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
