Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories | Page 7

believe, Ilya Stepanitch," I said, "that the voice we
heard came from those unknown realms...."
He stopped me with a peremptory gesture.
"Ridel," he began, "I am in no mood for jesting, and so I beg you not to
jest."
He certainly was in no mood for jesting. His face was changed. It
looked paler, longer and more expressive. His strange, "different" eyes
kept shifting from one object to another.
"I never thought," he began again, "that I should reveal to another ...
another man what you are about to hear and what ought to have died ...
yes, died, hidden in my breast; but it seems it is to be--and indeed I
have no choice. It is destiny! Listen."
And he told me a long story.
I have mentioned already that he was a poor hand at telling stories, but
it was not only his lack of skill in describing events that had happened
to him that impressed me that night; the very sound of his voice, his
glances, the movements which he made with his fingers and his
hands--everything about him, indeed, seemed unnatural, unnecessary,
false, in fact. I was very young and inexperienced in those days and did
not know that the habit of high-flown language and falsity of intonation
and manner may become so ingrained in a man that he is incapable of
shaking it off: it is a sort of curse. Later in life I came across a lady who
described to me the effect on her of her son's death, of her "boundless"
grief, of her fears for her reason, in such exaggerated language, with
such theatrical gestures, such melodramatic movements of her head and
rolling of her eyes, that I thought to myself, "How false and affected
that lady is! She did not love her son at all!" And a week afterwards I
heard that the poor woman had really gone out of her mind. Since then
I have become much more careful in my judgments and have had far
less confidence in my own impressions.
X
The story which Tyeglev told me was, briefly, as follows. He had

living in Petersburg, besides his influential uncle, an aunt, not
influential but wealthy. As she had no children of her own she had
adopted a little girl, an orphan, of the working class, given her a liberal
education and treated her like a daughter. She was called Masha.
Tyeglev saw her almost every day. It ended in their falling in love with
one another and Masha's giving herself to him. This was discovered.
Tyeglev's aunt was fearfully incensed, she turned the luckless girl out
of her house in disgrace, and moved to Moscow where she adopted a
young lady of noble birth and made her her heiress. On her return to her
own relations, poor and drunken people, Masha's lot was a bitter one.
Tyeglev had promised to marry her and did not keep his promise. At
his last interview with her, he was forced to speak out: she wanted to
know the truth and wrung it out of him. "Well," she said, "if I am not to
be your wife, I know what there is left for me to do." More than a
fortnight had passed since that last interview.
"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