Romashov helped him to bed and spread the cloak and counterpane over him.
Nasanski trembled so much from his chill that his teeth chattered.
He rolled himself up like a ball, bored his head right into his pillow, and whimpered helplessly as a child.
“Oh, how frightened I am of my room! What dreams! What dreams!”
“Perhaps you would like me to stay with you?” said Romashov.
“No, no; that’s not necessary.
But get me, please, some bromide and a little—vodka.
I have no money.”
Romashov sat by him till eleven.
Nasanski’s fits of ague gradually subsided.
Suddenly he opened his great eyes gleaming with fever, and uttered with some difficulty, but in a determined, abrupt tone:
“Go, now—good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” replied Romashov sadly.
He wanted to say,
“Good-bye, my teacher,” but was ashamed of the phrase, and he merely added with an attempt at joking:
“Why did you merely say ‘good-bye’?
Why not say do svidania?”
Nasanski burst into a weird, senseless laugh.
“Why not do svishvezia?” he screamed in a wild, mad voice.
Romashov felt that his body was shaken by violent shudders.
XXII
ON approaching his abode, Romashov noticed, to his astonishment, that a faint gleam of light poured from the dark window of his room.
“What can that be?” he thought, not without a certain uneasiness, whilst he involuntarily quickened his steps.
“Perhaps it is my seconds waiting to communicate to me the conditions of the duel?”
In the hall he ran into Hainan, but he did not recognize him immediately in the dark, and being startled, cried angrily:
“What the devil——!
Oh, it’s you, Hainan—and who’s in there?”
In spite of the darkness, Romashov realized that Hainan was doing his usual dance.
“It’s a lady, your Honour.
She’s sitting in there.”
Romashov opened the door.
The lamp, the kerosene of which had long come to an end, was still flickering feebly and was just ready to go out.
On the bed was seated a female figure, the outlines of which could scarcely be distinguished in the half-dark room.
“Shurochka!”—Romashov, who for a second was unable to breathe, slowly approached the bed on tip-toe—“Shurochka, you here?”
“S-sh; sit down,” she replied in a rapid whisper.
“Put out the lamp.”
Romashov blew sharply into the chimney of the lamp.
The little flickering, blue flame went out, and the room was at once dark and silent, but, in the next moment, the alarum on the table went off loudly.
Romashov sat down by Alexandra Petrovna, but could not distinguish her features.
A curious feeling of pain, nervousness, and faintness of heart took possession of him. He was unable to speak.
“Who is on the other side of that wall?” asked Shurochka.
“Can we be overheard?”
“No, there’s no one there, only old furniture. My landlord is a joiner.
One can speak out loud.”
But both spoke, all the same, in a low voice, and those shyly uttered words acquired, in the darkness, something in addition awful, disquieting, treacherously stealthy.
Romashov sat so close to Shurochka that he almost touched her dress.
There was a buzzing in his ears, and the blood throbbed in his veins with dull, heavy beats.
“Why, oh, why have you done this?” she asked quietly, but in a passionately reproachful tone.
Shurochka laid her hand on his knee.
Romashov felt through the cloth this light touch of her feverishly burning finger-tips.