The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ in herself an explanation she could not understand why she had not withdrawn the hand to which Ilyin's lips clung like a leech, nor why, at the same time as Ilyin, she looked hurriedly right and left to see that they were not observed.

      The fir-trees and the clouds stood motionless, and gazed at them severely like broken-down masters who see something going on, but have been bribed not to report to the head. The sentry on the embankment stood like a stick and seemed to be staring at the bench. " Let him look ! " thought Sophia Pietrovna.

      "But . . . But listen," she said at last with despair in her voice. " What will this lead to ? What will happen afterwards ? "

      "I don't know. I don't know," he began to whisper, waving these unpleasant questions aside.

      The hoarse, jarring whistle of a railway engine became audible. This cold, prosaic sound of the everyday world made Madame Loubianzev start.

      "It's time, I must go," she said, getting up quickly. " The train is coming. Andrey is arriving. He will want his dinner."

      Sophia Pietrovna turned her blazing cheeks to the embankment. First the engine came slowly into sight, after it the carriages. It was not a bungalow train, but a goods train. In a long row, one after another like the days of man's life, the cars drew past the white background of the church, and there seemed to be no end to them.

      But at last the train disappeared, and the end car with the guard and the lighted lamps disappeared into the green. Sophia Pietrovna turned sharply and not looking at Ilyin began to walk quickly back along the path. She had herself in control again. Red with shame, offended, not by Ilyin, no ! but by the cowardice and shamelessness with which she, a good, respectable woman allowed a stranger to embrace her knees. She had only one thought now, to reach her bungalow and her family as quickly as possible. The barrister could hardly keep up with her. Turning from the path on to a little track, she glanced at him so quickly that she noticed only the sand on his knees, and she motioned with her hand at him to let her be.

      Running into the house Sophia Pietrovna stood for about five minutes motionless in her room, looking now at the window then at the writing table. ..." You disgraceful woman," she scolded herself ; " disgraceful ! " In spite of herself she recollected every detail, hiding nothing, how all these days she had been against Ilyin's love-making, yet she was somehow drawn to meet him and explain ; but besides this when he was lying at her feet she felt an extraordinary pleasure. She recalled everything, not sparing herself, and now, stifled with shame, she could have slapped her own face.

      "Poor Andrey," she thought, trying, as she remembered her husband, to give her face the tenderest possible expression—" Varya, my poor darling child, does not know what a mother she has. Forgive me, my dears. I love you very much . . . very much ! . . ."

      And wishing to convince herself that she was still a good wife and mother, that corruption had not yet touched those " sanctities " of hers, of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sophia Pietrovna ran into the kitchen and scolded the cook for not having laid the table for Andrey Ilyitch. She tried to imagine her husband's tired, hungry look, and pitying him aloud, she laid the table herself, a thing which she had never done before. Then she found her daughter Varya, lifted her up in her hands and kissed her passionately ; the child seemed to her heavy and cold, but she would not own it to herself, and she began to tell her what a good, dear, splendid father she had.

      But when, soon after, Andrey Ilyitch arrived, she barely greeted him. The flow of imaginary feelings had ebbed away without convincing her of anything ; she was only exasperated and enraged by the lie. She sat at the window, suffered, and raged. Only in distress can people understand how difficult it is to master their thoughts and feelings. Sophia Pietrovna said afterwards a confusion was going on inside her as hard to define as to count a cloud of swiftly flying sparrows. Thus from the fact that she was delighted at her husband's arrival and pleased with the way he behaved at dinner, she suddenly concluded that she had begun to hate him. Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and fatigue, while waiting for the soup, fell upon the sausage and ate it greedily, chewing loudly and moving his temples.

      "My God," thought Sophia Pietrovna. " I do love and respect him, but . . . why does he chew so disgustingly."

      Her thoughts were no less disturbed than her feelings. Madame Loubianzev, like all who have no experience of the struggle with unpleasant thought, did her best not to think of her unhappiness, and the more zealously she tried, the more vivid Ilyin became to her imagination, the sand on his knees, the feathery clouds, the train. . . .

      "Why did I—idiot—go today ? " she teased herself. " And am I really a person who can't answer for herself ? "

      Fear has big eyes. When Andrey Ilyitch had finished the last course, she had already resolved to tell him everything and so escape from danger.

      "Andrey, I want to speak to you seriously," she began after dinner, when her husband was taking off his coat and boots in order to have a lie down.

      "Well ? "

      "Let's go away from here ! "

      "How—where to ? It's still too early to go to town."

      "No. Travel or something like that."

      "Travel," murmured the solicitor, stretching himself. " I dream of it myself, but where shall I get the money, and who'll look after my business."

      After a little reflection he added :

      "Yes, really you are bored. Go by yourself if you want to."

      Sophia Pietrovna agreed ; but at the same time she saw that Ilyin would be glad of the opportunity to travel in the same train with her, in the same carriage. . . .

      She pondered and looked at her husband, who was full fed but still languid. For some reason her eyes stopped on his feet, tiny, almost womanish, in stupid socks. On the toe of both socks little threads were standing out. Under the drawn blind a bumble bee was knocking against the window pane and buzzing. Sophia Pietrovna stared at the threads, listened to the bumble bee and pictured her journey . . . Day and night Ilyin sits opposite, without taking his eyes from her, angry with his weakness and pale with the pain of his soul. He brands himself as a libertine, accuses her, tears his hair ; but when the dark comes he seizes the chance when the passengers go to sleep or alight at a station and falls on his knees before her and clasps her feet, as he did by the bench . . .

      She realised that she was dreaming . . .

      "Listen. I am not going by myself," she said. " You must come, too ! "

      "Sophochka, that's all imagination ! " sighed Loubianzev. " You must be serious and only ask for the possible . . ."

      "You'll come when you find out ! " thought Sophia Pietrovna.

      Having decided to go away at all costs, she began to feel free from danger ; her thoughts fell gradually into order, she became cheerful and even allowed herself to think about everything. Whatever she may think or dream about, she is going all the same. While her husband still slept, little by little, evening came . . .

      She sat in the drawing-room playing the piano. Outside the window the evening animation, the sound of music, but chiefly the thought of her own cleverness in mastering her misery gave the final touch to her joy. Other women, her easy conscience told her, in a position like her own would surely not resist, they would spin round like a whirlwind ; but she was nearly burnt up with shame, she suffered and now she had escaped from a danger which perhaps was non-existent ! Her virtue and resolution moved her so much that she even glanced at herself in the glass three times.

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