A week passed. It was a blazing day. Indoors it was
stifling, and in the streets the dust whirled along. All day
long he was plagued with thirst and he came into the
pavilion every few minutes and offered Anna Sergueyevna
an iced drink or an ice. It was impossibly hot.
In the evening, when the air was fresher, they walked to
the jetty to see the steamer come in. There was quite a
crowd all gathered to meet somebody, for they carried
bouquets. And among them were clearly marked the
peculiarities of Talta: the elderly ladies were youngly
dressed and there were many generals.
The sea was rough and the steamer was late, and before it
turned into the jetty it had to do a great deal of
manoeuvring. Anna Sergueyevna looked through her
lorgnette at the steamer and the passengers as though she
were looking for friends, and when she turned to Gomov,
her eyes shone. She talked much and her questions were
abrupt, and she forgot what she had said; and then she lost
her lorgnette in the crowd.
The well-dressed people went away, the wind dropped,
and Gomov and Anna Sergueyevna stood as though they
were waiting for somebody to come from the steamer.
Anna Sergueyevna was silent. She smelled her flowers and
did not look at Gomov.
"The weather has got pleasanter toward evening," he said.
"Where shall we go now? Shall we take a carriage?"
She did not answer.
He fixed his eyes on her and suddenly embraced her and
kissed her lips, and he was kindled with the perfume and
the moisture of the flowers; at once he started and looked
round; had not some one seen? Let us go to your--" he murmured.
And they walked quickly away.
Her room was stifling, and smelled of scents which she
had bought at the Japanese shop. Gomov looked at her and
thought: "What strange chances there are in life!" From the
past there came the memory of earlier good-natured
women, gay in their love, grateful to him for their
happiness, short though it might be; and of others--like his
wife--who loved without sincerity, and talked overmuch
and affectedly, hysterically, as though they were protesting
that it was not love, nor passion, but something more
important; and of the few beautiful cold women, into
whose eyes there would flash suddenly a fierce expression,
a stubborn desire to take, to snatch from life more than it
can give; they were no longer in their first youth, they
were capricious, unstable, domineering, imprudent, and
when Gomov became cold toward them then their beauty
roused him to hatred, and the lace on their lingerie
reminded him of the scales of fish.
But here there was the shyness and awkwardness of
inexperienced youth, a feeling of constraint; an impression
of perplexity and wonder, as though some one had
suddenly knocked at the door. Anna Sergueyevna, "the
lady with the toy dog" took what had happened somehow
seriously, with a particular gravity, as though thinking that
this was her downfall and very strange and improper. Her
features seemed to sink and wither, and on either side of
her face her long hair hung mournfully down; she sat
crestfallen and musing, exactly like a woman taken in sin
in some old picture.
"It is not right," she said. "You are the first to lose respect
for me."
There was a melon on the table. Gomov cut a slice and
began to eat it slowly. At least half an hour passed in
silence.
Anna Sergueyevna was very touching; she irradiated the
purity of a simple, devout, inexperienced woman; the
solitary candle on the table hardly lighted her face, but it
showed her very wretched.
"Why should I cease to respect you?" asked Gomov. "You
don't know what you are saying."
"God forgive me!" she said, and her eyes filled with tears.
"It is horrible."
"You seem to want to justify yourself."
"How can I justify myself? I am a wicked, low woman and
I despise myself. I have no thought of justifying myself. It
is not my husband that I have deceived, but myself. And
not only now but for a long time past. My husband may be
a good honest man, but he is a lackey. I do not know what work he does, but I do know that he is a lackey in his soul.
I was twenty when I married him. I was overcome by
curiosity. I longed for something. 'Surely,' I said to myself,
'there is another kind of life.' I longed to live! To live, and
to live.... Curiosity burned me up.... You do not understand
it, but I swear by God, I could no longer control myself.
Something strange was going on in me. I could not hold
myself in. I told my husband that I was ill and came here....
And here I have been walking about dizzily, like a
lunatic.... And now I have become a low, filthy woman
whom everybody may despise."
Gomov was already bored; her simple words irritated him
with their unexpected and inappropriate repentance; but for
the tears in her eyes he might have thought her to be joking
or playing a part.
"I do not understand," he said quietly. "What do you
want?"
She hid her face in his bosom and pressed close to him.
"Believe, believe me, I implore you," she said. "I love a
pure, honest life, and sin is revolting to me. I don't know
myself what I am doing. Simple people say: 'The devil
entrapped me,' and I can say of myself: 'The Evil One
tempted me.'"
"Don't, don't," he murmured.
He looked into her staring, frightened eyes, kissed her,
spoke quietly and tenderly, and gradually quieted her and
she was happy again, and they both began to laugh.
Later, when they went out, there was not a soul on the
quay; the town with its cypresses looked like a city of the
dead, but the sea still roared and broke against the shore; a
boat swung on the waves; and in it sleepily twinkled the
light of a lantern.
They found a cab and drove out to the Oreanda.
"Just now in the hall," said Gomov, "I discovered your
name written on the board--von Didenitz. Is your husband
a German?"
"No. His grandfather, I believe, was a German, but he
himself is an Orthodox Russian."
At Oreanda they sat on a bench, not far from the church,
looked down at the sea and were silent. Talta was hardly
visible through the morning mist. The tops of the hills
were shrouded in motionless white clouds. The leaves of
the trees never stirred, the cicadas trilled, and the
monotonous dull sound of the sea, coming up from below,
spoke of the rest, the eternal sleep awaiting us. So the sea
roared when there was neither Talta nor Oreanda, and so it
roars and will roar, dully, indifferently when we shall be
no more. And in this continual indifference to the life and
death of each of us, lives pent up, the pledge of our eternal salvation, of the uninterrupted movement of life on earth
and its unceasing perfection. Sitting side by side with a
young woman, who in the dawn seemed so beautiful,
Gomov, appeased and enchanted by the sight of the fairy
scene, the sea, the mountains, the clouds, the wide sky,
thought how at bottom, if it were thoroughly explored,
everything on earth was beautiful, everything, except what
we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher
purposes of life and our own human dignity.
A man came up--a coast-guard--gave a look at them, then
went away. He, too, seemed mysterious and enchanted. A
steamer came over from Feodossia, by the light of the
morning star, its own lights already put out.
"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergueyevna after a
silence.
"Yes. It is time to go home."
They returned to the town.
Then every afternoon they met on the quay, and lunched
together, dined, walked, enjoyed the sea. She complained
that she slept badly, that her heart beat alarmingly. She
would ask the same question over and over again, and was
troubled now by jealousy, now by fear that he did not
sufficiently respect her. And often in the square or the
gardens, when there was no one near, he would draw her
close and kiss her passionately. Their complete idleness,
these kisses in the full daylight, given timidly and fearfully
lest any one should see, the heat, the smell of the sea and
the continual brilliant parade of leisured, well-dressed,
well-fed people almost regenerated him. He would tell
Anna Sergueyevna how delightful she was, how tempting.
He was impatiently passionate, never left her side, and she
would often brood, and even asked him to confess that he
did not respect her, did not love her at all, and only saw in
her a loose woman. Almost every evening, rather late, they
would drive out of the town, to Oreanda, or to the
waterfall; and these drives were always delightful, and the
impressions won during them were always beautiful and
sublime.
They expected her husband to come. But he sent a letter in
which he said that his eyes were bad and implored his wife
to come home. Anna Sergueyevna began to worry.
"It is a good thing I am going away," she would say to
Gomov. "It is fate."
She went in a carriage and he accompanied her. They
drove for a whole day. When she took her seat in the car of
an express-train and when the second bell sounded, she
said:
"Let me have another look at you.... Just one more look.
Just as you are." She did not cry, but was sad and low-spirited, and her lips
trembled.
"I will think of you--often," she said. "Good-bye. Goodbye. Don't think ill of me. We part for ever. We must,
because we ought not to have met at all. Now, good-bye."
The train moved off rapidly. Its lights disappeared, and in
a minute or two the sound of it was lost, as though
everything were agreed to put an end to this sweet,
oblivious madness. Left alone on the platform, looking
into the darkness, Gomov heard the trilling of the
grasshoppers and the humming of the telegraph-wires, and
felt as though he had just woke up. And he thought that it
had been one more adventure, one more affair, and it also
was finished and had left only a memory. He was moved,
sad, and filled with a faint remorse; surely the young
woman, whom he would never see again, had not been
happy with him; he had been kind to her, friendly, and
sincere, but still in his attitude toward her, in his tone and
caresses, there had always been a thin shadow of raillery,
the rather rough arrogance of the successful male
aggravated by the fact that he was twice as old as she. And
all the time she had called him kind, remarkable, noble, so
that he was never really himself to her, and had
involuntarily deceived her....
Here at the station, the smell of autumn was in the air, and
the evening was cool.
"It is time for me to go North," thought Gomov, as he left
the platform. "It is time."