'I have come on your invitation,' he began in his turn. 'I have come, my dear madam' (her shoulders gave a faint twitch, she turned off into a side pa.s.sage, he followed her), 'simply to clear up, to discover to what strange misunderstanding it is due that you are pleased to address me, a stranger to you ... who ... only _guessed_, to use your expression in your letter, that it was you writing to him ... guessed it because during that literary matinee, you saw fit to pay him such ... such obvious attention.'

All this little speech was delivered by Aratov in that ringing but unsteady voice in which very young people answer at examinations on a subject in which they are well prepared.... He was angry; he was furious.... It was just this fury which loosened his ordinarily not very ready tongue.

She still went on along the walk with rather slower steps.... Aratov, as before, walked after her, and as before saw only the old cape and the hat, also not a very new one. His vanity suffered at the idea that she must now be thinking: 'I had only to make a sign--and he rushed at once!'

Aratov was silent ... he expected her to answer him; but she did not utter a word.

'I am ready to listen to you,' he began again, 'and shall be very glad if I can be of use to you in any way ... though I am, I confess, surprised ...

considering the retired life I lead....'

At these last words of his, Clara suddenly turned to him, and he beheld such a terrified, such a deeply-wounded face, with such large bright tears in the eyes, such a pained expression about the parted lips, and this face was so lovely, that he involuntarily faltered, and himself felt something akin to terror and pity and softening.

'Ah, why ... why are you like that?' she said, with an irresistibly genuine and truthful force, and how movingly her voice rang out! 'Could my turning to you be offensive to you?... is it possible you have understood nothing?... Ah, yes! you have understood nothing, you did not understand what I said to you, G.o.d knows what you have been imagining about me, you have not even dreamed what it cost me--to write to you!... You thought of nothing but yourself, your own dignity, your peace of mind!... But is it likely I' ... (she squeezed her hands raised to her lips so hard, that the fingers gave a distinct crack).... 'As though I made any sort of demands of you, as though explanations were necessary first....

"My dear madam,... I am, I confess, surprised,... if I can be of any use"

... Ah! I am mad!--I was mistaken in you--in your face!... when I saw you the first time ...! Here ... you stand.... If only one word. What, not one word?'

She ceased.... Her face suddenly flushed, and as suddenly took a wrathful and insolent expression. 'Mercy! how idiotic this is!' she cried suddenly, with a shrill laugh. 'How idiotic our meeting is! What a fool I am!... and you too.... Ugh!'

She gave a contemptuous wave of her hand, as though motioning him out of her road, and pa.s.sing him, ran quickly out of the boulevard, and vanished.

The gesture of her hand, the insulting laugh, and the last exclamation, at once carried Aratov back to his first frame of mind, and stifled the feeling that had sprung up in his heart when she turned to him with tears in her eyes. He was angry again, and almost shouted after the retreating girl: 'You may make a good actress, but why did you think fit to play off this farce on me?'

He returned home with long strides, and though he still felt anger and indignation all the way, yet across these evil, malignant feelings, unconsciously, the memory forced itself of the exquisite face he had seen for a single moment only.... He even put himself the question, 'Why did I not answer her when she asked of me only a word? I had not time,' he thought. 'She did not let me utter the word ... and what word could I have uttered?'

But he shook his head at once, and murmured reproachfully, 'Actress!'

And again, at the same time, the vanity of the inexperienced nervous youth, at first wounded, was now, as it were, flattered at having any way inspired such a pa.s.sion....

'Though by now,' he pursued his reflections, 'it's all over, of course....

I must have seemed absurd to her.'...

This idea was disagreeable to him, and again he was angry ... both with her ... and with himself. On reaching home, he shut himself up in his study. He did not want to see Platosha. The good old lady came twice to his locked door, put her ear to the keyhole, and only sighed and murmured her prayer.

'It has begun!' she thought.... 'And he only five-and-twenty! Ah, it's early, it's early!'

VIII

All the following day Aratov was in very low spirits. 'What is it, Yasha?' Platonida Ivanovna said to him: 'you seem somehow all loose ends to-day!'... In her own peculiar idiom the old lady's expression described fairly accurately Aratov's mental condition. He could not work and he did not know himself what he wanted. At one time he was eagerly on the watch for Kupfer, again he suspected that it was from Kupfer that Clara had got his address ... and from where else could she 'have heard so much about him'? Then he wondered: was it possible his acquaintance with her was to end like this? Then he fancied she would write to him again; then he asked himself whether he ought not to write her a letter, explaining everything, since he did not at all like leaving an unfavourable impression of himself.... But exactly what to explain? Then he stirred up in himself almost a feeling of repulsion for her, for her insistence, her impertinence; and then again he saw that unutterably touching face and heard an irresistible voice; then he recalled her singing, her recitation--and could not be sure whether he had been right in his wholesale condemnation of it. In fact, he was all loose ends! At last he was heartily sick of it, and resolved to keep a firm hand over himself, as it is called, and to obliterate the whole incident, as it was unmistakably hindering his studies and destroying his peace of mind. It turned out not so easy to carry out this resolution ... more than a week pa.s.sed by before he got back into his old accustomed groove. Luckily Kupfer did not turn up at all; he was in fact out of Moscow. Not long before the incident, Aratov had begun to work at painting in connection with his photographic plans; he set to work upon it now with redoubled zest.

So, imperceptibly, with a few (to use the doctors' expression) 'symptoms of relapse,' manifested, for instance, in his once almost deciding to call upon the princess, two months pa.s.sed ... then three months ... and Aratov was the old Aratov again. Only somewhere down below, under the surface of his life, something like a dark and burdensome secret dogged him wherever he went. So a great fish just caught on the hook, but not yet drawn up, will swim at the bottom of a deep stream under the very boat where the angler sits with a stout rod in his hand.

And one day, skimming through a not quite new number of the _Moscow Gazette_, Aratov lighted upon the following paragraph:

'With the greatest regret,' wrote some local contributor from Kazan, 'we must add to our dramatic record the news of the sudden death of our gifted actress Clara Militch, who had succeeded during the brief period of her engagement in becoming a favourite of our discriminating public. Our regret is the more poignant from the fact that Miss Militch by her own act cut short her young life, so full of promise, by means of poison. And this dreadful deed was the more awful through the talented actress taking the fatal drug in the theatre itself. She had scarcely been taken home when to the universal grief, she expired. There is a rumour in the town that an unfortunate love affair drove her to this terrible act.'

Aratov slowly laid the paper on the table. In outward appearance he remained perfectly calm ... but at once something seemed to strike him a blow in the chest and the head--and slowly the shock pa.s.sed on through all his limbs. He got up, stood still on the spot, and sat down again, again read through the paragraph. Then he got up again, lay down on the bed, and clasping his hands behind, stared a long while at the wall, as though dazed. By degrees the wall seemed to fade away ... vanished ... and he saw facing him the boulevard under the grey sky, and _her_ in her black cape ... then her on the platform ... saw himself even close by her. That something which had given him such a violent blow in the chest at the first instant, began mounting now ... mounting into his throat.... He tried to clear his throat; tried to call some one--but his voice failed him--and, to his own astonishment, tears rushed in torrents from his eyes ... what called forth these tears? Pity? Remorse? Or was it simply his nerves could not stand the sudden shock?

Why, she was nothing to him? was she?

'But, perhaps, it's not true after all,' the thought came as a sudden relief to him. 'I must find out! But from whom? From the princess? No, from Kupfer ... from Kupfer? But they say he's not in Moscow--no matter, I must try him first!'

With these reflections in his head, Aratov dressed himself in haste, called a cab and drove to Kupfer's.

IX

Though he had not expected to find him, he found him. Kupfer had, as a fact, been away from Moscow for some time, but he had now been back a week, and was indeed on the point of setting off to see Aratov. He met him with his usual heartiness, and was beginning to make some sort of explanation ... but Aratov at once cut him short with the impatient question, 'Have you heard it? Is it true?'

'Is what true?' replied Kupfer, puzzled.

'About Clara Militch?'

Kupfer's face expressed commiseration. 'Yes, yes, my dear boy, it's true; she poisoned herself! Such a sad thing!'

Aratov was silent for a while. 'But did you read it in the paper too?' he asked--'or perhaps you have been in Kazan yourself?'

'I have been in Kazan, yes; the princess and I accompanied her there. She came out on the stage there, and had a great success. But I didn't stay up to the time of the catastrophe ... I was in Yaroslav at the time.'

'In Yaroslav?'

'Yes--I escorted the princess there.... She is living now at Yaroslav.'

'But you have trustworthy information?'

'Trustworthy ... I have it at first-hand!--I made the acquaintance of her family in Kazan. But, my dear boy ... this news seems to be upsetting you?

Why, I recollect you didn't care for Clara at one time? You were wrong, though! She was a marvellous girl--only what a temper! I was terribly broken-hearted about her!'

Aratov did not utter a word, he dropped into a chair, and after a brief pause, asked Kupfer to tell him ... he stammered.

'What?' inquired Kupfer.

'Oh ... everything,' Aratov answered brokenly, 'all about her family ...

and the rest of it. Everything you know!'

'Why, does it interest you? By all means!' And Kupfer, whose face showed no traces of his having been so terribly broken-hearted about Clara, began his story.

From his account Aratov learnt that Clara Militch's real name was Katerina Milovidov; that her father, now dead, had held the post of drawing-master in a school in Kazan, had painted bad portraits and holy pictures of the regulation type; that he had besides had the character of being a drunkard and a domestic tyrant; that he had left behind him, first a widow, of a shopkeeper's family, a quite stupid body, a character straight out of an Ostrovsky comedy; and secondly, a daughter much older than Clara and not like her--a very clever girl, and enthusiastic, only sickly, a remarkable girl--and very advanced in her ideas, my dear boy! That they were living, the widow and daughter, fairly comfortably, in a decent little house, obtained by the sale of the bad portraits and holy pictures; that Clara ...

or Katia, if you like, from her childhood up impressed every one with her talent, but was of an insubordinate, capricious temper, and used to be for ever quarrelling with her father; that having an inborn pa.s.sion for the theatre, at sixteen she had run away from her parent's house with an actress ...'

'With an actor?' put in Aratov.

'No, not with an actor, with an actress, to whom she became attached....

It's true this actress had a protector, a wealthy gentleman, no longer young, who did not marry her simply because he happened to be married--and indeed I fancy the actress was a married woman.' Furthermore Kupfer informed Aratov that Clara had even before her coming to Moscow acted and sung in provincial theatres, that, having lost her friend the actress--the gentleman, too, it seemed, had died, or else he had made it up with his wife--Kupfer could not quite remember this--she had made the acquaintance of the princess, 'that heart of gold, whom you, my dear Yakov Andreitch,'

the speaker added with feeling, 'were incapable of appreciating properly'; that at last Clara had been offered an engagement in Kazan, and that she had accepted it, though before then she used to declare that she would never leave Moscow! But then how the people of Kazan liked her--it was really astonishing! Whatever the performance was, nothing but nosegays and presents! nosegays and presents! A wholesale miller, the greatest swell in the province, had even presented her with a gold inkstand! Kupfer related all this with great animation, without giving expression, however, to any special sentimentality, and interspersing his narrative with the questions, 'What is it to you?' and 'Why do you ask?' when Aratov, who listened to him with devouring attention, kept asking for more and more details. All was told at last, and Kupfer was silent, rewarding himself for his exertions with a cigar.

'And why did she take poison?' asked Aratov. 'In the paper it was stated....'