«Who is there? Who goes
there? Who is knocking?» Then he was suddenly silent, stood still
outside near the corner where I was lying and without uttering another
word, came back into the hut and lay down without taking off his boots
and overcoat.
«Knock … knock … knock!» I began again. «Knock … knock …
knock!»
But Tyeglev did not stir, did not ask who was knocking, and merely
propped his head on his hand.
Seeing that this no longer acted, after an interval I pretended to
wake up and, looking at Tyeglev, assumed an air of astonishment.
«Have you been out?» I asked.
«Yes,» he answered unconcernedly.
«Did you still hear the knocking?»
«Yes.»
«And you met no one?»
«No.»
«And did the knocking stop?»
«I don’t know. I don’t care now.»
«Now? Why now?»
Tyeglev did not answer.
I felt a little ashamed and a little vexed with him. I could not bring
myself to acknowledge my prank, however.
«Do you know what?» I began, «I am convinced that it was all your
imagination.»
Tyeglev frowned. «Ah, you think so!»
«You say you heard a knocking?»
«It was not only knocking I heard.»
«Why, what else?»
Tyeglev bent forward and bit his lips. He was evidently hesitating.
«I was called!» he brought out at last in a low voice and turned away
his face.
«You were called? Who called you?»
«Someone….» Tyeglev still looked away. «A woman whom I had hitherto
only believed to be dead … but now I know it for certain.»
«I swear, Ilya Stepanitch,» I cried, «this is all your imagination!»
«Imagination?» he repeated. «Would you like to hear it for yourself?»
«Yes.»
«Then come outside.»
VIII
I hurriedly dressed and went out of the hut with Tyeglev. On the side
opposite to it there were no houses, nothing but a low hurdle fence
broken down in places, beyond which there was a rather sharp slope
down to the plain. Everything was still shrouded in mist and one could
scarcely see anything twenty paces away. Tyeglev and I went up to the
hurdle and stood still.
«Here,» he said and bowed his head. «Stand still, keep quiet and
listen!»
Like him I strained my ears, and I heard nothing except the ordinary,
extremely faint but universal murmur, the breathing of the night.
Looking at each other in silence from time to time we stood motionless
for several minutes and were just on the point of going on.
«Ilyusha…» I fancied I heard a whisper from behind the hurdle.
I glanced at Tyeglev but he seemed to have heard nothing—and still
held his head bowed.
«Ilyusha … ah, Ilyusha,» sounded more distinctly than before—so
distinctly that one could tell that the words were uttered by a woman.
We both started and stared at each other.
«Well?» Tyeglev asked me in a whisper. «You won’t doubt it now, will
you?»
«Wait a minute,» I answered as quietly. «It proves nothing. We must
look whether there isn’t anyone. Some practical joker….»
I jumped over the fence—and went in the direction from which, as far
as I could judge, the voice came.
I felt the earth soft and crumbling under my feet; long ridges
stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen
garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything
seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went a few steps
further.
«Who is there?» I cried as wildly as Tyeglev had.
«Prrr-r-r!» a startled corn-crake flew up almost under my feet and
flew away as straight as a bullet. Involuntarily I started…. What
foolishness!
I looked back. Tyeglev was in sight at the spot where I left him. I
went towards him.
«You will call in vain,» he said. «That voice has come to us—to
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?
«Why don’t you marry her, then?» I asked again.
Tyeglev’s strange, drowsy eyes strayed over the table.
«There is … no answering that … in a few words,» he began,
hesitating. «There were reasons…. And besides,
