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