Short Stories by Chekhov
could easily reconcile this life of toil with my cultured habits; to do
so, I thought, all that is necessary is to maintain a certain external
order in life. I established myself upstairs here in the best rooms, and
ordered them to bring me there coffee and liquor after lunch and dinner,
and when I went to bed I read every night the Yyesnik Evropi. But one
day our priest, Father Ivan, came and drank up all my liquor at one
sitting; and the Yyesnik Evropi went to the priest's daughters; as in
the summer, especially at the haymaking, I did not succeed in getting to
my bed at all, and slept in the sledge in the barn, or somewhere in the
forester's lodge, what chance was there of reading? Little by little I
moved downstairs, began dining in the servants' kitchen, and of my
former luxury nothing is left but the servants who were in my father's
service, and whom it would be painful to turn away.
"In the first years I was elected here an honourary justice of the
peace. I used to have to go to the town and take part in the sessions of
the congress and of the circuit court, and this was a pleasant change
for me. When you live here for two or three months without a break,
especially in the winter, you begin at last to pine for a black coat.
And in the circuit court there were frock-coats, and uniforms, and
dress-coats, too, all lawyers, men who have received a general
education; I had some one to talk to. After sleeping in the sledge and
dining in the kitchen, to sit in an arm-chair in clean linen, in thin
boots, with a chain on one's waistcoat, is such luxury!
"I received a warm welcome in the town. I made friends eagerly. And of
all my acquaintanceships the most intimate and, to tell the truth, the
most agreeable to me was my acquaintance with Luganovitch, the vice-
president of the circuit court. You both know him: a most charming
personality. It all happened just after a celebrated case of
incendiarism; the preliminary investigation lasted two days; we were
exhausted. Luganovitch looked at me and said:
"'Look here, come round to dinner with me.'
"This was unexpected, as I knew Luganovitch very little, only
officially, and I had never been to his house. I only just went to my
hotel room to change and went off to dinner. And here it was my lot to
meet Anna Alexyevna, Luganovitch's wife. At that time she was still very
young, not more than twenty-two, and her first baby had been born just
six months before. It is all a thing of the past; and now I should find
it difficult to define what there was so exceptional in her, what it was
in her attracted me so much; at the time, at dinner, it was all
perfectly clear to me. I saw a lovely young, good, intelligent,
fascinating woman, such as I had never met before; and I felt her at
once some one close and already familiar, as though that face, those
cordial, intelligent eyes, I had seen somewhere in my childhood, in the
album which lay on my mother's chest of drawers.
"Four Jews were charged with being incendiaries, were regarded as a gang
of robbers, and, to my mind, quite groundlessly. At dinner I was very
much excited, I was uncomfortable, and I don't know what I said, but
Anna Alexyevna kept shaking her head and saying to her husband:
"'Dmitry, how is this?'
"Luganovitch is a good-natured man, one of those simple-hearted people
who firmly maintain the opinion that once a man is charged before a
court he is guilty, and to express doubt of the correctness of a
sentence cannot be done except in legal form on paper, and not at dinner
and in private conversation.
"'You and I did not set fire to the place,' he said softly, 'and you see
we are not condemned, and not in prison.'
"And both husband and wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as
possible. From some trifling details, from the way they made the coffee
together, for instance, and from the way they understood each other at
half a word, I could gather that they lived in harmony and comfort, and
that they were glad of a visitor. After dinner they played a duet on the
piano; then it got dark, and I went home. That was at the beginning of
spring.
"After that I spent the whole summer at Sofino without a break, and I
had no time to think of the town, either, but the memory of the graceful
fair-haired woman remained in my mind all those days; I did not think of
her, but it was as though her light shadow were lying on my heart.
"In the late autumn there was a theatrical performance for some
charitable object in the town. I went into the governor's box (I was
invited to go there in the interval); I looked, and there was Anna
Alexyevna sitting beside the governor's wife; and again the same
irresistible, thrilling impression of beauty and sweet, caressing eyes,
and again the same feeling of nearness. We sat side by side, then went
to the foyer.
"'You've grown thinner,' she said; 'have you been ill?'
"'Yes, I've had rheumatism in my shoulder, and in rainy weather I can't
sleep.'
"'You look dispirited. In the spring, when you came to dinner, you were
younger, more confident. You were full of eagerness, and talked a great
deal then; you were very interesting, and I really must confess I was a
little carried away by you. For some reason you often came back to my
memory during the summer, and when I was getting ready for the theatre
today I thought I should see you.'
"And she laughed.
"'But you look dispirited today,' she repeated; 'it makes you seem
older.'
"The next day I lunched at the Luganovitchs'. After lunch they drove out
to their summer villa, in order to make arrangements there for the
winter, and I went with them. I returned with them to the town, and at
midnight drank tea with them in quiet domestic surroundings, while the
fire glowed, and the young mother kept going to see if her baby girl was
asleep. And after that, every time I went to town I never failed to
visit the Luganovitchs. They grew used to me, and I grew used to them.
As a rule I went in unannounced, as though I were one of the family.
"'Who is there?' I would hear from a faraway room, in the drawling voice
that seemed to me so lovely.
"'It is Pavel Konstantinovitch,' answered the maid or the nurse.
"Anna Alexyevna would come out to me with an anxious face, and would ask
every time:
"'Why is it so long since you have been? Has anything happened?'
"Her eyes, the elegant refined hand she gave me, her indoor dress, the
way she did her hair, her voice, her step, always produced the same
impression on me of something new and extraordinary in my life, and very
important. We talked together for hours, were silent, thinking each our
own thoughts, or she played for hours to me on the piano. If there were
no one at home I stayed and waited, talked to the nurse, played with the
child, or lay on the sofa in the study and read; and when Anna Alexyevna
came back I met her in the hall, took all her parcels from her, and for
some reason I carried those parcels every time with as much love, with
as much solemnity, as a boy.
"There is a proverb that if a peasant woman has no troubles she will buy
a pig. The Luganovitchs had no troubles, so they made friends with me.
If I did not come to the town I must be ill or something must have
happened to me, and both of them were extremely anxious. They were
worried that I, an educated man with a knowledge of languages, should,
instead of devoting myself to science or literary work, live in the
country, rush round like a squirrel in a rage, work hard with never a
penny to show for it. They fancied that I was unhappy, and that I only
talked, laughed, and ate to conceal my sufferings, and even at cheerful
moments when I felt happy I was aware of their searching eyes fixed upon
me. They were particularly touching when I really was depressed, when I
was being worried by some creditor or had not money enough to pay
interest on the proper day. The two of them, husband and wife, would
whisper together at the window; then he would come to me and say with a
grave face:
"'If you really are in need of money at the moment, Pavel
Konstantinovitch, my wife and I beg you not to hesitate to borrow from
us.'
"And he would blush to his ears with emotion. And it would happen that,
after whispering in the same way at the window, he would come up to me,
with red ears, and say:
"'My wife and I earnestly beg you to accept this present.'
"And he would give me studs, a cigar-case, or a lamp, and I would send
them game, butter, and flowers from the country. They both, by the way,
had considerable means of their own. In early days I often borrowed
money, and was not very particular about it--borrowed wherever I
could--but nothing in the world would have induced me to borrow from the
Luganovitchs. But why talk of it?
"I was unhappy. At home, in the fields, in the barn, I thought of her; I
tried to understand the mystery of a beautiful, intelligent young
woman's marrying some one so uninteresting, almost an old man (her
husband was over forty), and having children by him; to understand the
mystery of this uninteresting, good, simple-hearted man, who argued with
such wearisome good sense, at balls and evening parties kept near the
more solid people, looking listless and superfluous, with a submissive,
uninterested expression, as though he had been brought there for sale,
who yet believed in his right to be happy, to have children by her; and
I kept trying to understand why she had met him first and not me, and
why such a terrible mistake in our lives need have happened.
"And when I went to the town I saw every time from her eyes that she was
expecting me, and she would confess to me herself that she had had a
peculiar feeling all that day and had guessed that I should come. We
talked a long time, and were silent, yet we did not confess our love to
each other, but timidly and jealously concealed it. We were afraid of
everything that might reveal our secret to ourselves. I loved her
tenderly, deeply, but I reflected and kept asking myself what our love
could lead to if we had not the strength to fight against it. It seemed
to be incredible that my gentle, sad love could all at once coarsely
break up the even tenor of the life of her husband, her children, and
all the household in which I was so loved and trusted. Would it be
honourable? She would go away with me, but where? Where could I take
her? It would have been a different matter if I had had a beautiful,
interesting life--if, for instance, I had been struggling for the
emancipation of my country, or had been a celebrated man of science, an
artist or a painter; but as it was it would mean taking her from one
everyday humdrum life to another as humdrum or perhaps more so. And how
long would our happiness last? What would happen to her in case I was
ill, in case I died, or if we simply grew cold to one another?
"And she apparently reasoned in the same way. She thought of her
husband, her children, and of her mother, who loved the husband like a
son. If she abandoned herself to her feelings she would have to lie, or
else to tell the truth, and in her position either would have been
equally terrible and inconvenient. And she was tormented by the question
whether her love would bring me happiness--would she not complicate my
life, which, as it was, was hard enough and full of all sorts of
trouble? She fancied she was not young enough for me, that she was not
industrious nor energetic enough to begin a new life, and she often
talked to her husband of the importance of my marrying a girl of
intelligence and merit who would be a capable housewife and a help to
me--and she would immediately add that it would be difficult to find such
a girl in the whole town.
"Meanwhile the years were passing. Anna Alexyevna already had two