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The Dream
by
I went to my mother’s room; she was lying in bed, whiter than the pillow on which her head rested…. At sight of me she smiled faintly, and put out her hand to me. I sat down by her side, and began to question her; at first she persistently parried my questions; but at last she confessed that she had seen something which had frightened her greatly.
“Did some one enter here?” I asked.
“No,” she answered hastily, “no one entered, but it seemed to me … I thought I saw … a vision….”
She ceased speaking and covered her eyes with her hand. I was on the point of communicating to her what I had heard from the gardener–and my meeting with the baron also, by the way … but, for some reason or other, the words died on my lips.
Nevertheless I did bring myself to remark to my mother that visions do not manifest themselves in the daylight….
“Stop,” she whispered, “please stop; do not torture me now. Some day thou shalt know….” Again she relapsed into silence. Her hands were cold, and her pulse beat fast and unevenly. I gave her a dose of her medicine and stepped a little to one side, in order not to disturb her.
She did not rise all day. She lay motionless and quiet, only sighing deeply from time to time, and opening her eyes in a timorous fashion.–Every one in the house was perplexed.
VIII
Toward night a slight fever made its appearance, and my mother sent me away. I did not go to my own chamber, however, but lay down in the adjoining room on the divan. Every quarter of an hour I rose, approached the door on tiptoe, and listened…. Everything remained silent–but my mother hardly slept at all that night. When I went into her room early in the morning her face appeared to me to be swollen, and her eyes were shining with an unnatural brilliancy. In the course of the day she became a little easier, but toward evening the fever increased again.
Up to that time she had maintained an obstinate silence, but now she suddenly began to talk in a hurried, spasmodic voice. She was not delirious, there was sense in her words, but there was no coherency in them. Not long before midnight she raised herself up in bed with a convulsive movement (I was sitting beside her), and with the same hurried voice she began to narrate to me, continually drinking water in gulps from a glass, feebly flourishing her hands, and not once looking at me the while…. At times she paused, exerted an effort over herself, and went on again…. All this was strange, as though she were doing it in her sleep, as though she herself were not present, but as though some other person were speaking with her lips, or making her speak.
IX
“Listen to what I have to tell thee,” she began. “Thou art no longer a young boy; thou must know all. I had a good friend…. She married a man whom she loved with all her heart, and she was happy with her husband. But during the first year of their married life they both went to the capital to spend a few weeks and enjoy themselves. They stopped at a good hotel and went out a great deal to theatres and assemblies. My friend was very far from homely; every one noticed her, all the young men paid court to her; but among them was one in particular … an officer. He followed her unremittingly, and wherever she went she beheld his black, wicked eyes. He did not make her acquaintance, and did not speak to her even once; he merely kept staring at her in a very strange, insolent way. All the pleasures of the capital were poisoned by his presence. She began to urge her husband to depart as speedily as possible, and they had fully made up their minds to the journey. One day her husband went off to the club; some officers–officers who belonged to the same regiment as this man–had invited him to play cards…. For the first time she was left alone. Her husband did not return for a long time; she dismissed her maid and went to bed…. And suddenly a great dread came upon her, so that she even turned cold all over and began to tremble. It seemed to her that she heard a faint tapping on the other side of the wall–like the noise a dog makes when scratching–and she began to stare at that wall. In the corner burned a shrine-lamp; the chamber was all hung with silken stuff…. Suddenly something began to move at that point, rose, opened…. And straight out of the wall, all black and long, stepped forth that dreadful man with the wicked eyes!