A Reckless Character, and Other Stories Part 22

apparently she was thinking: "Yes, thou dost inspire me with confidence") ... "if you yourself cherish such sympathy for her, then permit me to request that you come to us this evening ... after dinner.

I cannot now ... so suddenly.... I will collect my forces.... I will make an effort.... Akh, I loved her too greatly!"

Anna turned away; she was on the point of bursting into sobs.

Aratoff rose alertly from his chair, thanked her for her proposal, said that he would come without fail ... without fail! and went away, bearing in his soul an impression of a quiet voice, of gentle and sorrowful eyes--and burning with the languor of antic.i.p.ation.

XIII

Aratoff returned to the Milovidoffs' house that same day, and conversed for three whole hours with Anna Semyonovna. Madame Milovidoff went to bed immediately after dinner--at two o'clock--and "rested" until evening tea, at seven o'clock. Aratoff's conversation with Clara's sister was not, properly speaking, a conversation: she did almost the whole of the talking, at first with hesitation, with confusion, but afterward with uncontrollable fervour. She had, evidently, idolised her sister. The confidence wherewith Aratoff had inspired her waxed and strengthened; she was no longer embarra.s.sed; she even fell to weeping softly, twice, in his presence. He seemed to her worthy of her frank revelations and effusions. Nothing of that sort had ever before come into her own dull life!... And he ... he drank in her every word.

This, then, is what he learned ... much of it, as a matter of course, from what she refrained from saying ... and much he filled out for himself.

In her youth Clara had been, without doubt, a disagreeable child; and as a young girl she had been only a little softer: self-willed, hot-tempered, vain, she had not got on particularly well with her father, whom she despised for his drunkenness and incapacity. He was conscious of this and did not pardon it in her. Her musical faculties showed themselves at an early age; her father repressed them, recognising painting as the sole art,--wherein he himself had had so little success, but which had nourished him and his family. Clara had loved her mother ... in a careless way, as she would have loved a nurse; she wors.h.i.+pped her sister, although she squabbled with her, and bit her.... It is true that afterward she had been wont to go down on her knees before her and kiss the bitten places. She was all fire, all pa.s.sion, and all contradiction: vengeful and kind-hearted, magnanimous and rancorous; "she believed in Fate, and did not believe in G.o.d" (these words Anna whispered with terror); she loved everything that was beautiful, and dressed herself at haphazard; she could not endure to have young men pay court to her, but in books she read only those pages where love was the theme; she did not care to please, she did not like petting and never forgot caresses as she never forgot offences; she was afraid of death, and she had killed herself! She had been wont to say sometimes, "I do not meet the sort of man I want--and the others I will not have!"--"Well, and what if you should meet the right sort?" Anna had asked her.--"If I do ... I shall take him."--"But what if he will not give himself?"--"Well, then ... I will make an end of myself. It will mean that I am good for nothing."

Clara's father ... (he sometimes asked his wife when he was drunk: "Who was the father of that black-visaged little devil of thine?--I was not!")--Clara's father, in the endeavour to get her off his hands as promptly as possible, undertook to betroth her to a wealthy young merchant, a very stupid fellow,--one of the "cultured" sort. Two weeks before the wedding (she was only sixteen years of age), she walked up to her betrothed, folded her arms, and drumming with her fingers on her elbows (her favourite pose), she suddenly dealt him a blow, bang! on his rosy cheek with her big, strong hand! He sprang to his feet, and merely gasped,--it must be stated that he was dead in love with her.... He asked: "What is that for?" She laughed and left the room.--"I was present in the room," narrated Anna, "and was a witness. I ran after her and said to her: 'Good gracious, Katya, why didst thou do that?'--But she answered me: 'If he were a real man he would have thrashed me, but as it is, he is a wet hen!' And he asks what it is for, to boot. If he loved me and did not avenge himself, then let him bear it and not ask: 'what is that for?' He'll never get anything of me, unto ages of ages!'

And so she did not marry him. Soon afterward she made the acquaintance of that actress, and left our house. My mother wept, but my father only said: 'Away with the refractory goat from the flock!' and would take no trouble, or try to hunt her up. Father did not understand Clara. On the eve of her flight," added Anna, "she almost strangled me in her embrace, and kept repeating: 'I cannot! I cannot do otherwise!... My heart may break in two, but I cannot! our cage is too small ... it is not large enough for my wings! And one cannot escape his fate'"....

"After that," remarked Anna, "we rarely saw each other.... When father died she came to us for a couple of days, took nothing from the inheritance, and again disappeared. She found it oppressive with us....

I saw that. Then she returned to Kazan as an actress."

Aratoff began to interrogate Anna concerning the theatre, the parts in which Clara had appeared, her success.... Anna answered in detail, but with the same sad, although animated enthusiasm. She even showed Aratoff a photographic portrait, which represented Clara in the costume of one of her parts. In the portrait she was looking to one side, as though turning away from the spectators; the ribbon intertwined with her thick hair fell like a serpent on her bare arm. Aratoff gazed long at that portrait, thought it a good likeness, inquired whether Clara had not taken part in public readings, and learned that she had not; that she required the excitement of the theatre, of the stage ... but another question was burning on his lips.

"Anna Semyonovna!" he exclaimed at last, not loudly, but with peculiar force, "tell me, I entreat you, why she ... why she made up her mind to that frightful step?"

Anna dropped her eyes.--"I do not know!" she said, after the lapse of several minutes.--"G.o.d is my witness, I do not know!" she continued impetuously, perceiving that Aratoff had flung his hands apart as though he did not believe her.... "From the very time she arrived here she seemed to be thoughtful, gloomy. Something must infallibly have happened to her in Moscow, which I was not able to divine! But, on the contrary, on that fatal day, she seemed ... if not more cheerful, at any rate more tranquil than usual. I did not even have any forebodings," added Anna with a bitter smile, as though reproaching herself for that.

"You see," she began again, "it seemed to have been written in Katya's fate, that she should be unhappy. She was convinced of it herself from her early youth. She would prop her head on her hand, meditate, and say: 'I shall not live long!' She had forebodings. Just imagine, she even saw beforehand,--sometimes in a dream, sometimes in ordinary wise,--what was going to happen to her! 'I cannot live as I wish, so I will not live at all,' ... was her adage.--'Our life is in our own hands, you know!' And she proved it."

Anna covered her face with her hands and ceased speaking.

"Anna Semyonovna," began Aratoff, after waiting a little: "perhaps you have heard to what the newspapers attributed...."

"To unhappy love?" interrupted Anna, removing her hands from her face with a jerk. "That is a calumny, a calumny, a lie!... My unsullied, unapproachable Katya ... Katya! ... and an unhappy, rejected love? And would not I have known about that?... Everybody, everybody fell in love with her ... but she.... And whom could she have fallen in love with here? Who, out of all these men, was worthy of her? Who had attained to that ideal of honour, uprightness, purity,--most of all, purity,--which she constantly held before her, in spite of all her defects?... Reject her ... her...."

Anna's voice broke.... Her fingers trembled slightly. Suddenly she flushed scarlet all over ... flushed with indignation, and at that moment--and only at that moment--did she resemble her sister.

Aratoff attempted to apologise.

"Listen," broke in Anna once more:--"I insist upon it that you shall not believe that calumny yourself, and that you shall dissipate it, if possible! Here, you wish to write an article about her, or something of that sort:--here is an opportunity for you to defend her memory! That is why I am talking so frankly with you. Listen: Katya left a diary...."

Aratoff started.--"A diary," he whispered.

"Yes, a diary ... that is to say, a few pages only.--Katya was not fond of writing ... for whole months together she did not write at all ...

and her letters were so short! But she was always, always truthful, she never lied.... Lie, forsooth, with her vanity! I ... I will show you that diary! You shall see for yourself whether it contains a single hint of any such unhappy love!"

Anna hastily drew from the table-drawer a thin copy-book, about ten pages in length, no more, and offered it to Aratoff. The latter grasped it eagerly, recognised the irregular, bold handwriting,--the handwriting of that anonymous letter,--opened it at random, and began at the following lines:

"Moscow--Tuesday ... June. I sang and recited at a literary morning. To-day is a significant day for me. _It must decide my fate_." (These words were doubly underlined.) "Once more I have seen...." Here followed several lines which had been carefully blotted out.--And then: "No! no! no!... I must return to my former idea, if only...."

Aratoff dropped the hand in which he held the book, and his head sank quietly on his breast.

"Read!" cried Anna.--"Why don't you read? Read from the beginning....

You can read the whole of it in five minutes, though this diary extends over two whole years. In Kazan she wrote nothing...."

Aratoff slowly rose from his chair, and fairly crashed down on his knees before Anna!

She was simply petrified with amazement and terror.

"Give ... give me this diary," said Aratoff in a fainting voice.--"Give it to me ... and the photograph ... you must certainly have another--but I will return the diary to you.... But I must, I must...."

In his entreaty, in the distorted features of his face there was something so despairing that it even resembled wrath, suffering.... And in reality he was suffering. It seemed as though he had not been able to foresee that such a calamity would descend upon him, and was excitedly begging to be spared, to be saved....

"Give it to me," he repeated.

"But ... you ... you were not in love with my sister?" said Anna at last.

Aratoff continued to kneel.

"I saw her twice in all ... believe me!... and if I had not been impelled by causes which I myself cannot clearly either understand or explain ... if some power that is stronger than I were not upon me.... I would not have asked you.... I would not have come hither.... I must ...

I ought ... why, you said yourself that I was bound to restore her image!"

"And you were not in love with my sister?" asked Anna for the second time.

Aratoff did not reply at once, and turned away slightly, as though with pain.

"Well, yes! I was! I was!--And I am in love with her now...." he exclaimed with the same desperation as before.

Footsteps became audible in the adjoining room.

"Rise ... rise ..." said Anna hastily. "My mother is coming."

Aratoff rose.

"And take the diary and the picture. G.o.d be with you!--Poor, poor Katya!... But you must return the diary to me," she added with animation.--"And if you write anything, you must be sure to send it to me.... Do you hear?"

The appearance of Madame Milovidoff released Aratoff from the necessity of replying.--He succeeded, nevertheless, in whispering:--"You are an angel! Thanks! I will send all that I write...."

Madame Milovidoff was too drowsy to divine anything. And so Aratoff left Kazan with the photographic portrait in the side-pocket of his coat. He had returned the copy-book to Anna, but without her having detected it, he had cut out the page on which stood the underlined words.

On his way back to Moscow he was again seized with a sort of stupor.

Although he secretly rejoiced that he had got what he went for, yet he repelled all thoughts of Clara until he should reach home again. He meditated a great deal more about her sister Anna.--"Here now," he said to himself, "is a wonderful, sympathetic being! What a delicate comprehension of everything, what a loving heart, what absence of egoism! And how comes it that such girls bloom with us, and in the provinces,--and in such surroundings into the bargain! She is both sickly, and ill-favoured, and not young,--but what a capital wife she would make for an honest, well-educated man! That is the person with whom one ought to fall in love!..." Aratoff meditated thus ... but on his arrival in Moscow the matter took quite another turn.