§7
The day after her arrival, my cousin turned my usual routine, with the exception of my lessons, upside down. With a high hand she fixed hours for us to read together, advised me to stop reading novels, and recommended Ségur’s General History and The Travels of Anacharsis.[[32]] From the ascetic point of view she opposed my strong inclination to smoke on the sly—cigarettes were then unknown, and I rolled the tobacco in paper myself: in general, she liked to preach to me, and I listened meekly to her sermons, if I did not profit by them. Fortunately, she was not consistent: quite forgetting her own arrangements, she read with me for amusement rather than instruction, and often sent out a secret messenger in the shape of a pantry-boy to buy buckwheat cakes in winter or gooseberries in summer.
[32]. Voyage du jeune Anacharsis, by the Abbé Barthélemy, published in 1779. Ségur was a French historian (1753-1830).
I believe that her influence on me was very good. She brought into my monastic life an element of warmth, and this may have served to keep alive the enthusiasms that were beginning to stir in my mind, when they might easily have been smothered by my father’s ironical tone. I learned to be attentive, to be nettled by a single word, to care for a friend, and to feel affection; I learned also to talk about feelings. In her I found support for my political ideas; she prophesied a remarkable future and reputation for me, and I, with a child’s vanity, believed her when she said I would one day be a Brutus or Fabricius.
To me alone she confided the secret of her love for a cavalry officer in a black jacket and dolman. It was really a secret; for the officer, as he rode at the head of his squadron, never suspected the pure little flame that burnt for him in the breast of this young lady of eighteen. Whether I envied him, I can’t say; probably I did, a little; but I was proud of being chosen as her confidant, and I imagined (under the influence of Werther) that this was a tragic passion, fated to end in some great catastrophe involving suicide by poison or the dagger. I even thought at times of calling on the officer and telling him the whole story.
My cousin brought shuttlecocks with her from home. One of them had a pin stuck into it, and she always used it in playing; if anyone else happened to get hold of it, she took it away and said that no other suited her as well. But the demon of mischief, which was always whispering its temptations in my ear, tempted me to take out this pin and stick it into another shuttlecock. The trick was entirely successful: my cousin always chose the shuttlecock with the pin in it. After a fortnight I told her what I had done: she changed colour, burst out crying, and ran to her own room. I was frightened and distressed; after waiting half an hour I went to find her. Her door was locked, and I asked her to open it. She refused, saying that she was not well, and that I was an unkind, heartless boy. Then I wrote a note in which I begged her to forgive me, and after tea we made it up: I kissed her hand, and she embraced me and explained the full importance of the incident. A year before, the officer had dined at their house and played battledore with her afterwards; and the marked shuttlecock had been used by him. I felt very remorseful, as if I had committed a real act of sacrilege.
My cousin stayed with us till October, when her father summoned her home, promising to let her spend the next summer with us in the country. We looked forward with horror to the separation; and soon there came an autumn day when a carriage arrived to fetch her, and her maid carried down baskets and band-boxes, while our servants put in provisions of all kinds, to last a week, and crowded to the steps to say their good-byes. We exchanged a close embrace, and both shed tears; the carriage drove out into the street, turned into a side-street close to the very shop where we used to buy the buckwheat cakes, and disappeared. I took a turn in the court-yard, but it seemed cold and unfriendly; my own room, where I went next, seemed empty and cold too. I began to prepare a lesson for Protopópov, and all the time I was thinking, “Where is the carriage now? has it passed the gates or not?”
I had one comfort: we should spend next June together in the country.