Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories | Page 6

mist and one could scarcely see anything twenty paces away. Tyeglev and I went up to the hurdle and stood still.
"Here," he said and bowed his head. "Stand still, keep quiet and listen!"
Like him I strained my ears, and I heard nothing except the ordinary, extremely faint but universal murmur, the breathing of the night. Looking at each other in silence from time to time we stood motionless for several minutes and were just on the point of going on.
"Ilyusha ..." I fancied I heard a whisper from behind the hurdle.
I glanced at Tyeglev but he seemed to have heard nothing--and still held his head bowed.
"Ilyusha ... ah, Ilyusha," sounded more distinctly than before--so distinctly that one could tell that the words were uttered by a woman.
We both started and stared at each other.
"Well?" Tyeglev asked me in a whisper. "You won't doubt it now, will you?"
"Wait a minute," I answered as quietly. "It proves nothing. We must look whether there isn't anyone. Some practical joker...."
I jumped over the fence--and went in the direction from which, as far as I could judge, the voice came.
I felt the earth soft and crumbling under my feet; long ridges stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went a few steps further.
"Who is there?" I cried as wildly as Tyeglev had.
"Prrr-r-r!" a startled corn-crake flew up almost under my feet and flew away as straight as a bullet. Involuntarily I started.... What foolishness!
I looked back. Tyeglev was in sight at the spot where I left him. I went towards him.
"You will call in vain," he said. "That voice has come to us--to me--from far away."
He passed his hand over his face and with slow steps crossed the road towards the hut. But I did not want to give in so quickly and went back into the kitchen garden. That someone really had three times called "Ilyusha" I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had agitated Tyeglev so much.
I walked along beside the fence, stopping from time to time and looking about me. Close to the fence, at no great distance from our hut, there stood an old leafy willow tree; it stood out, a big dark patch, against the whiteness of the mist all round, that dim whiteness which perplexes and deadens the sight more than darkness itself. All at once it seemed to me that something alive, fairly big, stirred on the ground near the willow. Exclaiming "Stop! Who is there?" I rushed forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass comb on a cord, such as peasants wear on their belt.
Further search led to nothing--and I went back to the hut with the comb in my hand, and my cheeks tingling.
IX
I found Tyeglev sitting on the bench. A candle was burning on the table before him and he was writing something in a little album which he always had with him. Seeing me, he quickly put the album in his pocket and began filling his pipe.
"Look here, my friend," I began, "what a trophy I have brought back from my expedition!" I showed him the comb and told him what had happened to me near the willow. "I must have startled a thief," I added. "You heard a horse was stolen from our neighbour yesterday?"
Tyeglev smiled frigidly and lighted his pipe. I sat down beside him.
"And do you still 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