She ceased and hid her face in her hands. I was
on the point of telling her, what I had learnt from
the gardener, and incidentally describing my meeting
with the baron ... but for some reason or other, the
words died away on my lips. I ventured, however,
to observe to my mother, that apparitions do not usually
appear in the daytime.... ‘Stop,’
she whispered, ‘please; do not torture me now.
You will know some time....’ She was silent
again. Her hands were cold and her pulse beat
fast and unevenly. I gave her some medicine and
moved a little away so as not to disturb her.
She did not get up the whole day. She lay perfectly
still and quiet, and now and then heaving a deep sigh,
and timorously opening her eyes. Every one in
the house was at a loss what to think.
VIII
Towards night my mother became a little feverish,
and she sent me away. I did not, however, go
to my own room, but lay down in the next room on the
sofa. Every quarter of an hour I got up, went
on tiptoe to the door, listened.... Everything
was still—but my mother hardly slept that
night. When I went in to her early in the morning,
her face looked hollow, her eyes shone with an unnatural
brightness. In the course of the day she got
a little better, but towards evening the feverishness
increased again. Up till then she had been obstinately
silent, but all of a sudden she began talking in a
hurried broken voice. She was not wandering, there
was a meaning in her words—but no sort
of connection. Just upon midnight, she suddenly,
with a convulsive movement raised herself in bed—I
was sitting beside her—and in the same
hurried voice, continually taking sips of water, from
a glass beside her, feebly gesticulating with her hands,
and never once looking at me, she began to tell her
story.... She would stop, make an effort to control
herself and go on again.... It was all so strange,
just as though she were doing it all in a dream, as
though she herself were absent, and some one else
were speaking by her lips, or forcing her to speak.
IX
‘Listen to what I am going to tell you,’
she began. ’You are not a little boy now;
you ought to know all. I had a friend, a girl....
She married a man she loved with all her heart, and
she was very happy with her husband. During the
first year of their married life they went together
to the capital to spend a few weeks there and enjoy
themselves. They stayed at a good hotel, and
went out a great deal to theatres and parties.
My friend was very pretty—every one noticed
her, young men paid her attentions,—but
there was among them one ... an officer. He followed
her about incessantly, and wherever she was, she always
saw his cruel black eyes. He was not introduced
to her, and never once spoke to her—only
perpetually stared at her—so insolently
and strangely. All the pleasures of the capital
were poisoned by his presence. She began persuading
Copyrights
Dream Tales and Prose Poems from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
