A Reckless Character, and Other Stories Part 7

"Impossible now, he is asleep."

"And cannot I go into the house?"

"No; go your way."

"Well, and can I see your master a little later?"

"Why not? Certainly. He can always be seen.... That's his business as a dealer. Only, go your way now. See how early it is."

"Well, and how about that negro?" I suddenly asked.

The labourer stared in amazement, first at me, then at the maid-servant.

"What negro?" he said at last.--"Go away, sir. You can come back later.

Talk with the master."

I went out into the street. The gate was instantly banged behind me, heavily and sharply, without squeaking this time.

I took good note of the street and house and went away, but not home.--I felt something in the nature of disenchantment. Everything which had happened to me was so strange, so remarkable--and yet, how stupidly it had been ended! I had been convinced that I should behold in that house the room which was familiar to me--and in the middle of it my father, the baron, in a dressing-gown and with a pipe.... And instead of that, the master of the house was a carpenter, and one might visit him as much as one pleased,--and order furniture of him if one wished!

But my father had gone to America! And what was left for me to do now?... Tell my mother everything, or conceal forever the very memory of that meeting? I was absolutely unable to reconcile myself to the thought that such a senseless, such a commonplace ending should be tacked on to such a supernatural, mysterious beginning!

I did not wish to return home, and walked straight ahead, following my nose, out of the town.

XIV

I walked along with drooping head, without a thought, almost without sensation, but wholly engrossed in myself.--A measured, dull and angry roar drew me out of my torpor. I raised my head: it was the sea roaring and booming fifty paces from me. Greatly agitated by the nocturnal storm, the sea was a ma.s.s of white-caps to the very horizon, and steep crests of long breakers were rolling in regularly and breaking on the flat sh.o.r.e, I approached it, and walked along the very line left by the ebb and flow on the yellow, ribbed sand, strewn with fragments of trailing seawrack, bits of sh.e.l.ls, serpent-like ribbons of eel-gra.s.s.

Sharp-winged gulls with pitiful cry, borne on the wind from the distant aerial depths, soared white as snow against the grey, cloudy sky, swooped down abruptly, and as though skipping from wave to wave, departed again and vanished like silvery flecks in the strips of swirling foam. Some of them, I noticed, circled persistently around a large isolated boulder which rose aloft in the midst of the monotonous expanse of sandy sh.o.r.es. Coa.r.s.e seaweed grew in uneven tufts on one side of the rock; and at the point where its tangled stems emerged from the yellow salt-marsh, there was something black, and long, and arched, and not very large.... I began to look more intently.... Some dark object was lying there--lying motionless beside the stone.... That object became constantly clearer and more distinct the nearer I approached....

I was only thirty paces from the rock now.... Why, that was the outline of a human body! It was a corpse; it was a drowned man, cast up by the sea! I went clear up to the rock.

It was the corpse of the baron, my father! I stopped short, as though rooted to the spot. Then only did I understand that ever since daybreak I had been guided by some unknown forces--that I was in their power,--and for the s.p.a.ce of several minutes there was nothing in my soul save the ceaseless crashing of the sea, and a dumb terror in the presence of the Fate which held me in its grip....

XV

He was lying on his back, bent a little to one side, with his left arm thrown above his head ... the right was turned under his bent body. The sticky slime had sucked in the tips of his feet, shod in tall sailor's boots; the short blue pea-jacket, all impregnated with sea-salt, had not unb.u.t.toned; a red scarf encircled his neck in a hard knot. The swarthy face, turned skyward, seemed to be laughing; from beneath the upturned upper lip small close-set teeth were visible; the dim pupils of the half-closed eyes were hardly to be distinguished from the darkened whites; covered with bubbles of foam the dirt-encrusted hair spread out over the ground and laid bare the smooth forehead with the purplish line of the scar; the narrow nose rose up like a sharp, white streak between the sunken cheeks. The storm of the past night had done its work.... He had not beheld America! The man who had insulted my mother, who had marred her life, my father--yes! my father, I could cherish no doubt as to that--lay stretched out helpless in the mud at my feet. I experienced a sense of satisfied vengeance, and compa.s.sion, and repulsion, and terror most of all ... of twofold terror; terror of what I had seen, and of what had come to pa.s.s. That evil, that criminal element of which I have already spoken, those incomprehensible spasms rose up within me ... stifled me.

"Aha!" I thought to myself: "so that is why I am what I am.... That is where blood tells!" I stood beside the corpse and gazed and waited, to see whether those dead pupils would not stir, whether those benumbed lips would not quiver. No! everything was motionless; the very seaweed, among which the surf had cast him, seemed to have congealed; even the gulls had flown away--there was not a fragment anywhere, not a plank or any broken rigging. There was emptiness everywhere ... only he--and I--and the foaming sea in the distance. I cast a glance behind me; the same emptiness was there; a chain of hillocks on the horizon ... that was all!

I dreaded to leave that unfortunate man in that loneliness, in the ooze of the sh.o.r.e, to be devoured by fishes and birds; an inward voice told me that I ought to hunt up some men and call them thither, if not to aid--that was out of the question--at least for the purpose of laying him out, of bearing him beneath an inhabited roof.... But indescribable terror suddenly took possession of me. It seemed to me as though that dead man knew that I had come thither, that he himself had arranged that last meeting--it even seemed as though I could hear that dull, familiar muttering.... I ran off to one side ... looked behind me once more....

Something shining caught my eye; it brought me to a standstill. It was a golden hoop on the outstretched hand of the corpse.... I recognised my mother's wedding-ring. I remember how I forced myself to return, to go close, to bend down.... I remember the sticky touch of the cold fingers, I remember how I panted and puckered up my eyes and gnashed my teeth, as I tugged persistently at the ring....

At last I got it off--and I fled--fled away, in headlong flight,--and something darted after me, and overtook me and caught me.

XVI

Everything which I had gone through and endured was, probably, written on my face when I returned home. My mother suddenly rose upright as soon as I entered her room, and gazed at me with such insistent inquiry that, after having unsuccessfully attempted to explain myself, I ended by silently handing her the ring. She turned frightfully pale, her eyes opened unusually wide and turned dim like _his_.--She uttered a faint cry, seized the ring, reeled, fell upon my breast, and fairly swooned there, with her head thrown back and devouring me with those wide, mad eyes. I encircled her waist with both arms, and standing still on one spot, never stirring, I slowly narrated everything, without the slightest reservation, to her, in a quiet voice: my dream and the meeting, and everything, everything.... She heard me out to the end, only her breast heaved more and more strongly, and her eyes suddenly grew more animated and drooped. Then she put the ring on her fourth finger, and, retreating a little, began to get out a mantilla and a hat.

I asked where she was going. She raised a surprised glance to me and tried to answer, but her voice failed her. She shuddered several times, rubbed her hands as though endeavouring to warm herself, and at last she said: "Let us go at once thither."

"Whither, mother dear?"

"Where he is lying.... I want to see ... I want to know ... I shall identify...."

I tried to persuade her not to go; but she was almost in hysterics. I understood that it was impossible to oppose her desire, and we set out.

XVII

And lo, again I am walking over the sand of the dunes, but I am no longer alone, I am walking arm in arm with my mother. The sea has retreated, has gone still further away; it is quieting down; but even its diminished roar is menacing and ominous. Here, at last, the solitary rock has shown itself ahead of us--and there is the seaweed. I look intently, I strive to distinguish that rounded object lying on the ground--but I see nothing. We approach closer. I involuntarily r.e.t.a.r.d my steps. But where is that black, motionless thing? Only the stalks of the seaweed stand out darkly against the sand, which is already dry.... We go to the very rock.... The corpse is nowhere to be seen, and only on the spot where it had lain there still remains a depression, and one can make out where the arms and legs lay.... Round about the seaweed seems tousled, and the traces of one man's footsteps are discernible; they go across the down, then disappear on reaching the flinty ridge.

My mother and I exchange glances and are ourselves frightened at what we read on our own faces....

Can he have got up of himself and gone away?

"But surely thou didst behold him dead?" she asks in a whisper.

I can only nod my head. Three hours have not elapsed since I stumbled upon the baron's body.... Some one had discovered it and carried it away.--I must find out who had done it, and what had become of him.

But first of all I must attend to my mother.

XVIII

While she was on her way to the fatal spot she was in a fever, but she controlled herself. The disappearance of the corpse had startled her as the crowning misfortune. She was stupefied. I feared for her reason.

With great difficulty I got her home. I put her to bed again; again I called the doctor for her; but as soon as my mother partly recovered her senses she at once demanded that I should instantly set out in search of "that man." I obeyed. But, despite all possible measures, I discovered nothing. I went several times to the police-office, I visited all the villages in the neighbourhood, I inserted several advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspapers, I made inquiries in every direction--all in vain! It is true that I did hear that a drowned man had been found at one of the hamlets on the seash.o.r.e.... I immediately hastened thither, but he was already buried, and from all the tokens he did not resemble the baron. I found out on what ship he had sailed for America. At first every one was positive that that ship had perished during the tempest; but several months afterward rumours began to circulate to the effect that it had been seen at anchor in the harbour of New York. Not knowing what to do, I set about hunting up the negro whom I had seen.--I offered him, through the newspapers, a very considerable sum of money if he would present himself at our house. A tall negro in a cloak actually did come to the house in my absence.... But after questioning the servant-maid, he suddenly went away and returned no more.

And thus the trace of my ... my father grew cold; thus did it vanish irrevocably in the mute gloom. My mother and I never spoke of him. Only, one day, I remember that she expressed surprise at my never having alluded before to my strange dream; and then she added: "Of course, it really ..." and did not finish her sentence.

My mother was ill for a long time, and after her convalescence our former relations were not reestablished. She felt awkward in my presence until the day of her death.... Precisely that, awkward. And there was no way of helping her in her grief. Everything becomes smoothed down, the memories of the most tragic family events gradually lose their force and venom; but if a feeling of awkwardness has been set up between two closely-connected persons, it is impossible to extirpate it!

I have never again had that dream which had been wont so to disturb me; I no longer "search for" my father; but it has sometimes seemed to me--and it seems so to me to this day--that in my sleep I hear distant shrieks, unintermittent, melancholy plaints; they resound somewhere behind a lofty wall, across which it is impossible to clamber; they rend my heart--and I am utterly unable to comprehend what it is: whether it is a living man groaning, or whether I hear the wild, prolonged roar of the troubled sea. And now it pa.s.ses once more into that beast-like growl--and I awake with sadness and terror in my soul.