me--from far away."
He passed his hand over his face and with slow steps crossed the road
towards the hut. But I did not want to give in so quickly and went
back into the kitchen garden. That someone really had three times
called "Ilyusha" I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive
and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who
knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in
reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had
agitated Tyeglev so much.
I walked along beside the fence, stopping from time to time and
looking about me. Close to the fence, at no great distance from our
hut, there stood an old leafy willow tree; it stood out, a big dark
patch, against the whiteness of the mist all round, that dim whiteness
which perplexes and deadens the sight more than darkness itself. All
at once it seemed to me that something alive, fairly big, stirred on
the ground near the willow. Exclaiming "Stop! Who is there?" I rushed
forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching
figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I
tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and
stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the
ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass
comb on a cord, such as peasants wear on their belt.
Further search led to nothing--and I went back to the hut with the
comb in my hand, and my cheeks tingling.
IX
I found Tyeglev sitting on the bench. A candle was burning on the
table before him and he was writing something in a little album which
he always had with him. Seeing me, he quickly put the album in his
pocket and began filling his pipe.
"Look here, my friend," I began, "what a trophy I have brought back
from my expedition!" I showed him the comb and told him what had
happened to me near the willow. "I must have startled a thief," I
added. "You heard a horse was stolen from our neighbour yesterday?"
Tyeglev smiled frigidly and lighted his pipe. I sat down beside him.
"And do you still believe, Ilya Stepanitch," I said, "that the voice
we heard came from those unknown realms...."
He stopped me with a peremptory gesture.
"Ridel," he began, "I am in no mood for jesting, and so I beg you not
to jest."
He certainly was in no mood for jesting. His face was changed. It
looked paler, longer and more expressive. His strange, "different"
eyes kept shifting from one object to another.
"I never thought," he began again, "that I should reveal to
another ... another man what you are about to hear and what ought
to have died ... yes, died, hidden in my breast; but it seems it is
to be--and indeed I have no choice. It is destiny! Listen."
And he told me a long story.
I have mentioned already that he was a poor hand at telling stories,
but it was not only his lack of skill in describing events that had
happened to him that impressed me that night; the very sound of his
voice, his glances, the movements which he made with his fingers and
his hands--everything about him, indeed, seemed unnatural,
unnecessary, false, in fact. I was very young and inexperienced in
those days and did not know that the habit of high-flown language and
falsity of intonation and manner may become so ingrained in a man that
he is incapable of shaking it off: it is a sort of curse. Later in
life I came across a lady who described to me the effect on her of her
son's death, of her "boundless" grief, of her fears for her reason, in
such exaggerated language, with such theatrical gestures, such
melodramatic movements of her head and rolling of her eyes, that I
thought to myself, "How false and affected that lady is! She did not
love her son at all!" And a week afterwards I heard that the poor
woman had really gone out of her mind. Since then I have become much
more careful in my judgments and have had far less confidence in my
own impressions.
X
The story which Tyeglev told me was, briefly, as follows. He had
living in Petersburg, besides his influential uncle, an aunt, not
influential but wealthy. As she had no children of her own she had
adopted a little girl, an orphan, of the working class, given her a
liberal education and treated her like a daughter. She was called
Masha. Tyeglev saw her almost every day. It ended in their falling in
love with one another and Masha's giving herself to him. This was
discovered. Tyeglev's aunt was fearfully incensed, she turned the
luckless girl out of her house in disgrace, and moved to Moscow where
she adopted a young lady of noble birth and made her her heiress. On
her return to her own relations, poor and drunken people, Masha's lot
was a bitter one. Tyeglev had promised to marry her and did not keep
his promise. At his last interview with her, he was forced to speak
out: she wanted to know the truth and wrung it out of him. "Well," she
said, "if I am not to be your wife, I know what there is left for me
to do." More than a fortnight had passed since that last interview.
"I never for a moment deceived myself as to the meaning of her last
words," added Tyeglev. "I am certain that she has put an end to her
life and ... and that it was her voice, that it was she
calling me ... to follow her there ... I recognised her
voice.... Well, there is but one end to it."
"But why didn't you marry her, Ilya Stepanitch?" I asked. "You ceased
to love her?"
"No; I still love her passionately."
At this point I stared at Tyeglev. I remembered another friend of
mine, a very intelligent man, who had a very plain wife, neither
intelligent nor rich and was very unhappy in his marriage. When
someone in my presence asked him why he had married and suggested that
it was probably for love, he answered, "Not for love at all. It simply
happened." And in this case Tyeglev loved a girl passionately and did
not marry her. Was it for the same reason, then?