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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.

“There are indeed,” I assented.

Yes, someone has said truly of suicides: until they carry out their design, no one believes them; and when they do, no one regrets them.

Baden, 1870.