Chapter XV

Aratov went to bed early, without feeling specially sleepy, but he hoped to find repose in bed. The strained condition of his nerves brought about an exhaustion far more unbearable than the bodily fatigue of the journey and the railway. However, exhausted as he was, he could not get to sleep. He tried to read ... but the lines danced before his eyes. He put out the candle, and darkness reigned in his room. But still he lay sleepless, with his eyes shut.... And it began to seem to him some one was whispering in his ear.... ‘The beating of the heart, the pulse of the blood,’ he thought.... But the whisper passed into connected speech. Some one was talking in Russian hurriedly, plaintively, and indistinctly. Not one separate word could he catch.... But it was the voice of Clara.

Aratov opened his eyes, raised himself, leaned on his elbow.... The voice grew fainter, but kept up its plaintive, hurried talk, indistinct as before....

It was unmistakably Clara’s voice.

Unseen fingers ran light arpeggios up and down the keys of the piano ... then the voice began again. More prolonged sounds were audible ... as it were moans ... always the same over and over again. Then apart from the rest the words began to stand out ... ‘Roses ... roses ... roses....’

‘Roses,’ repeated Aratov in a whisper. ‘Ah, yes! it’s the roses I saw on that woman’s head in the dream.’... ‘Roses,’ he heard again.

‘Is that you?’ Aratov asked in the same whisper. The voice suddenly ceased.

Aratov waited ... and waited, and dropped his head on the pillow. ‘Hallucinations of hearing,’ he thought. ‘But if ... if she really were here, close at hand?... If I were to see her, should I be frightened? or glad? But what should I be frightened of? or glad of? Why, of this, to be sure; it would be a proof that there is another world, that the soul is immortal. Though, indeed, even if I did see something, it too might be a hallucination of the sight....’

He lighted the candle, however, and in a rapid glance, not without a certain dread, scanned the whole room ... and saw nothing in it unusual. He got up, went to the stereoscope ... again the same grey doll, with its eyes averted. The feeling of dread gave way to one of annoyance. He was, as it were, cheated in his expectations ... the very expectation indeed struck him as absurd.

‘Well, this is positively idiotic!’ he muttered, as he got back into bed, and blew out the candle. Profound darkness reigned once more.

Aratov resolved to go to sleep this time.... But a fresh sensation started up in him. He fancied some one was standing in the middle of the room, not far from him, and scarcely perceptibly breathing. He turned round hastily and opened his eyes.... But what could be seen in impenetrable darkness? He began to feel for a match on his little bedside table ... and suddenly it seemed to him that a sort of soft, noiseless hurricane was passing over the whole room, over him, through him, and the word ‘I!’ sounded distinctly in his ears....

‘I!... I!’...

Some instants passed before he succeeded in getting the candle alight.

Again there was no one in the room; and he now heard nothing, except the uneven throbbing of his own heart. He drank a glass of water, and stayed still, his head resting on his hand. He was waiting.

He thought: ‘I will wait. Either it’s all nonsense ... or she is here. She is not going to play cat and mouse with me like this!’ He waited, waited long ... so long that the hand on which he was resting his head went numb ... but not one of his previous sensations was repeated. Twice his eyes closed.... He opened them promptly ... at least he believed that he opened them. Gradually they turned towards the door and rested on it. The candle burned dim, and it was once more dark in the room ... but the door made a long streak of white in the half darkness. And now this patch began to move, to grow less, to disappear ... and in its place, in the doorway appeared a woman’s figure. Aratov looked intently at it ... Clara! And this time she was looking straight at him, coming towards him.... On her head was a wreath of red roses.... He was all in agitation, he sat up....

Before him stood his aunt in a nightcap adorned with a broad red ribbon, and in a white dressing-jacket.

‘Platosha!’ he said with an effort. ‘Is that you?’

‘Yes, it’s I,’ answered Platonida Ivanovna ... ‘I, Yasha darling, yes.’

‘What have you come for?’

‘You waked me up. At first you kept moaning as it were ... and then you cried out all of a sudden, “Save me! help me! “’

‘I cried out?’

‘Yes, and such a hoarse cry, “Save me!” I thought, Mercy on us! He’s never ill, is he? And I came in. Are you quite well?’

‘Perfectly well.’

‘Well, you must have had a bad dream then. Would you like me to burn a little incense?’

Aratov once more stared intently at his aunt, and laughed aloud.... The figure of the good old lady in her nightcap and dressing-jacket, with her long face and scared expression, was certainly very comic. All the mystery surrounding him, oppressing him--everything weird was sent flying instantaneously.

‘No, Platosha dear, there’s no need,’ he said. ‘Please forgive me for unwittingly troubling you. Sleep well, and I will sleep too.’

Platonida Ivanovna remained a minute standing where she was, pointed to the candle, grumbled, ‘Why not put it out ... an accident happens in a minute?’ and as she went out, could not refrain, though only at a distance, from making the sign of the cross over him.

Aratov fell asleep quickly, and slept till morning. He even got up in a happy frame of mind ... though he felt sorry for something.... He felt light and free. ‘What romantic fancies, if you come to think of it!’ he said to himself with a smile. He never once glanced either at the stereoscope, or at the page torn out of the diary. Immediately after breakfast, however, he set off to go to Kupfer’s.

What drew him there ... he was dimly aware.