“Unhappy Clara! foolish
Clara!
Unhappy Clara Mowbray!”
Aratoff was acquainted with this poem also....
And now these words kept incessantly recurring to
his memory.... “Unhappy Clara! foolish
Clara!...” (That was why he had been so surprised
when Kupfer mentioned Clara Militch to him.) Even
Platosha noticed, not precisely a change in Yakoff’s
frame of mind—as a matter of fact, no change
had taken place—but something wrong about
his looks, in his remarks. She cautiously interrogated
him about the literary morning at which he had been
present;—she whispered, sighed, scrutinised
him from in front, scrutinised him from the side,
from behind—and suddenly, slapping her
hands on her thighs, she exclaimed:
“Well, Yashal—I see what the trouble
is!”
“What dost thou mean?” queried Aratoff
in his turn.
“Thou hast certainly met at that morning some
one of those tail-draggers” (that was what Platonida
Ivanovna called all ladies who wore fashionable gowns)....
“She has a comely face—and she puts
on airs like this,—and twists her
face like this” (Platosha depicted all
this in her face), “and she makes her eyes go
round like this....” (she mimicked this also,
describing huge circles in the air with her forefinger)....
“And it made an impression on thee, because thou
art not used to it.... But that does not signify
anything, Yasha ... it does not signify anything!
Drink a cup of herb-tea when thou goest to bed, and
that will be the end of it!... Lord, help!”
Platosha ceased speaking and took herself off....
She probably had never made such a long and animated
speech before since she was born ... but Aratoff thought:
“I do believe my aunt is right.... It is
all because I am not used to such things....”
(He really had attracted the attention of the female
sex to himself for the first time ... at any rate,
he had never noticed it before.) “I must not
indulge myself.”
So he set to work at his books, and drank some linden-flower
tea when he went to bed, and even slept well all that
night, and had no dreams. On the following morning
he busied himself with his photography, as though
nothing had happened....
But toward evening his spiritual serenity was again
disturbed.
To wit: a messenger brought him a note, written
in a large, irregular feminine hand, which ran as
follows:
“If you guess who is writing to you, and if
it does not bore you, come to-morrow, after dinner,
to the Tver boulevard—about five o’clock—and
wait. You will not be detained long. But
it is very important. Come.”
There was no signature. Aratoff instantly divined
who his correspondent was, and that was precisely
what disturbed him.—“What nonsense!”
he said, almost aloud. “This is too much!
Of course I shall not go.”—Nevertheless,
he ordered the messenger to be summoned, and from
him he learned merely that the letter had been handed
to him on the street by a maid. Having dismissed
him, Aratoff reread the letter, and flung it on the
floor.... But after a while he picked it up and
read it over again; a second time he cried: “Nonsense!”
He did not throw the letter on the floor this time,
however, but put it away in a drawer.
