Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories | Page 8

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.
XI
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.")
"She has not written to me since we have been in camp," observed
Tyeglev.
"That proves nothing, Ilya Stepanitch."
Tyeglev waved me off. "No! she is certainly not in this world. She
called me."
He suddenly turned to the window. "Someone is knocking again!"
I could not help laughing. "No, excuse me, Ilya Stepanitch! This time it
is your nerves. You see, it is getting light. In ten minutes the sun will be
up--it is past three o'clock--and ghosts have no power in the day."
Tyeglev cast a gloomy glance at me and muttering through his teeth
"good-bye," lay down on the bench and turned his back on me.
I lay down, too, and before I fell asleep I remember I wondered why

Tyeglev was always hinting at ... suicide. What nonsense! What
humbug! Of his own free will he had refused to marry her, had cast her
off ... and now he wanted to kill himself! There was no sense in it! He
could not resist posing!
With these thoughts I fell into a sound sleep and when I opened my
eyes the sun was already high in the sky--and Tyeglev was not in the
hut.
He had, so his servant said, gone to the town.
XII
I spent a very dull and wearisome day. Tyeglev did not return to dinner
nor to supper; I did not expect my brother. Towards evening a thick fog
came on again, thicker even than the day before. I went to bed rather
early. I was awakened by a knocking under the window.
It was my turn to be startled!
The knock was repeated and so insistently distinct that one could have
no doubt of its reality. I got up, opened the window and saw Tyeglev.
Wrapped in his great-coat, with his cap pulled over his eyes, he stood
motionless.
"Ilya Stepanitch!" I cried, "is that you? I gave up expecting you. Come
in. Is the door locked?"
Tyeglev shook his head. "I do not intend to come in," he pronounced in
a hollow tone. "I only want to ask you to give this letter to the
commanding officer to-morrow."
He gave me a big envelope sealed with five seals. I was
astonished--however, I took the envelope mechanically. Tyeglev at
once walked away into the middle of the road.
"Stop! stop!" I began. "Where are you going? Have you only just come?
And what is the letter?"
"Do you promise to deliver it?" said Tyeglev, and moved away a few
steps further. The fog blurred the outlines of his figure. "Do you
promise?"
"I promise ... but first--"
Tyeglev moved still further away and became a long dark blur.
"Good-bye," I heard his voice. "Farewell, Ridel, don't remember evil
against me.... And don't forget Semyon...."
And the blur itself vanished.
This was too much. "Oh, the damned _poseur_," I thought. "You must

always be straining after effect!" I felt uneasy, however; an involuntary
fear clutched at my heart. I flung on my great-coat and ran out into the
road.
XIII
Yes; but where was I to go? The fog enveloped me on all sides. For
five or six steps all round it was a little transparent--but further away it
stood up like