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

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      When it was dark visitors came. The men sat down to cards in the dining-room, the ladies were in the drawing room and on the terrace. Ilyin came last, he was stern and gloomy and looked ill. He sat down on a corner of the sofa and did not get up for the whole evening. Usually cheerful and full of conversation, he was now silent, frowning, and rubbing his eyes. When he had to answer a question he smiled with difficulty and only with his upper lip, answering abruptly and spitefully. He made about five jokes in all, but his jokes seemed crude and insolent. It seemed to Sophia Pietrovna that he was on the brink of hysteria. But only now as she sat at the piano did she acknowledge that the unhappy man was not in the mood to joke, that he was sick in his soul, he could find no place for himself. It was for her sake he was ruining the best days of his career and his youth, wasting his last farthing on a bungalow, had left his mother and sisters uncared for, and, above all, was breaking down under the martyrdom of his struggle. From simple, common humanity she ought to take him seriously. . . .

      All this was clear to her, even to paining her. If she were to go up to Ilyin now and say to him " No," there would be such strength in her voice that it would be hard to disobey. But she did not go up to him and she did not say it, did not even think it ... The petty selfishness of a young nature seemed never to have been revealed in her as strongly as that evening. She admitted that Ilyin was unhappy and that he sat on the sofa as if on hot coals. She was sorry for him, but at the same time the presence of the man who loved her so desperately filled her with a triumphant sense of her own power. She felt her youth, her beauty, her inaccessibility, and—since she had decided to go away—she gave herself full rein this evening. She coquetted, laughed continually, she sang with singular emotion, and as one inspired. Everything made her gay and everything seemed funny. It amused her to recall the incident of the bench, the sentry looking on. The visitors seemed funny to her, Ilyin's insolent jokes, his tie pin which she had never seen before. The pin was a little red snake with tiny diamond eyes ; the snake seemed so funny that she was ready to kiss and kiss it.

      Sophia Pietrovna, nervously sang romantic songs, with a kind of half-intoxication, and as if jeering at another's sorrow she chose sad, melancholy songs that spoke of lost hopes, of the past, of old age. ... " And old age is approaching nearer and nearer," she sang. What had she to do with old age ?

      "There's something wrong going on in me," she thought now and then through laughter and singing.

      At twelve o'clock the visitors departed. Ilyin was the last to go. She still felt warm enough about him to go with him to the lower step of the terrace. She had the idea of telling him that she was going away with her husband, just to see what effect this news would have upon him.

      The moon was hiding behind the clouds, but it was so bright that Sophia Pietrovna could see the wind playing with the tails of his overcoat and with the creepers on the terrace. It was also plain how pale Ilyin was, and how he twisted his upper-lip, trying to smile.

      "Sonia, Sonichka, my dear little woman," he murmured, not letting her speak. " My darling, my pretty one."

      In a paroxysm of tenderness with tears in his voice, he showered her with endearing words each tenderer than the other, and was already speaking to her as if she were his wife or his mistress. Suddenly and unexpectedly to her, he put one arm round her and with the other hand he seized her elbow.

      "My dear one, my beauty," he began to whisper, kissing the nape of her neck ; " be sincere, come to me now."

      She slipped out of his embrace and lifted her head to break out in indignation and revolt. But indignation did not come, and of all her praiseworthy virtue and purity, there was left only enough for her to say that which all average women say in similar circumstances :

      "You must be mad."

      "But really let us go," continued Ilyin. "Just now and over there by the bench I felt convinced that you, Sonia, were as helpless as myself. You too will be all the worse for it. You love me, and you are making a useless bargain with your conscience."

      Seeing that she was leaving him he seized her by her lace sleeve and ended quickly :

      "If not to-day, then to-morrow ; but you will have to give in. What's the good of putting if off ? My dear, my darling Sonia, the verdict has been pronounced. Why postpone the execution ? Why deceive yourself?"

      Sophia Pietrovna broke away from him and suddenly disappeared inside the door. She returned to the drawing-room, shut the piano mechanically, stared for a long time at the cover of a music book, and sat down. She could neither stand nor think. . . . From her agitation and passion remained only an awful weakness mingled with laziness and tiredness. Her conscience whispered to her that she had behaved wickedly and foolishly to-night, like a mad-woman ; that just now she had been kissed on the terrace, and even now she had some strange sensation in her waist and in her elbow. Not a soul was in the drawing-room. Only a single candle was burning. Madame Loubianzev sat on a little round stool before the piano without strirring as if waiting for something, and as if taking advantage of her extreme exhaustion and the dark a heavy unconquerable desire began to possess her. Like a boa-constrictor, it enchained her limbs and soul. It grew every second and was no longer threatening, but stood clear before her in all its nakedness.

      She sat thus for half an hour, not moving, and not stopping herself from thinking of Ilyin. Then she got up lazily and went slowly into the bed-room. Andrey Ilyitch was in bed already. She sat by the window and gave herself to her desire. She felt no more "confusion." All her feelings and thoughts pressed lovingly round some clear purpose. She still had a mind to struggle, but instantly she waved her hand impotently, realising the strength and the determination of the foe. To fight him power and strength were necessary, but her birth, upbringing and life had given her nothing on which to lean.

      "You're immoral, you're horrible," she tormented herself for her weakness. " You're a nice sort, you are ! "

      So indignant was her insulted modesty at this weakness that she called herself all the bad names that she knew and she related to herself many insulting, degrading truths. Thus she told herself that she never was moral, and she had not fallen before only because there was no pretext, that her day-long struggle had been nothing but a game and a comedy. . . .

      "Let us admit that I struggled," she thought, "but what kind of a fight was it ? Even prostitutes struggle before they sell themselves, and still they do sell themselves. It's a pretty sort of fight. Like milk, turns in a day." She realised that it was not love that drew her from her home nor Ilyin's personality, but the sensations which await her. ... A little week-end type like the rest of them.

      "When the young bird's mother was killed," a hoarse tenor finished singing.

      If I am going, it's time, thought Sophia Pietrovna. Her heart began to beat with a frightful force.

      "Andrey," she almost cried. " Listen. Shall we go away ? Shall we ? Yes ? "

      "Yes. . . . I've told you already. You go alone."

      "But listen," she said, " if you don't come too, you may lose me. I seem to be in love already."

      "Who with ? " Andrey Ilyitch asked.

      "It must be all the same for you, who with," Sophia Pietrovna cried out.

      Andrey Ilyitch got up, dangled his feet over the side of the bed, with a look of surprise at the dark form of his wife.

      "Imagination," he yawned.

      He could not believe her, but all the same he was frightened. After having thought for a while, and asked his wife some unimportant questions, he gave his views of the family, of infidelity. . СКАЧАТЬ