Tyeglev was the first to speak and talked with his usual hesitating
incompleted sentences and repetitions about presentiments ... about
ghosts. On exactly such a night, according to him, one of his friends,
a student who had just taken the place of tutor to two orphans and was
sleeping with them in a lodge in the garden, saw a woman's figure
bending over their beds and next day recognised the figure in a
portrait of the mother of the orphans which he had not previously
noticed. Then Tyeglev told me that his parents had heard for several
days before their death the sound of rushing water; that his
grandfather had been saved from death in the battle of Borodino
through suddenly stooping down to pick up a simple grey pebble at the
very instant when a volley of grape-shot flew over his head and broke
his long black plume. Tyeglev even promised to show me the very pebble
which had saved his grandfather and which he had mounted into a
medallion. Then he talked of the lofty destination of every man and of
his own in particular and added that he still believed in it and that
if he ever had any doubts on that subject he would know how to be rid
of them and of his life, as life would then lose all significance for
him. "You imagine perhaps," he brought out, glancing askance at me,
"that I shouldn't have the spirit to do it? You don't know me ... I
have a will of iron."
"Well said," I thought to myself.
Tyeglev pondered, heaved a deep sigh and dropping his chibouk out of
his hand, informed me that that day was a very important one for him.
"This is the prophet Elijah's day--my name day.... It is ... it is
always for me a difficult time."
I made no answer and only looked at him as he sat facing me, bent,
round-shouldered, and clumsy, with his drowsy, lustreless eyes fixed
on the ground.
"An old beggar woman" (Tyeglev never let a single beggar pass without
giving alms) "told me to-day," he went on, "that she would pray for my
soul.... Isn't that strange?"
"Why does the man want to be always bothering about himself!" I
thought again. I must add, however, that of late I had begun noticing
an unusual expression of anxiety and uneasiness on Tyeglev's face, and
it was not a "fatal" melancholy: something really was fretting and
worrying him. On this occasion, too, I was struck by the dejected
expression of his face. Were not those very doubts of which he had
spoken to me beginning to assail him? Tyeglev's comrades had told me
that not long before he had sent to the authorities a project for some
reforms in the artillery department and that the project had been
returned to him "with a comment," that is, a reprimand. Knowing his
character, I had no doubt that such contemptuous treatment by his
superior officers had deeply mortified him. But the change that I
fancied I saw in Tyeglev was more like sadness and there was a more
personal note about it.
"It's getting damp, though," he brought out at last and he shrugged
his shoulders. "Let us go into the hut--and it's bed-time, too." He
had the habit of shrugging his shoulders and turning his head from
side to side, putting his right hand to his throat as he did so, as
though his cravat were constricting it. Tyeglev's character was
expressed, so at least it seemed to me, in this uneasy and nervous
movement. He, too, felt constricted in the world.
We went back into the hut, and both lay down on benches, he in the
corner facing the door and I on the opposite side.