“I never for a moment deceived myself as to
the meaning of her last words,” added Tyeglev.
“I am certain that she has put an end to her
life and ... and that it was her voice, that
it was she calling me ... to follow her there
... I recognised her voice.... Well,
there is but one end to it.”
“But why didn’t you marry her, Ilya Stepanitch?”
I asked. “You ceased to love her?”
“No; I still love her passionately.”
At this point I stared at Tyeglev. I remembered
another friend of mine, a very intelligent man, who
had a very plain wife, neither intelligent nor rich
and was very unhappy in his marriage. When someone
in my presence asked him why he had married and suggested
that it was probably for love, he answered, “Not
for love at all. It simply happened.”
And in this case Tyeglev loved a girl passionately
and did not marry her. Was it for the same reason,
then?
“Why don’t you marry her, then?”
I asked again.
Tyeglev’s strange, drowsy eyes strayed over
the table.
“There is ... no answering that ... in a few
words,” he began, hesitating. “There
were reasons.... And besides, she was ... a working-class
girl. And then there is my uncle.... I was
obliged to consider him, too.”
“Your uncle?” I cried. “But
what the devil do you want with your uncle whom you
never see except at the New Year when you go to congratulate
him? Are you reckoning on his money? But
he has got a dozen children of his own!”
I spoke with heat.... Tyeglev winced and flushed
... flushed unevenly, in patches.
“Don’t lecture me, if you please,”
he said dully. “I don’t justify myself,
however. I have ruined her life and now I must
pay the penalty....”
His head sank and he was silent. I found nothing
to say, either.
So we sat for a quarter of an hour. He looked
away—I looked at him—and I noticed
that the hair stood up and curled above his forehead
in a peculiar way, which, so I have heard from an army
doctor who had had a great many wounded pass through
his hands, is always a symptom of intense overheating
of the brain.... The thought struck me again
that fate really had laid a heavy hand on this man
and that his comrades were right in seeing something
“fatal” in him. And yet inwardly
I blamed him. “A working-class girl!”
I thought, “a fine sort of aristocrat you are
yourself!”
“Perhaps you blame me, Ridel,” Tyeglev
began suddenly, as though guessing what I was thinking.
“I am very ... unhappy myself. But what
to do? What to do?”
He leaned his chin on his hand and began biting the
broad flat nails of his short, red fingers, hard as
iron.
“What I think, Ilya Stepanitch, is that you
ought first to make certain whether your suppositions
are correct.... Perhaps your lady love is alive
and well.” ("Shall I tell him the real explanation
of the taps?” flashed through my mind.
“No—later.”)
