The circumstances accompanying Clara’s death had at first given him a violent shock ... but later on this performance ‘with the poison inside her,’ as Kupfer had expressed it, struck him as a kind of monstrous pose, a piece of bravado, and he was already trying not to think about it, fearing to arouse a feeling in himself, not unlike repugnance. And at dinner, as he sat facing Platosha, he suddenly recalled her midnight appearance, recalled that abbreviated dressing-jacket, the cap with the high ribbon—and why a ribbon on a nightcap?—all the ludicrous apparition which, like the scene-shifter’s whistle in a transformation scene, had dissolved all his visions into dust! He even forced Platosha to repeat her description of how she had heard his scream, had been alarmed, had jumped up, could not for a minute find either his door or her own, and so on. In the evening he played a game of cards with her, and went off to his room rather depressed, but again fairly composed.
Aratov did not think about the approaching night, and was not afraid of it: he was sure he would pass an excellent night. The thought of Clara had sprung up within him from time to time; but he remembered at once how ‘affectedly’ she had killed herself, and turned away from it. This piece of ‘bad taste’ blocked out all other memories of her. Glancing cursorily into the stereoscope, he even fancied that she was averting her eyes because she was ashamed. Opposite the stereoscope on the wall hung a portrait of his mother. Aratov took it from its nail, scrutinised it a long while, kissed it and carefully put it away in a drawer. Why did he do that? Whether it was that it was not fitting for this portrait to be so close to that woman ... or for some other reason Aratov did not inquire of himself. But his mother’s portrait stirred up memories of his father ... of his father, whom he had seen dying in this very room, in this bed. ‘What do you think of all this, father?’ he mentally addressed himself to him. ‘You understand all this; you too believed in Schiller’s world of spirits. Give me advice!’
‘Father would have advised me to give up all this idiocy,’ Aratov said aloud, and he took up a book. He could not, however, read for long, and feeling a sort of heaviness all over, he went to bed earlier than usual, in the full conviction that he would fall asleep at once.
And so it happened ... but his hopes of a quiet night were not realised.
XVII
It had not struck midnight, when he had an extraordinary and terrifying dream.
He dreamed that he was in a rich manor-house of which he was the owner. He had lately bought both the house and the estate attached to it. And he kept thinking, ‘It’s nice, very nice now, but evil is coming!’ Beside him moved to and fro a little tiny man, his steward; he kept laughing, bowing, and trying to show Aratov how admirably everything was arranged in his house and his estate. ‘This way, pray, this way, pray,’ he kept repeating, chuckling at every word; ‘kindly look how prosperous everything is with you! Look at the horses ... what splendid horses!’ And Aratov saw a row of immense horses. They were standing in their stalls with their backs to him; their manes and tails were magnificent ... but as soon as Aratov went near, the horses’ heads turned towards him, and they showed their teeth viciously. ‘It’s very nice,’ Aratov thought! ‘but evil is coming!’ ‘This way, pray, this way,’ the steward repeated again, ‘pray come into the garden: look what fine apples you have!’ The apples certainly were fine, red, and round; but as soon as Aratov looked at them, they withered and fell ... ‘Evil is coming,’ he thought. ‘And here is the lake,’ lisped the steward, ‘isn’t it blue and smooth? And here’s a little boat of gold ... will you get into it?... it floats of itself.’ ‘I won’t get into it,’ thought Aratov, ‘evil is coming!’ and for all that he got into the boat. At the bottom lay huddled up a little creature like a monkey; it was holding in its paws a glass full of a dark liquid. ‘Pray don’t be uneasy,’ the steward shouted from the bank ... ‘It’s of no consequence! It’s death! Good luck to you!’ The boat darted swiftly along ... but all of a sudden a hurricane came swooping down on it, not like the hurricane of the night before, soft and noiseless—no; a black, awful, howling hurricane! Everything was confusion. And in the midst of the whirling darkness Aratov saw Clara in a stage-dress; she was lifting a glass to her lips, listening to shouts of ‘Bravo! bravo!’ in the distance, and some coarse voice shouted in Aratov’s ear: ‘Ah! did you think it would all end in a farce? No; it’s a tragedy! a tragedy!’
Trembling all over, Aratov awoke. In the room it was not dark.... A faint light streamed in from somewhere, and showed every thing in the gloom and stillness. Aratov did not ask himself whence this light came.... He felt one thing only: Clara was there, in that room ... he felt her presence ... he was again and for ever in her power!
The cry broke from his lips, ‘Clara, are you here?’
‘Yes!’ sounded distinctly in the midst of the lighted, still room.