Before him stood his aunt in her nightcap, with a broad red ribbon, and in a white wrapper.

"Platosha!" he enunciated with difficulty.--"Is it you?"

"It is I," replied Platonida Ivanovna.... "It is I, Yashyonotchek, it is I."

"Why have you come?"

"Why, thou didst wake me. At first thou seemedst to be moaning all the while ... and then suddenly thou didst begin to shout: 'Save me! Help me!'"

"I shouted?"

"Yes, thou didst shout, and so hoa.r.s.ely: 'Save me!'--I thought: 'O Lord!

Can he be ill?' So I entered. Art thou well?"

"Perfectly well."

"Come, that means that thou hast had a bad dream. I will fumigate with incense if thou wishest--shall I?"

Again Aratoff gazed intently at his aunt, and burst into a loud laugh.... The figure of the kind old woman in nightcap and wrapper, with her frightened, long-drawn face, really was extremely comical. All that mysterious something which had surrounded him, had stifled him, all those delusions dispersed on the instant.

"No, Platosha, my dear, it is not necessary," he said.--"Forgive me for having involuntarily alarmed you. May your rest be tranquil--and I will go to sleep also."

Platonida Ivanovna stood a little while longer on the spot where she was, pointed at the candle, grumbled: "Why dost thou not extinguish it? ... there will be a catastrophe before long!"--and as she retired, could not refrain from making the sign of the cross over him from afar.

Aratoff fell asleep immediately, and slept until morning. He rose in a fine frame of mind ... although he regretted something.... He felt light and free. "What romantic fancies one does devise," he said to himself with a smile. He did not once glance either at the stereoscope or the leaf which he had torn out. But immediately after breakfast he set off to see Kupfer.

What drew him thither ... he dimly recognised.

XVI

Aratoff found his sanguine friend at home. He chatted a little with him, reproached him for having quite forgotten him and his aunt, listened to fresh laudations of the golden woman, the Princess, from whom Kupfer had just received,--from Yaroslavl,--a skull-cap embroidered with fish-scales ... and then suddenly sitting down in front of Kupfer, and looking him straight in the eye, he announced that he had been to Kazan.

"Thou hast been to Kazan? Why so?"

"Why, because I wished to collect information about that ... Clara Militch."

"The girl who poisoned herself?"

"Yes."

Kupfer shook his head.--"What a fellow thou art! And such a sly one!

Thou hast travelled a thousand versts there and back ... and all for what? Hey? If there had only been some feminine interest there! Then I could understand everything! every sort of folly!"--Kupfer ruffled up his hair.--"But for the sake of collecting materials, as you learned men put it.... No, I thank you! That's what the committee of statistics exists for!--Well, and what about it--didst thou make acquaintance with the old woman and with her sister? She's a splendid girl, isn't she?"

"Splendid," a.s.sented Aratoff.--"She communicated to me many curious things."

"Did she tell thee precisely how Clara poisoned herself?"

"Thou meanest ... what dost thou mean?"

"Why, in what manner?"

"No.... She was still in such affliction.... I did not dare to question her too much. But was there anything peculiar about it?"

"Of course there was. Just imagine: she was to have acted that very day--and she did act. She took a phial of poison with her to the theatre, drank it before the first act, and in that condition played through the whole of that act. With the poison inside her! What dost thou think of that strength of will? What character, wasn't it? And they say that she never sustained her role with so much feeling, with so much warmth! The audience suspected nothing, applauded, recalled her.... But as soon as the curtain fell she dropped down where she stood on the stage. She began to writhe ... and writhe ... and at the end of an hour her spirit fled! But is it possible I did not tell thee that? It was mentioned in the newspapers also."

Aratoff's hands suddenly turned cold and his chest began to heave. "No, thou didst not tell me that," he said at last.--"And dost thou not know what the piece was?"

Kupfer meditated.--"I was told the name of the piece ... a young girl who has been betrayed appears in it.... It must be some drama or other.

Clara was born for dramatic parts. Her very appearance.... But where art thou going?" Kupfer interrupted himself, perceiving that Aratoff was picking up his cap.

"I do not feel quite well," replied Aratoff. "Good-bye.... I will drop in some other time."

Kupfer held him back and looked him in the face.--"What a nervous fellow thou art, brother! Just look at thyself.... Thou hast turned as white as clay."

"I do not feel well," repeated Aratoff, freeing himself from Kupfer's hands and going his way. Only at that moment did it become clear to him that he had gone to Kupfer with the sole object of talking about Clara....

"About foolish, about unhappy Clara"....

But on reaching home he speedily recovered his composure to a certain extent.

The circ.u.mstances which had attended Clara's death at first exerted a shattering impression upon him ... but later on that acting "with the poison inside her," as Kupfer had expressed it, seemed to him a monstrous phrase, a piece of bravado, and he tried not to think of it, fearing to arouse within himself a feeling akin to aversion. But at dinner, as he sat opposite Platosha, he suddenly remembered her nocturnal apparition, recalled that bob-tailed wrapper, that cap with the tall ribbon (and why should there be a ribbon on a night-cap?), the whole of that ridiculous figure, at which all his visions had dispersed into dust, as though at the whistle of the machinist in a fantastic ballet! He even made Platosha repeat the tale of how she had heard him shout, had taken fright, had leaped out of bed, had not been able at once to find either her own door or his, and so forth. In the evening he played cards with her and went off to his own room in a somewhat sad but fairly tranquil state of mind.

Aratoff did not think about the coming night, and did not fear it; he was convinced that he should pa.s.s it in the best possible manner. The thought of Clara awoke in him from time to time; but he immediately remembered that she had killed herself in a "spectacular" manner, and turned away. That "outrageous" act prevented other memories from rising in him. Giving a cursory glance at the stereoscope it seemed to him that she was looking to one side because she felt ashamed. Directly over the stereoscope on the wall, hung the portrait of his mother. Aratoff removed it from its nail, kissed it, and carefully put it away in a drawer. Why did he do this? Because that portrait must not remain in the vicinity of that woman ... or for some other reason--Aratoff did not quite know. But his mother's portrait evoked in him memories of his father ... of that father whom he had seen dying in that same room, on that very bed. "What dost thou think about all this, father?" he mentally addressed him. "Thou didst understand all this; thou didst also believe in Schiller's world of spirits.--Give me counsel!"

"My father has given me counsel to drop all these follies," said Aratoff aloud, and took up a book. But he was not able to read long, and feeling a certain heaviness all through his body, he went to bed earlier than usual, in the firm conviction that he should fall asleep immediately.

And so it came about ... but his hopes for a peaceful night were not realised.

XVII

Before the clock struck midnight he had a remarkable, a menacing dream.

It seemed to him that he was in a sumptuous country-house of which he was the owner. He had recently purchased the house, and all the estates attached to it. And he kept thinking: "It is well, now it is well, but disaster is coming!" Beside him was hovering a tiny little man, his manager; this man kept making obeisances, and trying to demonstrate to Aratoff how admirably everything about his house and estate was arranged.--"Please, please look," he kept reiterating, grinning at every word, "how everything is flourishing about you! Here are horses ... what magnificent horses!" And Aratoff saw a row of huge horses. They were standing with their backs to him, in stalls; they had wonderful manes and tails ... but as soon as Aratoff walked past them the horses turned their heads toward him and viciously displayed their teeth.

"It is well," thought Aratoff, "but disaster is coming!"

"Please, please," repeated his manager again; "please come into the garden; see what splendid apples we have!"

The apples really were splendid, red, and round; but as soon as Aratoff looked at them, they began to shrivel and fall.... "Disaster is coming!"

he thought.