Dream Tales and Prose Poems Part 6

He lighted the candle, however, and in a rapid glance, not without a certain dread, scanned the whole room ... and saw nothing in it unusual. He got up, went to the stereoscope ... again the same grey doll, with its eyes averted. The feeling of dread gave way to one of annoyance. He was, as it were, cheated in his expectations ... the very expectation indeed struck him as absurd.

'Well, this is positively idiotic!' he muttered, as he got back into bed, and blew out the candle. Profound darkness reigned once more.

Aratov resolved to go to sleep this time.... But a fresh sensation started up in him. He fancied some one was standing in the middle of the room, not far from him, and scarcely perceptibly breathing. He turned round hastily and opened his eyes.... But what could be seen in impenetrable darkness? He began to feel for a match on his little bedside table ... and suddenly it seemed to him that a sort of soft, noiseless hurricane was pa.s.sing over the whole room, over him, through him, and the word 'I!' sounded distinctly in his ears....

'I!... I!'...

Some instants pa.s.sed before he succeeded in getting the candle alight.

Again there was no one in the room; and he now heard nothing, except the uneven throbbing of his own heart. He drank a gla.s.s of water, and stayed still, his head resting on his hand. He was waiting.

He thought: 'I will wait. Either it's all nonsense ... or she is here. She is not going to play cat and mouse with me like this!' He waited, waited long ... so long that the hand on which he was resting his head went numb ... but not one of his previous sensations was repeated. Twice his eyes closed.... He opened them promptly ... at least he believed that he opened them. Gradually they turned towards the door and rested on it. The candle burned dim, and it was once more dark in the room ... but the door made a long streak of white in the half darkness. And now this patch began to move, to grow less, to disappear ... and in its place, in the doorway appeared a woman's figure. Aratov looked intently at it ... Clara! And this time she was looking straight at him, coming towards him.... On her head was a wreath of red roses.... He was all in agitation, he sat up....

Before him stood his aunt in a nightcap adorned with a broad red ribbon, and in a white dressing-jacket.

'Platosha!' he said with an effort. 'Is that you?'

'Yes, it's I,' answered Platonida Ivanovna ... 'I, Yasha darling, yes.'

'What have you come for?'

'You waked me up. At first you kept moaning as it were ... and then you cried out all of a sudden, "Save me! help me! "'

'I cried out?'

'Yes, and such a hoa.r.s.e cry, "Save me!" I thought, Mercy on us! He's never ill, is he? And I came in. Are you quite well?'

'Perfectly well.'

'Well, you must have had a bad dream then. Would you like me to burn a little incense?'

Aratov once more stared intently at his aunt, and laughed aloud.... The figure of the good old lady in her nightcap and dressing-jacket, with her long face and scared expression, was certainly very comic. All the mystery surrounding him, oppressing him--everything weird was sent flying instantaneously.

'No, Platosha dear, there's no need,' he said. 'Please forgive me for unwittingly troubling you. Sleep well, and I will sleep too.'

Platonida Ivanovna remained a minute standing where she was, pointed to the candle, grumbled, 'Why not put it out ... an accident happens in a minute?'

and as she went out, could not refrain, though only at a distance, from making the sign of the cross over him.

Aratov fell asleep quickly, and slept till morning. He even got up in a happy frame of mind ... though he felt sorry for something.... He felt light and free. 'What romantic fancies, if you come to think of it!'

he said to himself with a smile. He never once glanced either at the stereoscope, or at the page torn out of the diary. Immediately after breakfast, however, he set off to go to Kupfer's.

What drew him there ... he was dimly aware.

XVI

Aratov found his sanguine friend at home. He chatted a little with him, reproached him for having quite forgotten his aunt and himself, listened to fresh praises of that heart of gold, the princess, who had just sent Kupfer from Yaroslav a smoking-cap embroidered with fish-scales ... and all at once, sitting just opposite Kupfer and looking him straight in the face, he announced that he had been a journey to Kazan.

'You have been to Kazan; what for?'

'Oh, I wanted to collect some facts about that ... Clara Militch.'

'The one that poisoned herself?'

'Yes.'

Kupfer shook his head. 'Well, you are a chap! And so quiet about it! Toiled a thousand miles out there and back ... for what? Eh? If there'd been some woman in the case now! Then I can understand anything! anything! any madness!' Kupfer ruffled up his hair. 'But simply to collect materials, as it's called among you learned people.... I'd rather be excused! There are statistical writers to do that job! Well, and did you make friends with the old lady and the sister? Isn't she a delightful girl?'

'Delightful,' answered Aratov, 'she gave me a great deal of interesting information.'

'Did she tell you exactly how Clara took poison?'

'You mean ... how?'

'Yes, in what manner?'

'No ... she was still in such grief ... I did not venture to question her too much. Was there anything remarkable about it?'

'To be sure there was. Only fancy; she had to appear on the stage that very day, and she acted her part. She took a gla.s.s of poison to the theatre with her, drank it before the first act, and went through all that act afterwards. With the poison inside her! Isn't that something like strength of will? Character, eh? And, they say, she never acted her part with such feeling, such pa.s.sion! The public suspected nothing, they clapped, and called for her.... And directly the curtain fell, she dropped down there, on the stage. Convulsions ... and convulsions, and within an hour she was dead! But didn't I tell you all about it? And it was in the papers too!'

Aratov's hands had grown suddenly cold, and he felt an inward s.h.i.+ver.

'No, you didn't tell me that,' he said at last. 'And you don't know what play it was?

Kupfer thought a minute. 'I did hear what the play was ... there is a betrayed girl in it.... Some drama, it must have been. Clara was created for dramatic parts.... Her very appearance ... But where are you off to?'

Kupfer interrupted himself, seeing that Aratov was reaching after his hat.

'I don't feel quite well,' replied Aratov. 'Good-bye ... I'll come in another time.'

Kupfer stopped him and looked into his face. 'What a nervous fellow you are, my boy! Just look at yourself.... You're as white as chalk.'

'I'm not well,' repeated Aratov, and, disengaging himself from Kupfer's detaining hands, he started homewards. Only at that instant it became clear to him that he had come to Kupfer with the sole object of talking of Clara...

'Unhappy Clara, poor frantic Clara....'

On reaching home, however, he quickly regained his composure to a certain degree.

The circ.u.mstances accompanying Clara's death had at first given him a violent shock ... but later on this performance 'with the poison inside her,' as Kupfer had expressed it, struck him as a kind of monstrous pose, a piece of bravado, and he was already trying not to think about it, fearing to arouse a feeling in himself, not unlike repugnance. And at dinner, as he sat facing Platosha, he suddenly recalled her midnight appearance, recalled that abbreviated dressing-jacket, the cap with the high ribbon--and why a ribbon on a nightcap?--all the ludicrous apparition which, like the scene-s.h.i.+fter's whistle in a transformation scene, had dissolved all his visions into dust! He even forced Platosha to repeat her description of how she had heard his scream, had been alarmed, had jumped up, could not for a minute find either his door or her own, and so on. In the evening he played a game of cards with her, and went off to his room rather depressed, but again fairly composed.

Aratov did not think about the approaching night, and was not afraid of it: he was sure he would pa.s.s an excellent night. The thought of Clara had sprung up within him from time to time; but he remembered at once how 'affectedly' she had killed herself, and turned away from it. This piece of 'bad taste' blocked out all other memories of her. Glancing cursorily into the stereoscope, he even fancied that she was averting her eyes because she was ashamed. Opposite the stereoscope on the wall hung a portrait of his mother. Aratov took it from its nail, scrutinised it a long while, kissed it and carefully put it away in a drawer. Why did he do that? Whether it was that it was not fitting for this portrait to be so close to that woman ... or for some other reason Aratov did not inquire of himself. But his mother's portrait stirred up memories of his father ... of his father, whom he had seen dying in this very room, in this bed. 'What do you think of all this, father?' he mentally addressed himself to him. 'You understand all this; you too believed in Schiller's world of spirits. Give me advice!'

'Father would have advised me to give up all this idiocy,' Aratov said aloud, and he took up a book. He could not, however, read for long, and feeling a sort of heaviness all over, he went to bed earlier than usual, in the full conviction that he would fall asleep at once.

And so it happened ... but his hopes of a quiet night were not realised.

XVII

It had not struck midnight, when he had an extraordinary and terrifying dream.