And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or
three months she left S----, telling her husband that she was going to
consult a doctor about an internal complaint--and her husband believed
her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky
Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went
to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.
Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the
messenger had come the evening before when he was out). With him walked
his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the way. Snow
was falling in big wet flakes.
"It's three degrees above freezing-point, and yet it is snowing," said
Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only on the surface of the earth;
there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the
atmosphere."
"And why are there no thunderstorms in the winter, father?"
He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was
going to see her, and no living soul knew of it, and probably never
would know. He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared
to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like
the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its
course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental,
conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest
and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not
deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden
from other people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he
hid himself to conceal the truth--such, for instance, as his work in the
bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with
his wife at anniversary festivities--all that was open. And he judged of
others by himself, not believing in what he saw, and always believing
that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of
secrecy and under the cover of night. All personal life rested on
secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that civilised man
was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.
After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky
Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below, went upstairs, and softly
knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress,
exhausted by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting him since
the evening before. She was pale; she looked at him, and did not smile,
and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their kiss was
slow and prolonged, as though they had not met for two years.
"Well, how are you getting on there?" he asked. "What news?"
"Wait; I'll tell you directly.... I can't talk."
She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and
pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
"Let her have her cry out. I'll sit down and wait," he thought, and he
sat down in an arm-chair.
Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his
tea she remained standing at the window with her back to him. She was
crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their life
was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding themselves
from people, like thieves! Was not their life shattered?
"Come, do stop!" he said.
It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over,
that he could not see the end of it. Anna Sergeyevna grew more and more
attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to her
that it was bound to have an end some day; besides, she would not have
believed it!
He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something
affectionate and cheering, and at that moment he saw himself in the
looking-glass.
His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to
him that he had grown so much older, so much plainer during the last few
years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering.
He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably
already not far from beginning to fade and wither like his own. Why did
she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he
was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their
imagination, whom they had been eagerly seeking all their lives; and
afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the
same. And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had
made their acquaintance, got on with them, parted, but he had never once
loved; it was anything you like, but not love.
And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in
love--for the first time in his life.
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.