’Not a beauty ... and such an expressive face!
Immobile ... and yet expressive! I never met
such a face.... And talent, too, she has ... that
is, she had, unmistakable. Untrained, undeveloped,
even coarse, perhaps ... but unmistakable talent.
And in that case I was unjust to her.’ Aratov
was carried back in thought to the literary musical
matinee ... and he observed to himself how exceedingly
clearly he recollected every word she had sung of
recited, every intonation of her voice.... ’That
would not have been so had she been without talent.
And now it is all in the grave, to which she has hastened
of herself.... But I’ve nothing to do with
that ... I’m not to blame! It would
be positively ridiculous to suppose that I’m
to blame.’
It again occurred to Aratov that even if she had had
‘anything of the sort’ in her mind, his
behaviour during their interview must have effectually
disillusioned her.... ’That was why she
laughed so cruelly, too, at parting. Besides,
what proof is there that she took poison because of
unrequited love? That’s only the newspaper
correspondents, who ascribe every death of that sort
to unrequited love! People of a character like
Clara’s readily feel life repulsive ... burdensome.
Yes, burdensome. Kupfer was right; she was simply
sick of life.
‘In spite of her successes, her triumphs?’
Aratov mused. He got a positive pleasure from
the psychological analysis to which he was devoting
himself. Remote till now from all contact with
women, he did not even suspect all the significance
for himself of this intense realisation of a woman’s
soul.
‘It follows,’ he pursued his meditations,
’that art did not satisfy her, did not fill
the void in her life. Real artists exist only
for art, for the theatre.... Everything else
is pale beside what they regard as their vocation....
She was a dilettante.’
At this point Aratov fell to pondering again.
’No, the word dilettante did not accord with
that face, the expression of that face, those eyes....’
And Clara’s image floated again before him,
with eyes, swimming in tears, fixed upon him, with
clenched hands pressed to her lips....
‘Ah, no, no,’ he muttered, ‘what’s
the use?’
So passed the whole day. At dinner Aratov talked
a great deal with Platosha, questioned her about the
old days, which she remembered, but described very
badly, as she had so few words at her command, and
except her dear Yasha, had scarcely ever noticed anything
in her life. She could only rejoice that he was
nice and good-humoured to-day; towards evening Aratov
was so far calm that he played several games of cards
with his aunt.
So passed the day ... but the night!
XI
It began well; he soon fell asleep, and when his aunt
went into him on tip-toe to make the sign of the cross
three times over him in his sleep—she did
so every night—he lay breathing as quietly
as a child. But before dawn he had a dream.
Copyrights
Dream Tales and Prose Poems from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
