VIII
Towards night my mother became a little feverish, and she sent me away. I did not, however, go to my own room, but lay down in the next room on the sofa. Every quarter of an hour I got up, went on tiptoe to the door, listened…. Everything was still—but my mother hardly slept that night. When I went in to her early in the morning, her face looked hollow, her eyes shone with an unnatural brightness. In the course of the day she got a little better, but towards evening the feverishness increased again. Up till then she had been obstinately silent, but all of a sudden she began talking in a hurried broken voice. She was not wandering, there was a meaning in her words—but no sort of connection. Just upon midnight, she suddenly, with a convulsive movement raised herself in bed—I was sitting beside her—and in the same hurried voice, continually taking sips of water, from a glass beside her, feebly gesticulating with her hands, and never once looking at me, she began to tell her story…. She would stop, make an effort to control herself and go on again…. It was all so strange, just as though she were doing it all in a dream, as though she herself were absent, and some one else were speaking by her lips, or forcing her to speak.
IX
'Listen to what I am going to tell you,' she began. 'You are not a little boy now; you ought to know all. I had a friend, a girl…. She married a man she loved with all her heart, and she was very happy with her husband. During the first year of their married life they went together to the capital to spend a few weeks there and enjoy themselves. They stayed at a good hotel, and went out a great deal to theatres and parties. My friend was very pretty—every one noticed her, young men paid her attentions,—but there was among them one … an officer. He followed her about incessantly, and wherever she was, she always saw his cruel black eyes. He was not introduced to her, and never once spoke to her—only perpetually stared at her—so insolently and strangely. All the pleasures of the capital were poisoned by his presence. She began persuading her husband to hasten their departure—and they had already made all the preparations for the journey. One evening her husband went out to a club—he had been invited by the officers of the same regiment as that officer—to play cards…. She was for the very first time left alone. Her husband did not return for a long while. She dismissed her maid, and went to bed…. And suddenly she felt overcome by terror, so that she was quite cold and shivering. She fancied she heard a slight sound on the other side of the wall, like a dog scratching, and she began watching the wall. In the corner a lamp was burning; the room was all hung with tapestry…. Suddenly something stirred there, rose, opened…. And straight out of the wall a black, long figure came, that awful man with the cruel eyes! She tried to scream, but could not. She was utterly numb with terror. He went up to her rapidly, like some beast of prey, flung something on her head, something strong-smelling, heavy, white…. What happened then I don't remember I … don't remember! It was like death, like a murder…. When at last that fearful darkness began to pass away—when I … when my friend came to herself, there was no one in the room. Again, and for a long time, she had not the strength to scream, she screamed at last … then again everything was confusion…. Then she saw her husband by her side: he had been kept at the club till two o'clock at night…. He looked scared and white. He began questioning her, but she told him nothing…. Then she swooned away again. I remember though when she was left alone in the room, she examined the place in the wall…. Under the tapestry hangings it turned out there was a secret door. And her betrothal ring had gone from off her hand. This ring was of an unusual pattern; seven little gold stars alternated on it with seven silver stars; it was an old family heirloom. Her husband asked her what had become of the ring; she could give him no answer. Her husband supposed she had dropped it somewhere, searched everywhere, but could not find it. He felt uneasy and distressed; he decided to go home as soon as possible and directly the doctor allowed it—they left the capital…. But imagine! On the very day of their departure they happened suddenly to meet a stretcher being carried along the street…. On the stretcher lay a man who had just been killed, with his head cut open; and imagine! the man was that fearful apparition of the night with the evil eyes…. He had been killed over some gambling dispute!
Then my friend went away into the country … became a mother for the first time … and lived several years with her husband. He never knew anything; indeed, what could she have told him?—she knew nothing herself.
But her former happiness had vanished. A gloom had come over their lives, and never again did that gloom pass out of it…. They had no other children, either before or after … and that son….'
My mother trembled all over and hid her face in her hands.
'But say now,' she went on with redoubled energy, 'was my friend to blame in any way? What had she to reproach herself with? She was punished, but had she not the right to declare before God Himself that the punishment that overtook her was unjust? Then why is it, that like a criminal, tortured by stings of conscience, why is it she is confronted with the past in such a fearful shape after so many years? Macbeth slew Bancho—so no wonder that he could be haunted … but I….'
But here my mother's words became so mixed and confused, that I ceased to follow her…. I no longer doubted that she was in delirium.
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
