The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Ossipovna, while I retired to my quarters, and was kept awake a long
while by coughing and headache.
IV
Three weeks after I entered Orlov's service--it was Sunday morning, I
remember--somebody rang the bell. It was not yet eleven, and Orlov was
still asleep. I went to open the door. You can imagine my astonishment
when I found a lady in a veil standing at the door on the landing.
"Is Georgy Ivanitch up?" she asked.
From her voice I recognised Zinaida Fyodorovna, to whom I had taken
letters in Znamensky Street. I don't remember whether I had time or
self-possession to answer her--I was taken aback at seeing her. And,
indeed, she did not need my answer. In a flash she had darted by me,
and, filling the hall with the fragrance of her perfume, which I
remember to this day, she went on, and her footsteps died away. For at
least half an hour afterwards I heard nothing. But again some one rang.
This time it was a smartly dressed girl, who looked like a maid in a
wealthy family, accompanied by our house porter. Both were out of
breath, carrying two trunks and a dress-basket.
"These are for Zinaida Fyodorovna," said the girl.
And she went down without saying another word. All this was mysterious,
and made Polya, who had a deep admiration for the pranks of her betters,
smile slyly to herself; she looked as though she would like to say, "So
that's what we're up to," and she walked about the whole time on tiptoe.
At last we heard footsteps; Zinaida Fyodorovna came quickly into the
hall, and seeing me at the door of my room, said:
"Stepan, take Georgy Ivanitch his things."
When I went in to Orlov with his clothes and his boots, he was sitting
on the bed with his feet on the bearskin rug. There was an air of
embarrassment about his whole figure. He did not notice me, and my
menial opinion did not interest him; he was evidently perturbed and
embarrassed before himself, before his inner eye. He dressed, washed,
and used his combs and brushes silently and deliberately, as though
allowing himself time to think over his position and to reflect, and
even from his back one could see he was troubled and dissatisfied with
himself.
They drank coffee together. Zinaida Fyodorovna poured out coffee for
herself and for Orlov, then she put her elbows on the table and laughed.
"I still can't believe it," she said. "When one has been a long while on
one's travels and reaches a hotel at last, it's difficult to believe
that one hasn't to go on. It is pleasant to breathe freely."
With the expression of a child who very much wants to be mischievous,
she sighed with relief and laughed again.
"You will excuse me," said Orlov, nodding towards the coffee. "Reading
at breakfast is a habit I can't get over. But I can do two things at
once--read and listen."
"Read away.... You shall keep your habits and your freedom. But why do
you look so solemn? Are you always like that in the morning, or is it
only to-day? Aren't you glad?"
"Yes, I am. But I must own I am a little overwhelmed."
"Why? You had plenty of time to prepare yourself for my descent upon
you. I've been threatening to come every day."
"Yes, but I didn't expect you to carry out your threat to-day."
"I didn't expect it myself, but that's all the better. It's all the
better, my dear. It's best to have an aching tooth out and have done
with it."
"Yes, of course."
"Oh, my dear," she said, closing her eyes, "all is well that ends well;
but before this happy ending, what suffering there has been! My laughing
means nothing; I am glad, I am happy, but I feel more like crying than
laughing. Yesterday I had to fight a regular battle," she went on in
French. "God alone knows how wretched I was. But I laugh because I can't
believe in it. I keep fancying that my sitting here drinking coffee with
you is not real, but a dream."
Then, still speaking French, she described how she had broken with her
husband the day before and her eyes were alternately full of tears and
of laughter while she gazed with rapture at Orlov. She told him her
husband had long suspected her, but had avoided explanations; they had
frequent quarrels, and usually at the most heated moment he would
suddenly subside into silence and depart to his study for fear that in
his exasperation he might give utterance to his suspicions or she might
herself begin to speak openly. And she had felt guilty, worthless,
incapable of taking a bold and serious step, and that had made her hate
herself and her husband more every day, and she had suffered the
torments of hell. But the day before, when during a quarrel he had cried
out in a tearful voice, "My God, when will it end?" and had walked off
to his study, she had run after him like a cat after a mouse, and,
preventing him from shutting the door, she had cried that she hated him
with her whole soul. Then he let her come into the study and she had
told him everything, had confessed that she loved some one else, that
that some one else was her real, most lawful husband, and that she
thought it her true duty to go away to him that very day, whatever might
happen, if she were to be shot for it.
"There's a very romantic streak in you," Orlov interrupted, keeping his
eyes fixed on the newspaper.
She laughed and went on talking without touching her coffee. Her cheeks
glowed and she was a little embarrassed by it, and she looked in
confusion at Polya and me. From what she went on to say I learnt that
her husband had answered her with threats, reproaches, and finally
tears, and that it would have been more accurate to say that she, and
not he, had been the attacking party.
"Yes, my dear, so long as I was worked up, everything went all right,"
she told Orlov; "but as night came on, my spirits sank. You don't
believe in God, _George_, but I do believe a little, and I fear
retribution. God requires of us patience, magnanimity, self-sacrifice,
and here I am refusing to be patient and want to remodel my life to suit
myself. Is that right? What if from the point of view of God it's wrong?
At two o'clock in the night my husband came to me and said: 'You dare
not go away. I'll fetch you back through the police and make a scandal.'
And soon afterwards I saw him like a shadow at my door. 'Have mercy on
me! Your elopement may injure me in the service.' Those words had a
coarse effect upon me and made me feel stiff all over. I felt as though
the retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling
with terror. I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I
should be dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow
cold to me--all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a
nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness, but
then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to dispose
of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a
tangle--I was in despair and did not know what to do or think. But the
sun rose and I grew happier. As soon as it was morning I dashed off to
you. Ah, what I've been through, dear one! I haven't slept for two
nights!"
She was tired out and excited. She was sleepy, and at the same time she
wanted to talk endlessly, to laugh and to cry, and to go to a restaurant
to lunch that she might feel her freedom.
"You have a cosy flat, but I am afraid it may be small for the two of
us," she said, walking rapidly through all the rooms when they had
finished breakfast. "What room will you give me? I like this one because
it is next to your study."
At one o'clock she changed her dress in the room next to the study,
which from that time she called hers, and she went off with Orlov to
lunch. They dined, too, at a restaurant, and spent the long interval
between lunch and dinner in shopping. Till late at night I was opening
the door to messengers and errand-boys from the shops. They bought,
among other things, a splendid pier-glass, a dressing-table, a bedstead,
and a gorgeous tea service which we did not need. They bought a regular
collection of copper saucepans, which we set in a row on the shelf in
our cold, empty kitchen. As we were unpacking the tea service Polya's
eyes gleamed, and she looked at me two or three times with hatred and
fear that I, not she, would be the first to steal one of these charming
cups. A lady's writing-table, very expensive and inconvenient, came too.
It was evident that Zinaida Fyodorovna contemplated settling with us for
good, and meant to make the flat her home.
She came back with Orlov between nine and ten. Full of proud
consciousness that she had done something bold and out of the common,
passionately in love, and, as she imagined, passionately loved,
exhausted, looking forward to a sweet sound sleep, Zinaida Fyodorovna
was revelling in her new life. She squeezed her hands together in the
excess of her joy, declared that everything was delightful, and swore
that she would love Orlov for ever; and these vows, and the naïve,
almost childish confidence that she too was deeply loved and would be
loved forever, made her at least five years younger. She talked charming
nonsense and laughed at herself.
"There's no other blessing greater than freedom!" she said, forcing
herself to say something serious and edifying. "How absurd it is when
you think of it! We attach no value to our own opinion even when it is
wise, but tremble before the opinion of all sorts of stupid people. Up
to the last minute I was afraid of what other people would say, but as
soon as I followed my own instinct and made up my mind to go my own way,
my eyes were opened, I overcame my silly fears, and now I am happy and
wish every one could be as happy!"
But her thoughts immediately took another turn, and she began talking of
another flat, of wallpapers, horses, a trip to Switzerland and Italy.
Orlov was tired by the restaurants and the shops, and was still
suffering from the same uneasiness that I had noticed in the morning. He
smiled, but more from politeness than pleasure, and when she spoke of
anything seriously, he agreed ironically: "Oh, yes."
"Stepan, make haste and find us a good cook," she said to me.
"There's no need to be in a hurry over the kitchen arrangements," said
Orlov, looking at me coldly. "We must first move into another flat."
We had never had cooking done at home nor kept horses, because, as he
said, "he did not like disorder about him," and only put up with having
Polya and me in his flat from necessity. The so-called domestic hearth
with its everyday joys and its petty cares offended his taste as
vulgarity; to be with child, or to have children and talk about them,
was bad form, like a petty bourgeois. And I began to feel very curious
to see how these two creatures would get on together in one flat--she,
domestic and home-loving with her copper saucepans and her dreams of a
good cook and horses; and he, fond of saying to his friends that a
decent and orderly man's flat ought, like a warship, to have nothing in
it superfluous--no women, no children, no rags, no kitchen utensils.
V
Then I will tell you what happened the following Thursday. That day
Zinaida Fyodorovna dined at Content's or Donon's. Orlov returned home
alone, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, as I learnt afterwards, went to the
Petersburg Side to spend with her old governess the time visitors were
with us. Orlov did not care to show her to his friends. I realised that
at breakfast, when he began assuring her that for the sake of her peace
of mind it was essential to give up his Thursday evenings.
As usual the visitors arrived at almost the same time.
"Is your mistress at home, too?" Kukushkin asked me in a whisper.
"No, sir," I answered.
He went in with a sly, oily look in his eyes, smiling mysteriously,