I was excessively annoyed with myself. ‘Coward!’
I repeated incessantly; ’yes—Alice
was right. What was I frightened of? how could
I miss such an opportunity?... I might have seen
Caesar himself—and I was senseless with
terror, I whimpered and turned away, like a child at
the sight of the rod. Razin, now—that’s
another matter. As a nobleman and landowner ...
though, indeed, even then what had I really to fear?
Coward! coward!’...
‘But wasn’t it all a dream?’ I asked
myself at last. I called my housekeeper.
‘Marfa, what o’clock did I go to bed yesterday—do
you remember?’
’Why, who can tell, master?... Late enough,
surely. Before it was quite dark you went out
of the house; and you were tramping about in your bedroom
when the night was more than half over. Just on
morning—yes. And this is the third
day it’s been the same. You’ve something
on your mind, it’s easy to see.’
‘Aha-ha!’ I thought. ’Then
there’s no doubt about the flying. Well,
and how do I look to-day?’ I added aloud.
’How do you look? Let me have a look at
you. You’ve got thinner a bit. Yes,
and you’re pale, master; to be sure, there’s
not a drop of blood in your face.’
I felt a slight twinge of uneasiness.... I dismissed
Marfa.
‘Why, going on like this, you’ll die,
or go out of your mind, perhaps,’ I reasoned
with myself, as I sat deep in thought at the window.
’I must give it all up. It’s dangerous.
And now my heart beats so strangely. And when
I fly, I keep feeling as though some one were sucking
at it, or as it were drawing something out of it—as
the spring sap is drawn out of the birch-tree, if
you stick an axe into it. I’m sorry, though.
And Alice too.... She is playing cat and mouse
with me ... still she can hardly wish me harm.
I will give myself up to her for the last time—and
then.... But if she is drinking my blood?
That’s awful. Besides, such rapid locomotion
cannot fail to be injurious; even in England, I’m
told, on the railways, it’s against the law
to go more than one hundred miles an hour....’
So I reasoned with myself—but at ten o’clock
in the evening, I was already at my post before the
old oak-tree.
The night was cold, dull, grey; there was a feeling
of rain in the air. To my amazement, I found
no one under the oak; I walked several times round
it, went up to the edge of the wood, turned back again,
peered anxiously into the darkness.... All was
emptiness. I waited a little, then several times
I uttered the name, Alice, each time a little louder,...
but she did not appear. I felt sad, almost sick
at heart; my previous apprehensions vanished; I could
not resign myself to the idea that my companion would
not come back to me again.
‘Alice! Alice! come! Can it be you
will not come?’ I shouted, for the last time.
A crow, who had been waked by my voice, suddenly darted
upwards into a tree-top close by, and catching in
the twigs, fluttered his wings.... But Alice
did not appear.
