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
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
