To wit: a messenger brought him a note, written in a large, irregular
feminine hand, which ran as follows:
"If you guess who is writing to you, and if it does not bore you, come
to-morrow, after dinner, to the Tver boulevard--about five o'clock--and
wait. You will not be detained long. But it is very important. Come."
There was no signature. Arátoff instantly divined who his correspondent
was, and that was precisely what disturbed him.--"What nonsense!" he
said, almost aloud. "This is too much! Of course I shall not
go."--Nevertheless, he ordered the messenger to be summoned, and from
him he learned merely that the letter had been handed to him on the
street by a maid. Having dismissed him, Arátoff reread the letter, and
flung it on the floor.... But after a while he picked it up and read it
over again; a second time he cried: "Nonsense!" He did not throw the
letter on the floor this time, however, but put it away in a drawer.
Arátoff went about his customary avocations, busying himself now with
one, now with another; but his work did not make progress, was not a
success. Suddenly he noticed that he was waiting for Kupfer, that he
wanted to interrogate him, or even communicate something to him.... But
Kupfer did not make his appearance. Then Arátoff got Púshkin and read
Tatyána's letter and again felt convinced that that "gipsy" had not in
the least grasped the meaning of the letter. But there was that jester
Kupfer shouting: "A Rachel! A Viardot!" Then he went to his piano,
raised the cover in an abstracted sort of way, tried to search out in
his memory the melody of Tchaikóvsky's romance; but he immediately
banged to the piano-lid with vexation and went to his aunt, in her own
room, which was always kept very hot, and was forever redolent of mint,
sage, and other medicinal herbs, and crowded with such a multitude of
rugs, étagères, little benches, cushions and various articles of
softly-stuffed furniture that it was difficult for an inexperienced
person to turn round in it, and breathing was oppressive. Platonída
Ivánovna was sitting by the window with her knitting-needles in her hand
(she was knitting a scarf for Yáshenka--the thirty-eighth, by actual
count, during the course of his existence!)--and was greatly surprised.
Arátoff rarely entered her room, and if he needed anything he always
shouted in a shrill voice from his study: "Aunt Platósha!"--But she made
him sit down and, in anticipation of his first words, pricked up her
ears, as she stared at him through her round spectacles with one eye,
and above them with the other. She did not inquire after his health, and
did not offer him tea, for she saw that he had not come for that.
Arátoff hesitated for a while ... then began to talk ... to talk about
his mother, about the way she had lived with his father, and how his
father had made her acquaintance. He knew all this perfectly well ...
but he wanted to talk precisely about that. Unluckily for him, Platósha
did not know how to converse in the least; she made very brief replies,
as though she suspected that Yásha had not come for that purpose.
"Certainly!"--she kept repeating hurriedly, as she plied her
knitting-needles almost in an angry way. "Every one knows that thy
mother was a dove ... a regular dove.... And thy father loved her as a
husband should love, faithfully and honourably, to the very grave; and
he never loved any other woman,"--she added, elevating her voice and
removing her spectacles.
"And was she of a timid disposition?" asked Arátoff, after a short
pause.
"Certainly she was. As is fitting for the female sex. The bold ones are
a recent invention."
"And were there no bold ones in your time?"
"There were such even in our day ... of course there were! But who were
they? Some street-walker, or shameless hussy or other. She would drag
her skirts about, and fling herself hither and thither at random....
What did she care? What anxiety had she? If a young fool came along, he
fell into her hands. But steady-going people despised them. Dost thou
remember ever to have beheld such in our house?"
Arátoff made no reply and returned to his study. Platonída Ivánovna
gazed after him, shook her head and again donned her spectacles, again
set to work on her scarf ... but more than once she fell into thought
and dropped her knitting-needles on her knee.
And Arátoff until nightfall kept again and again beginning, with the
same vexation, the same ire as before, to think about "the gipsy," the
appointed tryst, to which he certainly would not go! During the night
also she worried him. He kept constantly seeing her eyes, now narrowed,
now widely opened, with their importunate gaze riveted directly on him,
and those impassive features with their imperious expression.
On the following morning he again kept expecting Kupfer, for some reason
or other; he came near writing him a letter ... however, he did
nothing ... but spent most of his time pacing to and fro in his study.
Not for one instant did he even admit to himself the thought that he
would go to that stupid "rendezvous" ... and at half-past four, after
having swallowed his dinner in haste, he suddenly donned his overcoat
and pulling his cap down on his brows, he stole out of the house without
letting his aunt see him and wended his way to the Tver boulevard.