The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin,
like husband and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that fate
itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why
he had a wife and she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair
of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They
forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they
forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had
changed them both.
In moments of depression in the past he had comforted himself with any
arguments that came into his mind, but now he no longer cared for
arguments; he felt profound compassion, he wanted to be sincere and
tender....
"Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You've had your cry; that's
enough.... Let us talk now, let us think of some plan."
Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to
avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different
towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be
free from this intolerable bondage?
"How? How?" he asked, clutching his head. "How?"
And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found,
and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both
of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the
most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.
A DOCTOR'S VISIT
THE Professor received a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he was
asked to come as quickly as possible. The daughter of some Madame
Lyalikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was ill, and that was all
that one could make out of the long, incoherent telegram. And the
Professor did not go himself, but sent instead his assistant, Korolyov.
It was two stations from Moscow, and there was a drive of three miles
from the station. A carriage with three horses had been sent to the
station to meet Korolyov; the coachman wore a hat with a peacock's
feather on it, and answered every question in a loud voice like a
soldier: "No, sir!" "Certainly, sir!"
It was Saturday evening; the sun was setting, the workpeople were coming
in crowds from the factory to the station, and they bowed to the
carriage in which Korolyov was driving. And he was charmed with the
evening, the farmhouses and villas on the road, and the birch-trees, and
the quiet atmosphere all around, when the fields and woods and the sun
seemed preparing, like the workpeople now on the eve of the holiday, to
rest, and perhaps to pray....
He was born and had grown up in Moscow; he did not know the country, and
he had never taken any interest in factories, or been inside one, but he
had happened to read about factories, and had been in the houses of
manufacturers and had talked to them; and whenever he saw a factory far
or near, he always thought how quiet and peaceable it was outside, but
within there was always sure to be impenetrable ignorance and dull
egoism on the side of the owners, wearisome, unhealthy toil on the side
of the workpeople, squabbling, vermin, vodka. And now when the
workpeople timidly and respectfully made way for the carriage, in their
faces, their caps, their walk, he read physical impurity, drunkenness,
nervous exhaustion, bewilderment.
They drove in at the factory gates. On each side he caught glimpses of
the little houses of workpeople, of the faces of women, of quilts and
linen on the railings. "Look out!" shouted the coachman, not pulling up
the horses. It was a wide courtyard without grass, with five immense
blocks of buildings with tall chimneys a little distance one from
another, warehouses and barracks, and over everything a sort of grey
powder as though from dust. Here and there, like oases in the desert,
there were pitiful gardens, and the green and red roofs of the houses in
which the managers and clerks lived. The coachman suddenly pulled up the
horses, and the carriage stopped at the house, which had been newly
painted grey; here was a flower garden, with a lilac bush covered with
dust, and on the yellow steps at the front door there was a strong smell
of paint.
"Please come in, doctor," said women's voices in the passage and the
entry, and at the same time he heard sighs and whisperings. "Pray walk
in.... We've been expecting you so long ... we're in real trouble. Here,
this way."
Madame Lyalikov--a stout elderly lady wearing a black silk dress with
fashionable sleeves, but, judging from her face, a simple uneducated
woman--looked at the doctor in a flutter, and could not bring herself to
hold out her hand to him; she did not dare. Beside her stood a personage
with short hair and a pince-nez; she was wearing a blouse of many
colours, and was very thin and no longer young. The servants called her
Christina Dmitryevna, and Korolyov guessed that this was the governess.
Probably, as the person of most education in the house, she had been
charged to meet and receive the doctor, for she began immediately, in
great haste, stating the causes of the illness, giving trivial and
tiresome details, but without saying who was ill or what was the matter.
The doctor and the governess were sitting talking while the lady of the
house stood motionless at the door, waiting. From the conversation
Korolyov learned that the patient was Madame Lyalikov's only daughter
and heiress, a girl of twenty, called Liza; she had been ill for a long
time, and had consulted various doctors, and the previous night she had
suffered till morning from such violent palpitations of the heart, that
no one in the house had slept, and they had been afraid she might die.
"She has been, one may say, ailing from a child," said Christina
Dmitryevna in a sing-song voice, continually wiping her lips with her
hand. "The doctors say it is nerves; when she was a little girl she was
scrofulous, and the doctors drove it inwards, so I think it may be due
to that."
They went to see the invalid. Fully grown up, big and tall, but ugly
like her mother, with the same little eyes and disproportionate breadth
of the lower part of the face, lying with her hair in disorder, muffled
up to the chin, she made upon Korolyov at the first minute the
impression of a poor, destitute creature, sheltered and cared for here
out of charity, and he could hardly believe that this was the heiress of
the five huge buildings.
"I am the doctor come to see you," said Korolyov. "Good evening."
He mentioned his name and pressed her hand, a large, cold, ugly hand;
she sat up, and, evidently accustomed to doctors, let herself be
sounded, without showing the least concern that her shoulders and chest
were uncovered.
"I have palpitations of the heart," she said, "It was so awful all
night.... I almost died of fright! Do give me something."
"I will, I will; don't worry yourself."
Korolyov examined her and shrugged his shoulders.
"The heart is all right," he said; "it's all going on satisfactorily;
everything is in good order. Your nerves must have been playing pranks a
little, but that's so common. The attack is over by now, one must
suppose; lie down and go to sleep."
At that moment a lamp was brought into the bed-room. The patient screwed
up her eyes at the light, then suddenly put her hands to her head and
broke into sobs. And the impression of a destitute, ugly creature
vanished, and Korolyov no longer noticed the little eyes or the heavy
development of the lower part of the face. He saw a soft, suffering
expression which was intelligent and touching: she seemed to him
altogether graceful, feminine, and simple; and he longed to soothe her,
not with drugs, not with advice, but with simple, kindly words. Her
mother put her arms round her head and hugged her. What despair, what
grief was in the old woman's face! She, her mother, had reared her and
brought her up, spared nothing, and devoted her whole life to having her
daughter taught French, dancing, music: had engaged a dozen teachers for
her; had consulted the best doctors, kept a governess. And now she could
not make out the reason of these tears, why there was all this misery,
she could not understand, and was bewildered; and she had a guilty,
agitated, despairing expression, as though she had omitted something
very important, had left something undone, had neglected to call in
somebody--and whom, she did not know.
"Lizanka, you are crying again ... again," she said, hugging her
daughter to her. "My own, my darling, my child, tell me what it is! Have
pity on me! Tell me."
Both wept bitterly. Korolyov sat down on the side of the bed and took
Liza's hand.
"Come, give over; it's no use crying," he said kindly. "Why, there is
nothing in the world that is worth those tears. Come, we won't cry;
that's no good...."
And inwardly he thought:
"It's high time she was married...."
"Our doctor at the factory gave her kalibromati," said the governess,
"but I notice it only makes her worse. I should have thought that if she
is given anything for the heart it ought to be drops.... I forget the
name.... Convallaria, isn't it?"
And there followed all sorts of details. She interrupted the doctor,
preventing his speaking, and there was a look of effort on her face, as
though she supposed that, as the woman of most education in the house,
she was duty bound to keep up a conversation with the doctor, and on no
other subject but medicine.
Korolyov felt bored.
"I find nothing special the matter," he said, addressing the mother as
he went out of the bedroom. "If your daughter is being attended by the
factory doctor, let him go on attending her. The treatment so far has
been perfectly correct, and I see no reason for changing your doctor.
Why change? It's such an ordinary trouble; there's nothing seriously
wrong."
He spoke deliberately as he put on his gloves, while Madame Lyalikov
stood without moving, and looked at him with her tearful eyes.
"I have half an hour to catch the ten o'clock train," he said. "I hope I
am not too late."
"And can't you stay?" she asked, and tears trickled down her cheeks
again. "I am ashamed to trouble you, but if you would be so good.... For
God's sake," she went on in an undertone, glancing towards the door, "do
stay to-night with us! She is all I have ... my only daughter.... She
frightened me last night; I can't get over it.... Don't go away, for
goodness' sake!..."
He wanted to tell her that he had a great deal of work in Moscow, that
his family were expecting him home; it was disagreeable to him to spend
the evening and the whole night in a strange house quite needlessly; but
he looked at her face, heaved a sigh, and began taking off his gloves
without a word.
All the lamps and candles were lighted in his honour in the drawing-room
and the dining-room. He sat down at the piano and began turning over the
music. Then he looked at the pictures on the walls, at the portraits.
The pictures, oil-paintings in gold frames, were views of the Crimea--a
stormy sea with a ship, a Catholic monk with a wineglass; they were all
dull, smooth daubs, with no trace of talent in them. There was not a
single good-looking face among the portraits, nothing but broad
cheekbones and astonished-looking eyes. Lyalikov, Liza's father, had a
low forehead and a self-satisfied expression; his uniform sat like a
sack on his bulky plebeian figure; on his breast was a medal and a Red
Cross Badge. There was little sign of culture, and the luxury was
senseless and haphazard, and was as ill fitting as that uniform. The
floors irritated him with their brilliant polish, the lustres on the
chandelier irritated him, and he was reminded for some reason of the
story of the merchant who used to go to the baths with a medal on his
neck....