Short Stories by Chekhov
average woman, about intellectual things; also it gave her great
pleasure to watch how the pale, lively, still angry, young face was
working. Much she did not understand; but the fine courage of modern man
was revealed to her, the courage by which he without reflection or
surmise solves the great questions and constructs his simple
conclusions.
Suddenly she discovered that she was admiring him, and it frightened
her.
"Pardon, but I don't really understand," she hastened to say. "Why did
you mention insincerity? I entreat you once more, be a dear, good friend
and leave me alone. Sincerely, I ask it."
"Good--I'll do my best. But hardly anything will come of it. Either I'll
put a bullet through my brains or ... I'll start drinking in the
stupidest possible way. Things will end badly for me. Everything has its
limit, even a struggle with nature. Tell me now, how can one struggle
with madness? If you've drunk wine, how can you get over the excitement?
What can I do if your image has grown into my soul, and stands
incessantly before my eyes, night and day, as plain as that fir tree
there? Tell me then what thing I must do to get out of this wretched,
unhappy state, when all my thoughts, desires, and dreams belong, not to
me, but to some devil that has got hold of me? I love you, I love you so
much that I've turned away from my path, given up my career and my
closest friends, forgot my God. Never in my life have I loved so much."
Sophia Pietrovna, who was not expecting this turn, drew her body away
from Ilyin, and glanced at him frightened. Tears shone in his eyes. His
lips trembled, and a hungry, suppliant expression showed over all his
face.
"I love you," he murmured, bringing his own eyes near to her big,
frightened ones. "You are so beautiful. I'm suffering now; but I swear I
could remain so all my life, suffering and looking into your eyes,
but.... Keep silent, I implore you."
Sophia Pietrovna as if taken unawares began, quickly, quickly, to think
out words with which to stop him. "I shall go away," she decided, but no
sooner had she moved to get up, than Ilyin was on his knees at her feet
already. He embraced her knees, looked into her eyes and spoke
passionately, ardently, beautifully. She did not hear his words, for her
fear and agitation. Somehow now at this dangerous moment when her knees
pleasantly contracted, as in a warm bath, she sought with evil intention
to read some meaning into her sensation. She was angry because the whole
of her instead of protesting virtue was filled with weakness, laziness,
and emptiness, like a drunken man to whom the ocean is but knee-deep;
only in the depths of her soul, a little remote malignant voice teased:
"Why don't you go away? Then this is right, is it?"
Seeking in herself an explanation she could not understand why she had
not withdrawn the hand to which Ilyin's lips clung like a leech, nor
why, at the same time as Ilyin, she looked hurriedly right and left to
see that they were not observed.
The fir-trees and the clouds stood motionless, and gazed at them
severely like broken-down masters who see something going on, but have
been bribed not to report to the head. The sentry on the embankment
stood like a stick and seemed to be staring at the bench. "Let him
look!" thought Sophia Pietrovna.
"But ... But listen," she said at last with despair in her voice. "What
will this lead to? What will happen afterwards?"
"I don't know. I don't know," he began to whisper, waving these
unpleasant questions aside.
The hoarse, jarring whistle of a railway engine became audible. This
cold, prosaic sound of the everyday world made Madame Loubianzev start.
"It's time, I must go," she said, getting up quickly. "The train is
coming. Audrey is arriving. He will want his dinner."
Sophia Pietrovna turned her blazing cheeks to the embankment. First the
engine came slowly into sight, after it the carriages. It was not a
bungalow train, but a goods train. In a long row, one after another like
the days of man's life, the cars drew past the white background of the
church, and there seemed to be no end to them.
But at last the train disappeared, and the end car with the guard and
the lighted lamps disappeared into the green. Sophia Pietrovna turned
sharply and not looking at Ilyin began to walk quickly back along the
path. She had herself in control again. Red with shame, offended, not by
Ilyin, no I but by the cowardice and shamelessness with which she, a
good, respectable woman allowed a stranger to embrace her knees. She had
only one thought now, to reach her bungalow and her family as quickly as
possible. The barrister could hardly keep up with her. Turning from the
path on to a little track, she glanced at him so quickly that she
noticed only the sand on his knees, and she motioned with her hand at
him to let her be.
Running into the house Sophia Pietrovna stood for about five minutes
motionless in her room, looking now at the window then at the writing
table.... "You disgraceful woman," she scolded herself; "disgraceful!"
In spite of herself she recollected every detail, hiding nothing, how
all these days she had been against Ilyin's love-making, yet she was
somehow drawn to meet him and explain; but besides this when he was
lying at her feet she felt an extraordinary pleasure. She recalled
everything, not sparing herself, and now, stifled with shame, she could
have slapped her own face.
"Poor Andrey," she thought, trying, as she remembered her husband, to
give her face the tenderest possible expression--"Varya, my poor darling
child, does not know what a mother she has. Forgive me, my dears. I love
you very much ... very much!..."
And wishing to convince herself that she was still a good wife and
mother, that corruption had not yet touched those "sanctities" of hers,
of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sophia Pietrovna ran into the kitchen
and scolded the cook for not having laid the table for Andrey Ilyitch.
She tried to imagine her husband's tired, hungry look, and pitying him
aloud, she laid the table herself, a thing which she had never done
before. Then she found her daughter Varya, lifted her up in her hands
and kissed her passionately; the child seemed to her heavy and cold, but
she would not own it to herself, and she began to tell her what a good,
dear, splendid father she had.
But when, soon after, Andrey. Ilyitch arrived, she barely greeted him.
The flow of imaginary feelings had ebbed away without convincing her of
anything; she was only exasperated and enraged by the lie. She sat at
the window, suffered, and raged. Only in distress can people understand
how difficult it is to master their thoughts and feelings. Sophia
Pietrovna said afterwards a confusion was going on inside her as hard to
define as to count a cloud of swiftly flying sparrows. Thus from the
fact that she was delighted at her husband's arrival and pleased with
the way he behaved at dinner, she suddenly concluded that she had begun
to hate him. Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and fatigue, while
waiting for the soup, fell upon the sausage and ate it greedily, chewing
loudly and moving his temples.
"My God," thought Sophia Pietrovna. "I do love and respect him, but ...
why does he chew so disgustingly."
Her thoughts were no less disturbed than her feelings. Madame
Loubianzev, like all who have no experience of the struggle with
unpleasant thought, did her best not to think of her unhappiness, and
the more zealously she tried, the more vivid Ilyin became to her
imagination, the sand on his knees, the feathery clouds, the train....
"Why did I--idiot--go to-day?" she teased herself. "And am I really a
person who can't answer for herself?"
Fear has big eyes. When Andrey Ilyitch had finished the last course, she
had already resolved to tell him everything and so escape from danger.
"Andrey, I want to speak to you seriously," she began after dinner, when
her husband was taking off his coat and boots in order to have a lie
down.
"Well?"
"Let's go away from here!"
"How--where to? It's still too early to go to town."
"No. Travel or something like that."
"Travel," murmured the solicitor, stretching himself. "I dream of it
myself, but where shall I get the money, and who'll look after my
business."
After a little reflection he added:
"Yes, really you are bored. Go by yourself if you want to."
Sophia Pietrovna agreed; but at the same time she saw that Ilyin would
be glad of the opportunity to travel in the same train with her, in the
same carriage....
She pondered and looked at her husband, who was full fed but still
languid. For some reason her eyes stopped on his feet, tiny, almost
womanish, in stupid socks. On the toe of both socks little threads were
standing out. Under the drawn blind a bumble bee was knocking against
the window pane and buzzing. Sophia Pietrovna stared at the threads,
listened to the bumble bee and pictured her journey.... Day and night
Ilyin sits opposite, without taking his eyes from her, angry with his
weakness and pale with the pain of his soul. He brands himself as a
libertine, accuses her, tears his hair; but when the dark comes he
seizes the chance when the passengers go to sleep or alight at a station
and falls on his knees before her and clasps her feet, as he did by the
bench....
She realised that she was dreaming....
"Listen. I am not going by myself," she said. "You must come, too!"
"Sophochka, that's all imagination!" sighed Loubianzev. "You must be
serious and only ask for the possible...."
"You'll come when you And out!" thought Sophia Pietrovna.
Having decided to go away at all costs, she began to feel free from
danger; her thoughts fell gradually into order, she became cheerful and
even allowed herself to think about everything. Whatever she may think
or dream about, she is going all the same. While her husband still
slept, little by little, evening came....
She sat in the drawing-room playing the piano. Outside the window the
evening animation, the sound of music, but chiefly the thought of her
own cleverness in mastering her misery gave the final touch to her joy.
Other women, her easy conscience told her, in a position like her own
would surely not resist, they would spin round like a whirlwind; but she
was nearly burnt up with shame, she suffered and now she had escaped
from a danger which perhaps was nonexistent! Her virtue and resolution
moved her so much that she even glanced at herself in the glass three
times.
When it was dark visitors came. The men sat down to cards in the dining-
room, the ladies were in the drawing room and on the terrace. Ilyin came
last, he was stem and gloomy and looked ill. He sat down on a corner of
the sofa and did not get up for the whole evening. Usually cheerful and
full of conversation, he was now silent, frowning, and rubbing his eyes.
When he had to answer a question he smiled with difficulty and only with
his upper lip, answering abruptly and spitefully. He made about five
jokes in all, but his jokes seemed crude and insolent. It seemed to
Sophia Pietrovna that he was on the brink of hysteria. But only now as
she sat at the piano did she acknowledge that the unhappy man was not in
the mood to joke, that he was sick in his soul, he could find no place
for himself. It was for her sake he was ruining the best days of his
career and his youth, wasting his last farthing on a bungalow, had left
his mother and sisters uncared for, and, above all, was breaking down
under the martyrdom of his struggle. From simple, common humanity she
ought to take him seriously....
All this was dear to her, even to paining her. If she were to go up to
Ilyin now and say to him "No," there would be such strength in her voice