Dream Tales and Prose Poems | Page 7

hitherto thick voice rang out boldly and enthusiastically,
while her eyes just as boldly and directly fastened upon Aratov. She
went on with the same fervour, and only towards the end her voice
dropped again; and in it, and in her face, the same weariness was
reflected again. The last four lines she completely 'murdered,' as it is
called; the volume of Pushkin suddenly slid out of her hand, and she
hastily withdrew.
The audience fell to applauding desperately, encoring.... One
Little-Russian divinity student bellowed in so deep a bass, 'Mill-itch!

Mill-itch!' that his neighbour civilly and sympathetically advised him,
'to take care of his voice, it would be the making of a protodeacon.' But
Aratov at once rose and made for the door. Kupfer overtook him.... 'I
say, where are you off to?' he called; 'would you like me to present you
to Clara?' 'No, thanks,' Aratov returned hurriedly, and he went
homewards almost at a run.
V
He was agitated by strange sensations, incomprehensible to himself. In
reality, Clara's recitation, too, had not been quite to his taste ... though
he could not quite tell why. It disturbed him, this recitation; it struck
him as crude and inharmonious.... It was as though it broke something
within him, forced itself with a certain violence upon him. And those
fixed, insistent, almost importunate looks--what were they for? what
did they mean?
Aratov's modesty did not for one instant admit of the idea that he might
have made an impression on this strange girl, that he might have
inspired in her a sentiment akin to love, to passion!... And indeed, he
himself had formed a totally different conception of the still unknown
woman, the girl to whom he was to give himself wholly, who would
love him, be his bride, his wife.... He seldom dwelt on this dream--in
spirit as in body he was virginal; but the pure image that arose at such
times in his fancy was inspired by a very different figure, the figure of
his dead mother, whom he scarcely remembered, but whose portrait he
treasured as a sacred relic. The portrait was a water-colour, painted
rather unskilfully by a lady who had been a neighbour of hers; but the
likeness, as every one declared, was a striking one. Just such a tender
profile, just such kind, clear eyes and silken hair, just such a smile and
pure expression, was the woman, the girl, to have, for whom as yet he
scarcely dared to hope....
But this swarthy, dark-skinned creature, with coarse hair, dark
eyebrows, and a tiny moustache on her upper lip, she was certainly a
wicked, giddy ... 'gipsy' (Aratov could not imagine a harsher
appellation)--what was she to him?

And yet Aratov could not succeed in getting out of his head this
dark-skinned gipsy, whose singing and reading and very appearance
were displeasing to him. He was puzzled, he was angry with himself.
Not long before he had read Sir Walter Scott's novel, St. Ronan's Well
(there was a complete edition of Sir Walter Scott's works in the library
of his father, who had regarded the English novelist with esteem as a
serious, almost a scientific, writer). The heroine of that novel is called
Clara Mowbray. A poet who flourished somewhere about 1840, Krasov,
wrote a poem on her, ending with the words:
'Unhappy Clara! poor frantic Clara!
Unhappy Clara Mowbray!'
Aratov knew this poem also.... And now these words were incessantly
haunting his memory.... 'Unhappy Clara! Poor, frantic Clara!' ... (This
was why he had been so surprised when Kupfer told him the name of
Clara Militch.)
Platosha herself noticed, not a change exactly in Yasha's temper--no
change in reality took place in it--but something unsatisfactory in his
looks and in his words. She cautiously questioned him about the
literary matinée at which he had been present; muttered, sighed, looked
at him from in front, from the side, from behind; and suddenly clapping
her hands on her thighs, she exclaimed: 'To be sure, Yasha; I see what
it is!'
'Why? what?' Aratov queried.
'You've met for certain at that matinée one of those long-tailed
creatures'--this was how Platonida Ivanovna always spoke of all
fashionably-dressed ladies of the period--'with a pretty dolly face; and
she goes prinking this_ way ... and pluming _that way'--Platonida
presented these fancied manoeuvres in mimicry--'and making saucers
like this with her eyes'--and she drew big, round circles in the air with
her forefinger--'You're not used to that sort of thing. So you fancied ...
but that means nothing, Yasha ... no-o-thing at all! Drink a cup of
posset at night ... it'll pass off!... Lord, succour us!'
Platosha ceased speaking, and left the room.... She had hardly ever

uttered such a long and animated speech in her life.... While Aratov
thought, 'Auntie's right, I