself," I replied; "you've read a lot, you're cultivated, and with your cleverness--"

"Why, am I clever?" she asked with such naïve interest, that I could not help laughing; but she did not even smile. "Brother, am I clever?" she asked Gagin.

He made her no answer, but went on working, continually changing brushes and raising his arm.

"I don't know myself what is in my head," Acia continued, with the same dreamy air. "I am sometimes afraid of myself, really . Ah, I should like . . . Is it true that women ought not to read a great deal?"

"A great deal's not wanted, but . . ."

"Tell me what I ought to read? Tell me what I ought to do. I will do everything you tell me," she added, turning to me with innocent confidence.

I could not at once find a reply.

"You won't be dull with me, though?"

"What nonsense," I was beginning. . . .

"All right, thanks!" Acia put in; "I was thinking you would be bored."

And her little hot hand clasped mine warmly.

"N!" Gagin cried at that instant; "isn't that background too dark?"

I went up to him. Acia got up and went away. 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 straight-forward 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.

I went up to the house. Th e door below was fastened. I knocked. A window on the ground floor was cautiously opened, and Gagin's head appeared.

"Have you found her?" I asked.

"She has come back," he answered in a whisper. "She is in her own room undressing. Everything is all right."

"Thank God!" I cried, in an indescribable rush of joy. "Thank God! now everything is right. But you know we must have another talk."

"Another time," he replied, softly drawing the casement towards him. "Another time; but now good-bye."

"Till to-morrow," I said. "To-morrow everything shall be arranged."

"Good-bye," repeated Gagin. The window was closed. I was on the point of knocking at the window. I was on the point of telling Gagin there and then that I wanted to ask him for his sister's hand. But such a proposal at such a time. . . . "To-morrow," I reflected, "to-morrow I shall be happy. . . ."

To-morrow I shall be happy! Happiness has no to-morrow, no yesterday; it thinks not on the past, and dreams not of the future; it has the present--not a day even--a moment.

I don't remember how I got to Z. It was not my legs that carried me, nor a boat that ferried me across; I felt that I was borne along by great, mighty wings. I passed a bush where a nightingale was singing. I stopped and listened long; I fancied it sang my love and happiness. XXI

WHEN next morning I began to approach the little house I knew so well, I was struck with one circumstance; all the windows in it were open, and the door too stood open; some bits of paper were lying about in front of the doorway; a maidservant appeared with a broom at the door.

I went up to her. . . .

"They are gone!" she bawled, before I had time to inquire whether Gagin was at home.

"Gone?" . . . I repeated. "What do you mean by gone? Where?"

"They went away this morning at six o'clock, and didn't say where. Wait a minute, I believe you're Mr. N----, aren't you?"

"I'm Mr. N----, yes."

"The mistress has a letter for you." The maid went up-stairs and returned with a letter. "Here it is, if you please, sir."

"But it's impossible. . . . how can it be?". . . I was beginning. The servant stared blankly at me, and began sweeping.

I opened the letter. Gagin had written it; there was not one word from Acia. He began with begging me not to be angry at his sudden departure; he felt sure that, on mature consideration, I should approve of his decision. He could find no other way out of a position which might become difficult and dangerous. "Yesterday evening," he wrote, "while we were both waiting in silence for Acia, I realised conclusively the necessity of separation. There are prejudices I respect; I can understand that it's impossible for you to marry Acia. She has told me everything; for the sake of her peace of mind, I was bound to yield to her reiterated urgent entreaties." At the end of the letter he expressed his regret that our acquaintance had come to such a speedy termination, wished me every happiness, shook my hand in friendship, and besought me not to try to seek them out.

"What prejudices?" I cried aloud, as though he could hear me; "what rubbish! What right has he to snatch her from me? . . ." I clutched at my head.

The servant began loudly calling for her mistress; her alarm forced me to control myself. One idea was aflame within me; to find them, to find them wherever they might be. To accept this blow, to resign myself to such a calamity was impossible. I learnt from the landlady that they had got on to a steamer at six o'clock in the morning, and were going down the Rhine. I went to the ticket-office; there I was told they had taken tickets for Cologne. I was going home to pack up at once and follow them. I happened to pass the house of Frau Luise. . . . Suddenly I heard some one calling me. I raised my head, and at the window of the very room where I had met Acia the day before, I saw the burgomaster's widow. She smiled her loathsome smile, and called me. I turned away, and was going on; but she called after me that she had something for me. These words brought me to a halt, and I went into her house. How can I describe my feelings when I saw that room again? . . .

"By rights," began the old woman, showing me a little note; "I oughtn't to have given you this unless you'd come to me of your own accord, but you are such a fine young man. Take it."

I took the note.

On a tiny scrap of paper stood the following words, hurriedly scribbled in pencil:

"Good-bye, we shall not see each other again. It is not through pride that I'm going away--no, I can't help it. Yesterday when I was crying before you, if you had said one word to me, only one word--I should have stayed. You did not say it. It seems it is better so . . . Good-bye for ever!"

One word . . . Oh, madman that I was! That word . . . I had repeated it the night before with tears, I had flung it to the wind, I had said it over and over again among the empty fields . . . but I did not say it to her, I did not tell her I loved her . . . Indeed, I could not have uttered that word then. When I met her in that fatal room, I had as yet no clear consciousness of my love; it had not fully awakened even when I was sitting with her brother in senseless and burdensome silence . . . it flamed up with irrepressible force only a few instants later, when, terrified by the possibility of misfortune, I began to seek and call her . . . but then it was already too late. "But that's impossible!" I shall be told; I don't know whether it's possible, I know that it's the truth. Acia would not have gone away if there had been the faintest shade of coquetry in her, and if her position had not been a false one. She could not put up with what any other girl would have endured; I did not realise that. My evil genius had arrested an avowal on my lips at my last interview with Gagin at the darkened window, and the last thread I might have caught at, had slipped out of my fingers.

The same day I went back with my portmanteau packed, to L., and started for Cologne. I remember the steamer was already off, and I was taking a mental farewell of those streets, all those spots which I was never to forget--when I caught sight of Hannchen. She was sitting on a seat near the river. Her face was pale but not sad; a handsome young fellow was standing beside her, laughing and telling her some story; while on the other side of the Rhine my little Madonna peeped out of the green of the old ash-tree as mournfully as ever. XXII

IN Cologne I came upon traces of the Gagins; I found out they had gone to London; I pushed on in pursuit of them; but in London all my researches were in vain. It was long before I would resign myself, for a long while I persevered, but I was obliged, at last, to give up all hope of coming across them.

And I never saw them again--I never saw Acia. Vague rumours reached me about him, but she had vanished for ever for me. I don't even know whether she is alive. One day, a few years later, in a railway carriage abroad, I caught a glimpse of a woman, whose face vividly recalled those features I could never forget . . . but I was most likely deceived by a chance resemblance. Acia remained in my memory a little girl such as I had known her at the best time of my life, as I saw her the last time, leaning against the back of a low wooden chair.

But I must own I did not grieve over-long for her; I even came to the conclusion that fate had done all for the best, in not uniting me to Acia; I consoled myself with the reflection that I should probably not have been happy with such a wife. I was young then--and the future, the brief, swiftly-passing future seemed boundless to me then. Could not what had been be repeated, I thought, and better, fairer still? . . . I got to know other women--but the feeling Acia had aroused in me, that intense, tender, deep feeling has never come again. No! no eyes have for me taken the place of those that were once turned with love upon my eyes, to no heart, pressed to my breast, has my heart responded with such joyous sweet emotion! Condemned as I have been to a solitary life, without ties or family, I have led a dreary existence; but I keep as sacred relics, her little notes and the dry geranium, the flower she threw me once out of the window. It still retains a faint scent. while the hand that gave it, the hand I only once pressed to my lips, has perhaps long since decayed in the grave . . . And I myself, what has become of me? What is left of me, of those blissful, heart-stirring days, of those winged hopes and aspirations? The faint fragrance of an insignificant plant outlives all man's joys and sorrows--outlives man himself.

1857.

FAUST A STORY IN NINE LETTERS By Ivan Turgenev

Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren (FAUST, PART I.)

FIRST LETTER

FROM PAVEL ALEXANDROVITCH B. . . . TO

SEMYON NIKOLAEVITCH V. . . .

M---- VILLAGE, 6th June 1850.

I HAVE been here for three days, my dear fellow, and, as I promised, I take up my pen to write to you. It has been drizzling with fine rain ever since the morning; I can't go out; and I want a little chat with you, too. Here I am again in my old home, where--it's a dreadful thing to say--I have not been for nine long years. Really, as you may fancy, I have become quite a different man. Yes, utterly different, indeed; do you remember, in the drawing-room, the little tarnished looking-glass of my great-grandmother's, with the queer little curly scrolls in the corners---you always used to be speculating on what it had seen a hundred years ago--directly I arrived, I went up to it, and I could not help feeling disconcerted. I suddenly saw how old and changed I had become in these last years. But I am not alone in that respect. My little house, which was old and tottering long ago, will hardly hold together now, it is all on the slant, and seems sunk into the ground. My dear Vassilievna, the housekeeper (you can't have forgotten her; she used to regale you with such capital jam), is quite shrivelled up and bent; when she saw me, she could not call out, and did not start crying, but only moaned and choked, sank helplessly into a chair, and waved her hand. Old Terenty has some spirit left in him still; he holds himself up as much as ever, and turns out his feet as he walks. He still wears the same yellow nankeen breeches, and the same creaking goatskin slippers, with high heels and ribbons, which touched you so much sometimes, . . . but, mercy on us!--how the breeches flap about his thin legs nowadays! how white his hair has grown! and his face has shrunk up into a sort of little fist. When he speaks to me, when he begins directing the servants, and giving orders in the next room, it makes me laugh, and feel sorry for him. All his teeth are gone, and he mumbles with a whistling, hissing sound. On the other hand, the garden has got on wonderfully. The modest little plants of lilac, acacia, and honeysuckle (do you remember, we planted them together?) have grown into splendid, thick bushes. The birches, the maples--all that has spread out and grown tall; the avenues of lime-trees are particularly fine. I love those avenues, I love the tender grey, green colour, and the delicate fragrance of the air under their arching boughs; I love the changing network of rings of light on the dark earth--there is no sand here, you know. My favourite oak sapling has grown into a young oak tree. Yesterday I spent more than an hour in the middle of the day on a garden bench in its shade. I felt very happy. All about me the grass was deliciously luxuriant; a rich, soft, golden light lay upon everything; it made its way even into the shade . . . and the birds one could hear! You've not forgotten, I expect, that birds are a passion of mine? The turtle-doves cooed unceasingly; from time to time there came the whistle of the oriole; the chaffinch uttered its sweet little refrain; the blackbirds quarrelled and twittered; the cuckoo called far away; suddenly, like a mad thing, the woodpecker uttered its shrill cry. I listened and listened to this subdued, mingled sound, and did not want to move, while my heart was full of something between languor and tenderness.

And it's not only the garden that has grown up: I am continually coming across sturdy, thick-set lads, whom I cannot recognise as the little boys I used to know in old days. Your favourite, Timosha, has turned into a Timofay, such as you could never imagine. You had fears in those days for his health, and predicted consumption; but now you should just see his huge, red hands, as they stick out from the narrow sleeves of his nankeen coat, and the stout rounded muscles that stand out all over him! He has a neck like a bull's, and a head all over tight, fair curls--a regular Farnese Hercules. His face, though, has changed less than the others'; it is not even much larger in circumference, and the good-humoured, "gaping"--as you used to say--smile has remained the same. I have taken him to be my valet; I got rid of my Petersburg fellow at Moscow; he was really too fond of putting me to shame, and making me feel the superiority of his Petersburg manners. Of my dogs I have not found one; they have all passed away. Nefka lived longer than any of them--and she did not live till my return, as Argos lived till the return of Ulysses; she was not fated to look once more with her lustreless eyes on her master and companion in the chase. But Shavka is all right, and barks as hoarsely as ever, and has one ear torn just the same, and burrs sticking to his tail,--all just as it should be. I have taken up my abode in what was your room. It is true the sun beats down upon it, and there are a lot of flies in it; but there is less of the smell of the old house in it than in the other rooms. It's a queer thing; that musty, rather sour, faint smell has a powerful effect on my imagination; I don't mean that it's disagreeable to me, quite the contrary, but it produces melancholy, and, at last, depression. I am very fond, just as you are, of podgy old chests with brass plates, white armchairs with oval backs, and crooked legs, fly-blown glass lustres, with a big egg of lilac tinsel in the centre--of all sorts of ancestral furniture, in fact. But I can't stand seeing it all continually; a sort of agitated dejection (it is just that) takes possession of me. In the room where I have established myself, the furniture is of the most ordinary, home-made description. I have left, though, in the corner, a long narrow set of shelves, on which there is an old-fashioned set of blown green and blue glasses, just discernible through the dust. And I have had hung on the wall that portrait of a woman--you remember, in the black frame?--that you used to call the portrait of Manon Lescaut. It has got rather darker in these nine years; but the eyes have the same pensive, sly, and tender look, the lips have the same capricious, melancholy smile, and the half-plucked rose falls as softly as ever from her slender fingers. I am greatly amused by the blinds in my room. They were once green, but have been turned yellow by the sun; on them are depicted, in dark colours, scenes from d'Arlencourt's Hermit. On one curtain the hermit, with an immense beard, goggle-eyes, and sandals on his feet, is carrying off a young lady with dishevelled locks to the mountains. On another one, there is a terrific combat going on between four knights wearing birettas, and with puffs on their shoulders; one, much foreshortened, lies slain--in fact, there are pictures of all sorts of horrors, while all about there is such unbroken peace, and the blinds themselves throw such soft light on the ceiling. . . . A sort of inward calm has come upon me since I have been settled here; one wants to do nothing, one wants to see no one, one looks forward to nothing, one is too lazy for thought, but not too lazy for musing; two different things, as you know well. Memories of childhood, at first, came flooding upon me-- wherever I went, whatever I looked at, they surged up on all sides, distinct, to the smallest detail, and, as it were, immovable, in their clearly defined outlines. . . . Then these memories were succeeded by others, then . . . then I gradually turned away from the past, and all that was left was a sort of drowsy heaviness in my heart. Fancy! as I was sitting on the dike, under a willow, I suddenly and unexpectedly burst out crying, and should have gone on crying a long while, in spite of my advanced years, if I had not been put to shame by a passing peasant woman, who stared at me with curiosity, then, without turning her face towards me, gave a low bow from the waist, and passed on. I should be very glad to remain in the same mood (I shan't do any more crying, of course) till I go away from here, that is, till September, and should be very sorry if any of my neighbours should take it into his head to call on me. However there is no danger, I fancy, of that; I have no near neighbours here. You will understand me, I'm sure; you know yourself, by experience, how often solitude is beneficial . . . I need it now after wanderings of all sorts.

But I shan't be dull. I have brought a few books with me, and I have a pretty fair library here. Yesterday, I opened all the bookcases, and was a long while rummaging about among the musty books. I found many curious things I had not noticed before: Candide, in a manuscript translation of somewhere about 1770; newspapers and magazines of the same period; the Triumphant Chameleon (that is, Mirabeau), le Paysan Perverti, etc. I came across children's books, my own, and my father's, and my grandmother's, and even, fancy, my great grandmother's; in one dilapidated French grammar in a particoloured binding, was written in fat letters: "Ce livre appartient à Mile Eudoxie de Lavrine," and it was dated 1741. I saw books I had brought at different times from abroad, among others, Goethe's Faust. You're not aware, perhaps, that there was a time when I knew Faust by heart (the first part, of course) word for word; I was never tired of reading it. . . But other days, other dreams, and for the last nine years, it has so happened, that I have scarcely had a Goethe in my hand. It was with an indescribable emotion that I saw the little book I knew so well, again (a poor edition of 1828). I brought it away with me, lay down on the bed, and began to read. How all that splendid first scene affected me! The entrance of the Spirit of the Earth, the words, you remember--"on the tide of life, in the whirl of creation," stirred a long unfamiliar tremor and shiver of ecstasy. I recalled everything: Berlin, and student days, and Fräulein Clara Stick, and Zeidelmann in the rôle of Mephistopheles, and the music of Radzivil, and all and everything. . . . It was a long while before I could get to sleep: my youth rose up and stood before me like a phantom; it ran like fire, like poison through my veins, my heart leaped and would not be still, something plucked at its chords, and yearnings began surging up. . . .

You see what fantasies your friend gives himself up to, at almost forty, when he sits in solitude in his solitary little house! What if any one could have peeped at me! Well, what? I shouldn't have been a bit ashamed of myself. To be ashamed is a sign of youth, too; and I have begun (do you know how?) to notice that I'm getting old. I'll tell you how. I try in these days to make as much as I can of my happy sensations, and to make little of my sad ones, and in the days of my youth I did just the opposite. At times, one used to carry about one's melancholy as if it were a treasure, and be ashamed of a cheerful mood . . . But for all that, it strikes me, that in spite of all my experience of life, there is something in the world, friend Horatio, which I have not experienced, and that "something" almost the most important.

Oh, what have I worked myself up to! Farewell for the present! What are you about in Petersburg? By the way; Savely, my country cook, wishes to send his duty to you. He too is older, but not very much so, he is grown rather corpulent, stouter all over. He is as good as ever at chicken-soup, with stewed onions, cheesecakes with goffered edges, and peagoose--peagoose is the famous dish of the steppes, which makes your tongue white and rough for twenty-four hours after. On the other hand, he roasts the meat as he always did, so that you can hammer on the plate with it--hard as a board. But I must really say, good-bye! Yours,

P. B. SECOND LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, June 12, 1850.

I HAVE rather an important piece of news to tell you, my dear friend. Listen! Yesterday I felt disposed for a walk before dinner--only not in the garden; I walked along the road towards the town. Walking rapidly, quite aimlessly, along a straight, long road is very pleasant. You feel as if you're doing something, hurrying somewhere. I look up; a coach is coming towards me. Surely not some one to see me, I wondered with secret terror . . . No: there was a gentleman with moustaches in the carriage, a stranger to me. I felt reassured. But all of a sudden, when he got abreast with me, this gentleman told the coachman to stop the horses, politely raised his cap, and still more politely asked me, "was not I" . . . mentioning my name. I too came to a standstill, and with the fortitude of a prisoner brought up for trial, replied that I was myself; while I stared like a sheep at the gentleman with the moustaches and said to myself--"I do believe I've seen him somewhere!"

"You don't recognise me?" he observed, as he got out of the coach.

"No, I don't."

"But I knew you directly."

Explanations followed; it appeared that it was Priemkov--do you remember?--a fellow we used to know at the university. "Why, is that an important piece of news?" you are asking yourself at this instant, my dear Semyon Nikolaitch. "Priemkov, to the best of my recollection, was rather a dull chap; no harm in him though, and not a fool." Just so, my dear boy; but hear the rest of our conversation.

"I was delighted," says he, "when I heard you had come to your country-place, into our neighbourhood. But I was not alone in that feeling."

"Allow me to ask," I questioned: "who was so kind. . ."

"My wife."

"Your wife!"

"Yes, my wife; she is an old acquaintance of yours."

"May I ask what was your wife's name?"

"Vera Nikolaevna; she was an Eltsov . . ."

"Vera Nikolaevna!" I could not help exclaiming . . .

This it is, which is the important piece of news I spoke of at the beginning of my letter.

But perhaps you don't see anything important even in this . . . I shall have to tell you something of my past . . . long past, life.

When we both left the university in 183-- I was three-and-twenty. You went into the service; I decided, as you know, to go to Berlin. But there was nothing to be done in Berlin before October. I wanted to spend the summer in Russia--in the country--to have a good lazy holiday for the last time; and then to set to work in earnest. How far this last project was carried out, there is no need to enlarge upon here . . . "But where am I to spend the summer?" I asked myself. I did not want to go to my own place; my father had died not long before, I had no near relations, I was afraid of the solitude and dreariness . . . And so I was delighted to receive an invitation from a distant cousin to stay at his country-place in T . . . province. He was a well-to-do, good-natured, simple-hearted man; he lived in style as a country magnate, and had a palatial country house. I went to stay there. My cousin had a large family; two sons and five daughters. Besides them, there was always a crowd of people in his house. Guests were for ever arriving; and yet it wasn't jolly at all. The days were spent in noisy entertainments, there was no chance of being by oneself. Everything was done in common, every one tried to be entertaining, to invent some amusement, and at the end of the day every one was fearfully exhausted. There was something vulgar about the way we lived. I was already beginning to look forward to getting away, and was only waiting till my cousin's birthday festivities were over, when on the very day of those festivities, at the ball, I saw Vera Nikolaevna Eltsov--and I stayed on.

She was at that time sixteen. She was living with her mother on a little estate four miles from my cousin's place. Her father--a remarkable man, I have been told--had risen rapidly to the grade of colonel, and would have attained further distinctions, but he died young, accidentally shot by a friend when out shooting. Vera Nikolaevna was a baby at the time of his death. Her mother too was an exceptional woman; she spoke several languages, and was very well informed. She was seven or eight years older than her husband whom she had married for love; he had run away with her in secret from her father's house. She never got over his loss, and, till the day of her death (I heard from Priemkov that she had died soon after her daughter's marriage), she never wore anything but black. I have a vivid recollection of her face: it was expressive, dark, with thick hair beginning to turn grey; large, severe, lustreless eyes, and a straight, fine nose. Her father--his surname was Ladanov--had lived for fifteen years in Italy. Vera Nikolaevna's mother was the daughter of a simple Albanian peasant girl, who, the day after giving birth to her child, was killed by her betrothed lover--a Transteverino peasant-- from whom Ladanov had enticed her away. . . . The story made a great sensation at the time. On his return to Russia, Ladanov never left his house, nor even his study; he devoted himself to chemistry, anatomy, and magical arts; tried to discover means to prolong human life, fancied he could hold intercourse with spirits, and call up the dead. . . . The neighbours looked upon him as a sorcerer. He was extremely fond of his daughter, and taught her everything himself: but he never forgave her elopement with Eltsov, never allowed either of them to come into his presence, predicted a life of sorrow for both of them, and died in solitude. When Madame Eltsov was left a widow, she devoted her whole time to the education of her daughter, and scarcely saw any friends. When I first met Vera Nikolaevna, she had--just fancy--never been in a town in her life, not even in the town of her district.

Vera Nikolaevna was not like the common run of Russian girls; there was the stamp of something special upon her. I was struck from the first minute by the extraordinary repose of all her movements and remarks. She seemed free from any sort of disturbance or agitation; she answered simply and intelligently, and listened attentively. The expression of her face was sincere and truthful as a child's, but a little cold and immobile, though not dreamy. She was rarely gay, and not in the way other girls are; the serenity of an innocent heart shone out in everything about her, and cheered one more than any gaiety. She was not tall, and had a very good figure, rather slender; she had soft, regular features, a lovely smooth brow, light golden hair, a straight nose, like her mother's, and rather full lips; her dark grey eyes looked out somewhat too directly from under soft, upward-turned eyelashes. Her hands were small, and not very pretty; one never sees hands like hers on people of talent . . . and, as a fact, Vera Nikolaevna had no special talents. Her voice rang out clear as a child of seven's. I was presented to her mother at my cousin's ball, and a few days later I called on them for the first time.

Madame Eltsov was a very strange woman, a woman of character, of strong will and concentration. She had a great influence on me; I at once respected her and feared her. Everything with her was done on a principle, and she had educated her daughter too on a principle, though she did not interfere with her freedom. Her daughter loved her and trusted her blindly. Madame Eltsov had only to give her a book, and say--"Don't read that page," she would prefer to skip the preceding page as well, and would certainly never glance at the page interdicted. But Madame Eltsov too had her idées fixes, her fads. She was mortally afraid, for instance, of anything that might work upon the imagination. And so her daughter reached the age of seventeen without ever having read a novel or a poem, while in Geography, History, and even Natural History, she would often put me to shame, graduate as I was, and a graduate, as you know, not by any means low down on the list either. I used to try and argue with Madame Eltsov about her fad, though it was difficult to draw her into conversation; she was very silent. She simply shook her head.

"You tell me," she said at last, "that reading poetry is both useful and pleasant. . . . I consider one must make one's choice early in life; either the useful or the pleasant, and abide by it once for all. I, too, tried at one time to unite the two. . . . That's impossible, and leads to ruin or vulgarity."

Yes, a wonderful being she was, that woman, an upright, proud nature, not without a certain fanaticism and superstition of her own. "I am afraid of life," she said to me one day. And really she was afraid of it, afraid of those secret forces on which life rests and which rarely, but so suddenly, break out. Woe to him who is their sport! These forces had shown themselves in fearful shape for Madame Eltsov; think of her mother's death, her husband's, her father's. . . . Any one would have been panic-stricken. I never saw her smile. She had, as it were, locked herself up and thrown the key into the water. She must have suffered great grief in her time, and had never shared it with any one; she had hidden it all away within herself. She had so thoroughly trained herself not to give way to her feelings that she was even ashamed to express her passionate love for her daughter; she never once kissed her in my presence, and never used any endearing names, always Vera. I remember one saying of hers; I happened to say to her that all of us modern people were half broken by life. "It's no good being half broken," she observed; "one must be broken in thoroughly or let it alone. . . ."

Very few people visited Madame Eltsov; but I went often to see her. I was secretly aware that she looked on me with favour; and I liked Vera Nikolaevna very much indeed. We used to talk and walk together. . . . Her mother was no check upon us; the daughter did not like to be away from her mother, and I, for my part, felt no craving for solitary talks with her. . . . Vera Nikolaevna had a strange habit of thinking aloud; she used at night in her sleep to talk loudly and distinctly about what had impressed her during the day. One day, looking at me attentively, leaning softly, as her way was, on her hand, she said, "It seems to me that B. is a good person, but there's no relying on him." The relations existing between us were of the friendliest and most tranquil; only once I fancied I detected somewhere far off in the very depths of her clear eyes something strange, a sort of softness and tenderness. . . . But perhaps I was mistaken.

Meanwhile the time was slipping by, and it was already time for me to prepare for departure. But still I put it off. At times, when I thought, when I realised that soon I should see no more of this sweet girl I had grown so fond of, I felt sick at heart. . . . Berlin began to lose its attractive force. I had not the courage to acknowledge to myself what was going on within me, and, indeed, I didn't understand what was taking place,--it was as though a cloud were overhanging my soul. At last one morning everything suddenly became clear to me. "Why seek further, what is there to strive towards? Why, I shall not attain to truth in any case. Isn't it better to stay here, to be married?" And, imagine, the idea of marriage had no terrors for me in those days. On the contrary, I rejoiced in it. More than that; that day I declared my intentions; only not to Vera Nikolaevna, as one would naturally suppose, but to Madame Eltsov. The old lady looked at me.

"No," she said; "my dear boy, go to Berlin, get broken in thoroughly. You're a good fellow; but it's not a husband like you that's needed for Vera."

I hung my head, blushed, and, what will very likely surprise you still more, inwardly agreed with Madame Eltsov on the spot. A week later I went away, and since then I have not seen her nor Vera Nikolaevna.

I have related this episode briefly because I know you don't care for anything "meandering." When I got to Berlin I very quickly forgot Vera Nikolaevna. . . . But I will own that hearing of her so unexpectedly has excited me. I am impressed by the idea that she is so close, that she is my neighbour, that I shall see her in a day or two. The past seems suddenly to have sprung up out of the earth before my eyes, and to have rushed down upon me. Priemkov informed me that he was coming to call upon me with the very object of renewing our old acquaintance, and that he should look forward to seeing me at his house as soon as I could possibly come. He told me he had been in the cavalry, had retired with the rank of lieutenant, had bought an estate about six miles from me, and was intending to devote himself to its management, that he had had three children, but that two had died, and he had only a little girl of five surviving.

"And does your wife remember me?" I inquired.

"Yes, she remembers you," he replied, with some slight hesitation. "Of course, she was a child, one may say, in those days; but her mother always spoke very highly of you, and you know how precious every word of her poor mother's is to her."

I recalled Madame Eltsov's words, that I was not suitable for her Vera. . . . "I suppose you were suitable," I thought, with a sidelong look at Priemkov. He spent some hours with me. He is a very nice, dear, good fellow, speaks so modestly, and looks at me so good-naturedly. One can't help liking him . . . but his intellectual powers have not developed since we used to know him. I shall certainly go and see him, possibly to-morrow. I am exceedingly curious to see how Vera Nikolaevna has turned out.

You, spiteful fellow, are most likely laughing at me as you read this, sitting at your directors' table. But I shall write and tell you, all the same, the impression she makes on me. Goodbye--till my next.--Yours,

P. B. THIRD LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, June 16, 1850.

WELL, my dear boy, I have been to her house; I have seen her. First of all I must tell you one astonishing fact: you may believe me or not as you like, but she has scarcely changed at all either in face or in figure. When she came to meet me, I almost cried out in amazement; it was simply a little girl of seventeen! Only her eyes are not a little girl's; but then her eyes were never like a child's, even in her young days,--they were too clear. But the same composure, the same serenity, the same voice, not one line on her brow, as though she had been laid in the snow all these years. And she's twenty-eight now, and has had three children. . . . It's incomprehensible! Don't imagine, please, that I had some preconceived preference, and so am exaggerating; quite the other way; I don't like this absence of change in her a bit.

A woman of eight-and-twenty, a wife and a mother, ought not to be like a little girl; she should have gained something from life. She gave me a very cordial welcome; but Priemkov was simply overjoyed at my arrival; the dear fellow seems on the look-out for some one to make much of. Their house is very cosy and clean. Vera Nikolaevna was dressed, too, like a girl; all in white, with a blue sash, and a slender gold chain on her neck. Her daughter is very sweet and not at all like her. She reminds one of her grandmother. In the drawing-room, just over a sofa, there hangs a portrait of that strange woman, a striking likeness. It caught my eye directly I went into the room. It seemed as though she were gazing sternly and earnestly at me. We sat down, spoke of old times, and by degrees got into conversation. I could not help continually glancing at the gloomy portrait of Madame Eltsov. Vera Nikolaevna was sitting just under it; it is her favourite place. Imagine my amazement: Vera Nikolaevna has never yet read a single novel, a single poem--in fact, not a single invented work, as she expresses it! This incomprehensible indifference to the highest pleasures of the intellect irritated me. In a woman of intelligence, and as far as I can judge, of sensibility, it's simply unpardonable.

"What? do you make it a principle," I asked, "never to read books of that sort?"

"I have never happened to," she answered; "I haven't had time!"

"Not time! You surprise me! I should have thought," I went on, addressing Priemkov, "you would have interested your wife in poetry."

"I should have been delighted----" Priemkov was beginning, but Vera Nikolaevna interrupted him-- "Don't pretend; you've no great love for poetry yourself."

"Poetry; well, no," he began; "I'm not very fond of it; but novels, now. . . ."

"But what do you do, how do you spend your evenings?" I queried; "do you play cards?"

"We sometimes play," she answered; "but there's always plenty to do. We read, too; there are good books to read besides poetry."

"Why are you so set against poetry?"

"I'm not set against it; I have been used to not reading these invented works from a child. That was my mother's wish, and the longer I live the more I am convinced that everything my mother did, everything she said, was right, sacredly right."

"Well, as you will, but I can't agree with you; I am certain you are depriving yourself quite needlessly of the purest, the most legitimate pleasure. Why, you're not opposed to music and painting, I suppose; why be opposed to poetry?"

"I'm not opposed to it; I have never got to know anything of it--that's all."

"Well, then, I will see to that! Your mother did not, I suppose, wish to prevent your knowing anything of the works of creative, poetic art all your life?"

"No; when I was married, my mother removed every restriction; it never occurred to me to read--what did you call them? well, anyway, to read novels."

I listened to Vera Nikolaevna in astonishment. I had not expected this.

She looked at me with her serene glance. Birds look so when they are not frightened.

"I'll bring you a book!" I cried. (I thought of Faust, which I had just been reading.)

Vera Nikolaevna gave a gentle sigh.

"It----it won't be Georges--Sand?" she questioned with some timidity.

"Ah! then you've heard of her? Well, if it were, where's the harm? . . . No, I'll bring you another author. You've not forgotten German, have you?"

"No."

"She speaks it like a German," put in Priemkov.

"Well, that's splendid! I will bring you-- but there, you shall see what a wonderful thing I will bring you."

"Very good, we shall see. But now let us go into the garden, or there'll be no keeping Natasha still."

She put on a round straw hat, a child's hat, just such a one as her daughter was wearing, only a little larger, and we went into the garden. I walked beside her. In the fresh air, in the shade of the tall limes, I thought her face looked sweeter than ever, especially when she turned a little and threw back her head so as to look up at me from under the brim of her hat. If it had not been for Priemkov walking behind us, and the little girl skipping about in front of us, I could really have fancied I was three-and-twenty, instead of thirty-five; and that I was just on the point of starting for Berlin, especially as the garden we were walking in was very much like the garden in Madame Eltsov's estate. I could not help expressing my feelings to Vera Nikolaevna.

"Every one tells me that I am very little changed externally," she answered, "though indeed I have remained just the same inwardly too."

We came up to a little Chinese summer-house.

"We had no summer-house like this at Osinovka," she said; "but you mustn't mind its being so tumbledown and discoloured: it's very nice and cool inside."

We went into the house. I looked round.

"I tell you what,Vera Nikolaevna," I observed, "you let them bring a table and some chairs in here. Here it is really delicious. I will read you here Goethe's Faust--that's the thing I am going to read you."

"Yes, there are no flies here," she observed simply. "When will you come?"

"The day after to-morrow."

"Very well," she answered. "I will arrange it."

Natasha, who had come into the summer-house with us, suddenly gave a shriek and jumped back, quite pale.

"What is it?" inquired Vera Nikolaevna.

"O mammy," said the little girl, pointing into the corner, "look, what a dreadful spider!"

Vera Nikolaevna looked into the corner: a fat mottled spider was crawling slowly along the wall.

"What is there to fear in that?" she said. "It won't bite, look."

And before I had time to stop her, she took up the hideous insect, let it run over her hand, and threw it away.

"Well, you are brave!" I cried.

"Where is the bravery in that? It wasn't a venomous spider."

"One can see you are as well up in Natural History as ever, but I couldn't have held it in my hand."

"There's nothing to be afraid of!" repeated Vera Nikolaevna.

Natasha looked at us both in silence, and laughed.

"How like your mother she is!" I remarked.

"Yes," rejoined Vera Nikolaevna with a smile of pleasure, "it is a great happiness to me. God grant she may be like her, not in face only!"

We were called in to dinner, and after dinner I went away.

N.B.--The dinner was very good and well-cooked, an observation in parenthesis for you, you gourmand!

To-morrow I shall take them Faust. I'm afraid old Goethe and I may not come off very well. I will write and tell you all about it most exactly.

Well, and what do you think of all these proceedings? No doubt, that she has made a great impression on me, that I'm on the point of falling in love, and all the rest of it? Rubbish, my dear boy! There's a limit to everything. I've been fool enough. No more! One can't begin life over again at my age. Besides, I never did care for women of that sort. . . . Nice sort of women I did care for, if you come to that!! "I shudder--my heart is sick--

I am ashamed of my idols."

Any way, I am very glad of such neighbours, glad of the opportunity of seeing something of an intelligent, simple, bright creature. And as to what comes of it later on, you shall hear in due time--Yours,

P. B. FOURTH LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, June 20, 1850.

THE reading took place yesterday, dear friend, and here follows the manner thereof. First of all, I hasten to tell you: a success quite beyond all expectation--success, in fact, is not the word. . . . Well, I'll tell you. I arrived to dinner. We sat down a party of six to dinner: she, Priemkov, their little girl, the governess (an uninteresting colourless figure), I, and an old German in a short cinnamon-coloured frock-coat, very clean, well-shaved and brushed; he had the meekest, most honest face, and a toothless smile, and smelled of coffee mixed with chicory . . . all old Germans have that peculiar odour about them. I was introduced to him; he was one Schimmel, a German tutor, living with the princes H., neighbours of the Priemkovs. Vera Nikolaevna, it appeared, had a liking for him, and had invited him to be present at the reading. We dined late, and sat a long while at table, and afterwards went a walk. The weather was exquisite. In the morning there had been rain and a blustering wind, but towards evening all was calm again. We came out on to an open meadow. Directly over the meadow a great rosy cloud poised lightly, high up in the sky; streaks of grey stretched like smoke over it; on its very edge, continually peeping out and vanishing again, quivered a little star, while a little further off the crescent of the moon shone white upon a background of azure, faintly flushed with red. I drew Vera Nikolaevna's attention to the cloud.

"Yes," she said, "that is lovely; but look in this direction." I looked round. An immense dark-blue storm-cloud rose up, hiding the setting sun; it reared a crest like a thick sheaf flung upwards against the sky; it was surrounded by a bright rim of menacing purple, which in one place, in the very middle, broke right through its mighty mass, like fire from a burning crater. . . .

"There'll be a storm," remarked Priemkov.

But I am wandering from the main point.

I forgot to tell you in my last letter that when I got home from the Priemkovs' I felt sorry I had mentioned Faust; Schiller would have been a great deal better for the first time, if it was to be something German. I felt especially afraid of the first scenes, before the meeting with Gretchen. I was not quite easy about Mephistopheles either. But I was under the spell of Faust, and there was nothing else I could have read with zest. It was quite dark when we went into the summer-house; it had been made ready for us the day before. Just opposite the door, before a little sofa, stood a round table covered with a cloth; easy-chairs and seats were placed round it; there was a lamp alight on the table. I sat down on the little sofa, and took out the book. Vera Nikolaevna settled herself in an easy-chair, a little way off, close to the door. In the darkness, through the door, a green branch of acacia stood out in the lamplight, swaying lightly; from time to time a flood of night air flowed into the room. Priemkov sat near me at the table, the German beside him. The governess had remained in the house with Natasha. I made a brief, introductory speech. I touched on the old legend of doctor Faust, the significance of Mephistopheles, and Goethe himself, and asked them to stop me if anything struck them as obscure. Then I cleared my throat. . . . Priemkov asked me if I wouldn't have some sugar water, and one could perceive that he was very well satisfied with himself for having put this question to me. I refused. Profound silence reigned. I began to read, without raising my eyes. I felt ill at ease; my heart beat, and my voice shook. The first exclamation of sympathy came from the German, and he was the only one to break the silence all the while I was reading. . . . "Wonderful! sublime!" he repeated, adding now and then, "Ah! that's profound." Priemkov, as far as I could observe, was bored; he did not know German very well, and had himself admitted he did not care for poetry! . . . Well, it was his own doing! I had wanted to hint at dinner that his company could be dispensed with at the reading, but I felt a delicacy about saying so. Vera Nikolaevna did not stir; twice I stole a glance at her. Her eyes were fixed directly and intently upon me; her face struck me as pale. After the first meeting of Faust with Gretchen she bent forward in her low chair, clasped her hands, and remained motionless in that position till the end. I felt that Priemkov was thoroughly sick of it, and at first that depressed me, but gradually I forgot him, warmed up, and read with fire, with enthusiasm. . . . I was reading for Vera Nikolaevna alone; an inner voice told me that Faust was affecting her. When I finished (the intermezzo I omitted: that bit belongs in style to the second part, and I skipped part, too, of the "Night on the Brocken") . . . when I finished, when that last "Heinrich!" was heard, the German with much feeling commented--"My God! how splendid!" Priemkov, apparently overjoyed (poor chap!), leaped up, gave a sigh, and began thanking me for the treat I had given them. . . . But I made him no reply; I looked towards Vera Nikolaevna. . . . I wanted to hear what she would say. She got up, walked irresolutely towards the door, stood a moment in the doorway, and softly went out into the garden. I rushed after her. She was already some paces off; her dress was just visible, a white patch in the thick shadow.

"Well?" I called--"didn't you like it?"

She stopped.

"Can you leave me that book?" I heard her voice saying.

"I will present it you, Vera Nikolaevna, if you care to have it."

"Thank you!" she answered, and disappeared.

Priemkov and the German came up to me.

"How wonderfully warm it is!" observed Priemkov; "it's positively stifling. But where has my wife gone?"

"Home, I think," I answered.

"I suppose it will soon be time for supper," he rejoined. "You read splendidly," he added, after a short pause.

"Vera Nikolaevna liked Faust, I think," said I.

"No doubt of it!" cried Priemkov.

"Oh, of course!" chimed in Schimmel.

We went into the house.

"Where's your mistress?" Priemkov inquired of a maid who happened to meet us.

"She has gone to her bedroom."

Priemkov went off to her bedroom.

I went out on to the terrace with Schimmel. The old man raised his eyes towards the sky.

"How many stars!" he said slowly, taking a pinch of snuff; "and all are worlds," he added, and he took another pinch.

I did not feel it necessary to answer him, and simply gazed upwards in silence. A secret uncertainty weighed upon my heart. . . . The stars, I fancied, looked down seriously at us. Five minutes later Priemkov appeared and called us into the dining-room. Vera Nikolaevna came in soon after. We sat down.

"Look at Verotchka," Priemkov said to me.

I glanced at her.

"Well? don't you notice anything?"

I certainly did notice a change in her face, but I answered, I don't know why--

"No, nothing."

"Her eyes are red," Priemkov went on.

I was silent.

"Only fancy! I went upstairs to her and found her crying. It's a long while since such a thing has happened to her. I can tell you the last time she cried; it was when our Sasha died. You see what you have done with your Faust!" he added, with a smile.

"So you see now, Vera Nikolaevna," I began, "that I was right when----"

"I did not expect this," she interrupted me; "but God knows whether you are right. Perhaps that was the very reason my mother forbade my reading such books,--she knew----"

Vera Nikolaevna stopped.

"What did she know?" I asked. "Tell me."

"What for? I'm ashamed of myself as it is; what did I cry for? But we'll talk about it another time. There was a great deal I did not quite understand."

"Why didn't you stop me?"

"I understood all the words, and the meaning of them, but----"

She did not finish her sentence, and looked away dreamily. At that instant there came from the garden the sound of rustling leaves, suddenly fluttering in the rising wind. Vera Nikolaevna started and looked round towards the open window.

"I told you there would be a storm!" cried Priemkov. "But what made you start like that, Verotchka?"

She glanced at him without speaking. A faint, far-off flash of lightning threw a mysterious light on her motionless face.

"It's all due to your Faust," Priemkov went on. "After supper we must all go to by-by. . . . Mustn't we, Herr Schimmel?"

"After intellectual enjoyment physical repose is as grateful as it is beneficial," responded the kind-hearted German, and he drank a wine-glass of vodka.

Immediately after supper we separated. As I said good-night to Vera Nikolaevna I pressed her hand; her hand was cold. I went up to the room assigned to me, and stood a long while at the window before I undressed and got into bed. Priemkov's prediction was fulfilled; the storm came close, and broke. I listened to the roar of the wind, the patter and splash of the rain, and watched how the church, built close by, above the lake, at each flash of lightning stood out, at one moment black against a background of white, at the next white against a background of black, and then was swallowed up in the darkness again. . . But my thoughts were far away. I kept thinking of Vera Nikolaevna, of what she would say to me when she had read Faust herself, I thought of her tears, remembered how she had listened. . . .

The storm had long passed away, the stars came out, all was hushed around. Some bird I did not know sang different notes, several times in succession repeating the same phrase. Its clear, solitary voice rang out strangely in the deep stillness; and still I did not go to bed. . . .

Next morning, earlier than all the rest, I was down in the drawing-room. I stood before the portrait of Madame Eltsov. "Aha," I thought, with a secret feeling of ironical triumph, "after all, I have read your daughter a forbidden book!" All at once I fancied--you have most likely noticed that eyes en face always seem fixed straight on any one looking at a picture--but this time I positively fancied the old lady moved them with a reproachful look on me.

I turned round, went to the window, and caught sight of Vera Nikolaevna. With a parasol on her shoulder and a light white kerchief on her head, she was walking about the garden. I went out at once and said good-morning to her.

"I didn't sleep all night," she said; "my head aches; I came out into the air--it may go off."

"Can that be the result of yesterday's reading?" I asked.

"Of course; I am not used to it. There are things in your book I can't get out of my mind; I feel as though they were simply turning my head," she added, putting her hand to her forehead.

"That's splendid," I commented; "but I tell you what I don't like--I'm afraid this sleeplessness and headache may turn you against reading such things."

"You think so?" she responded, and she picked a sprig of wild jasmine as she passed. "God knows! I fancy if one has once entered on that path, there is no turning back."

She suddenly flung away the spray.

"Come, let us sit down in this arbour," she went on; "and please, until I talk of it of my own accord, don't remind me--of that book." (She seemed afraid to utter the name Faust.)

We went into the arbour and sat down.

"I won't talk to you about Faust," I began; "but you will let me congratulate you and tell you that I envy you."

"You envy me?"

"Yes; you, as I know you now, with your soul, have such delights awaiting you! There are great poets besides Goethe; Shakespeare, Schiller--and, indeed, our own Pushkin, and you must get to know him too."

She did not speak, and drew in the sand with her parasol.

O, my friend, Semyon Nikolaitch! if you could have seen how sweet she was at that instant; pale almost to transparency, stooping forward a little, weary, inwardly perturbed--and yet serene as the sky! I talked, talked a long while, then ceased, and sat in silence watching her. . . . She did not raise her eyes, and went on drawing with her parasol and rubbing it out again. Suddenly we heard quick, childish steps; Natasha ran into the arbour. Vera Nikolaevna drew herself up, rose, and to my surprise she embraced her daughter with a sort of passionate tenderness. . . . That was not one of her ways. Then Priemkov made his appearance. Schimmel, that grey-haired but punctual innocent, had left before daybreak so as not to miss a lesson. We went in to morning tea.

But I am tired; it's high time to finish this letter. It's sure to strike you as foolish and confused. I feel confused myself. I'm not myself. I don't know what's the matter with me. I am continually haunted by a little room with bare walls, a lamp, an open door, the fragrance and freshness of the night, and there, near the door, an intent youthful face, light white garments. . . . I understand now why I wanted to marry her: I was not so stupid, it seems, before my stay in Berlin as I had hitherto supposed. Yes, Semyon Nikolaitch, your friend is in a curious frame of mind. All this I know will pass off. . . and if it doesn't pass off--well, what then? it won't pass off and that's all. But any way I am well satisfied with myself; in the first place, I have spent an exquisite evening; and secondly, if I have awakened that soul, who can blame me? Old Madame Eltsov is nailed up on the wall, and must hold her peace. The old thing! . . . I don't know all the details of her life; but I know she ran away from her father's house; she was not half Italian for nothing, it seems. She wanted to keep her daughter secure . . . we shall see.

I must put down my pen. You, jeering person, pray think what you like of me, only don't jeer at me in writing. You and I are old friends, and ought to spare each other. Good-bye!--Yours

P. B.

FIFTH LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, July 26, 1850.

IT'S a long time since I wrote to you, dear Semyon Nicolaitch; more than a month, I think. I had enough to write about but I was overcome by laziness. To tell the truth, I have hardly thought of you all this time. But from your last letter to me I gather that you are drawing conclusions in regard to me, which are unjust, that is to say, not altogether just. You imagine I have fallen in love with Vera (I feel it awkward, somehow, to call her Vera Nikolaevna); you are wrong. Of course I see her often, I like her extremely . . . indeed, who wouldn't like her? I should like to see you in my place. She's an exquisite creature! Rapid intuition, together with the inexperience of a child, clear common-sense, and an innate feeling for beauty, a continual striving towards the true and the lofty, and a comprehension of everything, even of the vicious, even of the ridiculous, a soft womanly charm brooding over all this like an angel's white wings But what's the use of words! We have read a great deal, we have talked a great deal together during this month. Reading with her is a delight such as I had never experienced before. You seem to be discovering new worlds. She never goes into ecstasies over anything; anything boisterous is distasteful to her; she is softly radiant all over when she likes anything, and her face wears such a noble and good--yes, good expression. From her earliest childhood Vera has not known what deceit was; she is accustomed to truth, it is the breath of her being, and so in poetry too, only what is true strikes her as natural; at once, without effort or difficulty, she recognises it as a familiar face . . . a great privilege and happiness. One must give her mother credit for it. How many times have I thought, as I watched Vera--yes, Goethe was right, "the good even in their obscure striving feel always where the true path lies." There is only one thing annoying--her husband is always about the place. (Please don't laugh a senseless guffaw, don't sully our pure friendship, even in thought). He is about as capable of understanding poetry as I am of playing the flute, but he does not like to lag behind his wife, he wants to improve himself too. Sometimes she puts me out of patience herself; all of a sudden a mood comes over her; she won't read or talk, she works at her embroidery frame, busies herself with Natasha, or with the housekeeper, runs off all at once into the kitchen, or simply sits with her hands folded looking out of the window, or sets to playing "fools" with the nurse . . . I have noticed at these times it doesn't do to bother her; it's better to bide one's time till she comes up, begins to talk or takes up a book. She has a great deal of independence, and I am very glad of it. In the days of our youth, do you remember, young girls would sometimes repeat one's own words to one, as they so well knew how, and one would be in ecstasies over the echo, and possibly quite impressed by it, till one realised what it meant? but this woman's . . . not so; she thinks for herself. She takes nothing on trust; there's no overawing her with authority; she won't begin arguing; but she won't give in either. We have discussed Faust more than once; but, strange to say, Gretchen she never speaks of, herself, she only listens to what I say of her. Mephistopheles terrifies her, not as the devil, but as "something which may exist in every man." . . . These are her own words. I began trying to convince her that this "something" is what we call reflection; but she does not understand the word reflection in its German sense; she only knows the French "refléction," and is accustomed to regarding it as useful. Our relations are marvellous! From a certain point of view I can say that I have a great influence over her, and am, as it were, educating her; but she too, though she is unaware of it herself is changing me for the better in many ways. It's only lately, for instance--thanks to her--that I have discovered what an immense amount of conventional, rhetorical stuff there is in many fine and celebrated poetical works. What leaves her cold is at once suspect in my eyes. Yes, I have grown better, serener. One can't be near her, see her, and remain the man one was.

What will come of all this? you ask. I really believe--nothing. I shall pass my time very delightfully till September and then go away. Life will seem dark and dreary to me for the first months . . . I shall get used to it. I know how full of danger is any tie whatever between a man and a young woman, how imperceptibly one feeling passes into another . . . I should have had the strength to break it off, if I had not been sure that we were both perfectly undisturbed. It is true one day something queer passed between us. I don't know how or from what--I remember we had been reading Oniegin--I kissed her hand. She turned a little away, bent her eyes upon me (I have never seen such a look, except in her; there is dreaminess and intent attention in it, and a sort of sternness), . . . suddenly flushed, got up and went away. I did not succeed in being alone with her that day. She avoided me, and for four mortal hours she played cards with her husband, the nurse, and the governess! Next morning she proposed a walk in the garden to me. We walked all through it, down to the lake. Suddenly without turning towards me, she softly whispered--"Please don't do that again!" and instantly began telling me about something else. . . . I was very much ashamed.

I must admit that her image is never out of my mind, and indeed I may almost say I have begun writing a letter to you with the object of having a reason for thinking and talking about her. I hear the tramp and neighing of horses; it's my carriage being got ready. I am going to see them. My coachman has given up asking me where to drive to, when I get into my carriage--he takes me straight off to the Priemkovs'. A mile and a half from their village, at an abrupt turn in the road, their house suddenly peeps out from behind a birch copse . . . Each time I feel a thrill of joy in my heart directly I catch the glimmer of its windows in the distance. Schimmel (the harmless old man comes to see them from time to time; the princes H----, thank God, have only called once) . . . Schimmel, with the modest solemnity characteristic of him, said very aptly, pointing to the house where Vera lives: "That is the abode of peace!" In that house dwells an angel of peace. . . .

Cover me with thy wing,

Still the throbbing of my heart,

And grateful will be the shade

To the enraptured soul. . . .

But enough of this; or you'll be fancying all sorts of things. Till next time . . . What shall I write to you next time, I wonder?-- Good-bye! By the way, she never says "Goodbye," but always, "So, good-bye!"--I like that tremendously.--Yours, P. B.

P.S.--I can't recollect whether I told you that she knows I wanted to marry her. SIXTH LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, August 10, 1850.

CONFESS you are expecting a letter from me of despair or of rapture! . . . Nothing of the sort. My letter will be like any other letter. Nothing new has happened, and nothing, I imagine, possibly can happen. The other day we went out in a boat on the lake. I will tell you about this boating expedition. We were three: she, Schimmel, and I. I don't know what induces her to invite the old fellow so often. The H----s, I hear, are annoyed with him for neglecting his lessons. This time, though, he was entertaining. Priemkov did not come with us; he had a headache. The weather was splendid, brilliant; great white clouds that seemed torn to shreds over a blue sky, everywhere glitter, a rustle in the trees, the plash and lapping of water on the bank, running coils of gold on the waves, freshness and sunlight! At first the German and I rowed; then we hoisted a sail and flew before the wind. The boat's bow almost dipped in the water, and a constant hissing and foaming followed the helm. She sat at the rudder and steered; she tied a kerchief over her head; she could not have kept a hat on; her curls strayed from under it and fluttered in the air. She held the rudder firmly in her little sunburnt hand, and smiled at the spray which flew at times in her face. I was curled up at the bottom of the boat; not far from her feet. The German brought out a pipe, smoked his shag, and, only fancy, began singing in a rather pleasing bass. First he sang the old-fashioned song: "Freut euch des Lebens," then an air from the "Magic Flute," then a song called the "A B C of Love." In this song all the letters of the alphabet--with additions of course--are sung through in order, beginning with "A B C D--Wenn ich dich seh!" and ending with "U V W X--Mach einen Knicks!" He sang all the couplets with much expression; but you should have seen how slily he winked with his left eye at the word "Knicks!" Vera laughed and shook her finger at him. I observed that, as far as I could judge, Mr. Schimmel had been a redoubtable fellow in his day. "Oh yes, I could take my own part!" he rejoined with dignity; and he knocked the ash out of his pipe on to his open hand, and, with a knowing air, held the mouth-piece on one side in his teeth, while he felt in the tobacco-pouch. "When I was a student," he added, "o-oh-oh!" He said nothing more. But what an o-oh-oh! it was! Vera begged him to sing some students' song, and he sang her: "Knaster, den gelben," but broke down on the last note. Altogether he was quite jovial and expansive. Meanwhile the wind had blown up, the waves began to be rather large, and the boat heeled a little over on one side; swallows began flitting above the water all about us. We made the sail loose and began to tack about. The wind suddenly blew a cross squall, we had not time to right the sail, a wave splashed over the boat's edge and flung a lot of water into the boat. And now the German proved himself a man of spirit; he snatched the cord from me, and set the sail right, saying as he did so-- "So macht man ins Kuxhaven!"

Vera was most likely frightened, for she turned pale, but as her way is, she did not utter a word, but picked up her skirt, and put her feet upon the crosspiece of the boat. I was suddenly reminded of the poem of Goethe's (I have been simply steeped in him for some time past) . . . you remember?--"On the waves glitter a thousand dancing stars," and I repeated it aloud. When I reached the line: "My eyes, why do you look down?" she slightly raised her eyes (I was sitting lower than she; her gaze had rested on me from above) and looked a long while away into the distance, screwing up her eyes from the wind. . . . A light rain came on in an instant, and pattered, making bubbles on the water. I offered her my overcoat; she put it over her shoulders. We got to the bank--not at the landing-place--and walked home. I gave her my arm. I kept feeling that I wanted to tell her something; but I did not speak. I asked her, though, I remember, why she always sat, when she was at home, under the portrait of Madame Eltsov, like a little bird under its mother's wing. "Your comparison is a very true one," she responded, "I never want to come out from under her wing." "Shouldn't you like to come out into freedom?" I asked again. She made no answer.

I don't know why I have described this expedition--perhaps, because it has remained in my memory as one of the brightest events of the past days, though, in reality, how can one call it an event? I had such a sense of comfort and unspeakable gladness of heart, and tears, light, happy tears were on the point of bursting from my eyes.

Oh! fancy, the next day, as I was walking in the garden by the arbour, I suddenly heard a pleasing, musical, woman's voice singing-- "Freut euch des Lebens!" . . . I glanced into the arbour: it was Vera. "Bravo!" I cried; "I didn't know you had such a splendid voice." She was rather abashed, and did not speak. Joking apart, she has a fine, strong soprano. And I do believe she has never even suspected that she has a good voice. What treasures of untouched wealth lie hid in her! She does not know herself. But am I not right in saying such a woman is a rarity in our time?

August 12.

We had a very strange conversation yesterday. We touched first upon apparitions. Fancy, she believes in them, and says she has her own reasons for it. Priemkov, who was sitting there, dropped his eyes, and shook his head, as though in confirmation of her words. I began questioning her, but soon noticed that this conversation was disagreeable to her. We began talking of imagination, of the power of imagination. I told them that in my youth I used to dream a great deal about happiness (the common occupation of people, who have not had or are not having good luck in life). Among other dreams, I used to brood over the bliss it would be to spend a few weeks, with the woman I loved, in Venice. I so often mused over this, especially at night, that gradually there grew up in my head a whole picture, which I could call up at will: I had only to close my eyes. This is what I imagined--night, a moon, the moonlight white and soft, a scent--of lemon, do you suppose? no, of vanilla, a scent of cactus, a wide expanse of water, a flat island overgrown with olives; on the island, at the edge of the shore, a small marble house, with open windows; music audible, coming from I know not where; in the house trees with dark leaves, and the light of a half-shaded lamp; from one window, a heavy velvet cloak, with gold fringe, hangs out with one end falling in the water; and with their arms on the cloak, sit he and she, gazing into the distance where Venice can be seen. All this rose as clearly before my mind as though I had seen it all with my own eyes. She listened to my nonsense, and said that she too often dreamed, but that her day-dreams were of a different sort: she fancied herself in the deserts of Africa, with some explorer, or seeking the traces of Franklin in the frozen Arctic Ocean. She vividly imagined all the hardships she had to endure, all the difficulties she had to contend with. . . .

"You have read a lot of travels," observed her husband.

"Perhaps," she responded; "but if one must dream, why need one dream of the unattainable?"

"And why not?" I retorted. "Why is the poor unattainable to be condemned?"

"I did not say that," she said; "I meant to say, what need is there to dream of oneself, of one's own happiness? It's useless thinking of that; it does not come--why pursue it? It is like health; when you don't think of it, it means that it's there."

These words astonished me. There's a great soul in this woman, believe me. . . . From Venice the conversation passed to Italy, to the Italians. Priemkov went away, Vera and I were left alone.

"You have Italian blood in your veins too," I observed.

"Yes," she responded; "shall I show you the portrait of my grandmother?"

"Please do."

She went to her own sitting-room, and brought out a rather large gold locket. Opening this locket, I saw excellently painted miniature portraits of Madame Eltsov's father and his wife--the peasant woman from Albano. Vera's grandfather struck me by his likeness to his daughter. Only his features, set in a white cloud of powder, seemed even more severe, sharp, and hard, and in his little yellow eyes there was a gleam of a sort of sullen obstinacy. But what a face the Italian woman had, voluptuous, open like a full-blown rose, with prominent, large, liquid eyes, and complacently smiling red lips! Her delicate sensual nostrils seemed dilating and quivering as after recent kisses. The dark cheeks seemed fragrant of glowing heat and health, the luxuriance of youth and womanly power . . . That brow had never done any thinking, and, thank God, she had been depicted in her Albanian dress! The artist (a master) had put a vine in her hair, which was black as pitch with bright grey high lights; this Bacchic ornament was in marvellous keeping with the expression of her face. And do you know of whom the face reminded me? My Manon Lescaut in the black frame. And what is most wonderful of all, as I looked at the portrait, I recalled that in Vera too, in spite of the utter dissimilarity of the features, there is at times a gleam of something like that smile, that look. . . .

Yes, I tell you again; neither she herself nor any one else in the world knows as yet all that is latent in her. . . .

By the way--Madame Eltsov, before her daughter's marriage, told he r all her life, her mother's death, and so on, probably with a view to her edification. What specially affected Vera was what she heard about her grandfather, the mysterious Ladanov. Isn't it owing to that that she believes in apparitions? It's strange! She is so pure and bright herself, and yet is afraid of everything dark and underground, and believes in it. . . .

But enough. Why write all this? However, as it is written, it may be sent off to you.--Yours,

P. B. SEVENTH LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, August 22, 1850.

I TAKE up my pen ten days after my last letter . . . Oh my dear fellow, I can't hide my feelings any longer! . . . How wretched I am! How I love her! You can imagine with what a thrill of bitterness I write that fatal word. I am not a boy, not a young man even; I am no longer at that stage when to deceive another is almost impossible, but to deceive oneself costs no effort. I know all, and see clearly. I know that I am just on forty, that she's another man's wife, that she loves her husband; I know very well that the unhappy feeling which has gained possession of me can lead to nothing but secret torture and an utter waste of vital energy--I know all that, I expect nothing, and I wish for nothing; but I am not the better off for that. As long as a month ago I began to notice that the attraction she has for me was growing stronger and stronger. This partly troubled me, and partly even delighted me . . . But how could I dream that everything would be repeated with me, which you would have thought could no more come again than youth can? What am I saying! I never loved like this, no, never! Manon Lescauts, Fritilions, these were my idols--such idols can easily be broken; but now . . . only now, I have found out what it is to love a woman. I feel ashamed even to speak of it; but it's so. I'm ashamed . . . Love is egoism any way; and at my years it's not permissible to be an egoist; at thirty-seven one cannot live for oneself; one must live to some purpose, with the aim of doing one's duty, one's work on earth. And I had begun to set to work. . . . And here everything is scattered to the winds again, as by a hurricane! Now I understand what I wrote to you in my first letter; I understand now what was the experience I had missed. How suddenly this blow has fallen upon me! I stand and look senselessly forward; a black veil hangs before my eyes; my heart is full of heaviness and dread! I can control myself, I am outwardly calm not only before others, but even in solitude. I can't really rave like a boy! But the worm has crept into my heart, and gnaws it night and day. How will it end? Hitherto I have fretted and suffered when away from her, and in her presence was at peace again at once-- now I have no rest even when I am with her, that is what alarms me. Oh my friend, how hard it is to be ashamed of one's tears, to hide them! Only youth may weep; tears are only fitting for the young. . . .

I cannot read over this letter; it has been wrung from me involuntarily, like a groan. I can add nothing, tell you nothing . . . Give me time; I will come to myself, and possess my soul again; I will talk to you like a man, but now I am longing to lay my head on your breast and----

Oh Mephistopheles! you too are no help to me! I stopped short of set purpose, of set purpose I called up what irony is in me, I told myself how ludicrous and mawkish these laments, these outbursts will seem to me in a year, in half a year . . . No, Mephistopheles is powerless, his tooth has lost its edge. . . . Farewell.--Yours,

P. B. EIGHTH LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

M---- VILLAGE, September 8, 1850.

MY DEAR SEMYON NIKOLAITCH,--You have taken my last letter too much to heart. You know I have always been given to exaggerating my sensations. It's done as it were unconsciously in me; a womanish nature! In the process of years this will pass away of course; but I admit with a sigh I have not corrected the failing so far. So set your mind at rest. I am not going to deny the impression made on me by Vera, but I say again, in all this there is nothing out of the way. For you to come here, as you write of doing, would be out of the question, quite. Post over a thousand versts, God knows with what object--why, it would be madness! But I am very grateful for this fresh proof of your affection, and believe me, I shall never forget it. Your journey here would be the more out of place as I mean to come to Petersburg shortly myself. When I am sitting on your sofa, I shall have a great deal to tell you, but now I really don't want to; what's the use? I shall only talk nonsense, I dare say, and muddle things up. I will write to you again before I start. And so good-bye for a little while. Be well and happy, and don't worry yourself too much about the fate of--your devoted,

P. B. NINTH LETTER

From the SAME to the SAME

P---- VILLAGE, March 10, 1853.

I HAVE been a long while without answering your letter; I have been all these days thinking about it. I felt that it was not idle curiosity but real friendship that prompted you, and yet I hesitated whether to follow your advice, whether to act on your desire. I have made up my mind at last; I will tell you everything. Whether my confession will ease my heart as you suppose, I don't know; but it seems to me I have no right to hide from you what has changed my life for ever; it seems to me, indeed, that I should be wronging--alas! even more wronging--the dear being ever in my thoughts, if I did not confide our mournful secret to the one heart still dear to me. You alone, perhaps, on earth, remember Vera, and you judge of her lightly and falsely; that I cannot endure. You shall know all. Alas! it can all be told in a couple of words. All there was between us flashed by in an instant, like lightning, and like lightning, brought death and ruin. . . . Over two years have passed since she died; since I took up my abode in this remote spot, which I shall not leave till the end of my days, and everything is still as vivid in my memory, my wounds are still as fresh, my grief as bitter . . . I will not complain. Complaints rouse up sorrow and so ease it, but not mine. I will begin my story.

Do you remember my last letter--the letter in which I tried to allay your fears and dissuaded you from coming from Petersburg? You suspected its assumed lightness of tone, you put no faith in our seeing each other soon; you were right. On the day before I wrote to you, I had learnt that I was loved. As I write these words, I realise how hard it would be for me to tell my story to the end. The ever insistent thought of her death will torture me with redoubled force, I shall be consumed by these memories. . . . But I will try to master myself, and will either throw aside the pen, or will say not a word more than is necessary. This is how I learnt that Vera loved me. First of all I must tell you (and you will believe me) that up to that day I had absolutely no suspicion. It is true she had grown pensive at times, which had never been the way with her before; but I did not know why this change had come upon her. At last, one day, the seventh of September--a day memorable for me--this is what happened. You know how I loved her and how wretched I was. I wandered about like an uneasy spirit, and could find no rest. I tried to keep at home, but I could not control myself, and went off to her. I found her alone in her own sitting-room. Priemkov was not at home, he had gone out shooting. When I went in to Vera, she looked intently at me and did not respond to my bow. She was sitting at the window; on her knees lay a book I recognised at once; it was my Faust. Her face showed traces of weariness. I sat down opposite her. She asked me to read aloud the scene of Faust with Gretchen, when she asks him if he believes in God. I took the book and began reading. When I had finished, I glanced at her. Her head leaning on the back of her low chair and her arms crossed on her bosom, she was still looking as intently at me.

I don't know why, my heart suddenly began to throb.

"What have you done to me?" she said in a slow voice.

"What?" I articulated in confusion.

"Yes, what have you done to me?" she repeated.

"You mean to say," I began; "why did I persuade you to read such books?"

She rose without speaking, and went out of the room. I looked after her.

On the doorway she stopped and turned to me.

"I love you," she said; "that's what you have done to me."

The blood rushed to my head. . . .

"I love you, I am in love with you," repeated Vera.

She went out and shut the door after her. I will not try to describe what passed within me then. I remember I went out into the garden, made my way into a thicket, leaned against a tree, and how long I stood there, I could not say. I felt faint and numb; a feeling of bliss came over my heart with a rush from time to time. . . . No, I cannot speak of that. Priemkov's voice roused me from my stupor; they had sent to tell him I had come: he had come home from shooting and was looking for me. He was surprised at finding me alone in the garden, without a hat on, and he led me into the house. "My wife's in the drawing-room," he observed; "let's go to her!" You can imagine my sensations as I stepped through the doorway of the drawing-room. Vera was sitting in the corner, at her embroidery frame; I stole a glance at her, and it was a long while before I raised my eyes again. To my amazement, she seemed composed; there was no trace of agitation in what she said, nor in the sound of her voice. At last I brought myself to look at her. Our eyes met . . . She faintly blushed, and bent over her canvas. I began to watch her. She seemed, as it were, perplexed; a cheerless smile hung about her lips now and then.

Priemkov went out. She suddenly raised her head and in a rather loud voice asked me-- "What do you intend to do now?"

I was taken aback, and hurriedly, in a subdued voice, answered, that I intended to do the duty of an honest man--to go away, "for," I added, "I love you, Vera Nikolaevna, you have probably seen that long ago." She bent over her canvas again and seemed to ponder.

"I must talk with you," she said; "come this evening after tea to our little house . . . you know, where you read Faust."

She said this so distinctly that I can't to this day conceive how it was Priemkov, who came into the room at that instant, heard nothing. Slowly, terribly slowly, passed that day. Vera sometimes looked about her with an expression as though she were asking herself if she were not dreaming. And at the same time there was a look of determination in her face; while I . . . I could not recover myself. Vera loves me! These words were continually going round and round in my head; but I did not understand them--I neither understood myself nor her. I could not believe in such unhoped-for, such overwhelming happiness; with an effort I recalled the past, and I too looked and talked as in a dream. . . .

After evening tea, when I had already begun to think how I could steal out of the house unobserved, she suddenly announced of her own accord that she wanted a walk, and asked me to accompany her. I got up, took my hat, and followed her. I did not dare begin to speak, I could scarcely breathe, I awaited her first word, I awaited explanations; but she did not speak. In silence we reached the summer-house, in silence we went into it, and then--I don't know to this day, I can't understand how it happened--we suddenly found ourselves in each other's arms. Some unseen force flung me to her and her to me. In the fading daylight, her face, with the curls tossed back, lighted up for an instant with a smile of self-surrender and tenderness, and our lips met in a kiss. . . .

That kiss was the first and last.

Vera suddenly broke from my arms and with an expression of horror in her wide open eyes staggered back----

"Look round," she said in a shaking voice; "do you see nothing?"

I turned round quickly.

"Nothing. Why, do you see something?"

"Not now, but I did."

She drew deep, gasping breaths.

"Whom? what?"

"My mother," she said slowly, and she began trembling all over. I shivered too, as though with cold. I suddenly felt ashamed, as though I were guilty. And indeed, wasn't I guilty at that instant?

"Nonsense!" I began; "what do you mean? Tell me rather----"

"No, for God's sake, no!" she interposed, clutching her head. "This is madness--I'm going out of my mind. . . . One can't play with this--it's death. . . . Good-bye. . . ."

I held out my hands to her.

"Stay, for God's sake, for an instant," I cried in an involuntary outburst. I didn't know what I was saying and could scarcely stand upright. "For God's sake . . . it is too cruel!"

She glanced at me.

"To-morrow, to-morrow evening," she said, "not to-day, I beseech you--go away today . . . to-morrow evening come to the garden gate, near the lake. I will be there, I will come. . . . I swear to you I will come," she added with passion, and her eyes shone; "whoever may hinder me, I swear! I will tell you everything, only let me go to-day."

And before I could utter a word she was gone. Utterly distraught, I stayed where I was. My head was in a whirl. Across the mad rapture, which filled my whole being, there began to steal a feeling of apprehension. . . . I looked round. The dim, damp room in which I was standing oppressed me with its low roof and dark walls.

I went out and walked with dejected steps towards the house. Vera was waiting for me on the terrace; she went into the house directly I drew near, and at once retreated to her bedroom.

I went away.

How I spent the night and the next day till the evening I can't tell you. I only remember that I lay, my face hid in my hands, I recalled her smile before our kiss, I whispered--"At last, she . . ."

I recalled, too, Madame Eltsov's words, which Vera had repeated to me. She had said to her once, "You are like ice; until you melt as strong as stone, but directly you melt there's nothing of you left."

Another thing recurred to my mind; Vera and I had once been talking of talent, ability.

"There's only one thing I can do," she said; "keep silent till the last minute."

I did not understand it in the least at the time.

"But what is the meaning of her fright?" I wondered--"Can she really have seen Madame Eltsov? Imagination!" I thought, and again I gave myself up to the emotions of expectation.

It was on that day I wrote you,--with what thoughts in my head it hurts me to recall--that deceitful letter.

In the evening--the sun had not yet set--I took up my stand about fifty paces from the garden gate in a tall thicket on the edge of the lake. I had come from home on foot. I will confess to my shame; fear, fear of the most cowardly kind, filled my heart; I was incessantly starting . . . but I had no feeling of remorse. Hiding among the twigs, I kept continual watch on the little gate. It did not open. The sun set, the evening drew on; then the stars came out, and the sky turned black. No one appeared. I was in a fever. Night came on. I could bear it no longer; I came cautiously out of the thicket and stole down to the gate. Everything was still in the garden. I called Vera, in a whisper, called a second time, a third. . . . No voice called back. Half-an-hour more passed by, and an hour; it became quite dark. I was worn out by suspense; I drew the gate towards me, opened it at once, and on tip-toe, like a thief, walked towards the house. I stopped in the shadow of a lime-tree.

Almost all the windows in the house had lights in them; people were moving to and fro in the house. This surprised me; my watch, as far as I could make out in the dim starlight, said half-past eleven. Suddenly I heard a noise near the house; a carriage drove out of the courtyard.

"Visitors, it seems," I thought. Losing every hope of seeing Vera, I made my way out of the garden and walked with rapid steps homewards. It was a dark September night, but warm and windless. The feeling, not so much of annoyance as of sadness, which had taken possession of me, gradually disappeared, and I got home, rather tired from my rapid walk, but soothed by the peacefulness of the night, happy and almost light-hearted. I went to my room, dismissed Timofay, and without undressing, flung myself on my bed and plunged into reverie.

At first my day-dreams were sweet, but soon I noticed a curious change in myself. I began to feel a sort of secret gnawing anxiety, a sort of deep, inward uneasiness. I could not understand what it arose from, but I began to feel sick and sad, as though I were menaced by some approaching trouble, as though some one dear to me were suffering at that instant and calling on me for help. A wax candle on the table burnt with a small, steady flame, the pendulum swung with a heavy, regular tick. I leant my head on my hand and fell to gazing into the empty half-dark of my lonely room. I thought of Vera, and my heart failed me; all, at which I had so rejoiced, struck me, as it ought to have done, as unhappiness, as hopeless ruin. The feeling of apprehension grew and grew; I could not lie still any longer; I suddenly fancied again that some one was calling me in a voice of entreaty. . . . I raised my head and shuddered; I had not been mistaken; a pitiful cry floated out of the distance and rang faintly resounding on the dark window-panes. I was frightened; I jumped off the bed; I opened the window. A distinct moan broke into the room and, as it were hovered about me. Chilled with terror, I drank in its last dying echoes. It seemed as though some one were being killed in the distance and the luckless wretch were beseeching in vain for mercy. Whether it was an owl hooting in the wood or some other creature that uttered this wail, I did not think to consider at the time, but, like Mazeppa, I called back in answer to the ill-omened sound.

"Vera, Vera!" I cried; "is it you calling me?" Timofay, sleepy and amazed, appeared before me.

I came to my senses, drank a glass of water and went into another room; but sleep did not come to me. My heart throbbed painfully though not rapidly. I could not abandon myself to dreams of happiness again; I dared not believe in it.

Next day, before dinner, I went to the Priemkovs'. Priemkov met me with a care-worn face.

"My wife is ill," he began; "she is in bed; I sent for a doctor."

"What is the matter with her?"

"I can't make out. Yesterday evening she went into the garden and suddenly came back quite beside herself, panic-stricken. Her maid ran for me. I went in, and asked my wife what was wrong. She made no answer, and so she has lain; by night delirium set in. In her delirium she said all sorts of things; she mentioned you. The maid told me an extraordinary thing; that Vera's mother appeared to her in the garden; she fancied she was coming to meet her with open arms."

You can imagine what I felt at these words.

"Of course that's nonsense," Priemkov went on; "though I must admit that extraordinary things have happened to my wife in that way."

"And you say Vera Nikolaevna is very unwell?"

"Yes: she was very bad in the night; now she is wandering."

"What did the doctor say?"

"The doctor said that the disease was undefined as yet. . . ."

March 12.

I cannot go on as I began, dear friend; it costs me too much effort and re-opens my wounds too cruelly. The disease, to use the doctor's words, became defined, and Vera died of it. She did not live a fortnight after the fatal day of our momentary interview. I saw her once more before her death. I have no memory more heart-rending. I had already learned from the doctor that there was no hope. Late in the evening, when every one in the house was in bed, I stole to the door of her room and looked in at her. Vera lay in her bed, with closed eyes, thin and small, with a feverish flush on her cheeks. I gazed at her as though turned to stone. All at once she opened her eyes, fastened them upon me, scrutinised me, and stretching out a wasted hand--

"Was will er an dem heiligen Ort

Der da . . . der dort . . . ."

[Faust, Part I., Last Scene.]

she articulated, in a voice so terrible that I rushed headlong away. Almost all through her illness, she raved about Faust and her mother, whom she sometimes called Martha, sometimes Gretchen's mother.

Vera died. I was at her burying. Ever since then I have given up everything and am settled here for ever.

Think now of what I have told you; think of her, of that being so quickly brought to destruction. How it came to pass, how explain this incomprehensible intervention of the dead in the affairs of the living, I don't know and never shall know. But you must admit that it is not a fit of whimsical spleen, as you express it, which has driven me to retire from the world. I am not what I was, as you knew me; I believe in a great deal now which I did not believe formerly. All this time I have thought so much of that unhappy woman (I had almost said, girl), of her origin, of the secret play of fate, which we in our blindness call blind chance. Who knows what seeds each man living on earth leaves behind him, which are only destined to come up after his death? Who can say by what mysterious bond a man's fate is bound up with his children's, his descendants'; how his yearnings are reflected in them, and how they are punished for his errors? We must all submit and bow our heads before the Unknown.

Yes, Vera perished, while I was untouched. I remember, when I was a child, we had in my home a lovely vase of transparent alabaster. Not a spot sullied its virgin whiteness. One day when I was left alone, I began shaking the stand on which it stood . . . the vase suddenly fell down and broke to shivers. I was numb with horror, and stood motionless before the fragments. My father came in, saw me, and said, "There, see what you have done; we shall never have our lovely vase again; now there is no mending it!" I sobbed. I felt I had committed a crime.

I grew into a man--and thoughtlessly broke a vessel a thousand times more precious. . . .

In vain I tell myself that I could not have dreamed of such a sudden catastrophe, that it struck me too with its suddenness, that I did not even suspect what sort of nature Vera was. She certainly knew how to be silent till the last minute. I ought to have run away directly I felt that I loved her, that I loved a married woman. But I stayed, and that fair being was shattered, and with despair I gaze at the work of my own hands.

Yes, Madame Eltsov took jealous care of her daughter. She guarded her to the end, and at the first incautious step bore her away with her to the grave!

It is time to make an end. . . . I have not told one hundredth part of what I ought to have; but this has been enough for me. Let all that has flamed up fall back again into the depths of my heart. . . . In conclusion, I say to you--one conviction I have gained from the experience of the last years--life is not jest and not amusement; life is not even enjoyment . . . life is hard labour. Renunciation, continual renunciation--that is its secret meaning, its solution. Not the fulfilment of cherished dreams and aspirations, however lofty they may be--the fulfilment of duty, that is what must be the care of man. Without laying on himself chains, the iron chains of duty, he cannot reach without a fall the end of his career. But in youth we think--the freer the better, the further one will get. Youth may be excused for thinking so. But it is shameful to delude oneself when the stern face of truth has looked one in the eyes at last.

Good-bye! In old days I would have added, be happy; now I say to you, try to live, it is not so easy as it seems. Think of me, not in hours of sorrow, but in hours of contemplation, and keep in your heart the image of Vera in all its pure stainlessness. . . . Once more, good-bye!--Yours,

P. B.

1855

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