The Bet, and other stories
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 find 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 stern 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 clear 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 that it would be hard to disobey. But she did not go up to him
and she did not say it, did not even think it.... The petty selfishness
of a young nature seemed never to have been revealed in her as strongly
as that evening. She admitted that Byin was unhappy and that he sat
on the sofa as if on hot coals. She was sorry for him, but at the
same time the presence of the man who loved her so desperately filled
her with a triumphant sense of her own power. She felt her youth,
her beauty, her inaccessibility, and--since she had decided to go
away--she gave herself full rein this evening. She coquetted, laughed
continually, she sang with singular emotion, and as one inspired.
Everything made her gay and everything seemed funny. It amused her to
recall the incident of the bench, the sentry looking on. The visitors
seemed funny to her, Ilyin’s insolent jokes, his tie pin which she had
never seen before. The pin was a little red snake with tiny diamond
eyes; the snake seemed so funny that she was ready to kiss and kiss it.
Sophia Pietrovna, nervously sang romantic songs, with a kind of
half-intoxication, and as if jeering at another’s sorrow she chose sad,
melancholy songs that spoke of lost hopes, of the past, of old age....
“And old age is approaching nearer and nearer,” she sang. What had she
to do with old age?
“There’s something wrong going on in me,” she thought now and then
through laughter and singing.
At twelve o’clock the visitors departed. Ilyin was the last to go. She
still felt warm enough about him to go with him to the lower step of
the terrace. She had the idea of telling him that she was going away
with her husband, just to see what effect this news would have upon him.
The moon was hiding behind the clouds, but it was so bright that Sophia
Pietrovna could see the wind playing with the tails of his overcoat and
with the creepers on the terrace. It was also plain how pale Ilyin was,
and how he twisted his upper-lip, trying to smile. “Sonia, Sonichka,
my dear little woman,” he murmured, not letting her speak. “My darling,
my pretty one.”
In a paroxysm of tenderness with tears in his voice, he showered her
with endearing words each tenderer than the other, and was already
speaking to her as if she were his wife or his mistress. Suddenly and
unexpectedly to her, he put one arm round her and with the other hand
he seized her elbow.
“My dear one, my beauty,” he began to whisper, kissing the nape of her
neck; “be sincere, come to me now.”
She slipped out of his embrace and lifted her head to break out in
indignation and revolt. But indignation did not come, and of all her
praiseworthy virtue and purity, there was left only enough for her to
say that which all average women say in similar circumstances:
“You must be mad.”
“But really let us go,” continued Ilyin. “Just now and over there by
the bench I felt convinced that you, Sonia, were as helpless as myself.
You too will be all the worse for it. You love me, and you are making a
useless bargain with your conscience.”
Seeing that she was leaving him he seized her by her lace sleeve and
ended quickly:
“If not to-day, then to-morrow; but you will have to give in. What’s
the good of putting if off? My dear, my darling Sonia, the verdict has
been pronounced. Why postpone the execution? Why deceive yourself?”
Sophia Pietrovna broke away from him and suddenly disappeared
inside the door. She returned to the drawing-room, shut the piano
mechanically, stared for a long time at the cover of a music book, and
sat down. She could neither stand nor think.... From her agitation
and passion remained only an awful weakness mingled with laziness
and tiredness. Her conscience whispered to her that she had behaved
wickedly and foolishly to-night, like a madwoman; that just now she
had been kissed on the terrace, and even now she had some strange
sensation in her waist and in her elbow. Not a soul was in the
drawing-room. Only a single candle was burning. Madame Loubianzev sat
on a little round stool before the piano without stirring as if waiting
for something, and as if taking advantage of her extreme exhaustion
and the dark a heavy unconquerable desire began to possess her. Like a
boa-constrictor, it enchained her limbs and soul. It grew every second
and was no longer threatening, but stood clear before her in all its
nakedness.
She sat thus for half an hour, not moving, and not stopping herself
from thinking of Ilyin. Then she got up lazily and went slowly into
the bed-room. Andrey Ilyitch was in bed already. She sat by the window
and gave herself to her desire. She felt no more “confusion.” All her
feelings and thoughts pressed lovingly round some clear purpose.
She still had a mind to struggle, but instantly she waved her hand
impotently, realising the strength and the determination of the foe. To
fight him power and strength were necessary, but her birth, up-bringing
and life had given her nothing on which to lean.
“You’re immoral, you’re horrible,” she tormented herself for her
weakness. “You’re a nice sort, you are!”
So indignant was her insulted modesty at this weakness that she called
herself all the bad names that she knew and she related to herself many
insulting, degrading truths. Thus she told herself that she never was
moral, and she had not fallen before only because there was no pretext,
that her day-long struggle had been nothing but a game and a comedy....
“Let us admit that I struggled,” she thought, “but what kind of a
fight was it? Even prostitutes struggle before they sell themselves,
and still they do sell themselves. It’s a pretty sort of fight. Like
milk, turns in a day.” She realised that it was not love that drew her
from her home nor Ilyin’s personality, but the sensations which await
her.... A little week-end _type_ like the rest of them.
“When the young bird’s mother was killed,” a hoarse tenor finished
singing.
If I am going, it’s time, thought Sophia Pietrovna. Her heart began to
beat with a frightful force.
“Andrey,” she almost cried. “Listen. Shall we go away? Shall we? Yes?”
“Yes.... I’ve told you already. You go alone.”
“But listen,” she said, “if you don’t come too, you may lose me. I seem
to be in love already.”
“Who with?” Andrey Ilyitch asked.
“It must be all the same for you, who with,” Sophia Pietrovna cried out.
Andrey Ilyitch got up, dangled his feet over the side of the bed, with
a look of surprise at the dark form of his wife.
“Imagination,” he yawned.
He could not believe her, but all the same he was frightened. After
having thought for a while, and asked his wife some unimportant
questions, he gave his views of the family, of infidelity.... He spoke
sleepily for about ten minutes and then lay down again. His remarks had
no success. There are a great many opinions in this world, and more
than half of them belong to people who have never known misery.
In spite of the late hour, the bungalow people were still moving behind
their windows. Sophia Pietrovna put on a long coat and stood for a
while, thinking. She still had force of mind to say to her sleepy
husband:
“Are you asleep? I’m going for a little walk. Would you like to come
with me?”
That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she walked out. It was
breezy and cool. She did not feel the breeze or the darkness but
walked on and on.... An irresistible power drove her, and it seemed to
her that if she stopped that power would push her in the back. “You’re
an immoral woman,” she murmured mechanically. “You’re horrible.”
She was choking for breath, burning with shame, did not feel her feet
under her, for that which drove her along was stronger than her shame,
her reason, her fear....
AFTER THE THEATRE
Nadya Zelenina had just returned with her mother from the theatre,
where they had been to see a performance of “Eugene Oniegin.” Entering
her room, she quickly threw off her dress, loosened her hair, and sat
down hurriedly in her petticoat and a white blouse to write a letter in
the style of Tatiana.
“I love you,”--she wrote--“but you don’t love me; no, you don’t!”
The moment she had written this, she smiled.
She was only sixteen years old, and so far she had not been in love.
She knew that Gorny, the officer, and Gronsdiev, the student, loved
her; but now, after the theatre, she wanted to doubt their love. To be
unloved and unhappy--how interesting. There is something beautiful,