A week had passed since they had made acquaintance. It was a holiday. It
was sultry indoors, while in the street the wind whirled the dust round
and round, and blew people's hats off. It was a thirsty day, and Gurov
often went into the pavilion, and pressed Anna Sergeyevna to have syrup
and water or an ice. One did not know what to do with oneself.
In the evening when the wind had dropped a little, they went out on the
groyne to see the steamer come in. There were a great many people
walking about the harbour; they had gathered to welcome some one,
bringing bouquets. And two peculiarities of a well-dressed Yalta crowd
were very conspicuous: the elderly ladies were dressed like young ones,
and there were great numbers of generals.
Owing to the roughness of the sea, the steamer arrived late, after the
sun had set, and it was a long time turning about before it reached the
groyne. Anna Sergeyevna looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and
the passengers as though looking for acquaintances, and when she turned
to Gurov her eyes were shining. She talked a great deal and asked
disconnected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked; then
she dropped her lorgnette in the crush.
The festive crowd began to disperse; it was too dark to see people's
faces. The wind had completely dropped, but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna
still stood as though waiting to see some one else come from the
steamer. Anna Sergeyevna was silent now, and sniffed the flowers without
looking at Gurov.
"The weather is better this evening," he said. "Where shall we go now?
Shall we drive somewhere?"
She made no answer.
Then he looked at her intently, and all at once put his arm round her
and kissed her on the lips, and breathed in the moisture and the
fragrance of the flowers; and he immediately looked round him, anxiously
wondering whether any one had seen them.
"Let us go to your hotel," he said softly. And both walked quickly.
The room was close and smelt of the scent she had bought at the Japanese
shop. Gurov looked at her and thought: "What different people one meets
in the world!" From the past he preserved memories of careless,
good-natured women, who loved cheerfully and were grateful to him for
the happiness he gave them, however brief it might be; and of women like
his wife who loved without any genuine feeling, with superfluous
phrases, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that suggested
that it was not love nor passion, but something more significant; and of
two or three others, very beautiful, cold women, on whose faces he had
caught a glimpse of a rapacious expression--an obstinate desire to
snatch from life more than it could give, and these were capricious,
unreflecting, domineering, unintelligent women not in their first youth,
and when Gurov grew cold to them their beauty excited his hatred, and
the lace on their linen seemed to him like scales.
But in this case there was still the diffidence, the angularity of
inexperienced youth, an awkward feeling; and there was a sense of
consternation as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door. The
attitude of Anna Sergeyevna--"the lady with the dog"--to what had
happened was somehow peculiar, very grave, as though it were her
fall--so it seemed, and it was strange and inappropriate. Her face
dropped and faded, and on both sides of it her long hair hung down
mournfully; she mused in a dejected attitude like "the woman who was a
sinner" in an old-fashioned picture.
"It's wrong," she said. "You will be the first to despise me now."
There was a water-melon on the table. Gurov cut himself a slice and
began eating it without haste. There followed at least half an hour of
silence.
Anna Sergeyevna was touching; there was about her the purity of a good,
simple woman who had seen little of life. The solitary candle burning on
the table threw a faint light on her face, yet it was clear that she was
very unhappy.
"How could I despise you?" asked Gurov. "You don't know what you are
saying."
"God forgive me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "It's
awful."
"You seem to feel you need to be forgiven."
"Forgiven? No. I am a bad, low woman; I despise myself and don't attempt
to justify myself. It's not my husband but myself I have deceived. And
not only just now; I have been deceiving myself for a long time. My
husband may be a good, honest man, but he is a flunkey! I don't know
what he does there, what his work is, but I know he is a flunkey! I was
twenty when I was married to him. I have been tormented by curiosity; I
wanted something better. 'There must be a different sort of life,' I
said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to live!... I was fired by
curiosity ... you don't understand it, but, I swear to God, I could not
control myself; something happened to me: I could not be restrained. I
told my husband I was ill, and came here.... And here I have been
walking about as though I were dazed, like a mad creature; ... and now I
have become a vulgar, contemptible woman whom any one may despise."
Gurov felt bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the
naïve tone, by this remorse, so unexpected and inopportune; but for the
tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or playing a
part.
"I don't understand," he said softly. "What is it you want?"
She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him.
"Believe me, believe me, I beseech you ..." she said. "I love a pure,
honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don't know what I am doing.
Simple people say: 'The Evil One has beguiled me.' And I may say of
myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me."
"Hush, hush!..." he muttered.
He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and
affectionately, and by degrees she was comforted, and her gaiety
returned; they both began laughing.
Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the sea-front. The
town with its cypresses had quite a deathlike air, but the sea still
broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and
a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.
They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.
"I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the
board--Von Diderits," said Gurov. "Is your husband a German?"
"No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox
Russian himself."
At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at
the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning
mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did
not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow
sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the
eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no
Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as
indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this
constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each
of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of
the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards
perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so
lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings--the sea,
mountains, clouds, the open sky--Gurov thought how in reality everything
is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we
think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher
aims of our existence.
A man walked up to them--probably a keeper--looked at them and walked
away. And this detail seemed mysterious and beautiful, too. They saw a
steamer come from Theodosia, with its lights out in the glow of dawn.
"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergeyevna, after a silence.
"Yes. It's time to go home."
They went back to the town.
Then they met every day at twelve o'clock on the sea-front, lunched and
dined together, went for walks, admired the sea. She complained that she
slept badly, that her heart throbbed violently; asked the same
questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the fear that he did not
respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or gardens, when there
was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her
passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight while he
looked round in dread of some one's seeing them, the heat, the smell of
the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle,
well-dressed, well-fed people, made a new man of him; he told Anna
Sergeyevna how beautiful she was, how fascinating. He was impatiently
passionate, he would not move a step away from her, while she was often
pensive and continually urged him to confess that he did not respect
her, did not love her in the least, and thought of her as nothing but a
common woman. Rather late almost every evening they drove somewhere out
of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the expedition was always a
success, the scenery invariably impressed them as grand and beautiful.
They were expecting her husband to come, but a letter came from him,
saying that there was something wrong with his eyes, and he entreated
his wife to come home as quickly as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made haste
to go.
"It's a good thing I am going away," she said to Gurov. "It's the finger
of destiny!"
She went by coach and he went with her. They were driving the whole day.
When she had got into a compartment of the express, and when the second
bell had rung, she said:
"Let me look at you once more ... look at you once again. That's right."
She did not shed tears, but was so sad that she seemed ill, and her face
was quivering.
"I shall remember you ... think of you," she said. "God be with you; be
happy. Don't remember evil against me. We are parting forever--it must
be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with you."
The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a
minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had
conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium,
that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark
distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum
of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And
he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in
his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a
memory.... He was moved, sad, and conscious of a slight remorse. This
young woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy with him;
he was genuinely warm and affectionate with her, but yet in his manner,
his tone, and his caresses there had been a shade of light irony, the
coarse condescension of a happy man who was, besides, almost twice her
age. All the time she had called him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously
he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had
unintentionally deceived her....
Here at the station was already a scent of autumn; it was a cold
evening.
"It's time for me to go north," thought Gurov as he left the platform.
"High time!"