Short Stories by Chekhov
Only I doubt whether anything will come of my efforts. Either I shall
put a bullet through my brains or take to drink in an idiotic way. I
shall come to a bad end! There's a limit to everything-- to struggles
with Nature, too. Tell me, how can one struggle against madness? If you
drink wine, how are you to struggle against intoxication? What am I to
do if your image has grown into my soul, and day and night stands
persistently before my eyes, like that pine there at this moment? Come,
tell me, what hard and difficult thing can I do to get free from this
abominable, miserable condition, in which all my thoughts, desires, and
dreams are no longer my own, but belong to some demon who has taken
possession of me? I love you, love you so much that I am completely
thrown out of gear; I've given up my work and all who are dear to me;
I've forgotten my God! I've never been in love like this in my life."
Sofya Petrovna, who had not expected such a turn to their conversation,
drew away from Ilyin and looked into his face in dismay. Tears came into
his eyes, his lips were quivering, and there was an imploring, hungry
expression in his face.
"I love you!" he muttered, bringing his eyes near her big, frightened
eyes. "You are so beautiful! I am in agony now, but I swear I would sit
here all my life, suffering and looking in your eyes. But . . . be
silent, I implore you!"
Sofya Petrovna, feeling utterly disconcerted, tried to think as quickly
as possible of something to say to stop him. "I'll go away," she
decided, but before she had time to make a movement to get up, Ilyin was
on his knees before her. . . . He was clasping her knees, gazing into
her face and speaking passionately, hotly, eloquently. In her terror and
confusion she did not hear his words; for some reason now, at this
dangerous moment, while her knees were being agreeably squeezed and felt
as though they were in a warm bath, she was trying, with a sort of angry
spite, to interpret her own sensations. She was angry that instead of
brimming over with protesting virtue, she was entirely overwhelmed with
weakness, apathy, and emptiness, like a drunken man utterly reckless;
only at the bottom of her soul a remote bit of herself was malignantly
taunting her: "Why don't you go? Is this as it should be? Yes?"
Seeking for some explanation, she could not understand how it was she
did not pull away the hand to which Ilyin was clinging like a leech, and
why, like Ilyin, she hastily glanced to right and to left to see whether
any one was looking. The clouds and the pines stood motionless, looking
at them severely, like old ushers seeing mischief, but bribed not to
tell the school authorities. The sentry stood like a post on the
embankment and seemed to be looking at the seat.
"Let him look," thought Sofya Petrovna.
"But . . . but listen," she said at last, with despair in her voice.
"What can come of this? What will be the end of this?"
"I don't know, I don't know," he whispered, waving off the disagreeable
questions.
They heard the hoarse, discordant whistle of the train. This cold,
irrelevant sound from the everyday world of prose made Sofya Petrovna
rouse herself.
"I can't stay . . . it's time I was at home," she said, getting up
quickly. "The train is coming in. . . Andrey is coming by it! He will
want his dinner."
Sofya Petrovna turned towards the embankment with a burning face. The
engine slowly crawled by, then came the carriages. It was not the local
train, as she had supposed, but a goods train. The trucks filed by
against the background of the white church in a long string like the
days of a man's life, and it seemed as though it would never end.
But at last the train passed, and the last carriage with the guard and a
light in it had disappeared behind the trees. Sofya Petrovna turned
round sharply, and without looking at Ilyin, walked rapidly back along
the track. She had regained her self-possession. Crimson with shame,
humiliated not by Ilyin--no, but by her own cowardice, by the
shamelessness with which she, a chaste and high-principled woman, had
allowed a man, not her husband, to hug her knees--she had only one
thought now: to get home as quickly as possible to her villa, to her
family. The lawyer could hardly keep pace with her. Turning from the
clearing into a narrow path, she turned round and glanced at him so
quickly that she saw nothing but the sand on his knees, and waved to him
to drop behind.
Reaching home, Sofya Petrovna stood in the middle of her room for five
minutes without moving, and looked first at the window and then at her
writing-table.
"You low creature!" she said, upbraiding herself. "You low creature!"
To spite herself, she recalled in precise detail, keeping nothing
back--she recalled that though all this time she had been opposed to
Ilyin's lovemaking, something had impelled her to seek an interview with
him; and what was more, when he was at her feet she had enjoyed it
enormously. She recalled it all without sparing herself, and now,
breathless with shame, she would have liked to slap herself in the face.
"Poor Andrey!" she said to herself, trying as she thought of her husband
to put into her face as tender an expression as she could. "Varya, my
poor little girl, doesn't know what a mother she has! Forgive me, my
dear ones! I love you so much . . . so much!"
And anxious to prove to herself that she was still a good wife and
mother, and that corruption had not yet touched that "sanctity of
marriage" of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sofya Petrovna ran to the
kitchen and abused the cook for not having yet laid the table for Andrey
Ilyitch. She tried to picture her husband's hungry and exhausted
appearance, commiserated him aloud, and laid the table for him with her
own hands, which she had never done before. Then she found her daughter
Varya, picked her up in her arms and hugged her warmly; the child seemed
to her cold and heavy, but she was unwilling to acknowledge this to
herself, and she began explaining to the child how good, kind, and
honourable her papa was.
But when Andrey Ilyitch arrived soon afterwards she hardly greeted him.
The rush of false feeling had already passed off without proving
anything to her, only irritating and exasperating her by its falsity.
She was sitting by the window, feeling miserable and cross. It is only
by being in trouble that people can understand how far from easy it is
to be the master of one's feelings and thoughts. Sofya Petrovna said
afterwards that there was a tangle within her which it was as difficult
to unravel as to count a flock of sparrows rapidly flying by. From the
fact that she was not overjoyed to see her husband, that she did not
like his manner at dinner, she concluded all of a sudden that she was
beginning to hate her husband.
Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and exhaustion, fell upon the
sausage while waiting for the soup to be brought in, and ate it
greedily, munching noisily and moving his temples.
"My goodness!" thought Sofya Petrovna. "I love and respect him, but . .
. why does he munch so repulsively?"
The disorder in her thoughts was no less than the disorder in her
feelings. Like all persons inexperienced in combating unpleasant ideas,
Madame Lubyantsev did her utmost not to think of her trouble, and the
harder she tried the more vividly Ilyin, the sand on his knees, the
fluffy clouds, the train, stood out in her imagination.
"And why did I go there this afternoon like a fool?" she thought,
tormenting herself. "And am I really so weak that I cannot depend upon
myself?"
Fear magnifies danger. By the time Andrey Ilyitch was finishing the last
course, she had firmly made up her mind to tell her husband everything
and to flee from danger!
"I've something serious to say to you, Andrey," she began after dinner
while her husband was taking off his coat and boots to lie down for a
nap.
"Well?"
"Let us leave this place!"
"H'm! . . . Where shall we go? It's too soon to go back to town."
"No; for a tour or something of that sort.
"For a tour . . ." repeated the notary, stretching. "I dream of that
myself, but where are we to get the money, and to whom am I to leave the
office?"
And thinking a little he added:
"Of course, you must be bored. Go by yourself if you like."
Sofya Petrovna agreed, but at once reflected that Ilyin would be
delighted with the opportunity, and would go with her in the same train,
in the same compartment. . . . She thought and looked at her husband,
now satisfied but still languid. For some reason her eyes rested on his
feet--miniature, almost feminine feet, clad in striped socks; there was a
thread standing out at the tip of each sock.
Behind the blind a bumble-bee was beating itself against the window-pane
and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on the socks, listened
to the bee, and pictured how she would set off . . . . vis-à-vis Ilyin
would sit, day and night, never taking his eyes off her, wrathful at his
own weakness and pale with spiritual agony. He would call himself an
immoral schoolboy, would abuse her, tear his hair, but when darkness
came on and the passengers were asleep or got out at a station, he would
seize the opportunity to kneel before her and embrace her knees as he
had at the seat in the wood. . . .
She caught herself indulging in this day-dream.
"Listen. I won't go alone," she said. "You must come with me."
"Nonsense, Sofotchka!" sighed Lubyantsev. "One must be sensible and not
want the impossible."
"You will come when you know all about it," thought Sofya Petrovna.
Making up her mind to go at all costs, she felt that she was out of
danger. Little by little her ideas grew clearer; her spirits rose and
she allowed herself to think about it all, feeling that however much she
thought, however much she dreamed, she would go away. While her husband
was asleep, the evening gradually came on. She sat in the drawing-room
and played the piano. The greater liveliness out of doors, the sound of
music, but above all the thought that she was a sensible person, that
she had surmounted her difficulties, completely restored her spirits.
Other women, her appeased conscience told her, would probably have been
carried off their feet in her position, and would have lost their
balance, while she had almost died of shame, had been miserable, and was
now running out of the danger which perhaps did not exist! She was so
touched by her own virtue and determination that she even looked at
herself two or three times in the looking-glass.
When it got dark, visitors arrived. The men sat down in the dining-room
to play cards; the ladies remained in the drawing-room and the verandah.
The last to arrive was Ilyin. He was gloomy, morose, and looked ill. He
sat down in the corner of the sofa and did not move the whole evening.
Usually good-humoured and talkative, this time he remained silent,
frowned, and rubbed his eyebrows. When he had to answer some question,
he gave a forced smile with his upper lip only, and answered jerkily and
irritably. Four or five times he made some jest, but his jests sounded
harsh and cutting. It seemed to Sofya Petrovna that he was on the verge
of hysterics. Only now, sitting at the piano, she recognized fully for
the first time that this unhappy man was in deadly earnest, that his
soul was sick, and that he could find no rest. For her sake he was
wasting the best days of his youth and his career, spending the last of
his money on a summer villa, abandoning his mother and sisters, and,
worst of all, wearing himself out in an agonizing struggle with himself.
From mere common humanity he ought to be treated seriously.
She recognized all this clearly till it made her heart ache, and if at