And Anna Sergueyevna began to come to him in Moscow.
Once every two or three months she would leave S., telling
her husband that she was going to consult a specialist in
women's diseases. Her husband half believed and half
disbelieved her. At Moscow she would stay at the
"Slaviansky Bazaar" and send a message at once to
Gomov. He would come to her, and nobody in Moscow
knew.
Once as he was going to her as usual one winter morning--
he had not received her message the night before--he had
his daughter with him, for he was taking her to school
which was on the way. Great wet flakes of snow were
falling.
"Three degrees above freezing," he said, "and still the
snow is falling. But the warmth is only on the surface of
the earth. In the upper strata of the atmosphere there is
quite a different temperature."
"Yes, papa. Why is there no thunder in winter?"
He explained this too, and as he spoke he thought of his
assignation, and that not a living soul knew of it, or ever
would know. He had two lives; one obvious, which every
one could see and know, if they were sufficiently
interested, a life full of conventional truth and
conventional fraud, exactly like the lives of his friends and
acquaintances; and another, which moved underground.
And by a strange conspiracy of circumstances, everything
that was to him important, interesting, vital, everything
that enabled him to be sincere and denied self-deception
and was the very core of his being, must dwell hidden
away from others, and everything that made him false, a
mere shape in which he hid himself in order to conceal the
truth, as for instance his work in the bank, arguments at the
club, his favourite gibe about women, going to parties with
his wife--all this was open. And, judging others by
himself, he did not believe the things he saw, and assumed
that everybody else also had his real vital life passing
under a veil of mystery as under the cover of the night.
Every man's intimate existence is kept mysterious, and
perhaps, in part, because of that civilised people are so nervously anxious that a personal secret should be
respected.
When he had left his daughter at school, Gomov went to
the "Slaviansky Bazaar." He took off his fur coat downstairs, went up and knocked quietly at the door. Anna
Sergueyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress, tired by the
journey, had been expecting him to come all night. She
was pale, and looked at him without a smile, and flung
herself on his breast as soon as he entered. Their kiss was
long and lingering as though they had not seen each other
for a couple of years.
"Well, how are you getting on down there?" he asked.
"What is your news?"
"Wait. I'll tell you presently.... I cannot."
She could not speak, for she was weeping. She turned her
face from him and dried her eyes.
"Well, let her cry a bit.... I'll wait," he thought, and sat
down.
Then he rang and ordered tea, and then, as he drank it, she
stood and gazed out of the window.... She was weeping in
distress, in the bitter knowledge that their life had fallen
out so sadly; only seeing each other in secret, hiding
themselves away like thieves! Was not their life crushed?
"Don't cry.... Don't cry," he said.
It was clear to him that their love was yet far from its end,
which there was no seeing. Anna Sergueyevna was more
and more passionately attached to him; she adored him and
it was inconceivable that he should tell her that their love
must some day end; she would not believe it.
He came up to her and patted her shoulder fondly and at
that moment he saw himself in the mirror.
His hair was already going grey. And it seemed strange to
him that in the last few years he should have got so old and
ugly. Her shoulders were warm and trembled to his touch.
He was suddenly filled with pity for her life, still so warm
and beautiful, but probably beginning to fade and wither,
like his own. Why should she love him so much? He
always seemed to women not what he really was, and they
loved in him, not himself, but the creature of their
imagination, the thing they hankered for in life, and when
they had discovered their mistake, still they loved him.
And not one of them was happy with him. Time passed; he
met women and was friends with them, went further and
parted, but never once did he love; there was everything
but love.
And now at last when his hair was grey he had fallen in
love, real love--for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergueyevna and he loved one another, like dear
kindred, like husband and wife, like devoted friends; it
seemed to them that Fate had destined them for one
another, and it was inconceivable that he should have a
wife, she a husband; they were like two birds of passage, a
male and a female, which had been caught and forced to
live in separate cages. They had forgiven each other all the
past of which they were ashamed; they forgave everything
in the present, and they felt that their love had changed
both of them.
Formerly, when he felt a melancholy compunction, he
used to comfort himself with all kinds of arguments, just as
they happened to cross his mind, but now he was far
removed from any such ideas; he was filled with a
profound pity, and he desired to be tender and sincere....
"Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You have cried
enough.... Now let us talk and see if we can't find some
way out."
Then they talked it all over, and tried to discover some
means of avoiding the necessity for concealment and
deception, and the torment of living in different towns, and
of not seeing each other for a long time. How could they
shake off these intolerable fetters?
"How? How?" he asked, holding his head in his hands.
"How?"
And it seemed that but a little while and the solution would
be found and there would begin a lovely new life; and to
both of them it was clear that the end was still very far off,
and that their hardest and most difficult period was only
just beginning.
The end