Madame Milovidov withdrew. On being left alone with Anna Semyonovna, Aratov repeated his speech to her; but realising at the first glance that he had to do with a really cultivated girl, not a typical tradesman's daughter, he went a little more into particulars and made use of different expressions; but towards the end he grew agitated, flushed and felt that his heart was throbbing. Anna listened to him in silence, her hands folded on her lap; a mournful smile never left her face … bitter grief, still fresh in its poignancy, was expressed in that smile.
'You knew my sister?' she asked Aratov.
'No, I did not actually know her,' he answered. 'I met her and heard her once … but one need only hear and see your sister once to …'
'Do you wish to write her biography?' Anna questioned him again.
Aratov had not expected this inquiry; however, he replied promptly, 'Why not? But above all, I wanted to acquaint the public …'
Anna stopped him by a motion of her hand.
'What is the object of that? The public caused her plenty of suffering as it is; and indeed Katia had only just begun life. But if you yourself—(Anna looked at him and smiled again a smile as mournful but more friendly … as though she were saying to herself, Yes, you make me feel I can trust you) … if you yourself feel such interest in her, let me ask you to come and see us this afternoon … after dinner. I can't just now … so suddenly … I will collect my strength … I will make an effort … Ah, I loved her too much!'
Anna turned away; she was on the point of bursting into sobs.
Aratov rose hurriedly from his seat, thanked her for her offer, said he should be sure … oh, very sure!—to come—and went off, carrying away with him an impression of a soft voice, gentle and sorrowful eyes, and burning in the tortures of expectation.
XIII
Aratov went back the same day to the Milovidovs and spent three whole hours in conversation with Anna Semyonovna. Madame Milovidov was in the habit of lying down directly after dinner—at two o'clock—and resting till evening tea at seven. Aratov's talk with Clara's sister was not exactly a conversation; she did almost all the talking, at first with hesitation, with embarrassment, then with a warmth that refused to be stifled. It was obvious that she had adored her sister. The confidence Aratov had inspired in her grew and strengthened; she was no longer stiff; twice she even dropped a few silent tears before him. He seemed to her to be worthy to hear an unreserved account of all she knew and felt … in her own secluded life nothing of this sort had ever happened before!… As for him … he drank in every word she uttered.
This was what he learned … much of it of course, half-said … much he filled in for himself.
In her early years, Clara had undoubtedly been a disagreeable child; and even as a girl, she had not been much gentler; self-willed, hot-tempered, sensitive, she had never got on with her father, whom she despised for his drunkenness and incapacity. He felt this and never forgave her for it. A gift for music showed itself early in her; her father gave it no encouragement, acknowledging no art but painting, in which he himself was so conspicuously unsuccessful though it was the means of support of himself and his family. Her mother Clara loved,… but in a careless way, as though she were her nurse; her sister she adored, though she fought with her and had even bitten her…. It is true she fell on her knees afterwards and kissed the place she had bitten. She was all fire, all passion, and all contradiction; revengeful and kind; magnanimous and vindictive; she believed in fate—and did not believe in God (these words Anna whispered with horror); she loved everything beautiful, but never troubled herself about her own looks, and dressed anyhow; she could not bear to have young men courting her, and yet in books she only read the pages which treated of love; she did not care to be liked, did not like caresses, but never forgot a caress, just as she never forgot a slight; she was afraid of death and killed herself! She used to say sometimes, 'Such a one as I want I shall never meet … and no other will I have!' 'Well, but if you meet him?' Anna would ask. 'If I meet him … I will capture him.' 'And if he won't let himself be captured?' 'Well, then … I will make an end of myself. It will prove I am no good.' Clara's father—he used sometimes when drunk to ask his wife, 'Who got you your blackbrowed she-devil there? Not I!'—Clara's father, anxious to get her off his hands as soon as possible, betrothed her to a rich young shopkeeper, a great blockhead, one of the so-called 'refined' sort. A fortnight before the wedding-day—she was only sixteen at the time—she went up to her betrothed, her arms folded and her fingers drumming on her elbows—her favourite position—and suddenly gave him a slap on his rosy cheek with her large powerful hand! He jumped and merely gaped; it must be said he was head over ears in love with her…. He asked: 'What's that for?' She laughed scornfully and walked off. 'I was there in the room,' Anna related, 'I saw it all, I ran after her and said to her, "Katia, why did you do that, really?" And she answered me: "If he'd been a real man he would have punished me, but he's no more pluck than a drowned hen! And then he asks, 'What's that for?' If he loves me, and doesn't bear malice, he had better put up with it and not ask, 'What's that for?' I will never be anything to him—never, never!" And indeed she did not marry him. It was soon after that she made the acquaintance of that actress, and left her home. Mother cried, but father only said, "A stubborn beast is best away from the flock!" And he did not bother about her, or try to find her out. My father did not understand Katia. On the day before her flight,' added Anna, 'she almost smothered me in her embraces, and kept repeating: "I can't, I can't help it!… My heart's torn, but I can't help it! your cage is too small … it cramps my wings! And there's no escaping one's fate…."
'After that,' observed Anna, 'we saw each other very seldom…. When my father died, she came for a couple of days, would take nothing of her inheritance, and vanished again. She was unhappy with us … I could see that. Afterwards she came to Kazan as an actress.'
Aratov began questioning Anna about the theatre, about the parts in which Clara had appeared, about her triumphs…. Anna answered in detail, but with the same mournful, though keen fervour. She even showed Aratov a photograph, in which Clara had been taken in the costume of one of her parts. In the photograph she was looking away, as though turning from the spectators; her thick hair tied with a ribbon fell in a coil on her bare arm. Aratov looked a long time at the photograph, thought it like, asked whether Clara had taken part in public recitations, and learnt that she had not; that she had needed the excitement of the theatre, the scenery … but another question was burning on his lips.
'Anna Semyonovna!' he cried at last, not loudly, but with a peculiar force, 'tell me, I implore you, tell me why did she … what led her to this fearful step?'…
Anna looked down. 'I don't know,' she said, after a pause of some instants. 'By God, I don't know!' she went on strenuously, supposing from Aratov's gesture that he did not believe her…. 'since she came back here certainly she was melancholy, depressed. Something must have happened to her in Moscow—what, I could never guess. But on the other hand, on that fatal day she seemed as it were … if not more cheerful, at least more serene than usual. Even I had no presentiment,' added Anna with a bitter smile, as though reproaching herself for it.
'You see,' she began again, 'it seemed as though at Katia's birth it had been decreed that she was to be unhappy. From her early years she was convinced of it. She would lean her head on her hand, sink into thought, and say, "I shall not live long!" She used to have presentiments. Imagine! she used to see beforehand, sometimes in a dream and sometimes awake, what was going to happen to her! "If I can't live as I want to live, then I won't live,"… was a saying of hers too…. "Our life's in our own hands, you know." And she proved that!'