I
IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with
a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight
at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interest
in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the
sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a _béret_;
a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.
And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square
several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same
_béret_, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was,
and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."
"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss
to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.
He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and
two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student in
his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. She
was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as
she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phonetic
spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly
considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and
did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her long
ago--had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account,
almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his
presence, used to call them "the lower race."
It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that
he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two
days together without "the lower race." In the society of men he was
bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but
when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to say
to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was
silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there
was something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposed
them in his favour; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him,
too, to them.
Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long
ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people--always slow to
move and irresolute--every intimacy, which at first so agreeably
diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably
grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run
the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an
interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and
he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.
One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the _béret_
came up slowly to take the next table. Her expression, her gait, her
dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she was a lady, that
she was married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and
that she was dull there.... The stories told of the immorality in such
places as Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew
that such stories were for the most part made up by persons who would
themselves have been glad to sin if they had been able; but when the
lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he remembered
these tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the
tempting thought of a swift, fleeting love affair, a romance with an
unknown woman, whose name he did not know, suddenly took possession of
him.
He beckoned coaxingly to the Pomeranian, and when the dog came up to him
he shook his finger at it. The Pomeranian growled: Gurov shook his
finger at it again.
The lady looked at him and at once dropped her eyes.
"He doesn't bite," she said, and blushed.
"May I give him a bone?" he asked; and when she nodded he asked
courteously, "Have you been long in Yalta?"
"Five days."
"And I have already dragged out a fortnight here."
There was a brief silence.
"Time goes fast, and yet it is so dull here!" she said, not looking at
him.
"That's only the fashion to say it is dull here. A provincial will live
in Belyov or Zhidra and not be dull, and when he comes here it's 'Oh,
the dulness! Oh, the dust!' One would think he came from Grenada."
She laughed. Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers, but
after dinner they walked side by side; and there sprang up between them
the light jesting conversation of people who are free and satisfied, to
whom it does not matter where they go or what they talk about. They
walked and talked of the strange light on the sea: the water was of a
soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon
it. They talked of how sultry it was after a hot day. Gurov told her
that he came from Moscow, that he had taken his degree in Arts, but had
a post in a bank; that he had trained as an opera-singer, but had given
it up, that he owned two houses in Moscow.... And from her he learnt
that she had grown up in Petersburg, but had lived in S---- since her
marriage two years before, that she was staying another month in Yalta,
and that her husband, who needed a holiday too, might perhaps come and
fetch her. She was not sure whether her husband had a post in a Crown
Department or under the Provincial Council--and was amused by her own
ignorance. And Gurov learnt, too, that she was called Anna Sergeyevna.
Afterwards he thought about her in his room at the hotel--thought she
would certainly meet him next day; it would be sure to happen. As he got
into bed he thought how lately she had been a girl at school, doing
lessons like his own daughter; he recalled the diffidence, the
angularity, that was still manifest in her laugh and her manner of
talking with a stranger. This must have been the first time in her life
she had been alone in surroundings in which she was followed, looked at,
and spoken to merely from a secret motive which she could hardly fail to
guess. He recalled her slender, delicate neck, her lovely grey eyes.
"There's something pathetic about her, anyway," he thought, and fell
asleep.