Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (350 page)

“The devil must have led us astray, sir,” answered the distracted servant. “It’s not natural ... there’s mischief at the bottom of it!”

I would have checked him but at that instant my ear caught a sound, distinct but not loud, that engrossed my whole attention. There was a faint “pop” as though someone had drawn a stiff cork from a narrow bottle - neck. The sound came from somewhere not far off. Why the sound seemed to me strange and peculiar I could not say, but at once I went towards it.

Semyon followed me. Within a few minutes something tall and broad loomed in the fog.

“The copse! here is the copse!” Semyon cried, delighted. “Yes, here ... and there is the master sitting under the birch - tree.... There he is, sitting where I left him. That’s he, surely enough!”

I looked intently. A man really was sitting with his back towards us, awkwardly huddled up under the birch - tree. I hurriedly approached and recognised Tyeglev’s great - coat, recognised his figure, his head bowed on his breast. “Tyeglev!” I cried ... but he did not answer.

“Tyeglev!” I repeated, and laid my hand on his shoulder. Then he suddenly lurched forward, quickly and obediently, as though he were waiting for my touch, and fell onto the grass. Semyon and I raised him at once and turned him face upwards. It was not pale, but was lifeless and motionless; his clenched teeth gleamed white -
 
- and his eyes, motionless, too, and wide open, kept their habitual, drowsy and “different” look.

“Good God!” Semyon said suddenly and showed me his hand stained crimson with blood.... The blood was coming from under Tyeglev’s great - coat, from the left side of his chest.

He had shot himself from a small, single - barreled pistol which was lying beside him. The faint pop I had heard was the sound made by the fatal shot.

XVII

Tyeglev’s suicide did not surprise his comrades very much. I have told you already that, according to their ideas, as a “fatal” man he was bound to do something extraordinary, though perhaps they had not expected that from him. In the letter to the colonel he asked him, in the first place, to have the name of Ilya Tyeglev removed from the list of officers, as he had died by his own act, adding that in his cash - box there would be found more than sufficient money to pay his debts, -
 
- and, secondly, to forward to the important personage at that time commanding the whole corps of guards, an unsealed letter which was in the same envelope. This second letter, of course, we all read; some of us took a copy of it. Tyeglev had evidently taken pains over the composition of this letter.

“You know, Your Excellency” (so I remember the letter began), “you are so stern and severe over the slightest negligence in uniform when a pale, trembling officer presents himself before you; and here am I now going to meet our universal, righteous, incorruptible Judge, the Supreme Being, the Being of infinitely greater consequence even than Your Excellency, and I am going to meet him in undress, in my great - coat, and even without a cravat round my neck.”

Oh, what a painful and unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me, with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the dead man’s childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, to invent such rubbish at such a moment? But Tyeglev had evidently been pleased with the phrase: he had made use in it of the accumulation of epithets and amplifications
à la
Marlinsky, at that time in fashion. Further on he had alluded to destiny, to persecution, to his vocation which had remained unfulfilled, to a mystery which he would bear with him to the grave, to people who had not cared to understand him; he had even quoted lines from some poet who had said of the crowd that it wore life “like a dog - collar” and clung to vice “like a burdock” -
 
- and it was not free from mistakes in spelling. To tell the truth, this last letter of poor Tyeglev was somewhat vulgar; and I can fancy the contemptuous surprise of the great personage to whom it was addressed -
 
- I can imagine the tone in which he would pronounce “a worthless officer! ill weeds are cleared out of the field!”

Only at the very end of the letter there was a sincere note from Tyeglev’s heart. “Ah, Your Excellency,” he concluded his epistle, “I am an orphan, I had no one to love me as a child -
 
- and all held aloof from me ... and I myself destroyed the only heart that gave itself to me!”

Semyon found in the pocket of Tyeglev’s great - coat a little album from which his master was never separated. But almost all the pages had been torn out; only one was left on which there was the following calculation:

 
Napoleon was born
         
Ilya Tyeglev was born

 
on August 15th, 1769.
     
on January 7th, 1811.

         
1769
                       
1811

           
15
                    
      
7

            
8*
                         
1+

         
-
 
-
 
-
 
-
 
-
                      
-
 
-
 
-
 
-
 
-

 
Total
  
1792
               
Total
  
1819

 
* August -
 
- the 8th month
   
+ January -
 
- the 1st month

   
of the year.
              
of the year.

            
1
                          
1

            
7
                          
8

            
9
                          
1

            
2
                          
9

           
-
 
-
 
-
                        
-
 
-
 
-

 
Total
    
19!
      
         
Total
   
19!

 
Napoleon died on May
      
Ilya Tyeglev died on

 
5th, 1825.
                
April 21st, 1834.

         
1825
                       
1834

            
5
                         
21

            
5*
                         
7+

   
      
-
 
-
 
-
 
-
 
-
                      
-
 
-
 
-
 
-
 
-

 
Total
  
1835
                
Total
 
1862

 
* May -
 
- the 5th month
      
+ July -
 
- the 7th month

   
of the year.
              
of the year.

           
1
                           
1

       
    
8
                           
8

           
3
                           
6

           
5
                          
23

          
-
 
-
                          
-
 
-

    
Total 17!
                   
Total 17!

Poor fellow! Was not this perhaps why he became an artillery officer?

As a suicide he was buried outside the cemetery -
 
- and he was immediately forgotten.

 
XVIII

The day after Tyeglev’s burial (I was still in the village waiting for my brother) Semyon came into the hut and announced that Ilya wanted to see me.

“What Ilya?” I asked.

“Our pedlar.”

I told Semyon to call him.

He made his appearance. He expressed some regret at the death of the lieutenant; wondered what could have possessed him....

“Was he in debt to you?” I asked.

“No, sir. He always paid punctually for everything he had. But I tell you what,” here the pedlar grinned, “you have got something of mine.”

“What is it?”

“Why, that,” he pointed to the brass comb lying on the little toilet table. “A thing of little value,” the fellow went on, “but as it was a present...”

All at once I raised my head. Something dawned upon me.

“Your name is Ilya?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was it you, then, I saw under the willow tree the other night?”

The pedlar winked, and grinned more broadly than ever.

“Yes, sir.”

“And it was
your
name that was called?”

“Yes, sir,” the pedlar repeated with playful modesty. “There is a young girl here,” he went on in a high falsetto, “who, owing to the great strictness of her parents -
 
-
 
-
 
- “

“Very good, very good,” I interrupted him, handed him the comb and dismissed him.

“So that was the ‘Ilyusha,’“ I thought, and I sank into philosophic reflections which I will not, however, intrude upon you as I don’t want to prevent anyone from believing in fate, predestination and such like.

When I was back in Petersburg I made inquiries about Masha. I even discovered the doctor who had treated her. To my amazement I heard from him that she had died not through poisoning but of cholera! I told him what I had heard from Tyeglev.

“Eh! Eh!” cried the doctor all at once. “Is that Tyeglev an artillery officer, a man of middle height and with a stoop, speaks with a lisp?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I thought so. That gentleman came to me -
 
- I had never seen him before -
 
- and began insisting that the girl had poisoned herself. ‘It was cholera,’ I told him. ‘Poison,’ he said. ‘It was cholera, I tell you,’ I said. ‘No, it was poison,’ he declared. I saw that the fellow was a sort of lunatic, with a broad base to his head -
 
- a sign of obstinacy, he would not give over easily.... Well, it doesn’t matter, I thought, the patient is dead.... ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘she poisoned herself if you prefer it.’ He thanked me, even shook hands with me -
 
- and departed.”

I told the doctor how the officer had shot himself the same day.

The doctor did not turn a hair -
 
- and only observed that there were all sorts of queer fellows in the world.