The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
something else, possibly even more serious than consumption. I don't
know whether it was the effect of my illness or of an incipient change
in my philosophy of life of which I was not conscious at the time, but I
was, day by day, more possessed by a passionate, irritating longing for
ordinary everyday life. I yearned for mental tranquillity, health, fresh
air, good food. I was becoming a dreamer, and, like a dreamer, I did not
know exactly what I wanted. Sometimes I felt inclined to go into a
monastery, to sit there for days together by the window and gaze at the
trees and the fields; sometimes I fancied I would buy fifteen acres of
land and settle down as a country gentleman; sometimes I inwardly vowed
to take up science and become a professor at some provincial university.
I was a retired navy lieutenant; I dreamed of the sea, of our squadron,
and of the corvette in which I had made the cruise round the world. I
longed to experience again the indescribable feeling when, walking in
the tropical forest or looking at the sunset in the Bay of Bengal, one
is thrilled with ecstasy and at the same time homesick. I dreamed of
mountains, women, music, and, with the curiosity of a child, I looked
into people's faces, listened to their voices. And when I stood at the
door and watched Orlov sipping his coffee, I felt not a footman, but a
man interested in everything in the world, even in Orlov.
In appearance Orlov was a typical Petersburger, with narrow shoulders, a
long waist, sunken temples, eyes of an indefinite colour, and scanty,
dingy-coloured hair, beard and moustaches. His face had a stale,
unpleasant look, though it was studiously cared for. It was particularly
unpleasant when he was asleep or lost in thought. It is not worth while
describing a quite ordinary appearance; besides, Petersburg is not
Spain, and a man's appearance is not of much consequence even in love
affairs, and is only of value to a handsome footman or coachman. I have
spoken of Orlov's face and hair only because there was something in his
appearance worth mentioning. When Orlov took a newspaper or book,
whatever it might be, or met people, whoever they be, an ironical smile
began to come into his eyes, and his whole countenance assumed an
expression of light mockery in which there was no malice. Before reading
or hearing anything he always had his irony in readiness, as a savage
has his shield. It was an habitual irony, like some old liquor brewed
years ago, and now it came into his face probably without any
participation of his will, as it were by reflex action. But of that
later.
Soon after midday he took his portfolio, full of papers, and drove to
his office. He dined away from home and returned after eight o'clock. I
used to light the lamp and candles in his study, and he would sit down
in a low chair with his legs stretched out on another chair, and,
reclining in that position, would begin reading. Almost every day he
brought in new books with him or received parcels of them from the
shops, and there were heaps of books in three languages, to say nothing
of Russian, which he had read and thrown away, in the corners of my room
and under my bed. He read with extraordinary rapidity. They say: "Tell
me what you read, and I'll tell you who you are." That may be true, but
it was absolutely impossible to judge of Orlov by what he read. It was a
regular hotchpotch. Philosophy, French novels, political economy,
finance, new poets, and publications of the firm _Posrednik_*--and he
read it all with the same rapidity and with the same ironical expression
in his eyes.
* I.e., Tchertkov and others, publishers of Tolstoy, who issued good
literature for peasants' reading.
After ten o'clock he carefully dressed, often in evening dress, very
rarely in his _kammer-junker_'s uniform, and went out, returning in the
morning.
Our relations were quiet and peaceful, and we never had any
misunderstanding. As a rule he did not notice my presence, and when he
talked to me there was no expression of irony on his face--he evidently
did not look upon me as a human being.
I only once saw him angry. One day--it was a week after I had entered
his service--he came back from some dinner at nine o'clock; his face
looked ill-humoured and exhausted. When I followed him into his study to
light the candles, he said to me:
"There's a nasty smell in the flat."
"No, the air is fresh," I answered.
"I tell you, there's a bad smell," he answered irritably.
"I open the movable panes every day."
"Don't argue, blockhead!" he shouted.
I was offended, and was on the point of answering, and goodness knows
how it would have ended if Polya, who knew her master better than I did,
had not intervened.
"There really is a disagreeable smell," she said, raising her eyebrows.
"What can it be from? Stepan, open the pane in the drawing-room, and
light the fire."
With much bustle and many exclamations, she went through all the rooms,
rustling her skirts and squeezing the sprayer with a hissing sound. And
Orlov was still out of humour; he was obviously restraining himself not
to vent his ill-temper aloud. He was sitting at the table and rapidly
writing a letter. After writing a few lines he snorted angrily and tore
it up, then he began writing again.
"Damn them all!" he muttered. "They expect me to have an abnormal
memory!"
At last the letter was written; he got up from the table and said,
turning to me:
"Go to Znamensky Street and deliver this letter to Zinaida Fyodorovna
Krasnovsky in person. But first ask the porter whether her husband
--that is, Mr. Krasnovsky--has returned yet. If he has returned, don't
deliver the letter, but come back. Wait a minute!... If she asks whether
I have any one here, tell her that there have been two gentlemen here
since eight o'clock, writing something."
I drove to Znamensky Street. The porter told me that Mr. Krasnovsky had
not yet come in, and I made my way up to the third storey. The door was
opened by a tall, stout, drab-coloured flunkey with black whiskers, who
in a sleepy, churlish, and apathetic voice, such as only flunkeys use in
addressing other flunkeys, asked me what I wanted. Before I had time to
answer, a lady dressed in black came hurriedly into the hall. She
screwed up her eyes and looked at me.
"Is Zinaida Fyodorovna at home?" I asked.
"That is me," said the lady.
"A letter from Georgy Ivanitch."
She tore the letter open impatiently, and holding it in both hands, so
that I saw her sparkling diamond rings, she began reading. I made out a
pale face with soft lines, a prominent chin, and long dark lashes. From
her appearance I should not have judged the lady to be more than five
and twenty.
"Give him my thanks and my greetings," she said when she had finished
the letter. "Is there any one with Georgy Ivanitch?" she asked softly,
joyfully, and as though ashamed of her mistrust.
"Two gentlemen," I answered. "They're writing something."
"Give him my greetings and thanks," she repeated, bending her head
sideways, and, reading the letter as she walked, she went noiselessly
out. I saw few women at that time, and this lady of whom I had a passing
glimpse made an impression on me. As I walked home I recalled her face
and the delicate fragrance about her, and fell to dreaming. By the time
I got home Orlov had gone out.
II
And so my relations with my employer were quiet and peaceful, but still
the unclean and degrading element which I so dreaded on becoming a
footman was conspicuous and made itself felt every day. I did not get on
with Polya. She was a well-fed and pampered hussy who adored Orlov
because he was a gentleman and despised me because I was a footman.
Probably, from the point of view of a real flunkey or cook, she was
fascinating, with her red cheeks, her turned-up nose, her coquettish
glances, and the plumpness, one might almost say fatness, of her person.
She powdered her face, coloured her lips and eyebrows, laced herself in,
and wore a bustle, and a bangle made of coins. She walked with little
ripping steps; as she walked she swayed, or, as they say, wriggled her
shoulders and back. The rustle of her skirts, the creaking of her stays,
the jingle her bangle and the vulgar smell of lip salve, toilet vinegar,
and scent stolen from her master, aroused in me whilst I was doing the
rooms with her in the morning a sensation as though I were taking part
with her in some abomination.
Either because I did not steal as she did, or because I displayed no
desire to become her lover, which she probably looked upon as an insult,
or perhaps because she felt that I was a man of a different order, she
hated me from the first day. My inexperience, my appearance--so unlike
a flunkey--and my illness, seemed to her pitiful and excited her
disgust. I had a bad cough at that time, and sometimes at night I
prevented her from sleeping, as our rooms were only divided by a wooden
partition, and every morning she said to me:
"Again you didn't let me sleep. You ought to be in hospital instead of
in service."
She so genuinely believed that I was hardly a human being, but something
infinitely below her, that, like the Roman matrons who were not ashamed
to bathe before their slaves, she sometimes went about in my presence in
nothing but her chemise.
Once when I was in a happy, dreamy mood, I asked her at dinner (we had
soup and roast meat sent in from a restaurant every day):
"Polya, do you believe in God?"
"Why, of course!"
"Then," I went on, "you believe there will be a day of judgment, and
that we shall have to answer to God for every evil action?"
She gave me no reply, but simply made a contemptuous grimace, and,
looking that time at her cold eyes and over-fed expression, I realised
that for her complete and finished personality no God, no conscience, no
laws existed, and that if I had had to set fire to the house, to murder
or to rob, I could not have hired a better accomplice.
In my novel surroundings I felt very uncomfortable for the first week at
Orlov's before I got used to being addressed as "thou," and being
constantly obliged to tell lies (saying "My master is not at home" when
he was). In my flunkey's swallow-tail I felt as though I were in armour.
But I grew accustomed to it in time. Like a genuine footman, I waited at
table, tidied the rooms, ran and drove about on errands of all sorts.
When Orlov did not want to keep an appointment with Zinaida Fyodorovna,
or when he forgot that he had promised to go and see her, I drove to
Znamensky Street, put a letter into her hands and told a lie. And the
result of it all was quite different from what I had expected when I
became a footman. Every day of this new life of mine was wasted for me
and my cause, as Orlov never spoke of his father, nor did his visitors,
and all I could learn of the stateman's doings was, as before, what I
could glean from the newspapers or from correspondence with my comrades.
The hundreds of notes and papers I used to find in the study and read
had not the remotest connection with what I was looking for. Orlov was
absolutely uninterested in his father's political work, and looked as
though he had never heard of it, or as though his father had long been
dead.
III
Every Thursday we had visitors.
I ordered a piece of roast beef from the restaurant and telephoned to
Eliseyev's to send us caviare, cheese, oysters, and so on. I bought
playing-cards. Polya was busy all day getting ready the tea-things and
the dinner service. To tell the truth, this spurt of activity came as a
pleasant change in our idle life, and Thursdays were for us the most
interesting days.
Only three visitors used to come. The most important and perhaps the
most interesting was the one called Pekarsky--a tall, lean man of five