unexpected and inappropriate repentance; but for the tears in her eyes
he might have thought her to be joking or playing a part.
"I do not understand," he said quietly. "What do you want?"
She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to him.
"Believe, believe me, I implore you," she said. "I love a pure, honest
life, and sin is revolting to me. I don't know myself what I am doing.
Simple people say: 'The devil entrapped me,' and I can say of myself:
'The Evil One tempted me.'"
"Don't, don't," he murmured.
He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her, spoke quietly
and tenderly, and gradually quieted her and she was happy again, and
they both began to laugh.
Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the quay; the town
with its cypresses looked like a city of the dead, but the sea still
roared and broke against the shore; a boat swung on the waves; and in it
sleepily twinkled the light of a lantern.
They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda.
"Just now in the hall," said Gomov, "I discovered your name written on
the board--von Didenitz. Is your husband a German?"
"No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German, but he himself is an
Orthodox Russian."
At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church, looked down at
the sea and were silent. Talta was hardly visible through the morning
mist. The tops of the hills were shrouded in motionless white clouds.
The leaves of the trees never stirred, the cicadas trilled, and the
monotonous dull sound of the sea, coming up from below, spoke of the
rest, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So the sea roared when there was
neither Talta nor Oreanda, and so it roars and will roar, dully,
indifferently when we shall be no more. And in this continual
indifference to the life and death of each of us, lives pent up, the
pledge of our eternal salvation, of the uninterrupted movement of life
on earth and its unceasing perfection. Sitting side by side with a young
woman, who in the dawn seemed so beautiful, Gomov, appeased and
enchanted by the sight of the fairy scene, the sea, the mountains, the
clouds, the wide sky, thought how at bottom, if it were thoroughly
explored, everything on earth was beautiful, everything, except what we
ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and
our own human dignity.
A man came up--a coast-guard--gave a look at them, then went away. He,
too, seemed mysterious and enchanted. A steamer came over from
Feodossia, by the light of the morning star, its own lights already put
out.
"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergueyevna after a silence.
"Yes. It is time to go home."
They returned to the town.
Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and lunched together, dined,
walked, enjoyed the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that her
heart beat alarmingly. She would ask the same question over and over
again, and was troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did not
sufficiently respect her. And often in the square or the gardens, when
there was no one near, he would draw her close and kiss her
passionately. Their complete idleness, these kisses in the full
daylight, given timidly and fearfully lest any one should see, the heat,
the smell of the sea and the continual brilliant parade of leisured,
well-dressed, well-fed people almost regenerated him. He would tell Anna
Sergueyevna how delightful she was, how tempting. He was impatiently
passionate, never left her side, and she would often brood, and even
asked him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her at
all, and only saw in her a loose woman. Almost every evening, rather
late, they would drive out of the town, to Oreanda, or to the waterfall;
and these drives were always delightful, and the impressions won during
them were always beautiful and sublime.
They expected her husband to come. But he sent a letter in which he said
that his eyes were bad and implored his wife to come home. Anna
Sergueyevna began to worry.
"It is a good thing I am going away," she would say to Gomov. "It is
fate."
She went in a carriage and he accompanied her. They drove for a whole
day. When she took her seat in the car of an express-train and when the
second bell sounded, she said:
"Let me have another look at you.... Just one more look. Just as you
are."
She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and her lips trembled.
"I will think of you--often," she said. "Good-bye. Good-bye. Don't think
ill of me. We part for ever. We must, because we ought not to have met
at all. Now, good-bye."
The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared, and in a minute or
two the sound of it was lost, as though everything were agreed to put an
end to this sweet, oblivious madness. Left alone on the platform,
looking into the darkness, Gomov heard the trilling of the grasshoppers
and the humming of the telegraph-wires, and felt as though he had just
woke up. And he thought that it had been one more adventure, one more
affair, and it also was finished and had left only a memory. He was
moved, sad, and filled with a faint remorse; surely the young woman,
whom he would never see again, had not been happy with him; he had been
kind to her, friendly, and sincere, but still in his attitude toward
her, in his tone and caresses, there had always been a thin shadow of
raillery, the rather rough arrogance of the successful male aggravated
by the fact that he was twice as old as she. And all the time she had
called him kind, remarkable, noble, so that he was never really himself
to her, and had involuntarily deceived her....
Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the air, and the evening
was cool.
"It is time for me to go North," thought Gomov, as he left the platform.
"It is time."
III
At home in Moscow, it was already like winter; the stoves were heated,
and in the mornings, when the children were getting ready to go to
school, and had their tea, it was dark and their nurse lighted the lamp
for a short while. The frost had already begun. When the first snow
falls, the first day of driving in sledges, it is good to see the white
earth, the white roofs; one breathes easily, eagerly, and then one
remembers the days of youth. The old lime-trees and birches, white with
hoarfrost, have a kindly expression; they are nearer to the heart than
cypresses and palm-trees, and with the dear familiar trees there is no
need to think of mountains and the sea.
Gomov was a native of Moscow. He returned to Moscow on a fine frosty
day, and when he donned his fur coat and warm gloves, and took a stroll
through Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the church-bells
ringing, then his recent travels and the places he had visited lost all
their charm. Little by little he sank back into Moscow life, read
eagerly three newspapers a day, and said that he did not read Moscow
papers as a matter of principle. He was drawn into a round of
restaurants, clubs, dinner-parties, parties, and he was flattered to
have his house frequented by famous lawyers and actors, and to play
cards with a professor at the University club. He could eat a whole
plateful of hot sielianka.
So a month would pass, and Anna Sergueyevna, he thought, would be lost
in the mists of memory and only rarely would she visit his dreams with
her touching smile, just as other women had done. But more than a month
passed, full winter came, and in his memory everything was clear, as
though he had parted from Anna Sergueyevna only yesterday. And his
memory was lit by a light that grew ever stronger. No matter how,
through the voices of his children saying their lessons, penetrating to
the evening stillness of his study, through hearing a song, or the music
in a restaurant, or the snow-storm howling in the chimney, suddenly the
whole thing would come to life again in his memory: the meeting on the
jetty, the early morning with the mists on the mountains, the steamer
from Feodossia and their kisses. He would pace up and down his room and
remember it all and smile, and then his memories would drift into
dreams, and the past was confused in his imagination with the future. He
did not dream at night of Anna Sergueyevna, but she followed him
everywhere, like a shadow, watching him. As he shut his eyes, he could
see her, vividly, and she seemed handsomer, tenderer, younger than in
reality; and he seemed to himself better than he had been at Talta. In
the evenings she would look at him from the bookcase, from the
fireplace, from the corner; he could hear her breathing and the soft
rustle of her dress. In the street he would gaze at women's faces to see
if there were not one like her....
He was filled with a great longing to share his memories with some one.
But at home it was impossible to speak of his love, and away from
home--there was no one. Impossible to talk of her to the other people in
the house and the men at the bank. And talk of what? Had he loved then?
Was there anything fine, romantic, or elevating or even interesting in
his relations with Anna Sergueyevna? And he would speak vaguely of love,
of women, and nobody guessed what was the matter, and only his wife
would raise her dark eyebrows and say:
"Demitri, the r?e of coxcomb does not suit you at all."
One night, as he was coming out of the club with his partner, an
official, he could not help saying:
"If only I could tell what a fascinating woman I met at Talta."
The official seated himself in his sledge and drove off, but suddenly
called:
"Dimitri Dimitrich!"
"Yes."
"You were right. The sturgeon was tainted."
These banal words suddenly roused Gomov's indignation. They seemed to
him degrading and impure. What barbarous customs and people!
What preposterous nights, what dull, empty days! Furious card-playing,
gourmandising, drinking, endless conversations about the same things,
futile activities and conversations taking up the best part of the day
and all the best of a man's forces, leaving only a stunted, wingless
life, just rubbish; and to go away and escape was impossible--one might
as well be in a lunatic asylum or in prison with hard labour.
Gomov did not sleep that night, but lay burning with indignation, and
then all next day he had a headache. And the following night he slept
badly, sitting up in bed and thinking, or pacing from corner to corner
of his room. His children bored him, the bank bored him, and he had no
desire to go out or to speak to any one.
In December when the holidays came he prepared to go on a journey and
told his wife he was going to Petersburg to present a petition for a
young friend of his--and went to S. Why? He did not know. He wanted to
see Anna Sergueyevna, to talk to her, and if possible to arrange an
assignation.
He arrived at S. in the morning and occupied the best room in the hotel,
where the whole floor was covered with a grey canvas, and on the table
there stood an inkstand grey with dust, adorned with a horseman on a
headless horse holding a net in his raised hand. The porter gave him the
necessary information: von Didenitz; Old Goucharno Street, his own
house--not far from the hotel; lives well, has his own horses, every one
knows him.
Gomov walked slowly to Old Goucharno Street and found the house. In
front of it was a long, grey fence spiked with nails.
"No getting over a fence like that," thought Gomov, glancing from the
windows to the fence.
He thought: "To-day is a holiday and her husband is probably at home.
Besides it would be tactless to call and upset her. If he sent a note
then it might fall into her husband's hands and spoil everything. It
would be better to wait for an opportunity." And he kept on walking up
and down the street, and round the fence, waiting for his opportunity.
He saw a beggar go in at the gate and the dogs attack him. He heard a
piano and the sounds came faintly to his ears. It must be Anna
Sergueyevna playing. The door suddenly opened and out of it came an old
woman, and after her ran the familiar white Pomeranian. Gomov wanted to
call the dog, but his heart suddenly began to thump and in his agitation
he could not remember the dog's name.
He walked on, and more and more he hated the grey fence and thought with
a gust of irritation that Anna Sergueyevna had already forgotten him,
and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, as would be
only natural in a young woman forced from morning to night to behold the
accursed fence. He returned to his room and sat for a long time on the
sofa, not knowing what to do. Then he dined and afterward slept for a
long while.
"How idiotic and tiresome it all is," he thought as he awoke and saw the
dark windows; for it was evening. "I've had sleep enough, and what shall
I do to-night?"
He sat on his bed which was covered with a cheap, grey blanket, exactly
like those used in a hospital, and tormented himself.
"So much for the lady with the toy dog.... So much for the great
adventure.... Here you sit."
However, in the morning, at the station, his eye had been caught by a
poster with large letters: "First Performance of 'The Geisha.'" He
remembered that and went to the theatre.
"It is quite possible she will go to the first performance," he thought.
The theatre was full and, as usual in all provincial theatres, there was
a thick mist above the lights, the gallery was noisily restless; in the
first row before the opening of the performance stood the local dandies
with their hands behind their backs, and there in the governor's box, in
front, sat the governor's daughter, and the governor himself sat
modestly behind the curtain and only his hands were visible. The curtain
quivered; the orchestra tuned up for a long time, and while the audience
were coming in and taking their seats, Gomov gazed eagerly round.
At last Anna Sergueyevna came in. She took her seat in the third row,
and when Gomov glanced at her his heart ached and he knew that for him
there was no one in the whole world nearer, dearer, and more important
than she; she was lost in this provincial rabble, the little
undistinguished woman, with a common lorgnette in her hands, yet she
filled his whole life; she was his grief, his joy, his only happiness,
and he longed for her; and through the noise of the bad orchestra with
its tenth-rate fiddles, he thought how dear she was to him. He thought
and dreamed.
With Anna Sergueyevna there came in a young man with short side-
whiskers, very tall, stooping; with every movement he shook and bowed
continually. Probably he was the husband whom in a bitter mood at Talta
she had called a lackey. And, indeed, in his long figure, his side-
whiskers, the little bald patch on the top of his head, there was
something of the lackey; he had a modest sugary smile and in his
buttonhole he wore a University badge exactly like a lackey's number.
In the first entr'acte the husband went out to smoke, and she was left
alone. Gomov, who was also in the pit, came up to her and said in a
trembling voice with a forced smile:
"How do you do?"
She looked up at him and went pale. Then she glanced at him again in
terror, not believing her eyes, clasped her fan and lorgnette tightly
together, apparently struggling to keep herself from fainting. Both were
silent. She sat, he stood; frightened by her emotion, not daring to sit
down beside her. The fiddles and flutes began to play and suddenly it
seemed to them as though all the people in the boxes were looking at
them. She got up and walked quickly to the exit; he followed, and both
walked absently along the corridors, down the stairs, up the stairs,
with the crowd shifting and shimmering before their eyes; all kinds of
uniforms, judges, teachers, crown-estates, and all with badges; ladies
shone and shimmered before them, like fur coats on moving rows of
clothes-pegs, and there was a draught howling through the place laden
with the smell of tobacco and cigar-ends. And Gomov, whose heart was
thudding wildly, thought:
"Oh, Lord! Why all these men and that beastly orchestra?"
At that very moment he remembered how when he had seen Anna Sergueyevna
off that evening at the station he had said to himself that everything
was over between them, and they would never meet again. And now how far
off they were from the end!
On a narrow, dark staircase over which was written: "This Way to the
Amphitheatre," she stopped:
"How you frightened me!" she said, breathing heavily, still pale and
apparently stupefied. "Oh! how you frightened me! I am nearly dead. Why
did you come? Why?"
"Understand me, Anna," he whispered quickly. "I implore you to
understand...."
She looked at him fearfully, in entreaty, with love in her eyes, gazing
fixedly to gather up in her memory every one of his features.
"I suffer so!" she went on, not listening to him. "All the time, I
thought only of you. I lived with thoughts of you.... And I wanted to
forget, to forget, but why, why did you come?"
A little above them, on the landing, two schoolboys stood and smoked and
looked down at them, but Gomov did not care. He drew her to him and
began to kiss her cheeks, her hands.
"What are you doing? What are you doing?" she said in terror, thrusting
him away.... "We were both mad. Go away to-night. You must go away at
once.... I implore you, by everything you hold sacred, I implore you....
The people are coming-----"
Some one passed them on the stairs.
"You must go away," Anna Sergueyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear,
Dimitri Dimitrich? I'll come to you in Moscow. I never was happy. Now I
am unhappy and I shall never, never be happy, never! Don't make me
suffer even more! I swear, I'll come to Moscow. And now let us part. My
dear, dearest darling, let us part!"
She pressed his hand and began to go quickly down-stairs, all the while
looking back at him, and in her eyes plainly showed that she was most
unhappy. Gomov stood for a while, listened, then, when all was quiet he
found his coat and left the theatre.
IV
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. GOUSSIEV
IT was already dark and would soon be night.
Goussiev, a private on long leave, raised himself a little in his
hammock and said in a whisper:
"Can you hear me, Pavel Ivanich? A soldier at Souchan told me that their
boat ran into an enormous fish and knocked a hole in her bottom."
The man of condition unknown whom he addressed, and whom everybody in
the hospital-ship called Pavel Ivanich, was silent, as if he had not
heard.