Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories
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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, she was ... a
working-class girl. And then there is my uncle.... I was obliged to
consider him, too."
"Your uncle?" I cried. "But what the devil do you want with your uncle
whom you never see except at the New Year when you go to congratulate
him? Are you reckoning on his money? But he has got a dozen children
of his own!"
I spoke with heat.... Tyeglev winced and flushed ... flushed unevenly,
in patches.
"Don't lecture me, if you please," he said dully. "I don't justify
myself, however. I have ruined her life and now I must pay the
penalty...."
His head sank and he was silent. I found nothing to say, either.
XI
So we sat for a quarter of an hour. He looked away--I looked at
him--and I noticed that the hair stood up and curled above his
forehead in a peculiar way, which, so I have heard from an army doctor
who had had a great many wounded pass through his hands, is always a
symptom of intense overheating of the brain.... The thought struck me
again that fate really had laid a heavy hand on this man and that his
comrades were right in seeing something "fatal" in him. And yet
inwardly I blamed him. "A working-class girl!" I thought, "a fine sort
of aristocrat you are yourself!"
"Perhaps you blame me, Ridel," Tyeglev began suddenly, as though
guessing what I was thinking. "I am very ... unhappy myself. But what
to do? What to do?"
He leaned his chin on his hand and began biting the broad flat nails
of his short, red fingers, hard as iron.
"What I think, Ilya Stepanitch, is that you ought first to make
certain whether your suppositions are correct.... Perhaps your lady
love is alive and well." ("Shall I tell him the real explanation of
the taps?" flashed through my mind. "No--later.")
"She has not written to me since we have been in camp," observed
Tyeglev.
"That proves nothing, Ilya Stepanitch."
Tyeglev waved me off. "No! she is certainly not in this world. She
called me."
He suddenly turned to the window. "Someone is knocking again!"
I could not help laughing. "No, excuse me, Ilya Stepanitch! This time
it is your nerves. You see, it is getting light. In ten minutes the
sun will be up--it is past three o'clock--and ghosts have no power in
the day."
Tyeglev cast a gloomy glance at me and muttering through his teeth
"good-bye," lay down on the bench and turned his back on me.
I lay down, too, and before I fell asleep I remember I wondered why
Tyeglev was always hinting at ... suicide. What nonsense! What humbug!
Of his own free will he had refused to marry her, had cast her off ...
and now he wanted to kill himself! There was no sense in it! He could
not resist posing!
With these thoughts I fell into a sound sleep and when I opened my
eyes the sun was already high in the sky--and Tyeglev was not in the
hut.
He had, so his servant said, gone to the town.
XII
I spent a very dull and wearisome day. Tyeglev did not return to
dinner nor to supper; I did not expect my brother. Towards evening a
thick fog came on again, thicker even than the day before. I went to
bed rather early. I was awakened by a knocking under the window.
It was my turn to be startled!
The knock was repeated and so insistently distinct that one could have
no doubt of its reality. I got up, opened the window and saw Tyeglev.
Wrapped in his great-coat, with his cap pulled over his eyes, he stood
motionless.
"Ilya Stepanitch!" I cried, "is that you? I gave up expecting you.
Come in. Is the door locked?"
Tyeglev shook his head. "I do not intend to come in," he pronounced in
a hollow tone. "I only want to ask you to give this letter to the
commanding officer to-morrow."
He gave me a big envelope sealed with five seals. I was
astonished--however, I took the envelope mechanically. Tyeglev at once
walked away into the middle of the road.
"Stop! stop!" I began. "Where are you going? Have you only just come?
And what is the letter?"
"Do you promise to deliver it?" said Tyeglev, and moved away a few
steps further. The fog blurred the outlines of his figure. "Do you
promise?"
"I promise ... but first--"
Tyeglev moved still further away and became a long dark blur.
"Good-bye," I heard
his voice. "Farewell, Ridel, don't remember evil
against me.... And don't forget Semyon...."
And the blur itself vanished.
This was too much. "Oh, the damned poseur," I thought. "You
must always be straining after effect!" I felt uneasy, however; an
involuntary fear clutched at my heart. I flung on my great-coat and
ran out into the road.
XIII
Yes; but where was I to go? The fog enveloped me on all sides. For
five or six steps all round it was a little transparent--but further
away it stood up like a wall, thick and white like cotton wool. I
turned to the right along the village street; our house was the last
but one in the village and beyond it came waste land overgrown here
and there with bushes; beyond the waste land, a quarter of a mile from
the village, there was a birch copse through which flowed the same
little stream that lower down encircled our village. The moon stood, a
pale blur in the sky--but its light was not, as on the evening before,
strong enough to penetrate the smoky density of the fog and hung, a
broad opaque canopy, overhead. I made my way out on to the open ground
and listened.... Not a sound from any direction, except the calling of
the marsh birds.
"Tyeglev!" I cried. "Ilya Stepanitch!! Tyeglev!!"
My voice died away near me without an answer; it seemed as though the
fog would not let it go further. "Tyeglev!" I repeated.
No one answered.
I went forward at random. Twice I struck against a fence, once I
nearly fell into a ditch, and almost stumbled against a peasant's
horse lying on the ground. "Tyeglev! Tyeglev!" I cried.
All at once, almost behind me, I heard a low voice, "Well, here I am.
What do you want of me?"
I turned round quickly.
Before me stood Tyeglev with his hands hanging at his sides and with
no cap on his head. His face was pale; but his eyes looked animated
and bigger than usual. His breathing came in deep, prolonged gasps
through his parted lips.
"Thank God!" I cried in an outburst of joy, and I gripped him by both
hands. "Thank God! I was beginning to despair of finding you. Aren't
you ashamed of frightening me like this? Upon my word, Ilya
Stepanitch!"
"What do you want of me?" repeated Tyeglev.
"I want ... I want you, in the first place, to come back home with me.
And secondly, I want, I insist, I insist as a friend, that you explain
to me at once the meaning of your actions--and of this letter to the
colonel. Can something unexpected have happened to you in Petersburg?"
"I found in Petersburg exactly what I expected," answered Tyeglev,
without moving from the spot.
"That is ... you mean to say ... your friend ... this Masha...."
"She has taken her life," Tyeglev answered hurriedly and as it were
angrily. "She was buried the day before yesterday. She did not even
leave a note for me. She poisoned herself."
Tyeglev hurriedly uttered these terrible words and still stood
motionless as a stone.
I clasped my hands. "Is it possible? How dreadful! Your presentiment
has come true.... That is awful!"
I stopped in confusion. Slowly and with a sort of triumph Tyeglev
folded his arms.
"But why are we standing here?" I began. "Let us go home."
"Let us," said Tyeglev. "But how can we find the way in this fog?"
"There is a light in our windows, and we will make for it. Come
along."
"You go ahead," answered Tyeglev. "I will follow you." We set off. We
walked for five minutes and our beacon light still did not appear; at
last it gleamed before us in two red points. Tyeglev stepped evenly
behind me. I was desperately anxious to get home as quickly as
possible and to learn from him all the details of his unhappy
expedition to Petersburg. Before we reached the hut, impressed by what
he had said, I confessed to him in an access of remorse and a sort of
superstitious fear, that the mysterious knocking of the previous
evening had been my doing ... and what a tragic turn my jest had
taken!
Tyeglev confined himself to observing that I had nothing to do with
it--that something else had guided my hand--and this only showed how
little I knew him. His voice, strangely calm and even, sounded close
to my ear. "But you do not know me," he added. "I saw you smile
yesterday when I spoke of the strength of my will. You will come to
know me--and you will remember my words."
The first hut of the village sprang out of the fog before us like some
dark monster ... then the second, our hut, emerged--and my setter dog
began barking, probably scenting me.
I knocked at the window. "Semyon!" I shouted to Tyeglev's servant,
"hey, Semyon! Make haste and open the gate for us."
The gate creaked and opened; Semyon crossed the threshold.
"Ilya Stepanitch, come in," I said, and I looked round. But no Ilya
Stepanitch was with me. Tyeglev had vanished as though he had sunk
into the earth.
I went into the hut feeling dazed.
XIV
Vexation with Tyeglev and with myself succeeded the amazement with
which I was overcome at first.
"Your master is mad!" I blurted out to Semyon, "raving mad! He
galloped off to Petersburg, then came back and is running about all
over the place! I did get hold of him and brought him right up to the
gate--and here he has given me the slip again! To go out of doors on a
night like this! He has chosen a nice time for a walk!"
"And why did I let go of his hand?" I reproached myself. Semyon looked
at me in silence, as though intending to say something--but after the
fashion of servants in those days he simply shifted from one foot to
the other and said nothing.
"What time did he set off for town?" I asked sternly.
"At six o'clock in the morning."
"And how was he--did he seem anxious, depressed?" Semyon looked down.
"Our master is a deep one," he began. "Who can make him out? He told
me to get out his new uniform when he was going out to town--and then
he curled himself."
"Curled himself?"
"Curled his hair. I got the curling tongs ready for him."
That, I confess, I had not expected. "Do you know a young lady," I
asked Semyon, "a friend of Ilya Stepanitch's. Her name is Masha."
"To be sure I know Marya Anempodistovna! A nice young lady."
"Is your master in love with this Marya ... et cetera?"
Semyon heaved a sigh. "That young lady is Ilya Stepanitch's undoing.
For he is desperately in love with her--and can't bring himself to
marry her--and sorry to give her up, too. It's all his honour's
faintheartedness. He is very fond of her."
"What is she like then, pretty?" I inquired.
Semyon assumed a grave air. "She is the sort that the gentry like."
"And you?"
"She is not the right sort for us at all."
"How so?"
"Very thin in the body."
"If she died," I began, "do you think Ilya Stepanitch would not
survive her?"
Semyon heaved a sigh again. "I can't venture
to say that--there's no
knowing with gentlemen ... but our master is a deep one."
I took up from the table the big, rather thick letter that Tyeglev had
given me and turned it over in my hands.... The address to "his honour
the Commanding Officer of the Battery, Colonel So and So" (the name,
patronymic, and surname) was clearly and distinctly written. The word