"'Now take her,' said my father to me with earnestness. 'I bequeathe to you my daughter, your sister. You will hear everything from Jacob,' he added, while he pointed to his valet.
"Assja burst out sobbing, and threw herself on the bed. Half an hour afterward my father was dead.
"I learned the following story: Assja was the daughter of my father and a former waiting maid of my mother's, named Tatiana. She rose distinct to my remembrance, this Tatiana, with her tall, slender figure, her serious face, regular features, her dark and earnest eyes. She had the reputation of a proud, unapproachable girl. As nearly as I could learn from Jacob's reserved and respectful story, my father had entered into close relations with her some years after my mother's death. At that time Tatiana was not in her master's house, but living with a married sister, the dairywoman, in a separate hut. My father became very much attached to her, and wished to marry her after my departure, but she herself refused this in spite of his entreaties.
"'The departed Tatiana Vlassievna'—so Jacob told me, standing against the door, with his hands crossed behind his back—'was in all things very thoughtful, and would not lower your father. "A fine wife I should be for you—a real lady wife!" she said to him—in my presence she has said it.' Tatiana never would come back to the house, but remained, together with Assja, living with her sister as before. As a child I had often seen Tatiana at church on saint days. She stood among the servants, usually near a window. She wore a dark cloth wound about her head and a yellow shawl on her shoulders—the strong outline of her face clear against the transparent pane; and she prayed silently and humbly, bowing very low after the old fashion. When my uncle took me away Assja was just two; when she lost her mother, just nine years old.
"Immediately after Tatiana's death my father took Assja home to himself. He had already expressed a wish to have her with him, but Tatiana had refused it. You can imagine what Assja must have felt when she was taken into the master's house. To this day she has not forgotten the hour when for the first time they dressed her in a silk dress and kissed her little hand. In her mother's lifetime she had been brought up with great strictness: my father left her without a single restraint. He was her instructor; except him, she saw no one. He did not spoil her; at least he did not follow her about like a nursemaid, but he loved her fondly, and refused her nothing. He was conscious of guilt toward her. Assja soon discovered that she was the principal person in the household. She knew the master was her father, but at the same time she began to understand her equivocal position. Wilfulness and distrust were developed to an extreme degree in her. Bad manners were contracted; simplicity vanished. She wished (she herself told me) to compel the whole world to forget her origin. She was ashamed of her mother, was ashamed of being ashamed, and was in turn proud of her. You see that she knew and knows still many things that should not be known at her age. But does the blame rest with her? Youth was strong in her: her blood flowed hot, and no hand near to guide her—the fullest independence in everything! Is such a fate easily borne? She would not be inferior to other girls. She rushed headlong into study. But what good could result from it? The life, lawlessly begun, seemed likely to develop lawlessly. But the heart remained true and the reason sound.
"And so I found myself, a young fellow of twenty, weighted with the care of a thirteen-year old girl! In the first days after my father's death my voice caused her a feeling of feverish horror, my caresses made her sad, and only by degrees and after a long time did she become accustomed to me. And later, when she had gained security that I really considered her my sister, and that I loved her as a sister, she attached herself passionately to me: with her there is no half feeling.
"I brought her to Petersburg. Hard as it was to leave her—I could not live with her in any case—I placed her at one of the best boarding-schools. Assja agreed to the necessity of our separation, but it cost her a sickness which came near to being a fatal one. Little by little she reconciled herself, and she staid four years in this establishment. But contrary to my expectations, she remained almost her old self. The principal of the school often complained to me. 'I cannot punish her,' she would say; 'and I can do nothing by kindness.' Assja comprehended everything with great quickness, learned wonderfully—better than all; but it was utterly impossible to bring her under the common rule. She rebelled; was sulky. I could not blame her much. In her position she must keep herself at the service of every one, or avoid every one. Only one of all her companions was intimate with her—an insignificant, silent, and poor girl. The other young girls with whom she was associated, of good families for the most part, did not like her, and taunted and jibed her whenever they could find opportunity. Assja was not behind them by a hair's breadth. Once, in the hour for religious instruction, the teacher came to speak of the idea of vice. 'Sycophancy and cowardice,' said Assja aloud, 'are the meanest vices.' In a word, she continued to walk in her own way, only her manners improved somewhat; but even in this respect, I fancy, she has made no wonderful advance.
"She had reached her seventeenth year. It was useless to keep her longer at school. I found myself in great perplexity. All of a sudden a happy thought struck me: to quit the service, and to travel with Assja for a year or two. Done as soon as thought. So here are we both now on the banks of the Rhine: I occupied in learning to paint, she following out her whims in her usual way. But now I must hope that you will not pass too harsh judgment upon her; for however much she may insist that everything is indifferent to her, she does care very much for the opinion of others, and especially for your own."
And Gagin smiled again his gentle smile. I wrung his hand.
"That is how it stands now," Gagin continued. "But I have my hands full with her. A real firebrand, that girl! Up to this time no one has ever pleased her; but alas if ever she falls in love! At times I do not know what to do with her. Lately she took it into her head to declare that I was growing cold to her, but that she loved only me, and would love only me her life long. And how she sobbed!"