The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or playing a
part.
"I don't understand," he said softly. "What is it you want?"
She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.
"Believe me, believe me, I beseech you ..." she said. "I love a pure,
honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don't know what I am doing.
Simple people say: 'The Evil One has beguiled me.' And I may say of
myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me."
"Hush, hush!..." he muttered.
He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and
affectionately, and by degrees she was comforted, and her gaiety
returned; they both began laughing.
Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the sea-front. The
town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea still
broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and
a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.
They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.
"I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the
board--Von Diderits," said Gurov. "Is your husband a German?"
"No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox
Russian himself."
At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at
the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning
mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did
not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow
sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the
eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no
Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as
indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this
constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each
of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of
the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards
perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so
lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings--the sea,
mountains, clouds, the open sky--Gurov thought how in reality everything
is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we
think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher
aims of our existence.
A man walked up to them--probably a keeper--looked at them and walked
away. And this detail seemed mysterious and beautiful, too. They saw a
steamer come from Theodosia, with its lights out in the glow of dawn.
"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergeyevna, after a silence.
"Yes. It's time to go home."
They went back to the town.
Then they met every day at twelve o'clock on the sea-front, lunched and
dined together, went for walks, admired the sea. She complained that she
slept badly, that her heart throbbed violently; asked the same
questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the fear that he did not
respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or gardens, when there
was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her
passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight while he
looked round in dread of some one's seeing them, the heat, the smell of
the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle,
well-dressed, well-fed people, made a new man of him; he told Anna
Sergeyevna how beautiful she was, how fascinating. He was impatiently
passionate, he would not move a step away from her, while she was often
pensive and continually urged him to confess that he did not respect
her, did not love her in the least, and thought of her as nothing but a
common woman. Rather late almost every evening they drove somewhere out
of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the expedition was always a
success, the scenery invariably impressed them as grand and beautiful.
They were expecting her husband to come, but a letter came from him,
saying that there was something wrong with his eyes, and he entreated
his wife to come home as quickly as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made haste
to go.
"It's a good thing I am going away," she said to Gurov. "It's the finger
of destiny!"
She went by coach and he went with her. They were driving the whole day.
When she had got into a compartment of the express, and when the second
bell had rung, she said:
"Let me look at you once more ... look at you once again. That's right."
She did not shed tears, but was so sad that she seemed ill, and her face
was quivering.
"I shall remember you ... think of you," she said. "God be with you; be
happy. Don't remember evil against me. We are parting forever--it must
be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with you."
The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a
minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had
conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium,
that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark
distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum
of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And
he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in
his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a
memory.... He was moved, sad, and conscious of a slight remorse. This
young woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy with him;
he was genuinely warm and affectionate with her, but yet in his manner,
his tone, and his caresses there had been a shade of light irony, the
coarse condescension of a happy man who was, besides, almost twice her
age. All the time she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously
he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had
unintentionally deceived her....
Here at the station was already a scent of autumn; it was a cold
evening.
"It's time for me to go north," thought Gurov as he left the platform.
"High time!"
III
At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were
heated, and in the morning it was still dark when the children were
having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light
the lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first
snow has fallen, on the first day of sledge-driving it is pleasant to
see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath,
and the season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and
birches, white with hoar-frost, have a good-natured expression; they are
nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one
doesn't want to be thinking of the sea and the mountains.
Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and
when he put on his fur coat and warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka,
and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his
recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by
little he became absorbed in Moscow life, greedily read three newspapers
a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He
already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties,
anniversary celebrations, and he felt flattered at entertaining
distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor
at the doctors' club. He could already eat a whole plateful of salt fish
and cabbage.
In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be
shrouded in a mist in his memory, and only from time to time would visit
him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a
month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in
his memory as though he had parted with Anna Sergeyevna only the day
before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the
evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children,
preparing their lessons, or when he listened to a song or the organ at
the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything
would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the
early morning with the mist on the mountains, and the steamer coming
from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his
room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into
dreams, and in his fancy the past was mingled with what was to come.
Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about
everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw
her as though she were living before him, and she seemed to him
lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer
than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from
the bookcase, from the fireplace, from the corner--he heard her
breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched
the women, looking for some one like her.
He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some
one. But in his home it was impossible to talk of his love, and he had
no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the
bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there
been anything beautiful, poetical, or edifying or simply interesting in
his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to
talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only
his wife twitched her black eyebrows, and said:
"The part of a lady-killer does not suit you at all, Dimitri."
One evening, coming out of the doctors' club with an official with whom
he had been playing cards, he could not resist saying:
"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in
Yalta!"
The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned
suddenly and shouted:
"Dmitri Dmitritch!"
"What?"
"You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!"
These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation,
and struck him as degrading and unclean. What savage manners, what
people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The
rage for card-playing, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk
always about the same thing. Useless pursuits and conversations always
about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better
part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling
and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or
getting away from it--just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.
Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he
had a headache all next day. And the next night he slept badly; he sat
up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his
children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk
of anything.
In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife
he was going to Petersburg to do something in the interests of a young
friend--and he set off for S----. What for? He did not very well know
himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her--to
arrange a meeting, if possible.
He reached S---- in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in
which the floor was covered with grey army cloth, and on the table was
an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback, with
its hat in its hand and its head broken off. The hotel porter gave him
the necessary information; Von Diderits lived in a house of his own in
Old Gontcharny Street--it was not far from the hotel: he was rich and
lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew
him. The porter pronounced the name "Dridirits."
Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house.