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?’
Aratov made no reply, and went back to his study. Platonida Ivanovna looked
after him, shook her head, put on her spectacles again, and again took
up her comforter ... but more than once sank into thought, and let her
knitting-needles fall on her knees.
Aratov up till very night kept telling himself, no! no! but with the same
irritation, the same exasperation, he fell again into musing on the note,
on the ‘gipsy girl,’ on the appointed meeting, to which he would certainly
not go! And at night she gave him no rest. He was continually haunted
by her eyes--at one time half-closed, at another wide open--and their
persistent gaze fixed straight upon him, and those motionless features with
their dominating expression....
The next morning he again, for some reason, kept expecting Kupfer; he was
on the point of writing a note to him ... but did nothing, however,...
and spent most of the time walking up and down his room. He never for
one instant admitted to himself even the idea of going to this idiotic
rendezvous ... and at half-past three, after a hastily swallowed dinner,
suddenly throwing on his cloak and thrusting his cap on his head, he dashed
out into the street, unseen by his aunt, and turned towards the Tversky
boulevard.