Annouchka: A Tale

"At the time my uncle took me away, little Annouchka was only two years old; she was nine when she lost her mother. After the death of Tatiana, my father took the child to his own house. Already he had several times expressed a wish to do so, but Tatiana was always opposed to it. You may imagine what Annouchka must have felt when she found herself established in the house of him they called "the master." Even to the present time she preserves the remembrance of the day when for the first time she put on a silk dress, and they made her kiss his hand. Her mother had brought her up with severity; my father did not place the least restraint upon her. He charged himself with her education; she had no other master. He did not spoil her, or load her with useless tasks. He loved her ardently; he could refuse her nothing. Annouchka soon learned that she was the principal personage of the house; she knew that the master was her father; even then she had a feeling of her false position, and an amour propre unhealthful and full of mistrust sprang up in her. Some bad habits took root; her naïveté disappeared; she wished, she confided to me later, to force the whole world to forget her origin. At times she blushed at it; then, ashamed at her blushes, she showed that she was proud of her mother. You see that she knew, and knows still, a great many things which she should have been ignorant of at her age; but whose fault was it? The passion of youth burst forth impetuously, and there was no friendly hand to direct her. It is so difficult to make good use of such entire independence. So, not wishing to be behind other nobles' daughters, she devoted herself to reading; but what profit could she derive from it? Her life, begun in a false way, remained so, but her heart kept pure.

"At this time I was but twenty years of age, and charged with the care of a young girl of thirteen. For the first few days after my father's death the sound of my voice was sufficient to throw her into a fever. My caresses caused her agony; it was but gradually and almost insensibly that she became accustomed to me. It is true that later, when she saw that I was thoughtful of her, and loved her as a sister, she became ardently attached to me; she could feel nothing half way.

"I took her to Petersburg, and though hard for me to leave her, it not being in my power to keep her near me, I placed her in one of the best boarding-schools of the city. Annouchka understood the necessity of this separation, but she fell ill and nearly died. Later she became accustomed to this kind of life. She remained at boarding-school four years, and, contrary to my expectation, she came out nearly the same as she went in. The mistress of the boarding-school often complained of her. "Punishments have no effect upon her," she told me, "and marks of affection find her equally insensible." Annouchka was very intelligent; she studied hard, and in this respect led all her companions; but nothing could make her comply with the ordinary rules, – she remained obstinate, and with an unsociable humor. I do not blame her entirely; she was in a position where there were but two ways of acting open to her, – a complacent servility or a proud shyness. Among all her schoolmates, she was intimate with but one, a young girl, quite plain, poor, and persecuted. The other scholars of the boarding-school, most of them of the aristocracy, did not like her, and pursued her with their sarcasms. Annouchka kept aloof from them in every way. One day the priest charged with their religious instruction spoke of the faults of youth; Annouchka said aloud: "There are no greater faults than flattery and meanness." In a word, her character did not change, only her manners improved, although there was still much to be desired.

"So she reached her seventeenth year. My position was quite embarrassing; but a happy thought suddenly occurred to me: it was to leave the service, pass three or four years in a strange country and take my sister with me. As soon as I conceived this resolution I put it in execution, and that is why you find us both upon the banks of the Rhine, I attempting to paint, and she doing anything she wishes, according to her fancy. Now I hope that you will not judge her too severely, for I warn you that Annouchka, though pretending to care nothing about it, is very sensitive to the opinion that others have of her, and to yours above all."

As he said these last words, Gaguine smiled with his usual calmness. I pressed his hand with warmth.

"All this is nothing," he replied, "but I tremble for her in the future. She has one of the most inflammable natures. Up to the present time no one has pleased her; but if she ever loves, who can tell what may result from it? I do not at times know how to behave towards her. Imagine those days when she wished to prove to me that I was cool towards her, whilst she loved only me, and would never love another man! and while saying this she would weep bitterly.

"It is for this reason then? – " I began to say, but I immediately stopped myself.

"Since we are in the chapter of confidences," I replied, "allow me one question. Is it true that no one has pleased her up to the present time? Yet at Petersburg she must have seen a great many young people?"

"They were all to the highest degree displeasing to her. You see, Annouchka was seeking for a hero, an extraordinary man, or some handsome shepherd living in a mountain cave. But it is time for me to stop; I detain you," added he, rising.

"No," I said to him, "let us rather go to your house. I don't wish to go into the house."

"And your work?" he asked of me.

I did not reply to him. Gaguine kindly smiled, and we returned to L. In again seeing the vineyard and the white house on the mountain, I felt a peculiarly sweet emotion that penetrated my soul; it was as if balm had been poured into my heart.

Gaguine's story relieved me greatly.

IX

Annouchka came to meet us at the threshold of the door. I was expecting a fresh burst of laughter, but she approached us pale, silent, her eyes cast down.

"I have brought him back," said Gaguine, "and it is well to add that he wished to come himself."

She looked at me with a questioning air. I put my hand out to her this time, and pressed with fervor her cold and trembling fingers. I felt a profound pity for her. I understood, indeed, the sides of her character which had appeared inexplicable to me. That agitation one saw in her, that desire of putting herself forward, joined with the fear of appearing ridiculous, was quite clear to me now.

A weighty secret oppressed her constantly, her inexperienced amour propre came forward and receded incessantly, but her whole being sought the truth. I understood what attracted me towards this strange young girl: it was not only the half-savage charm bestowed upon her lovely and graceful young figure, it was also her soul that captivated me. Gaguine began to rummage over his portfolios; I proposed to Annouchka to accompany me into the vineyard. She immediately consented, with a gay and almost submissive air. We went half way down the mountain, and seated ourselves upon a stone.

"And you were not dull without us?" she asked me.

"You were then dull without me?" I replied to her.

Annouchka looked at me slyly.

"Yes!" she said, and almost immediately began, —

"The mountains must be very beautiful. They are high, higher than the clouds. Tell me what you saw. You have already told my brother, but I have not heard."

"But you did not care to hear, since you went out."

"I went out because, – you see very well that I don't go out now," added she in a tender tone; "but this morning you were angry."

"I was angry?"

"Yes!"

"Come now, why should I have been?"

"I don't know; but you were angry, and went away in the same mood. I was very sorry to see you go away so, and I am glad to see you come back."

"And I am very glad to be back," I answered.

Annouchka shrugged her shoulders, as children do when they are pleased. "Oh! I know it," she replied. "I used to know by the way in which my father coughed whether he was pleased with me or not."

It was the first time that she had spoken of her father; it surprised me.

"You loved your father very much?" I asked her; and suddenly, to my great disgust, I felt that I blushed.

She did not answer, and blushed also.

We kept silent for some time. In the distance the smoke of a steamboat rose up on the Rhine; we followed it with our eyes.

"And your story," she said to me in a low voice.

"Why did you sometimes begin to laugh when you saw me?" I asked her.

"I don't know. Sometimes I feel like weeping, and I begin to laugh. You must not judge of me by the way I act. Apropos, what is that legend about the fairy Lorelei? This is her rock that one sees here. They say that formerly she drowned everybody, until, falling in love, she threw herself into the Rhine. I like the story. Dame Louise knows a great many of them; she tells them all to me. Dame Louise has a black cat with yellow eyes."

Annouchka raised her head and shook her curls.

"Ah! how happy I am," she said. At that moment low, monotonous sounds began to be heard at intervals, – hundreds of voices, chanting in chorus, with cadenced interruptions, a religious song. A long procession appeared on the road below us, with crosses and banners.

"Suppose we join them," Annouchka said to me, listening to the chants that came to us growing fainter and fainter by degrees.

"You are then very religious?"

"One should go to some place very far away for devotion, or to accomplish a perilous work!" she added. "Otherwise the days slip by – life passes uselessly."

"You are ambitious," I said to her. "You do not wish to end your life without leaving behind some traces of your existence?"

"Is it then impossible?"

"Impossible!" I was going to answer; but I looked at the eyes that shone with ardor, and confined myself to saying, "Try!"

"Tell me," after a moment's silence, during which indescribable shades passed over her countenance, which again had become pale. "Then that lady pleases you very much? You know, the one whose health my brother drank at the ruins the day after you met us?"

I began to laugh.

"Your brother but jested; no woman was in my mind, or at least is there now."

"And what is it that you like about women?" she asked, turning her head with a childlike curiosity.

"What a singular question!" I cried.

Annouchka was immediately troubled.

"I shouldn't have asked you such a question, should I? Forgive me; I am accustomed to say whatever comes into my head. That is why I am afraid to speak."

"Speak, I beg you! Fear nothing, I am so delighted at seeing you less wild."

Annouchka lowered her eyes, and for the first time I heard a sweet low laugh come from her lips.

"Come, tell me about your trip," she said, arranging the folds of her dress over her knees, as if to install herself there for a long time; "begin or recite something to me, that which you read from Onéguine."⁴

She suddenly became pensive, and murmured in a low voice, —

 
"Où sont aujourd'hui la croix et l'ombrage
Qui marquaient la tombe de ma pauvre mère."
 

"That's not exactly the way that Pouchkina⁵ expressed himself," I said.

"I should like to be Tatiana,"⁶ continued she, still pensive. "Come, speak," she said with vivacity.

But that was far from my thoughts. I looked at her; inundated by the warm light of the sun, she seemed to me so calm, so serene. – About us, at our feet, above our heads, the country, the river, the heavens, – all were radiant; the air seemed to me quite saturated with splendor.

"See, how beautiful it is," I said, lowering my voice involuntarily.

"Oh, yes, very beautiful," she replied in the same tone, without looking at me. "If you and I were birds, how we would dart forth into space – into all that infinite blue! But we are not birds."

"Yes, but we can bring forth wings."

"How's that?"

"Life will teach you. There are many feelings that will raise you above this earth; never fear, the wings will come to you."

"Have you had any?"

"What shall I say? I don't think that I have taken wing so far."

Annouchka became thoughtful once more. I was leaning over her.

"Can you waltz?" she said to me suddenly.

"Yes," I replied, a little surprised at the question.

"Then come quickly; come. I am going to beg my brother to play us a waltz. We will pretend that the wings have appeared, and that we are flying into space."

She ran towards the house. I quickly followed her, and a few moments had hardly elapsed before we were whirling about the narrow room, to the sounds of a waltz of Lanner's. Annouchka danced with much grace and animation. I do not know what womanly charm suddenly appeared upon her girlish face. Long afterwards the charm of her slender figure still lingered about my hand; for a long time I felt her quick breathing near me, and I dreamed of her dark eyes, motionless and half closed, with her face animated, though pale, about which waved the curls of her sweet hair.