A Reckless Character, and Other Stories Part 18

"Well, brother, what dost thou think of her?" he asked, all beaming with satisfaction.

"She has a fine voice," replied Aratoff, "but she does not know how to sing yet, she has had no real school." (Why he said this and what he meant by "school" the Lord only knows!)

Kupfer was surprised.--"She has no school," he repeated slowly....

"Well, now.... She can still study. But on the other hand, what soul!

But just wait until thou hast heard her recite Tatyana's letter."

He ran away from Aratoff, and the latter thought: "Soul! With that impa.s.sive face!"--He thought that she bore herself and moved like a hypnotised person, like a somnambulist.... And, at the same time, she was indubitably.... Yes! she was indubitably staring at him.

Meanwhile the "morning" went on. The fat man in spectacles presented himself again; despite his serious appearance he imagined that he was a comic artist and read a scene from Gogol, this time without evoking a single token of approbation. The flute-player flitted past once more; again the pianist thundered; a young fellow of twenty, pomaded and curled, but with traces of tears on his cheeks, sawed out some variations on his fiddle. It might have appeared strange that in the intervals between the recitations and the music the abrupt notes of a French horn were wafted, now and then, from the artists' room; but this instrument was not used, nevertheless. It afterward came out that the amateur who had offered to perform on it had been seized with a panic at the moment when he should have made his appearance before the audience.

So at last, Clara Militch appeared again.

She held in her hand a small volume of Pushkin; but during her reading she never once glanced at it.... She was obviously frightened; the little book shook slightly in her fingers. Aratoff also observed the expression of dejection which _now_ overspread her stern features. The first line: "I write to you ... what would you more?" she uttered with extreme simplicity, almost ingenuously,--stretching both arms out in front of her with an ingenuous, sincere, helpless gesture. Then she began to hurry a little; but beginning with the line: "Another! Nay! to none on earth could I have given e'er my heart!" she regained her self-possession, and grew animated; and when she reached the words: "All, all life hath been a pledge of faithful meeting thus with thee,"--her hitherto rather dull voice rang out enthusiastically and boldly, and her eyes riveted themselves on Aratoff with a boldness and directness to match. She went on with the same enthusiasm, and only toward the close did her voice again fall, and in it and in her face her previous dejection was again depicted. She made a complete muddle, as the saying is, of the last four lines,--the little volume of Pushkin suddenly slipped from her hands, and she beat a hasty retreat.

The audience set to applauding and recalling her in desperate fas.h.i.+on.... One theological student,--a Little Russian,--among others, bellowed so loudly: "Muiluitch! Muiluitch!"[58] that his neighbour politely and sympathetically begged him to "spare himself, as a future proto-deacon!"[59] But Aratoff immediately rose and betook himself to the entrance. Kupfer overtook him....

"Good gracious, whither art thou going?" he yelled:--"I'll introduce thee to Clara if thou wishest--shall I?"

"No, thanks," hastily replied Aratoff, and set off homeward almost at a run.

V

Strange emotions, which were not clear even to himself, agitated him. In reality, Clara's recitation had not altogether pleased him either ...

altogether he could not tell precisely why. It had troubled him, that recitation, it had seemed to him harsh, unmelodious.... Somehow it seemed to have broken something within him, to have exerted some sort of violence. And those importunate, persistent, almost insolent glances--what had caused them? What did they signify?

Aratoff's modesty did permit him even a momentary thought that he might have pleased that strange young girl, that he might have inspired her with a sentiment akin to love, to pa.s.sion!... And he had imagined to himself quite otherwise that as yet unknown woman, that young girl, to whom he would surrender himself wholly, and who would love him, become his bride, his wife.... He rarely dreamed of this: he was chaste both in body and soul;--but the pure image which rose up in his imagination at such times was evoked under another form,--the form of his dead mother, whom he barely remembered, though he cherished her portrait like a sacred treasure. That portrait had been painted in water-colours, in a rather inartistic manner, by a friendly neighbour, but the likeness was striking, as every one averred. The woman, the young girl, whom as yet he did not so much as venture to expect, must possess just such a tender profile, just such kind, bright eyes, just such silky hair, just such a smile, just such a clear understanding....

But this was a black-visaged, swarthy creature, with coa.r.s.e hair, and a moustache on her lip; she must certainly be bad-tempered, giddy.... "A gipsy" (Aratoff could not devise a worse expression)--what was she to him?

And in the meantime, Aratoff was unable to banish from his mind that black-visaged gipsy, whose singing and recitation and even whose personal appearance were disagreeable to him. He was perplexed, he was angry with himself. Not long before this he had read Walter Scott's romance "Saint Ronan's Well" (there was a complete edition of Walter Scott's works in the library of his father, who revered the English romance-writer as a serious, almost a learned author). The heroine of that romance is named Clara Mowbray. A poet of the '40's, Krasoff, wrote a poem about her, which wound up with the words:

"Unhappy Clara! foolish Clara!

Unhappy Clara Mowbray!"

Aratoff was acquainted with this poem also.... And now these words kept incessantly recurring to his memory.... "Unhappy Clara! foolish Clara!..." (That was why he had been so surprised when Kupfer mentioned Clara Militch to him.) Even Platosha noticed, not precisely a change in Yakoff's frame of mind--as a matter of fact, no change had taken place--but something wrong about his looks, in his remarks. She cautiously interrogated him about the literary morning at which he had been present;--she whispered, sighed, scrutinised him from in front, scrutinised him from the side, from behind--and suddenly, slapping her hands on her thighs, she exclaimed:

"Well, Yashal--I see what the trouble is!"

"What dost thou mean?" queried Aratoff in his turn.

"Thou hast certainly met at that morning some one of those tail-draggers" (that was what Platonida Ivanovna called all ladies who wore fas.h.i.+onable gowns).... "She has a comely face--and she puts on airs like _this_,--and twists her face like _this_" (Platosha depicted all this in her face), "and she makes her eyes go round like this...." (she mimicked this also, describing huge circles in the air with her forefinger).... "And it made an impression on thee, because thou art not used to it.... But that does not signify anything, Yasha ... it does not signify anything! Drink a cup of herb-tea when thou goest to bed, and that will be the end of it!... Lord, help!"

Platosha ceased speaking and took herself off.... She probably had never made such a long and animated speech before since she was born ... but Aratoff thought:

"I do believe my aunt is right.... It is all because I am not used to such things...." (He really had attracted the attention of the female s.e.x to himself for the first time ... at any rate, he had never noticed it before.) "I must not indulge myself."

So he set to work at his books, and drank some linden-flower tea when he went to bed, and even slept well all that night, and had no dreams. On the following morning he busied himself with his photography, as though nothing had happened....

But toward evening his spiritual serenity was again disturbed.

VI

To wit: a messenger brought him a note, written in a large, irregular feminine hand, which ran as follows:

"If you guess who is writing to you, and if it does not bore you, come to-morrow, after dinner, to the Tver boulevard--about five o'clock--and wait. You will not be detained long. But it is very important. Come."

There was no signature. Aratoff instantly divined who his correspondent was, and that was precisely what disturbed him.--"What nonsense!" he said, almost aloud. "This is too much! Of course I shall not go."--Nevertheless, he ordered the messenger to be summoned, and from him he learned merely that the letter had been handed to him on the street by a maid. Having dismissed him, Aratoff reread the letter, and flung it on the floor.... But after a while he picked it up and read it over again; a second time he cried: "Nonsense!" He did not throw the letter on the floor this time, however, but put it away in a drawer.

Aratoff went about his customary avocations, busying himself now with one, now with another; but his work did not make progress, was not a success. Suddenly he noticed that he was waiting for Kupfer, that he wanted to interrogate him, or even communicate something to him.... But Kupfer did not make his appearance. Then Aratoff got Pushkin and read Tatyana's letter and again felt convinced that that "gipsy" had not in the least grasped the meaning of the letter. But there was that jester Kupfer shouting: "A Rachel! A Viardot!" Then he went to his piano, raised the cover in an abstracted sort of way, tried to search out in his memory the melody of Tchaikovsky's romance; but he immediately banged to the piano-lid with vexation and went to his aunt, in her own room, which was always kept very hot, and was forever redolent of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and crowded with such a mult.i.tude of rugs, etageres, little benches, cus.h.i.+ons and various articles of softly-stuffed furniture that it was difficult for an inexperienced person to turn round in it, and breathing was oppressive. Platonida Ivanovna was sitting by the window with her knitting-needles in her hand (she was knitting a scarf for Yashenka--the thirty-eighth, by actual count, during the course of his existence!)--and was greatly surprised.

Aratoff rarely entered her room, and if he needed anything he always shouted in a shrill voice from his study: "Aunt Platosha!"--But she made him sit down and, in antic.i.p.ation of his first words, p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, as she stared at him through her round spectacles with one eye, and above them with the other. She did not inquire after his health, and did not offer him tea, for she saw that he had not come for that.

Aratoff hesitated for a while ... then began to talk ... to talk about his mother, about the way she had lived with his father, and how his father had made her acquaintance. He knew all this perfectly well ...

but he wanted to talk precisely about that. Unluckily for him, Platosha did not know how to converse in the least; she made very brief replies, as though she suspected that Yasha had not come for that purpose.

"Certainly!"--she kept repeating hurriedly, as she plied her knitting-needles almost in an angry way. "Every one knows that thy mother was a dove ... a regular dove.... And thy father loved her as a husband should love, faithfully and honourably, to the very grave; and he never loved any other woman,"--she added, elevating her voice and removing her spectacles.

"And was she of a timid disposition?" asked Aratoff, after a short pause.

"Certainly she was. As is fitting for the female s.e.x. The bold ones are a recent invention."

"And were there no bold ones in your time?"

"There were such even in our day ... of course there were! But who were they? Some street-walker, or shameless hussy or other. She would drag her skirts about, and fling herself hither and thither at random....

What did she care? What anxiety had she? If a young fool came along, he fell into her hands. But steady-going people despised them. Dost thou remember ever to have beheld such in our house?"

Aratoff made no reply and returned to his study. Platonida Ivanovna gazed after him, shook her head and again donned her spectacles, again set to work on her scarf ... but more than once she fell into thought and dropped her knitting-needles on her knee.

And Aratoff until nightfall kept again and again beginning, with the same vexation, the same ire as before, to think about "the gipsy," the appointed tryst, to which he certainly would not go! During the night also she worried him. He kept constantly seeing her eyes, now narrowed, now widely opened, with their importunate gaze riveted directly on him, and those impa.s.sive features with their imperious expression.

On the following morning he again kept expecting Kupfer, for some reason or other; he came near writing him a letter ... however, he did nothing ... but spent most of his time pacing to and fro in his study.

Not for one instant did he even admit to himself the thought that he would go to that stupid "rendezvous" ... and at half-past four, after having swallowed his dinner in haste, he suddenly donned his overcoat and pulling his cap down on his brows, he stole out of the house without letting his aunt see him and wended his way to the Tver boulevard.

VII

Aratoff found few pedestrians on the boulevard. The weather was raw and quite cold. He strove not to think of what he was doing. He forced himself to turn his attention to all the objects he came across and pretended to a.s.sure himself that he had come out to walk precisely like the other people.... The letter of the day before was in his side-pocket, and he was uninterruptedly conscious of its presence. He walked the length of the boulevard a couple of times, darting keen glances at every feminine form which approached him, and his heart thumped, thumped violently.... He began to feel tired, and sat down on a bench. And suddenly the idea occurred to him: "Come now, what if that letter was not written by her but by some one else, by some other woman?" In point of fact, that should have made no difference to him ...

and yet he was forced to admit to himself that he did not wish this. "It would be very stupid," he thought, "still more stupid than _that_!" A nervous restlessness began to take possession of him; he began to feel chilly, not outwardly but inwardly. Several times he drew out his watch from his waistcoat pocket, glanced at the face, put it back again,--and every time forgot how many minutes were lacking to five o'clock. It seemed to him as though every one who pa.s.sed him stared at him in a peculiar manner, surveying him with a certain sneering surprise and curiosity. A wretched little dog ran up, sniffed at his legs and began to wag its tail. He flourished his arms angrily at it. He was most annoyed of all by a small boy from a factory in a bed-ticking jacket, who seated himself on the bench and first whistled, then scratched his head, dangling his legs, encased in huge, broken boots, the while, and staring at him from time to time. "His employer is certainly expecting him," thought Aratoff, "and here he is, the lazy dog, wasting his time idling about...."

But at that same moment it seemed to him as though some one had approached and taken up a stand close behind him ... a warm current emanated thence....