but been a pledge of a meeting true with thee,' her hitherto thick voice rang out boldly and enthusiastically, while her eyes just as boldly and directly fastened upon Aratov. She went on with the same fervour, and only towards the end her voice dropped again; and in it, and in her face, the same weariness was reflected again. The last four lines she completely 'murdered,' as it is called; the volume of Pushkin suddenly slid out of her hand, and she hastily withdrew.
The audience fell to applauding desperately, encoring…. One Little-Russian divinity student bellowed in so deep a bass, 'Mill-itch! Mill-itch!' that his neighbour civilly and sympathetically advised him, 'to take care of his voice, it would be the making of a protodeacon.' But Aratov at once rose and made for the door. Kupfer overtook him…. 'I say, where are you off to?' he called; 'would you like me to present you to Clara?' 'No, thanks,' Aratov returned hurriedly, and he went homewards almost at a run.
V
He was agitated by strange sensations, incomprehensible to himself. In reality, Clara's recitation, too, had not been quite to his taste … though he could not quite tell why. It disturbed him, this recitation; it struck him as crude and inharmonious…. It was as though it broke something within him, forced itself with a certain violence upon him. And those fixed, insistent, almost importunate looks—what were they for? what did they mean?
Aratov's modesty did not for one instant admit of the idea that he might have made an impression on this strange girl, that he might have inspired in her a sentiment akin to love, to passion!… And indeed, he himself had formed a totally different conception of the still unknown woman, the girl to whom he was to give himself wholly, who would love him, be his bride, his wife…. He seldom dwelt on this dream—in spirit as in body he was virginal; but the pure image that arose at such times in his fancy was inspired by a very different figure, the figure of his dead mother, whom he scarcely remembered, but whose portrait he treasured as a sacred relic. The portrait was a water-colour, painted rather unskilfully by a lady who had been a neighbour of hers; but the likeness, as every one declared, was a striking one. Just such a tender profile, just such kind, clear eyes and silken hair, just such a smile and pure expression, was the woman, the girl, to have, for whom as yet he scarcely dared to hope….
But this swarthy, dark-skinned creature, with coarse hair, dark eyebrows, and a tiny moustache on her upper lip, she was certainly a wicked, giddy … 'gipsy' (Aratov could not imagine a harsher appellation)—what was she to him?
And yet Aratov could not succeed in getting out of his head this dark-skinned gipsy, whose singing and reading and very appearance were displeasing to him. He was puzzled, he was angry with himself. Not long before he had read Sir Walter Scott's novel,
'Unhappy Clara! poor frantic Clara!
Unhappy Clara Mowbray!'
Aratov knew this poem also…. And now these words were incessantly haunting his memory…. 'Unhappy Clara! Poor, frantic Clara!' … (This was why he had been so surprised when Kupfer told him the name of Clara Militch.)
Platosha herself noticed, not a change exactly in Yasha's temper—no change in reality took place in it—but something unsatisfactory in his looks and in his words. She cautiously questioned him about the literary matinee at which he had been present; muttered, sighed, looked at him from in front, from the side, from behind; and suddenly clapping her hands on her thighs, she exclaimed: 'To be sure, Yasha; I see what it is!'
'Why? what?' Aratov queried.
'You've met for certain at that matinee one of those long-tailed creatures'—this was how Platonida Ivanovna always spoke of all fashionably-dressed ladies of the period—'with a pretty dolly face; and she goes prinking
Platosha ceased speaking, and left the room…. She had hardly ever uttered such a long and animated speech in her life…. While Aratov thought, 'Auntie's right, I dare say…. I'm not used to it; that's all …'—it actually was the first time his attention had ever happened to be drawn to a person of the female sex … at least he had never noticed it before—'I mustn't give way to it.'
And he set to work on his books, and at night drank some lime-flower tea; and positively slept well that night, and had no dreams. The next morning he took up his photography again as though nothing had happened….
But towards evening his spiritual repose was again disturbed.
VI
And this is what happened. A messenger brought him a note, written in a large irregular woman's hand, and containing the following lines:
'If you guess who it is writes to you, and if it is not a bore to you, come to-morrow after dinner to the Tversky boulevard—about five o'clock—and wait. You shall not be kept long. But it is very important. Do come.'
There was no signature. Aratov at once guessed who was his correspondent, and this was just what disturbed him. 'What folly,' he said, almost aloud; 'this is too much. Of course I shan't go.' He sent, however, for the messenger, and from him learnt nothing but that the note had been handed him by a maid-servant in the street. Dismissing him, Aratov read the letter through and flung it on the ground…. But, after a little while, he picked it up and read it again: a second time he cried, 'Folly!'—he did not, however, throw the note on the floor again, but put it in a drawer. Aratov took up his ordinary occupations, first one and then another; but nothing he did was successful or satisfactory. He suddenly realised that he was eagerly expecting Kupfer! Did he want to question him, or perhaps even to confide in him?… But Kupfer did not make his appearance. Then Aratov took down Pushkin, read Tatiana's letter, and convinced himself again that the 'gipsy girl' had not in the least understood the real force of the letter. And that donkey Kupfer shouts: Rachel! Viardot! Then he went to his piano, as it seemed, unconsciously opened it, and tried to pick out by ear the melody of Tchaykovsky's song; but he slammed it to again directly in vexation, and went up to his aunt to her special room, which was for ever baking hot, smelled of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and was littered up with such a multitude of rugs, side-tables, stools, cushions, and padded furniture of all sorts, that any one unused to it would have found it difficult to turn round and oppressive to breathe in it. Platonida Ivanovna was sitting at the window, her knitting in her hands (she was knitting her darling Yasha a comforter, the thirty-eighth she had made him in the course of his life!), and was much astonished to see him. Aratov rarely went up to her, and if he wanted anything, used always to call, in his delicate voice, from his study: 'Aunt Platosha!' However, she made him sit down, and sat all alert, in expectation of his first words, watching him through her spectacles with one eye, over them with the other. She did not inquire after his health nor offer him tea, as she saw he had not come for that. Aratov was a little disconcerted … then he began to talk … talked of his mother, of how she had lived with his father and how his father had got to know her. All this he knew very well … but it was just what he wanted to talk about. Unluckily for him, Platosha did not know how to keep up a conversation at all; she gave him very brief replies, as though she suspected that was not what Yasha had come for.
'Eh!' she repeated, hurriedly, almost irritably plying her knitting-needles. 'We all know: your mother was a darling … a darling that she was…. And your father loved her as a husband should, truly and faithfully even in her grave; and he never loved any other woman': she added, raising her voice and taking off her spectacles.
'And was she of a retiring disposition?' Aratov inquired, after a short silence.
'Retiring! to be sure she was. As a woman should be. Bold ones have sprung up nowadays.'
'And were there no bold ones in your time?'
'There were in our time too … to be sure there were! But who were they? A pack of strumpets, shameless hussies. Draggle-tails—for ever gadding about after no good…. What do they care? It's little they take to heart. If some poor fool comes in their way, they pounce on him. But sensible folk looked down on them. Did you ever see, pray, the like of such in our house?'
