XIV
My sister, too, was leading a life of her own which she carefully hid from me. She was often with Masha. When I went up to her she seemed to shrink into herself, and there was a guilty, look in her eyes; evidently there was something going on in her heart of which she was afraid or ashamed. So as to avoid meeting me in the garden, or being left alone with me, she always kept close to Masha, and I rarely had an opportunity of talking to her except at dinner.
One evening I was walking quietly through the garden on my way back from the building. It was beginning to get dark. Without noticing me, or hearing my step, my sister was walking near a spreading old apple tree, absolutely noiselessly as though she were a phantom. She was dressed in black, and was walking rapidly backwards and forwards on the same track, looking at the ground. An apple fell from the tree; she started at the sound, stood still and pressed her hands to her temples. At that moment I went up to her.
In a rush of affection which suddenly flooded my heart, with tears in my eyes, suddenly remembering my mother and our childhood, I put my arm round her shoulders and kissed her.
“What is the matter?” I asked her. “You are unhappy; I have seen it for a long time. Tell me what’s wrong?”
“I am ,” she said, .
“What is it?” I insisted. “For God’s sake, be open!”
“I will, I will be open; I will tell you the whole truth. To hide it from you is so hard, so . Misail, I love …” she went on in a , “I love him … I love him. … I am happy, but why am I so ?”
There was the sound of footsteps; between the trees appeared Dr. Blagovo in his shirt with his high top boots. Evidently they had arranged to meet near the apple tree. Seeing him, she rushed towards him with a cry of pain as though he were being taken from her.
“Vladimir! Vladimir!”
She to him and looked greedily into his face, and only then I noticed how pale and thin she had become of late. It was particularly noticeable from her collar which I had known for so long, and which now hung more loosely than ever before about her thin, long neck. The doctor was disconcerted, but at once recovered himself, and, stroking her hair, said:
“There, there. … Why so nervous? You see, I’m here.”
We were silent, looking with embarrassment at each other, then we walked on, the three of us together, and I heard the doctor say to me:
“Civilized life has not yet begun among us. Old men console themselves by making out that if there is nothing now, there was something in the forties or the sixties; that’s the old: you and I are young; our brains have not yet been touched by marasmus senilis; we cannot comfort ourselves with such illusions. The beginning of Russia was in 862, but the beginning of civilized Russia has not come yet.”
But I did not grasp the meaning of these reflections. It was somehow strange, I could not believe it, that my sister was in love, that she was walking and holding the arm of a stranger and looking tenderly at him. My sister, this nervous, frightened, crushed, fettered creature, loved a man who was married and had children! I felt sorry for something, but what exactly I don’t know; the presence of the doctor was for some reason distasteful to me now, and I could not imagine what would come of this love of theirs.