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 her husband to hasten their departure—and they had already made all the preparations for the journey. One evening her husband went out to a club—he had been invited by the officers of the same regiment as that officer—to play cards.... She was for the very first time left alone. Her husband did not return for a long while. She dismissed her maid, and went to bed.... And suddenly she felt overcome by terror, so that she was quite cold and shivering. She fancied she heard a slight sound on the other side of the wall, like a dog scratching, and she began watching the wall. In the corner a lamp was burning; the room was all hung with tapestry.... Suddenly something stirred there, rose, opened.... And straight out of the wall a black, long figure came, that awful man with the cruel eyes! She tried to scream, but could not. She was utterly numb with terror. He went up to her rapidly, like some beast of prey, flung something on her head, something strong-smelling, heavy, white.... What happened then I don’t remember I ... don’t remember! It was like death, like a murder.... When at last that fearful darkness began to pass away—when I ... when my friend came to herself, there was no one in the room. Again, and for a long time, she had not the strength to scream, she screamed at last ... then again everything was confusion.... Then she saw her husband by her side: he had been kept at the club till two o’clock at night.... He looked scared and white. He began questioning her, but she told him nothing.... Then she swooned away again. I remember though when she was left alone in the room, she examined the place in the wall.... Under the tapestry hangings it turned out there was a secret door. And her betrothal ring had gone from off her hand. This ring was of an unusual pattern; seven little gold stars alternated on it with seven silver stars; it was an old family heirloom. Her husband asked her what had become of the ring; she could give him no answer. Her husband supposed she had dropped it somewhere, searched everywhere, but could not find it. He felt uneasy and distressed; he decided to go home as soon as possible and directly the doctor allowed it—they left the capital.... But imagine! On the very day of their departure they happened suddenly to meet a stretcher being carried along the street.... On the stretcher lay a man who had just been killed, with his head cut open; and imagine! the man was that fearful apparition of the night with the evil eyes.... He had been killed over some gambling dispute!
Then my friend went away into the country ... became a mother for the first time ... and lived several years with her husband. He never knew anything; indeed, what could she have told him?—she knew nothing herself.
But her former happiness had vanished. A gloom had come over their lives, and never again did that gloom pass out of it.... They had no other children, either before or after ... and that son....’
My mother trembled all over and hid her face in her hands.
‘But say now,’ she went on with redoubled energy, ‘was my friend to blame in any way? What had she to reproach herself with? She was punished, but had she not the right to declare before God Himself that the punishment that overtook her was unjust? Then why is it, that like a criminal, tortured by stings of conscience, why is it she is confronted with the past in such a fearful shape after so many years? Macbeth slew Bancho—so no wonder that he could be haunted ... but I....’
But here my mother’s words became so mixed and confused, that I ceased to follow her.... I no longer doubted that she was in delirium.