When Platonída Ivánovna entered his room on the following morning he was
in the same condition ... but his weakness had not passed off, and he
even preferred to remain in bed. Platonída Ivánovna did not like the
pallor of his face in particular.
"What does it mean, O Lord!" she thought. "There isn't a drop of blood
in his face, he refuses his beef-tea; he lies there and laughs, and
keeps asserting that he is quite well!"
He refused breakfast also.--"Why dost thou do that, Yásha?" she asked
him; "dost thou intend to lie like this all day?"
"And what if I do?" replied Arátoff, affectionately.
This very affection also did not please Platonída Ivánovna. Arátoff
wore the aspect of a man who has learned a great secret, which is very
agreeable to him, and is jealously clinging to it and reserving it for
himself. He was waiting for night, not exactly with impatience but with
curiosity.
"What comes next?" he asked himself;--"what will happen?" He had ceased
to be surprised, to be perplexed; he cherished no doubt as to his having
entered into communication with Clara; that they loved each other ... he
did not doubt, either. Only ... what can come of such a love?--He
recalled that kiss ... and a wondrous chill coursed swiftly and sweetly
through all his limbs.--"Romeo and Juliet did not exchange such a kiss
as that!" he thought. "But the next time I shall hold out better.... I
shall possess her.... She will come with the garland of tiny roses in
her black curls....
"But after that what? For we cannot live together, can we? Consequently
I must die in order to be with her? Was not that what she came for,--and
is it not in _that_ way she wishes to take me?
"Well, and what of that? If I must die, I must. Death does not terrify
me in the least now. For it cannot annihilate me, can it? On the
contrary, only _thus_ and _there_ shall I be happy ... as I have never
been happy in my lifetime, as she has never been in hers.... For we are
both unsullied!--Oh, that kiss!"
* * * * *
Platonída Ivánovna kept entering Arátoff's room; she did not worry him
with questions, she merely took a look at him, whispered, sighed, and
went out again.--But now he refused his dinner also.... Things were
getting quite too bad. The old woman went off to her friend, the medical
man of the police-district, in whom she had faith simply because he did
not drink and was married to a German woman. Arátoff was astonished when
she brought the man to him; but Platonída Ivánovna began so insistently
to entreat her Yáshenka to permit Paramón Paramónitch (that was the
medical man's name) to examine him--come, now, just for her sake!--that
Arátoff consented. Paramón Paramónitch felt his pulse, looked at his
tongue, interrogated him after a fashion, and finally announced that it
was indispensably necessary to "auscultate" him. Arátoff was in such a
submissive frame of mind that he consented to this also. The doctor
delicately laid bare his breast, delicately tapped it, listened, smiled,
prescribed some drops and a potion, but chief of all, advised him to be
quiet, and refrain from violent emotions.
"You don't say so!" thought Arátoff.... "Well, brother, thou hast
bethought thyself too late!"
"What ails Yásha?" asked Platonída Ivánovna, as she handed Paramón
Paramónitch a three-ruble bank-note on the threshold. The district
doctor, who, like all contemporary doctors,--especially those of them
who wear a uniform,--was fond of showing off his learned terminology,
informed her that her nephew had all the dioptric symptoms of nervous
cardialgia, and that febris was present also.
"But speak more simply, dear little father," broke in Platonída
Ivánovna; "don't scare me with Latin; thou art not in an apothecary's
shop!"
"His heart is out of order," explained the doctor;--"well, and he has
fever also," ... and he repeated his advice with regard to repose and
moderation.
"But surely there is no danger?" sternly inquired Platonída Ivánovna, as
much as to say: "Look out and don't try your Latin on me again!"
"Not at present!"
The doctor went away, and Platonída Ivánovna took to grieving....
Nevertheless she sent to the apothecary for the medicine, which Arátoff
would not take, despite her entreaties. He even refused herb-tea.
"What makes you worry so, dear?" he said to her. "I assure you I am now
the most perfectly healthy and happy man in the whole world!"
Platonída Ivánovna merely shook her head. Toward evening he became
slightly feverish; yet he still insisted upon it that she should not
remain in his room, and should go away to her own to sleep. Platonída
Ivánovna obeyed, but did not undress, and did not go to bed; she sat up
in an arm-chair and kept listening and whispering her prayer.
She was beginning to fall into a doze, when suddenly a dreadful,
piercing shriek awakened her. She sprang to her feet, rushed into
Arátoff's study, and found him lying on the floor, as upon the night
before.
But he did not come to himself as he had done the night before, work
over him as they would. That night he was seized with a high fever,
complicated by inflammation of the heart.
A few days later he died.
A strange circumstance accompanied his second swoon. When they lifted
him up and put him to bed, there proved to be a small lock of woman's
black hair clutched in his right hand. Where had that hair come from?
Anna Semyónovna had such a lock, which she had kept after Clara's death;
but why should she have given to Arátoff an object which was so precious
to her? Could she have laid it into the diary, and not noticed the fact
when she gave him the book?
In the delirium which preceded his death Arátoff called himself
Romeo ... after the poison; he talked about a marriage contracted,
consummated;--said that now he knew the meaning of delight. Especially
dreadful for Platonída Ivánovna was the moment when Arátoff, recovering
consciousness, and seeing her by his bedside, said to her:
"Aunty, why art thou weeping? Is it because I must die? But dost thou
not know that love is stronger than death?... Death! O Death, where is
thy sting? Thou must not weep, but rejoice, even as I rejoice...."
And again the face of the dying man beamed with that same blissful smile
which had made the poor old woman shudder so.