And Anna Sergueyevna began to come to him in Moscow. Once every two or
three months she would leave S., telling her husband that she was going
to consult a specialist in women's diseases. Her husband half believed
and half disbelieved her. At Moscow she would stay at the "Slaviansky
Bazaar" and send a message at once to Gomov. He would come to her, and
nobody in Moscow knew.
Once as he was going to her as usual one winter morning--he had not
received her message the night before--he had his daughter with him, for
he was taking her to school which was on the way. Great wet flakes of
snow were falling.
"Three degrees above freezing," he said, "and still the snow is falling.
But the warmth is only on the surface of the earth. In the upper strata
of the atmosphere there is quite a different temperature."
"Yes, papa. Why is there no thunder in winter?"
He explained this too, and as he spoke he thought of his assignation,
and that not a living soul knew of it, or ever would know. He had two
lives; one obvious, which every one could see and know, if they were
sufficiently interested, a life full of conventional truth and
conventional fraud, exactly like the lives of his friends and
acquaintances; and another, which moved underground. And by a strange
conspiracy of circumstances, everything that was to him important,
interesting, vital, everything that enabled him to be sincere and denied
self-deception and was the very core of his being, must dwell hidden
away from others, and everything that made him false, a mere shape in
which he hid himself in order to conceal the truth, as for instance his
work in the bank, arguments at the club, his favourite gibe about women,
going to parties with his wife--all this was open. And, judging others
by himself, he did not believe the things he saw, and assumed that
everybody else also had his real vital life passing under a veil of
mystery as under the cover of the night. Every man's intimate existence
is kept mysterious, and perhaps, in part, because of that civilised
people are so nervously anxious that a personal secret should be
respected.
When he had left his daughter at school, Gomov went to the "Slaviansky
Bazaar." He took off his fur coat down-stairs, went up and knocked
quietly at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress,
tired by the journey, had been expecting him to come all night. She was
pale, and looked at him without a smile, and flung herself on his breast
as soon as he entered. Their kiss was long and lingering as though they
had not seen each other for a couple of years.
"Well, how are you getting on down there?" he asked. "What is your
news?"
"Wait. I'll tell you presently.... I cannot."
She could not speak, for she was weeping. She turned her face from him
and dried her eyes.
"Well, let her cry a bit.... I'll wait," he thought, and sat down.
Then he rang and ordered tea, and then, as he drank it, she stood and
gazed out of the window.... She was weeping in distress, in the bitter
knowledge that their life had fallen out so sadly; only seeing each
other in secret, hiding themselves away like thieves! Was not their life
crushed?
"Don't cry.... Don't cry," he said.
It was clear to him that their love was yet far from its end, which
there was no seeing. Anna Sergueyevna was more and more passionately
attached to him; she adored him and it was inconceivable that he should
tell her that their love must some day end; she would not believe it.
He came up to her and patted her shoulder fondly and at that moment he
saw himself in the mirror.
His hair was already going grey. And it seemed strange to him that in
the last few years he should have got so old and ugly. Her shoulders
were warm and trembled to his touch. He was suddenly filled with pity
for her life, still so warm and beautiful, but probably beginning to
fade and wither, like his own. Why should she love him so much? He
always seemed to women not what he really was, and they loved in him,
not himself, but the creature of their imagination, the thing they
hankered for in life, and when they had discovered their mistake, still
they loved him. And not one of them was happy with him. Time passed; he
met women and was friends with them, went further and parted, but never
once did he love; there was everything but love.
And now at last when his hair was grey he had fallen in love, real
love--for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergueyevna and he loved one another, like dear kindred, like
husband and wife, like devoted friends; it seemed to them that Fate had
destined them for one another, and it was inconceivable that he should
have a wife, she a husband; they were like two birds of passage, a male
and a female, which had been caught and forced to live in separate
cages. They had forgiven each other all the past of which they were
ashamed; they forgave everything in the present, and they felt that
their love had changed both of them.
Formerly, when he felt a melancholy compunction, he used to comfort
himself with all kinds of arguments, just as they happened to cross his
mind, but now he was far removed from any such ideas; he was filled with
a profound pity, and he desired to be tender and sincere....
"Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You have cried enough.... Now let us
talk and see if we can't find some way out."
Then they talked it all over, and tried to discover some means of
avoiding the necessity for concealment and deception, and the torment of
living in different towns, and of not seeing each other for a long time.
How could they shake off these intolerable fetters?
"How? How?" he asked, holding his head in his hands. "How?"
And it seemed that but a little while and the solution would be found
and there would begin a lovely new life; and to both of them it was
clear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest and
most difficult period was only just beginning.