“Well?” I asked him. “Have you found Ilya Stepanitch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“Here, not far away.”
“How . . . have you found him? Is he alive?”
“To be sure. I have been talking to him.” (A load was lifted from my heart.) “His honour was sitting in his great-coat under a birch tree . . . and he was all right. I put it to him, ‘Won’t you come home, Ilya Stepanitch; Alexandr Vassilitch is very much worried about you.’ And he said to me, ‘What does he want to worry for! I want to be in the fresh air. My head aches. Go home,’ he said, ‘and I will come later.’”
“And you left him?” I cried, clasping my hands.
“What else could I do? He told me to go . . . how could I stay?”
All my fears came back to me at once.
“Take me to him this minute — do you hear? This minute! O Semyon, Semyon, I did not expect this of you! You say he is not far off?”
“He is quite close, here, where the copse begins — he is sitting there. It is not more than five yards from the river bank. I found him as I came alongside the river.”
“Well, take me to him, take me to him.”
Semyon set off ahead of me. “This way, sir. . . . We have only to get down to the river and it is close there.”
But instead of getting down to the river we got into a hollow and found ourselves before an empty shed.
“Hey, stop!” Semyon cried suddenly. “I must have come too far to the right. . . . We must go that way, more to the left. . . . ”
We turned to the left — and found ourselves among such high, rank weeds that we could scarcely get out. . . . I could not remember such a tangled growth of weeds anywhere near our village. And then all at once a marsh was squelching under our feet, and we saw little round moss-covered hillocks which I had never noticed before either. . . . We turned back — a small hill was sharply before us and on the top of it stood a shanty — and in it someone was snoring. Semyon and I shouted several times into the shanty; something stirred at the further end of it, the straw rustled — and a hoarse voice shouted, “I am on guard.”
We turned back again . . . fields and fields, endless fields. . . . I felt ready to cry. . . . I remembered the words of the fool in King Lear: “This night will turn us all to fools or madmen.”
“Where are we to go?” I said in despair to Semyon.
“The devil must have led us astray, sir,” answered the distracted servant. “It’s not natural . . . there’s mischief at the bottom of it!”
I would have checked him but at that instant my ear caught a sound, distinct but not loud, that engrossed my whole attention. There was a faint “pop” as though someone had drawn a stiff cork from a narrow bottle-neck. The sound came from somewhere not far off. Why the sound seemed to me strange and peculiar I could not say, but at once I went towards it.
Semyon followed me. Within a few minutes something tall and broad loomed in the fog.
“The copse! here is the copse!” Semyon cried, delighted. “Yes, here . . . and there is the master sitting under the birch-tree. . . . There he is, sitting where I left him. That’s he, surely enough!”
I looked intently. A man really was sitting with his back towards us, awkwardly huddled up under the birch-tree. I hurriedly approached and recognised Tyeglev’s great-coat, recognised his figure, his head bowed on his breast. “Tyeglev!” I cried . . . but he did not answer.
“Tyeglev!” I repeated, and laid my hand on his shoulder. Then he suddenly lurched forward, quickly and obediently, as though he were waiting for my touch, and fell onto the grass. Semyon and I raised him at once and turned him face upwards. It was not pale, but was lifeless and motionless; his clenched teeth gleamed white — and his eyes, motionless, too, and wide open, kept their habitual, drowsy and “different” look.
“Good God!” Semyon said suddenly and showed me his hand stained crimson with blood. . . . The blood was coming from under Tyeglev’s great-coat, from the left side of his chest.
He had shot himself from a small, single-barreled pistol which was lying beside him. The faint pop I had heard was the sound made by the fatal shot.