The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Just opposite the house stretched a long grey fence adorned with nails.
"One would run away from a fence like that," thought Gurov, looking from
the fence to the windows of the house and back again.
He considered: to-day was a holiday, and the husband would probably be
at home. And in any case it would be tactless to go into the house and
upset her. If he were to send her a note it might fall into her
husband's hands, and then it might ruin everything. The best thing was
to trust to chance. And he kept walking up and down the street by the
fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and
dogs fly at him; then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sounds
were faint and indistinct. Probably it was Anna Sergeyevna playing. The
front door suddenly opened, and an old woman came out, followed by the
familiar white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog,
but his heart began beating violently, and in his excitement he could
not remember the dog's name.
He walked up and down, and loathed the grey fence more and more, and by
now he thought irritably that Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was
perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that that was
very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning
till night but that confounded fence. He went back to his hotel room and
sat for a long while on the sofa, not knowing what to do, then he had
dinner and a long nap.
"How stupid and worrying it is!" he thought when he woke and looked at
the dark windows: it was already evening. "Here I've had a good sleep
for some reason. What shall I do in the night?"
He sat on the bed, which was covered by a cheap grey blanket, such as
one sees in hospitals, and he taunted himself in his vexation:
"So much for the lady with the dog ... so much for the adventure....
You're in a nice fix...."
That morning at the station a poster in large letters had caught his
eye. "The Geisha" was to be performed for the first time. He thought of
this and went to the theatre.
"It's quite possible she may go to the first performance," he thought.
The theatre was full. As in all provincial theatres, there was a fog
above the chandelier, the gallery was noisy and restless; in the front
row the local dandies were standing up before the beginning of the
performance, with their hands behind them; in the Governor's box the
Governor's daughter, wearing a boa, was sitting in the front seat, while
the Governor himself lurked modestly behind the curtain with only his
hands visible; the orchestra was a long time tuning up; the stage
curtain swayed. All the time the audience were coming in and taking
their seats Gurov looked at them eagerly.
Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when
Gurov looked at her his heart contracted, and he understood clearly that
for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so precious,
and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable,
lost in a provincial crowd, with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled
his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness that
he now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the inferior orchestra,
of the wretched provincial violins, he thought how lovely she was. He
thought and dreamed.
A young man with small side-whiskers, tall and stooping, came in with
Anna Sergeyevna and sat down beside her; he bent his head at every step
and seemed to be continually bowing. Most likely this was the husband
whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey.
And there really was in his long figure, his side-whiskers, and the
small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkey's obsequiousness;
his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of
distinction like the number on a waiter.
During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained
alone in her stall. Gurov, who was sitting in the stalls, too, went up
to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:
"Good-evening."
She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror,
unable to believe her eyes, and tightly gripped the fan and the
lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint.
Both were silent. She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her
confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The violins and the
flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though
all the people in the boxes were looking at them. She got up and went
quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked senselessly along
passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and
civil service uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes.
They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging on pegs; the
draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov,
whose heart was beating violently, thought:
"Oh, heavens! Why are these people here and this orchestra!..."
And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off
at the station he had thought that everything was over and they would
never meet again. But how far they were still from the end!
On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written "To the
Amphitheatre," she stopped.
"How you have frightened me!" she said, breathing hard, still pale and
overwhelmed. "Oh, how you have frightened me! I am half dead. Why have
you come? Why?"
"But do understand, Anna, do understand ..." he said hastily in a low
voice. "I entreat you to understand...."
She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at
him intently, to keep his features more distinctly in her memory.
"I am so unhappy," she went on, not heeding him. "I have thought of
nothing but you all the time; I live only in the thought of you. And I
wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?"
On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down,
but that was nothing to Gurov; he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began
kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.
"What are you doing, what are you doing!" she cried in horror, pushing
him away. "We are mad. Go away to-day; go away at once.... I beseech you
by all that is sacred, I implore you.... There are people coming this
way!"
Some one was coming up the stairs.
"You must go away," Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear,
Dmitri Dmitritch? I will come and see you in Moscow. I have never been
happy; I am miserable now, and I never, never shall be happy, never!
Don't make me suffer still more! I swear I'll come to Moscow. But now
let us part. My precious, good, dear one, we must part!"
She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round
at him, and from her eyes he could see that she really was unhappy.
Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died
away, he found his coat and left the theatre.
IV
And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or
three months she left S----, telling her husband that she was going to
consult a doctor about an internal complaint--and her husband believed
her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky
Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went
to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.
Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the
messenger had come the evening before when he was out). With him walked
his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the way. Snow
was falling in big wet flakes.
"It's three degrees above freezing-point, and yet it is snowing," said
Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only on the surface of the earth;
there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the
atmosphere."
"And why are there no thunderstorms in the winter, father?"
He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was
going to see her, and no living soul knew of it, and probably never
would know. He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared
to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like
the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its
course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental,
conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest
and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not
deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden
from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he
hid himself to conceal the truth--such, for instance, as his work in the
bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with
his wife at anniversary festivities--all that was open. And he judged of
others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing
that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of
secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on
secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man
was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.
After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky
Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below, went upstairs, and softly
knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress,
exhausted by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting him since
the evening before. She was pale; she looked at him, and did not smile,
and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their kiss was
slow and prolonged, as though they had not met for two years.
"Well, how are you getting on there?" he asked. "What news?"
"Wait; I'll tell you directly.... I can't talk."
She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and
pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Let her have her cry out. I'll sit down and wait," he thought, and he
sat down in an arm-chair.
Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his
tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him. She was
crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their life
was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding themselves
from people, like thieves! Was not their life shattered?
"Come, do stop!" he said.
It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over,
that he could not see the end of it. Anna Sergeyevna grew more and more
attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to her
that it was bound to have an end some day; besides, she would not have
believed it!
He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something
affectionate and cheering, and at that moment he saw himself in the
looking-glass.
His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to
him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the last few
years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering.
He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably
already not far from beginning to fade and wither like his own. Why did
she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he
was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their
imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and
afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the
same. And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had
made their acquaintance, got on with them, parted, but he had never once
loved; it was anything you like, but not love.
And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in
love--for the first time in his life.