It was the third of July. The heat and closeness of the air had become
quite unbearable. The day had been a busy one for Velchaninoff—he had been
walking and driving about without rest, and had still in prospect a visit
in the evening to a certain state councillor who lived somewhere on the
Chornaya Riéchka (black stream), and whom he was anxious to drop in upon
unexpectedly.
At six o’clock our hero issued from his house once more, and trudged off
to dine at a restaurant on the Nefsky, near the police-bridge—a
second-rate sort of place, but French. Here he took his usual corner, and
ordered his usual dinner, and waited.
He always had a rouble(1) dinner, and paid for his wine extra, which
moderation he looked upon as a discreet sacrifice to the temporary
financial embarrassment under which he was suffering.
He regularly went through the ceremony of wondering how he could bring
himself to eat “such nastiness,” and yet as regularly he demolished every
morsel, and with excellent show of appetite too, just as though he had
eaten nothing for three days.
“This appetite can’t be healthy!” he murmured to himself sometimes,
observing his own voracity. However, on this particular occasion, he sat
down to his dinner in a miserably bad humour: he threw his hat angrily
away somewhere, tipped his chair back,—and reflected.
He was in the sort of humour that if his next neighbour—dining at the
little table near him—were to rattle his plate, or if the boy serving him
were to make any little blunder, or, in fact, if any little petty
annoyance were to put him out of a sudden, he was quite capable of
shouting at the offender, and, in fact, of kicking up a serious row on the
smallest pretext.
Soup was served to him. He took up his spoon, and was about to commence
operations, when he suddenly threw it down again, and started from his
seat. An unexpected thought had struck him, and in an instant he had
realized why he had been plunged in gloom and mental perturbation during
the last few days. Goodness knows why he thus suddenly became inspired, as
it were, with the truth; but so it was. He jumped from his chair, and in
an instant it all stood out before him as plain as his five fingers! “It’s
all that hat!” he muttered to himself; “it’s all simply and solely that
damnable round hat, with the crape band round it; that’s the reason and
cause of all my worries these last days!”
He began to think; and the more he thought, the more dejected he became,
and the more astonishing appeared the “remarkable circumstance of the
hat.”
“But, hang it all, there _is_ no circumstance!” he growled to himself.
“What circumstance do I mean? There’s been nothing in the nature of an
event or occurrence!”
The fact of the matter was this: Nearly a fortnight since, he had met for
the first time, somewhere about the corner of the Podiacheskaya, a
gentleman with crape round his hat. There was nothing particular about the
man—he was just like all others; but as he passed Velchaninoff he had
stared at him so fixedly that it was impossible to avoid noticing him, and
more than noticing—observing him attentively.
The man’s face seemed to be familiar to Velchaninoff. He had evidently
seen him somewhere and at some time or other.
“But one sees thousands of people during one’s life,” thought
Velchaninoff; “one can’t remember every face!” So he had gone on his way,
and before he was twenty yards further, to all appearances he had
forgotten all about the meeting, in spite of the strength of the first
impression made upon him.
And yet he had _not_ forgotten; for the impression remained all day, and a
very original impression it was, too,—a kind of objectless feeling of
anger against he knew not what. He remembered his exact feelings at this
moment, a fortnight after the occurrence: how he had been puzzled by the
angry nature of his sentiments at the time, and puzzled to such an extent
that he had never for a moment connected his ill-humour with the meeting
of the morning, though he had felt as cross as possible all day. But the
gentleman with the crape band had not lost much time about reminding
Velchaninoff of his existence, for the very next day he met the latter
again, on the Nefsky Prospect and again he had stared in a peculiarly
fixed way at him.
Velchaninoff flared up and spat on the ground in irritation—Russian like,
but a moment after he was wondering at his own wrath. “There are faces,
undoubtedly,” he reflected, “which fill one with disgust at first sight;
but I certainly _have_ met that fellow somewhere or other.
“Yes, I _have_ met him before!” he muttered again, half an hour later.
And again, as on the last occasion, he was in a vile humour all that
evening, and even went so far as to have a bad dream in the night; and yet
it never entered his head to imagine that the cause of his bad temper on
both occasions had been the accidental meeting with the gentleman in
mourning, although on the second evening he had remembered and thought of
the chance encounter two or three times.
He had even flared up angrily to think that “such a dirty-looking cad”
should presume to linger in his memory so long; he would have felt it
humiliating to himself to imagine for a moment that such a wretched
creature could possibly be in any way connected with the agitated
condition of his feelings.
Two days later the pair had met once more at the landing place of one of
the small Neva ferry steamers.
On the third occasion Velchaninoff was ready to swear that the man
recognised him, and had pressed through the crowd towards him; had even
dared to stretch out his hand and call him by name. As to this last fact
he was not quite certain, however. “At all events, who the deuce _is_ he?”
thought Velchaninoff, “and why can’t the idiot come up and speak to me if
he really does recognise me; and if he so much wishes to do so?” With
these thoughts Velchaninoff had taken a droshky and started off for the
Smolney Monastery, where his lawyer lived.
Half an hour later he was engaged in his usual quarrel with that
gentleman.
But that same evening he was in a worse humour than ever, and his night
was spent in fantastic dreams and imaginings, which were anything but
pleasant. “I suppose it’s bile!” he concluded, as he paid his matutinal
visit to the looking-glass.
This was the third meeting.
Then, for five days there was not a sign of the man; and yet, much to his
distaste, Velchaninoff could not, for the life of him, avoid thinking of
the man with the crape band.
He caught himself musing over the fellow. “What have I to do with him?” he
thought. “What can his business in St. Petersburg be?—he looks busy: and
whom is he in mourning for? He clearly recognises me, but I don’t know in
the least who he is! And why do such people as he is put crape on their
hats? it doesn’t seem ’the thing’ for them, somehow! I believe I shall
recognise this fellow if I ever get a good close look at him!”
And there came over him that sensation we all know so well—the same
feeling that one has when one can’t for the life of one think of the
required word; every other word comes up; associations with the right word
come up; occasions when one has used the word come up; one wanders round
and round the immediate vicinity of the word wanted, but the actual word
itself will not appear, though you may break your head to get at it!
“Let’s see, now: it was—yes—some while since. It was—where on earth was
it? There was a—oh! devil take whatever there was or wasn’t there! What
does it matter to me?” he broke off angrily of a sudden. “I’m not going to
lower myself by thinking of a little cad like that!”
He felt very angry; but when, in the evening, he remembered that he had
been so upset, and recollected the cause of his anger, he felt the
disagreeable sensation of having been caught by someone doing something
wrong.
This fact puzzled and annoyed him.
“There must be some reason for my getting so angry at the mere
recollection of that man’s face,” he thought, but he didn’t finish
thinking it out.
But the next evening he was still more indignant; and this time, he really
thought, with good cause. “Such audacity is unparalleled!” he said to
himself.
The fact of the matter is, there had been a fourth meeting with the man of
the crape hat band. The latter had apparently arisen from the earth and
confronted him. But let me explain what had happened.
It so chanced that Velchaninoff had just met, accidentally, that very
state-councillor mentioned a few pages back, whom he had been so anxious
to see, and on whom he had intended to pounce unexpectedly at his country
house. This gentleman evidently avoided Velchaninoff, but at the same time
was most necessary to the latter in his lawsuit. Consequently, when
Velchaninoff met him, the one was delighted, while the other was very much
the reverse. Velchaninoff had immediately button-holed him, and walked
down the street with him, talking; doing his very utmost to keep the sly
old fox to the subject on which it was so necessary that he should be
pumped. And it was just at this most important moment, when Velchaninoff’s
intellect was all on the _qui vive_ to catch up the slightest hints of
what he wished to get at, while the foxy old councillor (aware of the
fact) was doing his best to reveal nothing, that the former, taking his
eyes from his companion’s face for one instant, beheld the gentleman of
the crape hatband walking along the other side of the road, and looking at
him—nay, _watching_ him, evidently—and apparently smiling!
“Devil take him!” said Velchaninoff, bursting out into fury at once, while
the “old fox” instantly disappeared, “and I should have succeeded in
another minute. Curse that dirty little hound! he’s simply spying me.
I’ll—I’ll hire somebody to—I’ll take my oath he laughed at me! D—n him,
I’ll thrash him. I wish I had a stick with me. I’ll—I’ll buy one! I won’t
leave this matter so. Who the deuce is he? I _will_ know! Who is he?”
At last, three days after this fourth encounter, we find Velchaninoff
sitting down to dinner at his restaurant, as recorded a page or two back,
in a state of mind bordering upon the furious. He could not conceal the
state of his feelings from himself, in spite of all his pride. He was
obliged to confess at last, that all his anxiety, his irritation, his
state of agitation generally, must undoubtedly be connected with, and
absolutely attributed to, the appearance of the wretched-looking creature
with the crape hatband, in spite of his insignificance.
“I may be a hypochondriac,” he reflected, “and I may be inclined to make
an elephant out of a gnat; but how does it help me? What use is it to me
if I persuade myself to believe that _perhaps_ all this is fancy? Why, if
every dirty little wretch like that is to have the power of upsetting a
man like myself, why—it’s—it’s simply unbearable!”
Undoubtedly, at this last (fifth) encounter of to-day, the elephant had
proved himself a very small gnat indeed. The “crape man” had appeared
suddenly, as usual, and had passed by Velchaninoff, but without looking up
at him this time; indeed, he had gone by with downcast eyes, and had even
seemed anxious to pass unobserved. Velchaninoff had turned rapidly round
and shouted as loud as ever he could at him.
“Hey!” he cried. “You! Crape hatband! You want to escape notice this time,
do you? Who are you?”
Both the question and the whole idea of calling after the man were
absurdly foolish, and Velchaninoff knew it the moment he had said the
words. The man had turned round, stopped for an instant, lost his head,
smiled—half made up his mind to say something,—had waited half a minute in
painful indecision, then twisted suddenly round again, and “bolted”
without a word. Velchaninoff gazed after him in amazement. “What if it be
_I_ that haunt _him_, and not he me, after all?” he thought. However,
Velchaninoff ate up his dinner, and then drove off to pounce upon the town
councillor at the latter’s house, if he could.
The councillor was not in; and he was informed that he would scarcely be
at home before three or four in the morning, because he had gone to a
“name’s-day party.”
Velchaninoff felt that this was too bad! In his rage he determined to
follow and hunt the fellow up at the party: he actually took a droshky,
and started off with that wild idea; but luckily he thought better of it
on the way, got out of the vehicle and walked away towards the “Great
Theatre,” near which he lived. He felt that he must have motion; also he
_must_ absolutely sleep well this coming night: in order to sleep he must
be tired; so he walked all the way home—a fairly long walk, and arrived
there about half-past ten, as tired as he could wish.
His lodging, which he had taken last March, and had abused ever since,
apologising to himself for living “in such a hole,” and at the same time
excusing himself for the fact by the reflection that it was only for a
while, and that he had dropped quite accidentally into St.
Petersburg—thanks to that cursed lawsuit!—his lodging, I say, was by no
means so bad as he made it out to be!
The entrance certainly was a little dark, and dirty-looking, being just
under the arch of the gateway. But he had two fine large light rooms on
the second floor, separated by the entrance hall: one of these rooms
overlooked the yard and the other the street. Leading out of the former of
these was a smaller room, meant to be used as a bedroom; but Velchaninoff
had filled it with a disordered array of books and papers, and preferred
to sleep in one of the large rooms, the one overlooking the street, to
wit.
His bed was made for him, every day, upon the large divan. The rooms were
full of good furniture, and some valuable ornaments and pictures were
scattered about, but the whole place was in dreadful disorder; the fact
being that at this time Velchaninoff was without a regular servant. His
one domestic had gone away to stay with her friends in the country; he
thought of taking a man, but decided that it was not worth while for a
short time; besides he hated flunkeys, and ended by making arrangements
with his dvornik’s sister Martha, who was to come up every morning and “do
out” his rooms, he leaving the key with her as he went out each day.
Martha did absolutely nothing towards tidying the place and robbed him
besides, but he didn’t care, he liked to be alone in the house. But
solitude is all very well within certain limits, and Velchaninoff found
that his nerves could not stand all this sort of thing at certain bilious
moments; and it so fell out that he began to loathe his room more and more
every time he entered it.
However, on this particular evening he hardly gave himself time to
undress; he threw himself on his bed, and determined that nothing should
make him think of _anything_, and that he would fall asleep at once.
And, strangely enough, his head had hardly touched the pillow before he
actually was asleep; and this was the first time for a month past that
such a thing had occurred.
He awoke at about two, considerably agitated; he had dreamed certain very
strange dreams, reminding him of the incoherent wanderings of fever.
The subject seemed to be some crime which he had committed and concealed,
but of which he was accused by a continuous flow of people who swarmed
into his rooms for the purpose. The crowd which had already collected
within was enormous, and yet they continued to pour in in such numbers
that the door was never shut for an instant.
But his whole interest seemed to centre in one strange looking
individual,—a man who seemed to have once been very closely and intimately
connected with him, but who had died long ago and now reappeared for some
reason or other.
The most tormenting part of the matter was that Velchaninoff could not
recollect who this man was,—he could not remember his name,—though he
recollected the fact that he had once dearly loved him. All the rest of
the people swarming into the room seemed to be waiting for the final word
of this man,—either the condemnation or the justification of Velchaninoff
was to be pronounced by him,—and everyone was impatiently waiting to hear
him speak.
But he sat motionless at the table, and would not open his lips to say a
word of any sort.
The uproar continued, the general annoyance increased, and, suddenly,
Velchaninoff himself strode up to the man in a fury, and smote him because
he would not speak. Velchaninoff felt the strangest satisfaction in having
thus smitten him; his heart seemed to freeze in horror for what he had
done, and in acute suffering for the crime involved in his action,—but in
that very sensation of freezing at the heart lay the sense of satisfaction
which he felt.
Exasperated more and more, he struck the man a second and a third time;
and then—in a sort of intoxication of fury and terror, which amounted to
actual insanity, and yet bore within it a germ of delightful satisfaction,
he ceased to count his blows, and rained them in without ceasing.
He felt he must destroy, annihilate, demolish all this.
Suddenly something strange happened; everyone present had given a dreadful
cry and turned expectantly towards the door, while at the same moment
there came three terrific peals of the hall-bell, so violent that it
appeared someone was anxious to pull the bell-handle out.
Velchaninoff awoke, started up in a second, and made for the door; he was
persuaded that the ring at the bell had been no dream or illusion, but
that someone had actually rung, and was at that moment standing at the
front door.
“It would be _too_ unnatural if such a clear and unmistakable ring should
turn out to be nothing but an item of a dream!” he thought. But, to his
surprise, it proved that such was nevertheless the actual state of the
case! He opened the door and went out on to the landing; he looked
downstairs and about him, but there was not a soul to be seen. The bell
hung motionless. Surprised, but pleased, he returned into his room. He lit
a candle, and suddenly remembered that he had left the door closed, but
not locked and chained. He had often returned home before this evening and
forgotten to lock the door behind him, without attaching any special
significance to the fact; his maid had often respectfully protested
against such neglect while with him. He now returned to the entrance hall
to make the door fast; before doing so he opened it, however, and had one
more look about the stairs. He then shut the door and fastened the chain
and hook, but did not take the trouble to turn the key in the lock.
Some clock struck half-past two at this moment, so that he had had three
hours’ sleep—more or less.
His dream had agitated him to such an extent that he felt unwilling to lie
down again at once; he decided to walk up and down the room two or three
times first, just long enough to smoke a cigar. Having half-dressed
himself, he went to the window, drew the heavy curtains aside and pulled
up one of the blinds, it was almost full daylight. These light summer
nights of St. Petersburg always had a bad effect upon his nerves, and of
late they had added to the causes of his sleeplessness, so that a few
weeks since he had invested in these thick curtains, which completely shut
out the light when drawn close.
Having thus let in the sunshine, quite oblivious of the lighted candle on
the table, he commenced to walk up and down the room. Still feeling the
burden of his dream upon him, its impression was even now at work upon his
mind, he still felt a painfully guilty sensation about him, caused by the
fact that he had allowed himself to raise his hand against “that man” and
strike him. “But, my dear sir!” he argued with himself, “it was not a man
at all! the whole thing was a dream! what’s the use of worrying yourself
for nothing?”
Velchaninoff now became obstinately convinced that he was a sick man, and
that to his sickly state of body was to be attributed all his perturbation
of mind. He was an invalid.
It had always been a weak point with Velchaninoff that he hated to think
of himself as growing old or infirm; and yet in his moments of anger he
loved to exaggerate one or the other in order to worry himself.
“It’s old age,” he now muttered to himself, as he paced up and down the
room. “I’m becoming an old fogey—that’s the fact of the matter! I’m losing
my memory—see ghosts, and have dreams, and hear bells ring—curse it all! I
know these dreams of old, they always herald fever with me. I dare swear
that the whole business of this man with the crape hatband has been a
dream too! I was perfectly right yesterday, he isn’t haunting me the least
bit in the world; it is I that am haunting _him_! I’ve invented a pretty
little ghost-story about him and then climb under the table in terror at
my own creation! Why do I call him a little cad, too? he may be a most
respectable individual for all I know! His face is a disagreeable one,
certainly, though there is nothing hideous about it! He dresses just like
anyone else. I don’t know—there’s something about his look—There I go
again! What the devil have I got to do with his look? what a fool I
am—just as though I could not live without the dirty little wretch—curse
him!”
Among other thoughts connected with this haunting crape-man was one which
puzzled Velchaninoff immensely; he felt convinced that at some time or
other he had known the man, and known him very intimately; and that now
the latter, when meeting him, always laughed at him because he was aware
of some great secret of his former life, or because he was amused to see
Velchaninoff’s present humiliating condition of poverty.
Mechanically our hero approached the window in order to get a breath of
fresh air—when he was suddenly seized with a violent fit of shuddering;—a
feeling came over him that something unusual and unheard-of was happening
before his very eyes.
He had not had time to open the window when something he saw caused him to
slip behind the corner of the curtain, and hide himself.
The man in the crape hatband was standing on the opposite side of the
street.
He was standing with his face turned directly towards Velchaninoff’s
window, but evidently unaware of the latter’s presence there, and was
carefully examining the house, and apparently considering some question
connected with it.
He seemed to come to a decision after a moment’s thought, and raised his
finger to his forehead; then he looked quietly about him, and ran swiftly
across the road on tiptoe. He reached the gate, and entered it; this gate
was often left open on summer nights until two or three in the morning.
“He’s coming to me,” muttered Velchaninoff, and with equal caution he left
the window, and ran to the front door; arrived in the hall, he stood in
breathless expectation before the door, and placed his trembling hand
carefully upon the hook which he had fastened a few minutes since, and
stood listening for the tread of the expected footfall on the stairs. His
heart was beating so loud that he was afraid he might miss the sound of
the cautious steps approaching.
He could understand nothing of what was happening, but it seemed clear
that his dream was about to be realised.
Velchaninoff was naturally brave. He loved risk for its own sake, and very
often ran into useless dangers, with no one by to see, to please himself.
But this was different, somehow; he was not himself, and yet he was as
brave as ever, but with something added. He made out every movement of the
stranger from behind his own door.
“Ah!—there he comes!—he’s on the steps now!—here he comes!—he’s up
now!—now he’s looking down stairs and all about, and crouching down! Aha!
there’s his hand on the door-handle—he’s trying it!—he thought he would
find it unlocked!—then he must know that I _do_ leave it unlocked
sometimes!—He’s trying it again!—I suppose he thinks the hook may slip!—he
doesn’t care to go away without doing anything!”
So ran Velchaninoff’s thoughts, and so indeed followed the man’s actions.
There was no doubt about it, someone was certainly standing outside and
trying the door-handle, carefully and cautiously pulling at the door
itself, and, in fact, endeavouring to effect an entrance; equally sure was
it that the person so doing must have his own object in trying to sneak
into another man’s house at dead of night. But Velchaninoff’s plan of
action was laid, and he awaited the proper moment; he was anxious to seize
a good opportunity—slip the hook and chain—open the door wide, suddenly,
and stand face to face with this bugbear, and then ask him what the deuce
he wanted there.
No sooner devised than executed.
Awaiting the proper moment, Velchaninoff suddenly slipped the hook, pushed
the door wide, and almost tumbled over the man with the crape hatband!