He glanced round.... It was she!
He recognised her immediately, although a thick, dark-blue veil concealed her features. He instantly sprang from the bench, and remained standing there, unable to utter a word. She also maintained silence. He felt greatly agitated ... but her agitation was as great as his: Aratoff could not help seeing even through the veil how deadly pale she grew.
But she was the first to speak.
"Thank you," she began in a broken voice, "thank you for coming. I did not hope...." She turned away slightly and walked along the boulevard.
Aratoff followed her.
"Perhaps you condemn me," she went on, without turning her head.--"As a matter of fact, my action is very strange.... But I have heard a great deal about you ... but no! I ... that was not the cause.... If you only knew.... I wanted to say so much to you, my G.o.d!... But how am I to do it?... How am I to do it!"
Aratoff walked by her side, but a little in the rear. He did not see her face; he saw only her hat and a part of her veil ... and her long, threadbare cloak. All his vexation against her and against himself suddenly returned to him; all the absurdity, all the awkwardness of this tryst, of these explanations between utter strangers, on a public boulevard, suddenly presented itself to him.
"I have come hither at your behest," he began in his turn, "I have come, my dear madame" (her shoulders quivered softly, she turned into a side path, and he followed her), "merely for the sake of having an explanation, of learning in consequence of what strange misunderstanding you were pleased to appeal to me, a stranger to you, who ... who only _guessed_, as you expressed it in your letter, that it was precisely you who had written to him ... because he guessed that you had tried, in the course of that literary morning to show him too much ... too much obvious attention."
Aratoff uttered the whole of this little speech in the same resonant but firm voice in which men who are still very young answer at examinations on questions for which they are well prepared.... He was indignant; he was angry.... And that wrath had loosed his tongue which was not very fluent on ordinary occasions.
She continued to advance along the path with somewhat lagging steps....
Aratoff followed her as before, and as before saw only her little old mantilla and her small hat, which was not quite new either. His vanity suffered at the thought that she must now be thinking: "All I had to do was to make a sign, and he immediately hastened to me!"
Aratoff lapsed into silence ... he expected that she would reply to him; but she did not utter a word.
"I am ready to listen to you," he began again, "and I shall even be very glad if I can be of service to you in any way ... although, I must confess, nevertheless, that I find it astonishing ... that considering my isolated life...."
But at his last words Clara suddenly turned to him and he beheld the same startled, profoundly-sorrowful visage, with the same large, bright tears in its eyes, with the same woful expression around the parted lips; and the visage was so fine thus that he involuntarily broke off short and felt within himself something akin to fright, and pity and forbearance.
"Akh, why ... why are you like this? ..." she said with irresistibly sincere and upright force--and what a touching ring there was to her voice!--"Is it possible that my appeal to you can have offended you?...
Is it possible that you have understood nothing?... Ah, yes! You have not understood anything, you have not understood what I said to you. G.o.d knows what you have imagined about me, you have not even reflected what it cost me to write to you!... You have been anxious only on your own account, about your own dignity, your own peace!... But did I...." (she so tightly clenched her hands which she had raised to her lips that her fingers cracked audibly).... "As though I had made any demands upon you, as though explanations were requisite to begin with.... "My dear madame".... "I even find it astonishing".... "If I can be of service to you".... Akh, how foolish I have been!--I have been deceived in you, in your face!... When I saw you for the first time.... There.... There you stand.... And not one word do you utter! Have you really not a word to say?"
She had been imploring.... Her face suddenly flushed, and as suddenly a.s.sumed an evil and audacious expression,--"O Lord! how stupid this is!"--she cried suddenly, with a harsh laugh.--"How stupid our tryst is!
How stupid I am! ... and you, too!... Fie!"
She made a disdainful gesture with her hand as though sweeping him out of her path, and pa.s.sing around him she ran swiftly from the boulevard and disappeared.
That gesture of the hand, that insulting laugh, that final exclamation instantly restored Aratoff to his former frame of mind and stifled in him the feeling which had risen in his soul when she turned to him with tears in her eyes. Again he waxed wroth, and came near shouting after the retreating girl: "You may turn out a good actress, but why have you taken it into your head to play a comedy on me?"
With great strides he returned home, and although he continued to be indignant and to rage all the way thither, still, at the same time, athwart all these evil, hostile feelings there forced its way the memory of that wondrous face which he had beheld only for the twinkling of an eye.... He even put to himself the question: "Why did not I answer her when she demanded from me at least one word?"--"I did not have time,"
... he thought.... "She did not give me a chance to utter that word....
And what would I have uttered?"
But he immediately shook his head and said, "An actress!"
And yet, at the same time, the vanity of the inexperienced, nervous youth, which had been wounded at first, now felt rather flattered at the pa.s.sion which he had inspired....
"But on the other hand," he pursued his reflections, "all that is at an end of course.... I must have appeared ridiculous to her."....
This thought was disagreeable to him, and again he grew angry ... both at her ... and at himself. On reaching home he locked himself in his study. He did not wish to encounter Platosha. The kind old woman came to his door a couple of times, applied her ear to the key-hole, and merely sighed and whispered her prayer....
"It has begun!" she thought.... "And he is only five-and-twenty.... Akh, it is early, early!"
VIII
Akatoff was very much out of sorts all the following day.
"What is the matter, Yasha?" Platonida Ivanovna said to him. "Thou seemest to be tousled to-day, somehow."... In the old woman"s peculiar language this quite accurately defined Aratoff"s moral condition. He could not work, but even he himself did not know what he wanted. Now he was expecting Kupfer again (he suspected that it was precisely from Kupfer that Clara had obtained his address ... and who else could have "talked a great deal" about him?); again he wondered whether his acquaintance with her was to end in that way? ... again he imagined that she would write him another letter; again he asked himself whether he ought not to write her a letter, in which he might explain everything to her,---as he did not wish to leave an unpleasant impression of himself.... But, in point of fact, _what_ was he to explain?--Now he aroused in himself something very like disgust for her, for her persistence, her boldness; again that indescribably touching face presented itself to him and her irresistible voice made itself heard; and yet again he recalled her singing, her recitation--and did not know whether he was right in his wholesale condemnation.--In one word: he was a tousled man! At last he became bored with all this and decided, as the saying is, "to take it upon himself" and erase all that affair, as it undoubtedly was interfering with his avocations and disturbing his peace of mind.--He did not find it so easy to put his resolution into effect.... More than a week elapsed before he got back again into his ordinary rut. Fortunately, Kupfer did not present himself at all, any more than if he had not been in Moscow. Not long before the "affair"
Aratoff had begun to busy himself with painting for photographic ends; he devoted himself to this with redoubled zeal.
Thus, imperceptibly, with a few "relapses" as the doctors express it, consisting, for example in the fact that he once came very near going to call on the Princess, two weeks ... three weeks pa.s.sed ... and Aratoff became once more the Aratoff of old. Only deep down, under the surface of his life, something heavy and dark secretly accompanied him in all his comings and goings. Thus does a large fish which has just been hooked, but has not yet been drawn out, swim along the bottom of a deep river under the very boat wherein sits the fisherman with his stout rod in hand.
And lo! one day as he was skimming over some not quite fresh numbers of the _Moscow News,_ Aratoff hit upon the following correspondence:
"With great sorrow," wrote a certain local literary man from Kazan, "we insert in our theatrical chronicle the news of the sudden death of our gifted actress, Clara Militch, who had succeeded in the brief s.p.a.ce of her engagement in becoming the favourite of our discriminating public.
Our sorrow is all the greater because Miss Militch herself put an end to her young life, which held so much of promise, by means of poison. And this poisoning is all the more dreadful because the actress took the poison on the stage itself! They barely got her home, where, to universal regret, she died. Rumours are current in the town to the effect that unrequited love led her to that terrible deed."
Aratoff softly laid the newspaper on the table. To all appearances he remained perfectly composed ... but something smote him simultaneously in his breast and in his head, and then slowly diffused itself through all his members. He rose to his feet, stood for a while on one spot, and again seated himself, and again perused the letter. Then he rose once more, lay down on his bed and placing his hands under his head, he stared for a long time at the wall like one dazed. Little by little that wall seemed to recede ... to vanish ... and he beheld before him the boulevard beneath grey skies and _her_ in her black mantilla ... then her again on the platform ... he even beheld himself by her side.--That which had smitten him so forcibly in the breast at the first moment, now began to rise up ... to rise up in his throat.... He tried to cough, to call some one, but his voice failed him, and to his own amazement, tears which he could not restrain gushed from his eyes.... What had evoked those tears? Pity? Regret? Or was it simply that his nerves had been unable to withstand the sudden shock? Surely, she was nothing to him?
Was not that the fact?
"But perhaps that is not true," the thought suddenly occurred to him. "I must find out! But from whom? From the Princess?--No, from Kupfer ...
from Kupfer? But they say he is not in Moscow.--Never mind! I must apply to him first!"
With these ideas in his head Aratoff hastily dressed himself, summoned a cab and dashed off to Kupfer.
IX
He had not hoped to find him ... but he did. Kupfer actually had been absent from Moscow for a time, but had returned about a week previously and was even preparing to call on Aratoff again. He welcomed him with his customary cordiality, and began to explain something to him ... but Aratoff immediately interrupted him with the impatient question:
"Hast thou read it?--Is it true?"
"Is what true?" replied the astounded Kupfer.
"About Clara Militch?"
Kupfer"s face expressed compa.s.sion.--"Yes, yes, brother, it is true; she has poisoned herself. It is such a misfortune!"
Aratoff held his peace for a s.p.a.ce.--"But hast thou also read it in the newspaper?" he asked:--"Or perhaps thou hast been to Kazan thyself?"
"I have been to Kazan, in fact; the Princess and I conducted her thither. She went on the stage there, and had great success. Only I did not remain there until the catastrophe.... I was in Yaroslavl."
"In Yaroslavl?"
"Yes; I escorted the Princess thither.... She has settled in Yaroslavl now."