X
The agitating effect of my mother"s recital on me--any one may easily conceive! I guessed from her first word that she was talking of herself, and not any friend of hers. Her slip of the tongue confirmed my conjecture.
Then this really was my father, whom I was seeking in my dream, whom I had seen awake by daylight! He had not been killed, as my mother supposed, but only wounded. And he had come to see her, and had run away, alarmed by her alarm. I suddenly understood everything: the feeling of involuntary aversion for me, which arose at times in my mother, and her perpetual melancholy, and our secluded life.... I remember my head seemed going round, and I clutched it in both hands as though to hold it still. But one idea, as it were, nailed me down; I resolved I must, come what may, find that man again? What for? with what aim? I could not give myself a clear answer, but to find him ... find him--that had become a question of life and death for me! The next morning my mother, at last, grew calmer ...
the fever left her ... she fell asleep. Confiding her to the care of the servants and people of the house, I set out on my quest.
XI
First of all I made my way, of course, to the cafe where I had met the baron; but no one in the cafe knew him or had even noticed him; he had been a chance customer there. The negro the people there had observed, his figure was so striking; but who he was, and where he was staying, no one knew. Leaving my address in any case at the cafe, I fell to wandering about the streets and sea front by the harbour, along the boulevards, peeped into all places of public resort, but could find no one like the baron or his companion!... Not having caught the baron"s surname, I was deprived of the resource of applying to the police; I did, however, privately let two or three guardians of the public safety know--they stared at me in bewilderment, and did not altogether believe in me--that I would reward them liberally if they could trace out two persons, whose exterior I tried to describe as exactly as possible. After wandering about in this way till dinner-time, I returned home exhausted. My mother had got up; but to her usual melancholy there was added something new, a sort of dreamy blankness, which cut me to the heart like a knife. I spent the evening with her.
We scarcely spoke at all; she played patience, I looked at her cards in silence. She never made a single reference to what she had told me, nor to what had happened the preceding evening. It was as though we had made a secret compact not to touch on any of these harrowing and strange incidents.... She seemed angry with herself, and ashamed of what had broken from her unawares; though possibly she did not remember quite what she had said in her half delirious feverishness, and hoped I should spare her....
And indeed this was it, I spared her, and she felt it; as on the previous day she avoided my eyes. I could not get to sleep all night. Outside, a fearful storm suddenly came on. The wind howled and darted furiously hither and thither, the window-panes rattled and rang, despairing shrieks and groans sounded in the air, as though something had been torn to shreds up aloft, and were flying with frenzied wailing over the shaken houses. Before dawn I dropped off into a doze ... suddenly I fancied some one came into my room, and called me, uttered my name, in a voice not loud, but resolute.
I raised my head and saw no one; but, strange to say! I was not only not afraid--I was glad; I suddenly felt a conviction that now I should certainly attain my object. I dressed hurriedly and went out of the house.
XII
The storm had abated ... but its last struggles could still be felt. It was very early, there were no people in the streets, many places were strewn with broken chimney-pots and tiles, pieces of wrecked fencing, and branches of trees.... "What was it like last night at sea?" I could not help wondering at the sight of the traces left by the storm. I intended to go to the harbour, but my legs, as though in obedience to some irresistible attraction, carried me in another direction. Ten minutes had not gone by before I found myself in a part of the town I had never visited till then.
I walked not rapidly, but without halting, step by step, with a strange sensation at my heart; I expected something extraordinary, impossible, and at the same time I was convinced that this extraordinary thing would come to pa.s.s.
XIII
And, behold, it came to pa.s.s, this extraordinary, this unexpected thing!
Suddenly, twenty paces before me, I saw the very negro who had addressed the baron in the cafe! m.u.f.fled in the same cloak as I had noticed on him there, he seemed to spring out of the earth, and with his back turned to me, walked with rapid strides along the narrow pavement of the winding street. I promptly flew to overtake him, but he, too, redoubled his pace, though he did not look round, and all of a sudden turned sharply round the corner of a projecting house. I ran up to this corner, turned round it as quickly as the negro.... Wonderful to relate! I faced a long, narrow, perfectly empty street; the fog of early morning rilled it with its leaden dulness, but my eye reached to its very end, I could scan all the buildings in it ... and not a living creature stirring anywhere! The tall negro in the cloak had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared! I was bewildered ...
but only for one instant. Another feeling at once took possession of me; the street, which stretched its length, dumb, and, as it were, dead, before my eyes, I knew it! It was the street of my dream. I started, shivered, the morning was so fresh, and promptly, without the least hesitation, with a sort of shudder of conviction, went on!
I began looking about.... Yes, here it was; here to the right, standing cornerwise to the street, was the house of my dream, here too the old-fashioned gateway with scrollwork in stone on both sides.... It is true the windows of the house were not round, but rectangular ... but that was not important.... I knocked at the gate, knocked twice or three times, louder and louder.... The gate was opened slowly with a heavy groan as though yawning. I was confronted by a young servant girl with dishevelled hair, and sleepy eyes. She was apparently only just awake. "Does the baron live here?" I asked, and took in with a rapid glance the deep narrow courtyard.... Yes; it was all there ... there were the planks and beams I had seen in my dream.
"No," the servant girl answered, "the baron"s not living here."
"Not? impossible!"
"He"s not here now. He left yesterday."
"Where"s he gone?"
"To America."
"To America!" I repealed involuntarily. "But he will come back?"
The servant looked at me suspiciously.
"We don"t know about that. May be he won"t come back at all."
"And has he been living here long?"
"Not long, a week. He"s not here now."
"And what was his surname, the baron"s?" The girl stared at me.
"You don"t know his name? We simply called him the baron.--Hi! Piotr!"
she shouted, seeing I was pushing in. "Come here; here"s a stranger keeps asking questions."
From the house came the clumsy figure of a st.u.r.dy workman.
"What is it? What do you want?" he asked in a sleepy voice; and having heard me sullenly, he repeated what the girl had told me.
"But who does live here?" I asked.
"Our master."
"Who is he?"
"A carpenter. They"re all carpenters in this street."
"Can I see him?"
"You can"t now, he"s asleep."
"But can"t I go into the house?"
"No. Go away."
"Well, but can I see your master later on?"
"What for? Of course. You can always see him.... To be sure, he"s always at his business here. Only go away now. Such a time in the morning, upon my soul!"
"Well, but that negro?" I asked suddenly.
The workman looked in perplexity first at me, then at the servant girl.
"What negro?" he said at last. "Go away, sir. You can come later. You can talk to the master."
I went out into the street. The gate slammed at once behind me, sharply and heavily, with no groan this time.
I carefully noted the street and the house, and went away, but not home--I was conscious of a sort of disillusionment. Everything that had happened to me was so strange, so unexpected, and meanwhile what a stupid conclusion to it! I had been persuaded, I had been convinced, that I should see in that house the room I knew, and in the middle of it my father, the baron, in the dressing-gown, and with a pipe.... And instead of that, the master of the house was a carpenter, and I could go and see him as much as I liked--and order furniture of him, I dare say.
My father had gone to America. And what was left for me to do?... To tell my mother everything, or to bury for ever the very memory of that meeting?
I positively could not resign myself to the idea that such a supernatural, mysterious beginning should end in such a senseless, ordinary conclusion!
I did not want to return home, and walked at random away from the town.
XIV
I walked with downcast head, without thought, almost without sensation, but utterly buried in myself. A rhythmic hollow and angry noise raised me from my numbness. I lifted my head; it was the sea roaring and moaning fifty paces from me. I saw I was walking along the sand of the dunes. The sea, set in violent commotion by the storm in the night, was white with foam to the very horizon, and the sharp crests of the long billows rolled one after another and broke on the flat sh.o.r.e. I went nearer to it, and walked along the line left by the ebb and flow of the tides on the yellow furrowed sand, strewn with fragments of trailing seaweed, broken sh.e.l.ls, and snakelike ribbons of sea-gra.s.s. Gulls, with pointed wings, flying with a plaintive cry on the wind out of the remote depths of the air, soared up, white as snow against the grey cloudy sky, fell abruptly, and seeming to leap from wave to wave, vanished again, and were lost like gleams of silver in the streaks of frothing foam. Several of them, I noticed, hovered persistently over a big rock, which stood up alone in the midst of the level uniformity of the sandy sh.o.r.e. Coa.r.s.e seaweed was growing in irregular ma.s.ses on one side of the rock; and where its matted tangles rose above the yellow line, was something black, something longish, curved, not very large.... I looked attentively.... Some dark object was lying there, lying motionless beside the rock.... This object grew clearer, more defined the nearer I got to it....
There was only a distance of thirty paces left between me and the rock....
Why, it was the outline of a human form! It was a corpse; it was a drowned man thrown up by the sea! I went right up to the rock.