When Platonida Ivanovna came in to him next morning, he was still in the
same position ... but the weakness had not passed off, and he actually
preferred to remain in bed. Platonida Ivanovna did not like the pallor of
his face at all. ‘Lord, have mercy on us! what is it?’ she thought; ‘not a
drop of blood in his face, refuses broth, lies there and smiles, and keeps
declaring he’s perfectly well!’ He refused breakfast too. ‘What is the
matter with you, Yasha?’ she questioned him; ‘do you mean to lie in bed all
day?’ ‘And what if I did?’ Aratov answered gently. This very gentleness
again Platonida Ivanovna did not like at all. Aratov had the air of a
man who has discovered a great, very delightful secret, and is jealously
guarding it and keeping it to himself. He was looking forward to the night,
not impatiently, but with curiosity. ‘What next?’ he was asking himself;
‘what will happen?’ Astonishment, incredulity, he had ceased to feel; he
did not doubt that he was in communication with Clara, that they loved one
another ... that, too, he had no doubt about. Only ... what could come of
such love? He recalled that kiss ... and a delicious shiver ran swiftly and
sweetly through all his limbs. ‘Such a kiss,’ was his thought, ‘even Romeo
and Juliet knew not! But next time I will be stronger.... I will master
her.... She shall come with a wreath of tiny roses in her dark curls....
‘But what next? We cannot live together, can we? Then must I die so as to
be with her? Is it not for that she has come; and is it not _so_ she means
to take me captive?
‘Well; what then? If I must die, let me die. Death has no terrors for me
now. It cannot, then, annihilate me? On the contrary, only _thus_ and
_there_ can I be happy ... as I have not been happy in life, as she has
not.... We are both pure! Oh, that kiss!’
* * * * *
Platonida Ivanovna was incessantly coming into Aratov’s room. She did not
worry him with questions; she merely looked at him, muttered, sighed,
and went out again. But he refused his dinner too: this was really too
dreadful. The old lady set off to an acquaintance of hers, a district
doctor, in whom she placed some confidence, simply because he did not drink
and had a German wife. Aratov was surprised when she brought him in to see
him; but Platonida Ivanovna so earnestly implored her darling Yashenka to
allow Paramon Paramonitch (that was the doctor’s name) to examine him--if
only for her sake--that Aratov consented. Paramon Paramonitch felt his
pulse, looked at his tongue, asked a question, and announced at last that
it was absolutely necessary for him to ‘auscultate’ him. Aratov was in such
an amiable frame of mind that he agreed to this too. The doctor delicately
uncovered his chest, delicately tapped, listened, hummed and hawed,
prescribed some drops and a mixture, and, above all, advised him to keep
quiet and avoid any excitement. ‘I dare say!’ thought Aratov; ‘that idea’s
a little too late, my good friend!’ ‘What is wrong with Yasha?’ queried
Platonida Ivanovna, as she slipped a three-rouble note into Paramon
Paramonitch’s hand in the doorway. The district doctor, who like all modern
physicians--especially those who wear a government uniform--was fond of
showing off with scientific terms, announced that her nephew’s diagnosis
showed all the symptoms of neurotic cardialgia, and there were febrile
symptoms also. ‘Speak plainer, my dear sir; do,’ cut in Platonida Ivanovna;
‘don’t terrify me with your Latin; you’re not in your surgery!’ ‘His
heart’s not right,’ the doctor explained; ‘and, well--there’s a little
fever too’ ... and he repeated his advice as to perfect quiet and absence
of excitement. ‘But there’s no danger, is there?’ Platonida Ivanovna
inquired severely [‘You dare rush off into Latin again,’ she implied.) ‘No
need to anticipate any at present!’
The doctor went away ... and Platonida Ivanovna grieved.... She sent to the
surgery, though, for the medicine, which Aratov would not take, in spite of
her entreaties. He refused any herb-tea too. ‘And why are you so uneasy,
dear?’ he said to her; ‘I assure you, I’m at this moment the sanest and
happiest man in the whole world!’ Platonida Ivanovna could only shake her
head. Towards evening he grew rather feverish; and still he insisted
that she should not stay in his room, but should go to sleep in her own.
Platonida Ivanovna obeyed; but she did not undress, and did not lie down.
She sat in an arm-chair, and was all the while listening and murmuring her
prayers.
She was just beginning to doze, when suddenly she was awakened by a
terrible piercing shriek. She jumped up, rushed into Aratov’s room, and as
on the night before, found him lying on the floor.
But he did not come to himself as on the previous night, in spite of all
they could do. He fell the same night into a high fever, complicated by
failure of the heart.
A few days later he passed away.
A strange circumstance attended his second fainting-fit. When they lifted
him up and laid him on his bed, in his clenched right hand they found a
small tress of a woman’s dark hair. Where did this lock of hair come from?
Anna Semyonovna had such a lock of hair left by Clara; but what could
induce her to give Aratov a relic so precious to her? Could she have put it
somewhere in the diary, and not have noticed it when she lent the book?
In the delirium that preceded his death, Aratov spoke of himself as Romeo
... after the poison; spoke of marriage, completed and perfect; of his
knowing now what rapture meant. Most terrible of all for Platosha was the
minute when Aratov, coming a little to himself, and seeing her beside his
bed, said to her, ‘Aunt, what are you crying for?--because I must die? But
don’t you know that love is stronger than death?... Death! death! where is
thy sting? You should not weep, but rejoice, even as I rejoice....’
And once more on the face of the dying man shone out the rapturous smile,
which gave the poor old woman such cruel pain.