All the following day Aratov was in very low spirits. ‘What is it,
Yasha?’ Platonida Ivanovna said to him: ‘you seem somehow all loose ends
to-day!’... In her own peculiar idiom the old lady’s expression described
fairly accurately Aratov’s mental condition. He could not work and he did
not know himself what he wanted. At one time he was eagerly on the watch
for Kupfer, again he suspected that it was from Kupfer that Clara had got
his address ... and from where else could she ‘have heard so much about
him’? Then he wondered: was it possible his acquaintance with her was
to end like this? Then he fancied she would write to him again; then he
asked himself whether he ought not to write her a letter, explaining
everything, since he did not at all like leaving an unfavourable
impression of himself.... But exactly what to explain? Then he stirred
up in himself almost a feeling of repulsion for her, for her insistence,
her impertinence; and then again he saw that unutterably touching face
and heard an irresistible voice; then he recalled her singing, her
recitation--and could not be sure whether he had been right in his
wholesale condemnation of it. In fact, he was all loose ends! At last he
was heartily sick of it, and resolved to keep a firm hand over himself, as
it is called, and to obliterate the whole incident, as it was unmistakably
hindering his studies and destroying his peace of mind. It turned out not
so easy to carry out this resolution ... more than a week passed by before
he got back into his old accustomed groove. Luckily Kupfer did not turn up
at all; he was in fact out of Moscow. Not long before the incident, Aratov
had begun to work at painting in connection with his photographic plans; he
set to work upon it now with redoubled zest.
So, imperceptibly, with a few (to use the doctors’ expression) ‘symptoms
of relapse,’ manifested, for instance, in his once almost deciding to call
upon the princess, two months passed ... then three months ... and Aratov
was the old Aratov again. Only somewhere down below, under the surface of
his life, something like a dark and burdensome secret dogged him wherever
he went. So a great fish just caught on the hook, but not yet drawn up,
will swim at the bottom of a deep stream under the very boat where the
angler sits with a stout rod in his hand.
And one day, skimming through a not quite new number of the _Moscow
Gazette_, Aratov lighted upon the following paragraph:
‘With the greatest regret,’ wrote some local contributor from Kazan, ‘we
must add to our dramatic record the news of the sudden death of our gifted
actress Clara Militch, who had succeeded during the brief period of her
engagement in becoming a favourite of our discriminating public. Our regret
is the more poignant from the fact that Miss Militch by her own act cut
short her young life, so full of promise, by means of poison. And this
dreadful deed was the more awful through the talented actress taking the
fatal drug in the theatre itself. She had scarcely been taken home when to
the universal grief, she expired. There is a rumour in the town that an
unfortunate love affair drove her to this terrible act.’
Aratov slowly laid the paper on the table. In outward appearance he
remained perfectly calm ... but at once something seemed to strike him a
blow in the chest and the head--and slowly the shock passed on through all
his limbs. He got up, stood still on the spot, and sat down again, again
read through the paragraph. Then he got up again, lay down on the bed,
and clasping his hands behind, stared a long while at the wall, as though
dazed. By degrees the wall seemed to fade away ... vanished ... and he
saw facing him the boulevard under the grey sky, and _her_ in her black
cape ... then her on the platform ... saw himself even close by her. That
something which had given him such a violent blow in the chest at the first
instant, began mounting now ... mounting into his throat.... He tried to
clear his throat; tried to call some one--but his voice failed him--and,
to his own astonishment, tears rushed in torrents from his eyes ... what
called forth these tears? Pity? Remorse? Or was it simply his nerves could
not stand the sudden shock?
Why, she was nothing to him? was she?
‘But, perhaps, it’s not true after all,’ the thought came as a sudden
relief to him. ‘I must find out! But from whom? From the princess? No, from
Kupfer ... from Kupfer? But they say he’s not in Moscow--no matter, I must
try him first!’
With these reflections in his head, Aratov dressed himself in haste, called
a cab and drove to Kupfer’s.