The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
last, five years ago, you were still a child. You were such a thin,
longlegged creature, with your hair hanging on your shoulders; you used
to wear short frocks, and I used to tease you, calling you a heron....
What time does!"
"Yes, five years!" sighed Tanya. "Much water has flowed since then. Tell
me, Andryusha, honestly," she began eagerly, looking him in the face:
"do you feel strange with us now? But why do I ask you? You are a man,
you live your own interesting life, you are somebody.... To grow apart
is so natural! But however that may be, Andryusha, I want you to think
of us as your people. We have a right to that."
"I do, Tanya."
"On your word of honour?"
"Yes, on my word of honour."
"You were surprised this evening that we have so many of your
photographs. You know my father adores you. Sometimes it seems to me
that he loves you more than he does me. He is proud of you. You are a
clever, extraordinary man, you have made a brilliant career for
yourself, and he is persuaded that you have turned out like this because
he brought you up. I don't try to prevent him from thinking so. Let
him."
Dawn was already beginning, and that was especially perceptible from the
distinctness with which the coils of smoke and the tops of the trees
began to stand out in the air.
"It's time we were asleep, though," said Tanya, "and it's cold, too."
She took his arm. "Thank you for coming, Andryusha. We have only
uninteresting acquaintances, and not many of them. We have only the
garden, the garden, the garden, and nothing else. Standards,
half-standards," she laughed. "Aports, Reinettes, Borovinkas, budded
stocks, grafted stocks.... All, all our life has gone into the garden. I
never even dream of anything but apples and pears. Of course, it is very
nice and useful, but sometimes one longs for something else for variety.
I remember that when you used to come to us for the summer holidays, or
simply a visit, it always seemed to be fresher and brighter in the
house, as though the covers had been taken off the lustres and the
furniture. I was only a little girl then, but yet I understood it."
She talked a long while and with great feeling. For some reason the idea
came into his head that in the course of the summer he might grow fond
of this little, weak, talkative creature, might be carried away and fall
in love; in their position it was so possible and natural! This thought
touched and amused him; he bent down to her sweet, preoccupied face and
hummed softly:
"'Onyegin, I won't conceal it;
I madly love Tatiana....'"
By the time they reached the house, Yegor Semyonitch had got up. Kovrin
did not feel sleepy; he talked to the old man and went to the garden
with him. Yegor Semyonitch was a tall, broad-shouldered, corpulent man,
and he suffered from asthma, yet he walked so fast that it was hard work
to hurry after him. He had an extremely preoccupied air; he was always
hurrying somewhere, with an expression that suggested that if he were
one minute late all would be ruined!
"Here is a business, brother ..." he began, standing still to take
breath. "On the surface of the ground, as you see, is frost; but if you
raise the thermometer on a stick fourteen feet above the ground, there
it is warm.... Why is that?"
"I really don't know," said Kovrin, and he laughed.
"H'm!... One can't know everything, of course.... However large the
intellect may be, you can't find room for everything in it. I suppose
you still go in chiefly for philosophy?"
"Yes, I lecture in psychology; I am working at philosophy in general."
"And it does not bore you?"
"On the contrary, it's all I live for."
"Well, God bless you!..." said Yegor Semyonitch, meditatively stroking
his grey whiskers. "God bless you!... I am delighted about you ...
delighted, my boy...."
But suddenly he listened, and, with a terrible face, ran off and quickly
disappeared behind the trees in a cloud of smoke.
"Who tied this horse to an apple-tree?" Kovrin heard his despairing,
heart-rending cry. "Who is the low scoundrel who has dared to tie this
horse to an apple-tree? My God, my God! They have ruined everything;
they have spoilt everything; they have done everything filthy, horrible,
and abominable. The orchard's done for, the orchard's ruined. My God!"
When he came back to Kovrin, his face looked exhausted and mortified.
"What is one to do with these accursed people?" he said in a tearful
voice, flinging up his hands. "Styopka was carting dung at night, and
tied the horse to an apple-tree! He twisted the reins round it, the
rascal, as tightly as he could, so that the bark is rubbed off in three
places. What do you think of that! I spoke to him and he stands like a
post and only blinks his eyes. Hanging is too good for him."
Growing calmer, he embraced Kovrin and kissed him on the cheek.
"Well, God bless you!... God bless you!..." he muttered. "I am very glad
you have come. Unutterably glad.... Thank you."
Then, with the same rapid step and preoccupied face, he made the round
of the whole garden, and showed his former ward all his greenhouses and
hot-houses, his covered-in garden, and two apiaries which he called the
marvel of our century.
While they were walking the sun rose, flooding the garden with brilliant
light. It grew warm. Foreseeing a long, bright, cheerful day, Kovrin
recollected that it was only the beginning of May, and that he had
before him a whole summer as bright, cheerful, and long; and suddenly
there stirred in his bosom a joyous, youthful feeling, such as he used
to experience in his childhood, running about in that garden. And he
hugged the old man and kissed him affectionately. Both of them, feeling
touched, went indoors and drank tea out of old-fashioned china cups,
with cream and satisfying krendels made with milk and eggs; and these
trifles reminded Kovrin again of his childhood and boyhood. The
delightful present was blended with the impressions of the past that
stirred within him; there was a tightness at his heart; yet he was
happy.
He waited till Tanya was awake and had coffee with her, went for a walk,
then went to his room and sat down to work. He read attentively, making
notes, and from time to time raised his eyes to look out at the open
windows or at the fresh, still dewy flowers in the vases on the table;
and again he dropped his eyes to his book, and it seemed to him as
though every vein in his body was quivering and fluttering with
pleasure.
II
In the country he led just as nervous and restless a life as in town. He
read and wrote a great deal, he studied Italian, and when he was out for
a walk, thought with pleasure that he would soon sit down to work again.
He slept so little that every one wondered at him; if he accidentally
dozed for half an hour in the daytime, he would lie awake all night,
and, after a sleepless night, would feel cheerful and vigorous as though
nothing had happened.
He talked a great deal, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars. Very
often, almost every day, young ladies of neighbouring families would
come to the Pesotskys', and would sing and play the piano with Tanya;
sometimes a young neighbour who was a good violinist would come, too.
Kovrin listened with eagerness to the music and singing, and was
exhausted by it, and this showed itself by his eyes closing and his head
falling to one side.
One day he was sitting on the balcony after evening tea, reading. At the
same time, in the drawing-room, Tanya taking soprano, one of the young
ladies a contralto, and the young man with his violin, were practising a
well-known serenade of Braga's. Kovrin listened to the words--they were
Russian--and could not understand their meaning. At last, leaving his
book and listening attentively, he understood: a maiden, full of sick
fancies, heard one night in her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and
lovely that she was obliged to recognise them as a holy harmony which is
unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies back to heaven. Kovrin's eyes
began to close. He got up, and in exhaustion walked up and down the
drawing-room, and then the dining-room. When the singing was over he
took Tanya's arm, and with her went out on the balcony.
"I have been all day thinking of a legend," he said. "I don't remember
whether I have read it somewhere or heard it, but it is a strange and
almost grotesque legend. To begin with, it is somewhat obscure. A
thousand years ago a monk, dressed in black, wandered about the desert,
somewhere in Syria or Arabia.... Some miles from where he was, some
fisherman saw another black monk, who was moving slowly over the surface
of a lake. This second monk was a mirage. Now forget all the laws of
optics, which the legend does not recognise, and listen to the rest.
From that mirage there was cast another mirage, then from that other a
third, so that the image of the black monk began to be repeated
endlessly from one layer of the atmosphere to another. So that he was
seen at one time in Africa, at another in Spain, then in Italy, then in
the Far North.... Then he passed out of the atmosphere of the earth, and
now he is wandering all over the universe, still never coming into
conditions in which he might disappear. Possibly he may be seen now in
Mars or in some star of the Southern Cross. But, my dear, the real point
on which the whole legend hangs lies in the fact that, exactly a
thousand years from the day when the monk walked in the desert, the
mirage will return to the atmosphere of the earth again and will appear
to men. And it seems that the thousand years is almost up.... According
to the legend, we may look out for the black monk to-day or to-morrow."
"A queer mirage," said Tanya, who did not like the legend.
"But the most wonderful part of it all," laughed Kovrin, "is that I
simply cannot recall where I got this legend from. Have I read it
somewhere? Have I heard it? Or perhaps I dreamed of the black monk. I
swear I don't remember. But the legend interests me. I have been
thinking about it all day."
Letting Tanya go back to her visitors, he went out of the house, and,
lost in meditation, walked by the flower-beds. The sun was already
setting. The flowers, having just been watered, gave forth a damp,
irritating fragrance. Indoors they began singing again, and in the
distance the violin had the effect of a human voice. Kovrin, racking his
brains to remember where he had read or heard the legend, turned slowly
towards the park, and unconsciously went as far as the river. By a
little path that ran along the steep bank, between the bare roots, he
went down to the water, disturbed the peewits there and frightened two
ducks. The last rays of the setting sun still threw light here and there
on the gloomy pines, but it was quite dark on the surface of the river.
Kovrin crossed to the other side by the narrow bridge. Before him lay a
wide field covered with young rye not yet in blossom. There was no
living habitation, no living soul in the distance, and it seemed as
though the little path, if one went along it, would take one to the
unknown, mysterious place where the sun had just gone down, and where
the evening glow was flaming in immensity and splendour.
"How open, how free, how still it is here!" thought Kovrin, walking
along the path. "And it feels as though all the world were watching me,
hiding and waiting for me to understand it...."
But then waves began running across the rye, and a light evening breeze
softly touched his uncovered head. A minute later there was another gust
of wind, but stronger--the rye began rustling, and he heard behind him
the hollow murmur of the pines. Kovrin stood still in amazement. From
the horizon there rose up to the sky, like a whirlwind or a waterspout,