The Secret of the Night
guests had departed thus, passing close by him, almost brushing him,
had exchanged their “Adieus,” their “Au revoirs,” and all their final,
drawn-out farewells. That dear little living domovoi certainly was a
rogue! Oh, that dear little domovoi who had been so affected by the
tears of Matrena Petrovna! The good, fat, sentimental, heroic woman
longed to hear, just then, his reassuring voice.
“It is I. Here I am,” said the voice of her little living familiar
spirit at that instant, and she felt her skirt grasped. She waited
for what he should say. She felt no fear. Yet she had supposed he was
outside the house. Still, after all, she was not too astonished that he
was within. He was so adroit! He had entered behind her, in the shadow
of her skirts, on all-fours, and had slipped away without anyone
noticing him, while she was speaking to her enormous, majestic
schwitzar.
“So you were here?” she said, taking his hand and pressing it nervously
in hers.
“Yes, yes. I have watched you closing the house. It is a task well-done,
certainly. You have not forgotten anything.”
“But where were you, dear little demon? I have been into all the
corners, and my hands did not touch you.”
“I was under the table set with hors-d’oeuvres in the sitting-room.”
“Ah, under the table of zakouskis! I have forbidden them before now
to spread a long hanging cloth there, which obliges me to kick my foot
underneath casually in order to be sure there is no one beneath. It is
imprudent, very imprudent, such table-cloths. And under the table of
zakouskis have you been able to see or hear anything?”
“Madame, do you think that anyone could possibly see or hear anything in
the villa when you are watching it alone, when the general is asleep and
your step-daughter is preparing for bed?”
“No. No. I do not believe so. I do not. No, oh, Christ!”
They talked thus very low in the dark, both seated in a corner of the
sofa, Rouletabille’s hand held tightly in the burning hands of Matrena
Petrovna.
She sighed anxiously. “And in the garden--have you heard anything?”
“I heard the officer Boris say to the officer Michael, in French, ‘Shall
we return at once to the villa?’ The other replied in Russian in a way I
could see was a refusal. Then they had a discussion in Russian which I,
naturally, could not understand. But from the way they talked I gathered
that they disagreed and that no love was lost between them.”
“No, they do not love each other. They both love Natacha.”
“And she, which one of them does she love? It is necessary to tell me.”
“She pretends that she loves Boris, and I believe she does, and yet she
is very friendly with Michael and often she goes into nooks and corners
to chat with him, which makes Boris mad with jealousy. She has forbidden
Boris to speak to her father about their marriage, on the pretext that
she does not wish to leave her father now, while each day, each minute
the general’s life is in danger.”
“And you, madame--do you love your step-daughter?” brutally inquired the
reporter.
“Yes--sincerely,” replied Matrena Petrovna, withdrawing her hand from
those of Rouletabille.
“And she--does she love you?”
“I believe so, monsieur, I believe so sincerely. Yes, she loves me,
and there is not any reason why she should not love me. I
believe--understand me thoroughly, because it comes from my heart--that
we all here in this house love one another. Our friends are old proved
friends. Boris has been orderly to my husband for a very long time.
We do not share any of his too-modern ideas, and there were many
discussions on the duty of soldiers at the time of the massacres. I
reproached him with being as womanish as we were in going down on his
knees to the general behind Natacha and me, when it became necessary to
kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia. It was not his role. A soldier
is a soldier. My husband raised him roughly and ordered him, for his
pains, to march at the head of the troops. It was right. What else could
he do? The general already had enough to fight against, with the whole
revolution, with his conscience, with the natural pity in his heart of
a brave man, and with the tears and insupportable moanings, at such a
moment, of his daughter and his wife. Boris understood and obeyed him,
but, after the death of the poor students, he behaved again like a woman
in composing those verses on the heroes of the barricades; don’t you
think so? Verses that Natacha and he learned by heart, working together,
when they were surprised at it by the general. There was a terrible
scene. It was before the next-to-the-last attack. The general then had
the use of both legs. He stamped his feet and fairly shook the house.”
“Madame,” said Rouletabille, “a propos of the attacks, you must tell me
about the third.”
As he said this, leaning toward her, Matrena Petrovna ejaculated a
“Listen!” that made him rigid in the night with ear alert. What had she
heard? For him, he had heard nothing.
“You hear nothing?” she whispered to him with an effort. “A tick-tack?”
“No, I hear nothing.”
“You know--like the tick-tack of a clock. Listen.”
“How can you hear the tick-tack? I’ve noticed that no clocks are running
here.”
“Don’t you understand? It is so that we shall be able to hear the
tick-tack better.”
“Oh, yes, I understand. But I do not hear anything.”
“For myself, I think I hear the tick-tack all the time since the last
attempt. It haunts my ears, it is frightful, to say to one’s self: There
is clockwork somewhere, just about to reach the death-tick--and not to
know where, not to know where! When the police were here I made them
all listen, and I was not sure even when they had all listened and said
there was no tick-tack. It is terrible to hear it in my ear any moment
when I least expect it. Tick-tack! Tick-tack! It is the blood beating
in my ear, for instance, hard, as if it struck on a sounding-board. Why,
here are drops of perspiration on my hands! Listen!”
“Ah, this time someone is talking--is crying,” said the young man.
“Sh-h-h!” And Rouletabille felt the rigid hand of Matrena Petrovna on
his arm. “It is the general. The general is dreaming!”
She drew him into the dining-room, into a corner where they could no
longer hear the moanings. But all the doors that communicated with the
dining-room, the drawing-room and the sitting-room remained open behind
him, by the secret precaution of Rouletabille.
He waited while Matrena, whose breath he heard come hard, was a little
behind. In a moment, quite talkative, and as though she wished to
distract Rouletabille’s attention from the sounds above, the broken
words and sighs, she continued:
“See, you speak of clocks. My husband has a watch which strikes. Well,
I have stopped his watch because more than once I have been startled by
hearing the tick-tack of his watch in his waistcoat-pocket. Koupriane
gave me that advice one day when he was here and had pricked his ears
at the noise of the pendulums, to stop all my watches and clocks so that
there would be no chance of confusing them with the tick-tack that might
come from an infernal machine planted in some corner. He spoke from
experience, my dear little monsieur, and it was by his order that all
the clocks at the Ministry, on the Naberjnaia, were stopped, my dear
little friend. The Nihilists, he told me, often use clockworks to set
off their machines at the time they decide on. No one can guess all the
inventions that they have, those brigands. In the same way, Koupriane
advised me to take away all the draught-boards from the fireplaces. By
that precaution they were enabled to avoid a terrible disaster at the
Ministry near the Pont-des-chantres, you know, petit demovoi? They saw a
bomb just as it was being lowered into the fire-place of the minister’s
cabinet.* The Nihilists held it by a cord and were up on the roof
letting it down the chimney. One of them was caught, taken to
Schlusselbourg and hanged. Here you can see that all the
draught-boards of the fireplaces are cleared away.”
*Actual attack on Witte.
“Madame,” interrupted Rouletabille (Matrena Petrovna did not know that
no one ever succeeded in distracting Rouletabille’s attention), “madame,
someone moans still, upstairs.”
“Oh, that is nothing, my little friend. It is the general, who has bad
nights. He cannot sleep without a narcotic, and that gives him a fever.
I am going to tell you now how the third attack came about. And then you
will understand, by the Virgin Mary, how it is I have yet, always have,
the tick-tack in my ears.
“One evening when the general had got to sleep and I was in my own room,
I heard distinctly the tick-tack of clockwork operating. All the clocks
had been stopped, as Koupriane advised, and I had made an excuse to send
Feodor’s great watch to the repairer. You can understand how I felt
when I heard that tick-tack. I was frenzied. I turned my head in all
directions, and decided that the sound came from my husband’s chamber. I
ran there. He still slept, man that he is! The tick-tack was there. But
where? I turned here and there like a fool. The chamber was in darkness
and it seemed absolutely impossible for me to light a lamp because I
thought I could not take the time for fear the infernal machine would go
off in those few seconds. I threw myself on the floor and listened
under the bed. The noise came from above. But where? I sprang to the
fireplace, hoping that, against my orders, someone had started the
mantel-clock. No, it was not that! It seemed to me now that the
tick-tack came from the bed itself, that the machine was in the bed. The
general awaked just then and cried to me, ‘What is it, Matrena? What are
you doing?’ And he raised himself in bed, while I cried, ‘Listen! Hear
the tick-tack. Don’t you hear the tick-tack?’ I threw myself upon him
and gathered him up in my arms to carry him, but I trembled too much,
was too weak from fear, and fell back with him onto the bed, crying,
‘Help!’ He thrust me away and said roughly, ‘Listen.’ The frightful
tick-tack was behind us now, on the table. But there was nothing on the
table, only the night-light, the glass with the potion in it, and a
gold vase where I had placed with my own hands that morning a cluster
of grasses and wild flowers that Ermolai had brought that morning on his
return from the Orel country. With one bound I was on the table and at
the flowers. I struck my fingers among the grasses and the flowers, and
felt a resistance. The tick-tack was in the bouquet! I took the bouquet
in both hands, opened the window and threw it as far as I could into the
garden. At the same moment the bomb burst with a terrible noise, giving
me quite a deep wound in the hand. Truly, my dear little domovoi, that
day we had been very near death, but God and the Little Father watched
over us.”
And Matrena Petrovna made the sign of the cross.
“All the windows of the house were broken. In all, we escaped with the
fright and a visit from the glazier, my little friend, but I certainly
believed that all was over.”
“And Mademoiselle Natacha?” inquired Rouletabille. “She must also have
been terribly frightened, because the whole house must have rocked.”
“Surely. But Natacha was not here that night. It was a Saturday. She
had been invited to the soiree du ‘Michel’ by the parents of Boris
Nikolaievitch, and she slept at their house, after supper at the Ours,
as had been planned. The next day, when she learned the danger the
general had escaped, she trembled in every limb. She threw herself in
her father’s arms, weeping, which was natural enough, and declared that
she never would go away from him again. The general told her how I had
managed. Then she pressed me to her heart, saying that she never would