The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
sitting was in darkness; but I saw how her head and shoulders were
quivering, and how her hair, escaping from her combs, covered her neck,
her face, her arms.... Her quiet, steady weeping, which was not
hysterical but a woman's ordinary weeping, expressed a sense of insult,
of wounded pride, of injury, and of something helpless, hopeless, which
one could not set right and to which one could not get used. Her tears
stirred an echo in my troubled and suffering heart; I forgot my illness
and everything else in the world; I walked about the drawing-room and
muttered distractedly:
"Is this life?... Oh, one can't go on living like this, one can't....
Oh, it's madness, wickedness, not life."
"What humiliation!" she said through her tears. "To live together, to
smile at me at the very time when I was burdensome to him, ridiculous in
his eyes! Oh, how humiliating!"
She lifted up her head, and looking at me with tear-stained eyes through
her hair, wet with her tears, and pushing it back as it prevented her
seeing me, she asked:
"They laughed at me?"
"To these men you were laughable--you and your love and Turgenev; they
said your head was full of him. And if we both die at once in despair,
that will amuse them, too; they will make a funny anecdote of it and
tell it at your requiem service. But why talk of them?" I said
impatiently. "We must get away from here--I cannot stay here one minute
longer."
She began crying again, while I walked to the piano and sat down.
"What are we waiting for?" I asked dejectedly. "It's two o'clock."
"I am not waiting for anything," she said. "I am utterly lost."
"Why do you talk like that? We had better consider together what we are
to do. Neither you nor I can stay here. Where do you intend to go?"
Suddenly there was a ring at the bell. My heart stood still. Could it be
Orlov, to whom perhaps Kukushkin had complained of me? How should we
meet? I went to open the door. It was Polya. She came in shaking the
snow off her pelisse, and went into her room without saying a word to
me. When I went back to the drawing-room, Zinaida Fyodorovna, pale as
death, was standing in the middle of the room, looking towards me with
big eyes.
"Who was it?" she asked softly.
"Polya," I answered.
She passed her hand over her hair and closed her eyes wearily.
"I will go away at once," she said. "Will you be kind and take me to the
Petersburg Side? What time is it now?"
"A quarter to three."
XIV
When, a little afterwards, we went out of the house, it was dark and
deserted in the street. Wet snow was falling and a damp wind lashed in
one's face. I remember it was the beginning of March; a thaw had set in,
and for some days past the cabmen had been driving on wheels. Under the
impression of the back stairs, of the cold, of the midnight darkness,
and the porter in his sheepskin who had questioned us before letting us
out of the gate, Zinaida Fyodorovna was utterly cast down and
dispirited. When we got into the cab and the hood was put up, trembling
all over, she began hurriedly saying how grateful she was to me.
"I do not doubt your good-will, but I am ashamed that you should be
troubled," she muttered. "Oh, I understand, I understand.... When Gruzin
was here to-day, I felt that he was lying and concealing something.
Well, so be it. But I am ashamed, anyway, that you should be troubled."
She still had her doubts. To dispel them finally, I asked the cabman to
drive through Sergievsky Street; stopping him at Pekarsky's door, I got
out of the cab and rang. When the porter came to the door, I asked
aloud, that Zinaida Fyodorovna might hear, whether Georgy Ivanitch was
at home.
"Yes," was the answer, "he came in half an hour ago. He must be in bed
by now. What do you want?"
Zinaida Fyodorovna could not refrain from putting her head out.
"Has Georgy Ivanitch been staying here long?" she asked.
"Going on for three weeks."
"And he's not been away?"
"No," answered the porter, looking at me with surprise.
"Tell him, early to-morrow," I said, "that his sister has arrived from
Warsaw. Good-bye."
Then we drove on. The cab had no apron, the snow fell on us in big
flakes, and the wind, especially on the Neva, pierced us through and
through. I began to feel as though we had been driving for a long time,
that for ages we had been suffering, and that for ages I had been
listening to Zinaida Fyodorovna's shuddering breath. In semi-delirium,
as though half asleep, I looked back upon my strange, incoherent life,
and for some reason recalled a melodrama, "The Parisian Beggars," which
I had seen once or twice in my childhood. And when to shake off that
semi-delirium I peeped out from the hood and saw the dawn, all the
images of the past, all my misty thoughts, for some reason, blended in
me into one distinct, overpowering thought: everything was irrevocably
over for Zinaida Fyodorovna and for me. This was as certain a conviction
as though the cold blue sky contained a prophecy, but a minute later I
was already thinking of something else and believed differently.
"What am I now?" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, in a voice husky with the cold
and the damp. "Where am I to go? What am I to do? Gruzin told me to go
into a nunnery. Oh, I would! I would change my dress, my face, my name,
my thoughts ... everything--everything, and would hide myself for ever.
But they will not take me into a nunnery. I am with child."
"We will go abroad together to-morrow," I said.
"That's impossible. My husband won't give me a passport."
"I will take you without a passport."
The cabman stopped at a wooden house of two storeys, painted a dark
colour. I rang. Taking from me her small light basket--the only luggage
we had brought with us--Zinaida Fyodorovna gave a wry smile and said:
"These are my _bijoux_."
But she was so weak that she could not carry these _bijoux_.
It was a long while before the door was opened. After the third or
fourth ring a light gleamed in the windows, and there was a sound of
steps, coughing and whispering; at last the key grated in the lock, and
a stout peasant woman with a frightened red face appeared at the door.
Some distance behind her stood a thin little old woman with short grey
hair, carrying a candle in her hand. Zinaida Fyodorovna ran into the
passage and flung her arms round the old woman's neck.
"Nina, I've been deceived," she sobbed loudly. "I've been coarsely,
foully deceived! Nina, Nina!"
I handed the basket to the peasant woman. The door was closed, but still
I heard her sobs and the cry "Nina!"
I got into the cab and told the man to drive slowly to the Nevsky
Prospect. I had to think of a night's lodging for myself.
Next day towards evening I went to see Zinaida Fyodorovna. She was
terribly changed. There were no traces of tears on her pale, terribly
sunken face, and her expression was different. I don't know whether it
was that I saw her now in different surroundings, far from luxurious,
and that our relations were by now different, or perhaps that intense
grief had already set its mark upon her; she did not strike me as so
elegant and well dressed as before. Her figure seemed smaller; there was
an abruptness and excessive nervousness about her as though she were in
a hurry, and there was not the same softness even in her smile. I was
dressed in an expensive suit which I had bought during the day. She
looked first of all at that suit and at the hat in my hand, then turned
an impatient, searching glance upon my face as though studying it.
"Your transformation still seems to me a sort of miracle," she said.
"Forgive me for looking at you with such curiosity. You are an
extraordinary man, you know."
I told her again who I was, and why I was living at Orlov's, and I told
her at greater length and in more detail than the day before. She
listened with great attention, and said without letting me finish:
"Everything there is over for me. You know, I could not refrain from
writing a letter. Here is the answer."
On the sheet which she gave there was written in Orlov's hand:
"I am not going to justify myself. But you must own that it was your
mistake, not mine. I wish you happiness, and beg you to make haste and
forget.
"Yours sincerely,
"G. O.
"P. S.--I am sending on your things."
The trunks and baskets despatched by Orlov were standing in the passage,
and my poor little portmanteau was there beside them.
"So ..." Zinaida Fyodorovna began, but she did not finish.
We were silent. She took the note and held it for a couple of minutes
before her eyes, and during that time her face wore the same haughty,
contemptuous, proud, and harsh expression as the day before at the
beginning of our explanation; tears came into her eyes--not timid,
bitter tears, but proud, angry tears.
"Listen," she said, getting up abruptly and moving away to the window
that I might not see her face. "I have made up my mind to go abroad with
you tomorrow."
"I am very glad. I am ready to go to-day."
"Accept me as a recruit. Have you read Balzac?" she asked suddenly,
turning round. "Have you? At the end of his novel 'Père Goriot' the hero
looks down upon Paris from the top of a hill and threatens the town:
'Now we shall settle our account,' and after this he begins a new life.
So when I look out of the train window at Petersburg for the last time,
I shall say, 'Now we shall settle our account!'"
Saying this, she smiled at her jest, and for some reason shuddered all
over.
XV
At Venice I had an attack of pleurisy. Probably I had caught cold in the
evening when we were rowing from the station to the Hotel Bauer. I had
to take to my bed and stay there for a fortnight. Every morning while I
was ill Zinaida Fyodorovna came from her room to drink coffee with me,
and afterwards read aloud to me French and Russian books, of which we
had bought a number at Vienna. These books were either long, long
familiar to me or else had no interest for me, but I had the sound of a
sweet, kind voice beside me, so that the meaning of all of them was
summed up for me in the one thing--I was not alone. She would go out for
a walk, come back in her light grey dress, her light straw hat, gay,
warmed by the spring sun; and sitting by my bed, bending low down over
me, would tell me something about Venice or read me those books--and I
was happy.
At night I was cold, ill, and dreary, but by day I revelled in life--I
can find no better expression for it. The brilliant warm sunshine
beating in at the open windows and at the door upon the balcony, the
shouts below, the splash of oars, the tinkle of bells, the prolonged
boom of the cannon at midday, and the feeling of perfect, perfect
freedom, did wonders with me; I felt as though I were growing strong,
broad wings which were bearing me God knows whither. And what charm,
what joy at times at the thought that another life was so close to mine!
that I was the servant, the guardian, the friend, the indispensable
fellow-traveller of a creature, young, beautiful, wealthy, but weak,
lonely, and insulted! It is pleasant even to be ill when you know that
there are people who are looking forward to your convalescence as to a
holiday. One day I heard her whispering behind the door with my doctor,
and then she came in to me with tear-stained eyes. It was a bad sign,
but I was touched, and there was a wonderful lightness in my heart.
But at last they allowed me to go out on the balcony. The sunshine and
the breeze from the sea caressed and fondled my sick body. I looked down
at the familiar gondolas, which glide with feminine grace smoothly and
majestically as though they were alive, and felt all the luxury of this
original, fascinating civilisation. There was a smell of the sea. Some