第37章
Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and fixed, he made a few steps, then suddenly stopped as if he had been given an electric shock.As soon as he seemed to have recovered from that shock he turned around and went a few steps back to another path, into which he advanced, straight ahead, his face high, with the same fixed look that he had had up to the time he so suddenly stopped, as if something or someone advised or warned him not to go further.He continually worked back toward the house, and thus he traversed all the paths that led from the villa, but in all these excursions he took pains not to place himself in the field of vision from Natacha's window, a restricted field because of its location just around an abutment of the building.To ascertain about this window he crept on all-fours up to the garden-edge that ran along the foot of the wall and had sufficient proof that no one had jumped out that way.Then he went to rejoin Matrena in the veranda.
" No one has come into the garden this morning," said he, "and no one has gone out of the villa into the garden.Now I am going to look outside the grounds.Wait here; I'll be back in five minutes."He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the lodge and waited some seconds.Ermolai came out and opened the gate for him.
Matrena moved to the threshold of the little sitting-room and watched Natacha's door with horror.She felt her legs give under her, she could not stand up under the diabolic thought of such a crime.Ah, that arm, that arm! reaching out, making its way, with a little shining phial in its hand.Pains of Christ! What could there be in the damnable books over which Natacha and her companions pored that could make such abominable crimes possible? Ah, Natacha, Natacha! it was from her that she would have desired the answer, straining her almost to stifling on her rough bosom and strangling her with her own strong hand that she might not hear the response.
Ah, Natacha, Natacha, whom she had loved so much! She sank to the floor, crept across the carpet to the door, and lay there, stretched like a beast, and buried her bead in her arms while she wept over her daughter.Natacha, Natacha, whom she had cherished as her own child, and who did not hear her.Ah, what use that the little fellow had gone to search outside when the whole truth lay behind this door? Thinking of him, she was embarrassed lest he should find her in that animalistic posture, and she rose to her knees and worked her way over to the window that looked out upon the Neva.
The angle of the slanting blinds let her see well enough what passed.outside, and what she saw made her spring to her feet.
Below her the reporter was going through the same incomprehensible maneuvers that she had seen him do in the garden.Three pathways led to the little road that ran along the wall of the villa by the bank of the Neva.The young man, still with his hands behind his back and with his face up, took them one after the other.In the first he stopped at the first step.He didn't take more than two steps in the second.In the third, which cut obliquely toward the right and seemed to run to the bank nearest Krestowsky Ostrow, she saw him advance slowly at first, then more quickly among the small trees and hedges.Once only he stopped and looked closely at the trunk of a tree against which he seemed to pick out something invisible, and then he continued to the bank.There he sat down on a stone and appeared to reflect, and then suddenly he cast off his jacket and trousers, picked out a certain place on the bank across from him, finished undressing and plunged into the stream.
She saw at once that he swam like a porpoise, keeping beneath and showing his head from time to time, breathing, then diving below the surface again.He reached Krestowsky Ostrow in a clump of reeds.
Then he disappeared.Below him, surrounded by trees, could be seen the red tiles of the villa which sheltered Boris and Michael.From that villa a person could see the window of the sitting-room in General Trebassof's residence, but not what might occur along the bank of the river just below its walls.An isvotchick drove along the distant route of Krestowsky, conveying in his carriage a company of young officers and young women who had been feasting and who sang as they rode; then deep silence ensued.Matrena's eyes searched for Rouletabille, but could not find him.How long was he going to stay hidden like that? She pressed her face against the chill window.
What was she waiting for? She waited perhaps for someone to make a move on this side, for the door near her to open and the traitorous figure of The Other to appear.
A hand touched her carefully.She turned.
Rouletabille was there, his face all scarred by red scratches, without collar or neck-tie, having hastily resumed his clothes.He appeared furious as he surprised her in his disarray.She let him lead her as though she were a child.He drew her to his room and closed the door.
"Madame," he commenced, "it is impossible to work with you.Why in the world have you wept not two feet from your step-daughter's door? You and your Koupriane, you commence to make me regret the Faubourg Poissoniere, you know.Your step-daughter has certainly heard you.It is lucky that she attaches no importance at all to your nocturnal phantasmagorias, and that she has been used to them a long time.She has more sense than you, Mademoiselle Natacha has.
She sleeps, or at least she pretends to sleep, which leaves everybody in peace.What reply will you give her if it happens that she asks you the reason to-day for your marching and counter-marching up and down the sitting-room and complains that you kept her from sleeping?"Matrena only shook her old, old head.
"No, no, she has not heard me.I was there like a shadow, like a shadow of myself.She will never hear me.No one hears a shadow."Rouletabille felt returning pity for her and spoke more gently.