The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Volodya. Why do you look at me like that from under your brows? Look me
straight in the face, if you please! Yes, now then, clumsy seal!"
Volodya made up his mind to speak. Wanting to smile, he twitched his
lower lip, blinked, and again put his hand to his forehead.
"I ... I love you," he said.
Nyuta raised her eyebrows in surprise, and laughed.
"What do I hear?" she sang, as prima-donnas sing at the opera when they
hear something awful. "What? What did you say? Say it again, say it
again...."
"I ... I love you!" repeated Volodya.
And without his will's having any part in his action, without reflection
or understanding, he took half a step towards Nyuta and clutched her by
the arm. Everything was dark before his eyes, and tears came into them.
The whole world was turned into one big, rough towel which smelt of the
bathhouse.
"Bravo, bravo!" he heard a merry laugh. "Why don't you speak? I want you
to speak! Well?"
Seeing that he was not prevented from holding her arm, Volodya glanced
at Nyuta's laughing face, and clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round
her waist, his hands meeting behind her back. He held her round the
waist with both arms, while, putting her hands up to her head, showing
the dimples in her elbows, she set her hair straight under the kerchief
and said in a calm voice:
"You must be tactful, polite, charming, and you can only become that
under feminine influence. But what a wicked, angry face you have! You
must talk, laugh.... Yes, Volodya, don't be surly; you are young and
will have plenty of time for philosophising. Come, let go of me; I am
going. Let go."
Without effort she released her waist, and, humming something, walked
out of the arbour. Volodya was left alone. He smoothed his hair, smiled,
and walked three times to and fro across the arbour, then he sat down on
the bench and smiled again. He felt insufferably ashamed, so much so
that he wondered that human shame could reach such a pitch of acuteness
and intensity. Shame made him smile, gesticulate, and whisper some
disconnected words.
He was ashamed that he had been treated like a small boy, ashamed of his
shyness, and, most of all, that he had had the audacity to put his arms
round the waist of a respectable married woman, though, as it seemed to
him, he had neither through age nor by external quality, nor by social
position any right to do so.
He jumped up, went out of the arbour, and, without looking round, walked
into the recesses of the garden furthest from the house.
"Ah! only to get away from here as soon as possible," he thought,
clutching his head. "My God! as soon as possible."
The train by which Volodya was to go back with his _maman_ was at
eight-forty. There were three hours before the train started, but he
would with pleasure have gone to the station at once without waiting for
his _maman_.
At eight o'clock he went to the house. His whole figure was expressive
of determination: what would be, would be! He made up his mind to go in
boldly, to look them straight in the face, to speak in a loud voice,
regardless of everything.
He crossed the terrace, the big hall and the drawing-room, and there
stopped to take breath. He could hear them in the dining-room, drinking
tea. Madame Shumihin, _maman_, and Nyuta were talking and laughing about
something.
Volodya listened.
"I assure you!" said Nyuta. "I could not believe my eyes! When he began
declaring his passion and--just imagine!--put his arms round my waist, I
should not have recognised him. And you know he has a way with him! When
he told me he was in love with me, there was something brutal in his
face, like a Circassian."
"Really!" gasped _maman_, going off into a peal of laughter. "Really!
How he does remind me of his father!"
Volodya ran back and dashed out into the open air.
"How could they talk of it aloud!" he wondered in agony, clasping his
hands and looking up to the sky in horror. "They talk aloud in cold
blood ... and _maman_ laughed!... _Maman!_ My God, why didst Thou give
me such a mother? Why?"
But he had to go to the house, come what might. He walked three times up
and down the avenue, grew a little calmer, and went into the house.
"Why didn't you come in in time for tea?" Madame Shumihin asked sternly.
"I am sorry, it's ... it's time for me to go," he muttered, not raising
his eyes. "_Maman_, it's eight o'clock!"
"You go alone, my dear," said his _maman_ languidly. "I am staying the
night with Lili. Goodbye, my dear.... Let me make the sign of the cross
over you."
She made the sign of the cross over her son, and said in French, turning
to Nyuta:
"He's rather like Lermontov ... isn't he?"
Saying good-bye after a fashion, without looking any one in the face,
Volodya went out of the dining-room. Ten minutes later he was walking
along the road to the station, and was glad of it. Now he felt neither
frightened nor ashamed; he breathed freely and easily.
About half a mile from the station, he sat down on a stone by the side
of the road, and gazed at the sun, which was half hidden behind a
barrow. There were lights already here and there at the station, and one
green light glimmered dimly, but the train was not yet in sight. It was
pleasant to Volodya to sit still without moving, and to watch the
evening coming little by little. The darkness of the arbour, the
footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, the laughter, and the waist--all
these rose with amazing vividness before his imagination, and all this
was no longer so terrible and important as before.
"It's of no consequence.... She did not pull her hand away, and laughed
when I held her by the waist," he thought. "So she must have liked it.
If she had disliked it she would have been angry...."
And now Volodya felt sorry that he had not had more boldness there in
the arbour. He felt sorry that he was so stupidly going away, and he was
by now persuaded that if the same thing happened again he would be
bolder and look at it more simply.
And it would not be difficult for the opportunity to occur again. They
used to stroll about for a long time after supper at the Shumihins'. If
Volodya went for a walk with Nyuta in the dark garden, there would be an
opportunity!
"I will go back," he thought, "and will go by the morning train
to-morrow.... I will say I have missed the train."
And he turned back.... Madame Shumihin, _Maman_, Nyuta, and one of the
nieces were sitting on the verandah, playing _vint_. When Volodya told
them the lie that he had missed the train, they were uneasy that he
might be late for the examination day, and advised him to get up early.
All the while they were playing he sat on one side, greedily watching
Nyuta and waiting.... He already had a plan prepared in his mind: he
would go up to Nyuta in the dark, would take her by the hand, then would
embrace her; there would be no need to say anything, as both of them
would understand without words.
But after supper the ladies did not go for a walk in the garden, but
went on playing cards. They played till one o'clock at night, and then
broke up to go to bed.
"How stupid it all is!" Volodya thought with vexation as he got into
bed. "But never mind; I'll wait till to-morrow ... to-morrow in the
arbour. It doesn't matter...."
He did not attempt to go to sleep, but sat in bed, hugging his knees and
thinking. All thought of the examination was hateful to him. He had
already made up his mind that they would expel him, and that there was
nothing terrible about his being expelled. On the contrary, it was a
good thing--a very good thing, in fact. Next day he would be as free as
a bird; he would put on ordinary clothes instead of his school uniform,
would smoke openly, come out here, and make love to Nyuta when he liked;
and he would not be a schoolboy but "a young man." And as for the rest
of it, what is called a career, a future, that was clear; Volodya would
go into the army or the telegraph service, or he would go into a
chemist's shop and work his way up till he was a dispenser.... There
were lots of callings. An hour or two passed, and he was still sitting
and thinking....
Towards three o'clock, when it was beginning to get light, the door
creaked cautiously and his _maman_ came into the room.
"Aren't you asleep?" she asked, yawning. "Go to sleep; I have only come
in for a minute.... I am only fetching the drops...."
"What for?"
"Poor Lili has got spasms again. Go to sleep, my child, your
examination's to-morrow...."
She took a bottle of something out of the cupboard, went to the window,
read the label, and went away.
"Marya Leontyevna, those are not the drops!" Volodya heard a woman's
voice, a minute later. "That's convallaria, and Lili wants morphine. Is
your son asleep? Ask him to look for it...."
It was Nyuta's voice. Volodya turned cold. He hurriedly put on his
trousers, flung his coat over his shoulders, and went to the door.
"Do you understand? Morphine," Nyuta explained in a whisper. "There must
be a label in Latin. Wake Volodya; he will find it."
_Maman_ opened the door and Volodya caught sight of Nyuta. She was
wearing the same loose wrapper in which she had gone to bathe. Her hair
hung loose and disordered on her shoulders, her face looked sleepy and
dark in the half-light....
"Why, Volodya is not asleep," she said. "Volodya, look in the cupboard
for the morphine, there's a dear! What a nuisance Lili is! She has
always something the matter."
_Maman_ muttered something, yawned, and went away.
"Look for it," said Nyuta. "Why are you standing still?"
Volodya went to the cupboard, knelt down, and began looking through the
bottles and boxes of medicine. His hands were trembling, and he had a
feeling in his chest and stomach as though cold waves were running all
over his inside. He felt suffocated and giddy from the smell of ether,
carbolic acid, and various drugs, which he quite unnecessarily snatched
up with his trembling fingers and spilled in so doing.
"I believe _maman_ has gone," he thought. "That's a good thing ... a
good thing...."
"Will you be quick?" said Nyuta, drawling.
"In a minute.... Here, I believe this is morphine," said Volodya,
reading on one of the labels the word "morph...." "Here it is!"
Nyuta was standing in the doorway in such a way that one foot was in his
room and one was in the passage. She was tidying her hair, which was
difficult to put in order because it was so thick and long, and looked
absent-mindedly at Volodya. In her loose wrap, with her sleepy face and
her hair down, in the dim light that came into the white sky not yet lit
by the sun, she seemed to Volodya captivating, magnificent....
Fascinated, trembling all over, and remembering with relish how he had
held that exquisite body in his arms in the arbour, he handed her the
bottle and said:
"How wonderful you are!"
"What?"
She came into the room.
"What?" she asked, smiling.
He was silent and looked at her, then, just as in the arbour, he took
her hand, and she looked at him with a smile and waited for what would
happen next.
"I love you," he whispered.
She left off smiling, thought a minute, and said:
"Wait a little; I think somebody is coming. Oh, these schoolboys!" she
said in an undertone, going to the door and peeping out into the
passage. "No, there is no one to be seen...."
She came back.
Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the sunrise and
himself--all melted together in one sensation of acute, extraordinary,
incredible bliss, for which one might give up one's whole life and face
eternal torments.... But half a minute passed and all that vanished.
Volodya saw only a fat, plain face, distorted by an expression of
repulsion, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had
happened.