第100章

He was bathed in a cold perspiration; his heart beat as hard as it was possible for it to beat; his chest was oppressed, as though his last breath was about to issue from it."Was it a dream?" he said, seizing his head with both hands.But the terrible reality of the apparition did not resemble a dream.As he woke, he saw the old man step into the frame: the skirts of the flowing garment even fluttered, and his hand felt plainly that a moment before it had held something heavy.The moonlight lit up the room, bringing out from the dark corners here a canvas, there the model of a hand: a drapery thrown over a chair;trousers and dirty boots.Then he perceived that he was not lying in his bed, but standing upright in front of the portrait.How he had come there, he could not in the least comprehend.Still more surprised was he to find the portrait uncovered, and with actually no sheet over it.Motionless with terror, he gazed at it, and perceived that the living, human eyes were fastened upon him.A cold perspiration broke out upon his forehead.He wanted to move away, but felt that his feet had in some way become rooted to the earth.And he felt that this was not a dream.The old man's features moved, and his lips began to project towards him, as though he wanted to suck him in.With a yell of despair he jumped back--and awoke.

"Was it a dream?" With his heart throbbing to bursting, he felt about him with both hands.Yes, he was lying in bed, and in precisely the position in which he had fallen asleep.Before him stood the screen.

The moonlight flooded the room.Through the crack of the screen, the portrait was visible, covered with the sheet, as it should be, just as he had covered it.And so that, too, was a dream? But his clenched fist still felt as though something had been held in it.The throbbing of his heart was violent, almost terrible; the weight upon his breast intolerable.He fixed his eyes upon the crack, and stared steadfastly at the sheet.And lo! he saw plainly the sheet begin to open, as though hands were pushing from underneath, and trying to throw it off.

"Lord God, what is it!" he shrieked, crossing himself in despair--and awoke.

And was this, too, a dream? He sprang from his bed, half-mad, and could not comprehend what had happened to him.Was it the oppression of a nightmare, the raving of fever, or an actual apparition? Striving to calm, as far as possible, his mental tumult, and stay the wildly rushing blood, which beat with straining pulses in every vein, he went to the window and opened it.The cool breeze revived him.The moonlight lay on the roofs and the white walls of the houses, though small clouds passed frequently across the sky.All was still: from time to time there struck the ear the distant rumble of a carriage.He put his head out of the window, and gazed for some time.Already the signs of approaching dawn were spreading over the sky.At last he felt drowsy, shut to the window, stepped back, lay down in bed, and quickly fell, like one exhausted, into a deep sleep.

He awoke late, and with the disagreeable feeling of a man who has been half-suffocated with coal-gas: his head ached painfully.The room was dim: an unpleasant moisture pervaded the air, and penetrated the cracks of his windows.Dissatisfied and depressed as a wet cock, he seated himself on his dilapidated divan, not knowing what to do, what to set about, and at length remembered the whole of his dream.As he recalled it, the dream presented itself to his mind as so oppressively real that he even began to wonder whether it were a dream, whether there were not something more here, whether it were not really an apparition.Removing the sheet, he looked at the terrible portrait by the light of day.The eyes were really striking in their liveliness, but he found nothing particularly terrible about them, though an indescribably unpleasant feeling lingered in his mind.Nevertheless, he could not quite convince himself that it was a dream.It struck him that there must have been some terrible fragment of reality in the vision.It seemed as though there were something in the old man's very glance and expression which said that he had been with him that night:

his hand still felt the weight which had so recently lain in it as if some one had but just snatched it from him.It seemed to him that, if he had only grasped the roll more firmly, it would have remained in his hand, even after his awakening.

"My God, if I only had a portion of that money!" he said, breathing heavily; and in his fancy, all the rolls of coin, with their fascinating inscription, "1000 ducats," began to pour out of the purse.The rolls opened, the gold glittered, and was wrapped up again;and he sat motionless, with his eyes fixed on the empty air, as if he were incapable of tearing himself from such a sight, like a child who sits before a plate of sweets, and beholds, with watering mouth, other people devouring them.

At last there came a knock on the door, which recalled him unpleasantly to himself.The landlord entered with the constable of the district, whose presence is even more disagreeable to poor people than is the presence of a beggar to the rich.The landlord of the little house in which Tchartkoff lived resembled the other individuals who own houses anywhere in the Vasilievsky Ostroff, on the St.