looking at her husband with surprise and amusement. She got up and moved a little apart with her husband.
'What notion is this?' she began. 'Why go home? Why, it's not eleven o'clock.'
'I wish it, and that's enough. Come along, and that's all about it.'
'Don't be silly! Go home alone if you want to.'
'All right; then I shall make a scene.'
The tax-collector saw the look of beatitude gradually vanish from his wife's face, saw how ashamed and miserable she was -- and he felt a little happier.
'Why do you want me at once?' asked his wife.
'I don't want you, but I wish you to be at home. I wish it, that's all.'
At first Anna Pavlovna refused to hear of it, then she began entreating her husband to let her stay just another half-hour; then, without knowing why, she began to apologise, to protest -- and all in a whisper, with a smile, that the spectators might not suspect that she was having a tiff with her husband. She began assuring him she would not stay long, only another ten minutes, only five minutes; but the tax-collector stuck obstinately to his point.
'Stay if you like,' he said, 'but I'll make a scene if you do.'
And as she talked to her husband Anna Pavlovna looked thinner, older, plainer. Pale, biting her lips, and almost crying, she went out to the entry and began putting on her things.
'You are not going?' asked the ladies in surprise. 'Anna Pavlovna, you are not going, dear?'
'Her head aches,' said the tax-collector for his wife.
Coming out of the club, the husband and wife walked all the way home in silence. The tax-collector walked behind his wife, and watching her downcast, sorrowful, humiliated little figure, he recalled the look of beatitude which had so irritated him at the club, and the consciousness that the beatitude was gone filled his soul with triumph. He was pleased and satisfied, and at the same time he felt the lack of something; he would have liked to go back to the club and make every one feel dreary and miserable, so that all might know how stale and worthless life is when you walk along the streets in the dark and hear the slush of the mud under your feet, and when you know that you will wake up next morning with nothing to look forward to but vodka and cards. Oh, how awful it is!
And Anna Pavlovna could scarcely walk. . . . She was still under the influence of the dancing, the music, the talk, the lights, and the noise; she asked herself as she walked along why God had thus afflicted her. She felt miserable, insulted, and choking with hate as she listened to her husband's heavy footsteps. She was silent, trying to think of the most offensive, biting, and venomous word she could hurl at her husband, and at the same time she was fully aware that no word could penetrate her tax-collector's hide. What did he care for words? Her bitterest enemy could not have contrived for her a more helpless position.
And meanwhile the band was playing and the darkness was full of the most rousing, intoxicating dance- tunes.
NOTES
on tick: on credit
making love: in the 19th century this meant declaring one's love, courting
A MISFORTUNE
by Anton Chekhov
SOFYA PETROVNA, the wife of Lubyantsev the notary, a handsome young woman of five-and-twenty, was walking slowly along a track that had been cleared in the wood, with Ilyin, a lawyer who was spending the summer in the neighbourhood. It was five o'clock in the evening. Feathery-white masses of cloud stood overhead; patches of bright blue sky peeped out between them. The clouds stood motionless, as though they had caught in the tops of the tall old pine-trees. It was still and sultry.
Farther on, the track was crossed by a low railway embankment on which a sentinel with a gun was for some reason pacing up and down. Just beyond the embankment there was a large white church with six domes and a rusty roof.
'I did not expect to meet you here,' said Sofya Petrovna, looking at the ground and prodding at the last year's leaves with the tip of her parasol, 'and now I am glad we have met. I want to speak to you seriously and once for all. I beg you, Ivan Mihalovitch, if you really love and respect me, please make an end of this pursuit of me! You follow me about like a shadow, you are continually looking at me not in a nice way, making love to me, writing me strange letters, and . . . and I don't know where it's all going to end! Why, what can come of it?'
Ilyin said nothing. Sofya Petrovna walked on a few steps and continued:
'And this complete transformation in you all came about in the course of two or three weeks, after five years' friendship. I don't know you, Ivan Mihalovitch!'
Sofya Petrovna stole a glance at her companion. Screwing up his eyes, he was looking intently at the fluffy clouds. His face looked angry, ill-humoured, and preoccupied, like that of a man in pain forced to listen to nonsense.
'I wonder you don't see it yourself,' Madame Lubyantsev went on, shrugging her shoulders. 'You ought to realize that it's not a very nice part you are playing. I am married; I love and respect my husband. . . . I have a daughter . . . . Can you think all that means nothing? Besides, as an old friend you know my attitude to family life and my views as to the sanctity of marriage.'
Ilyin cleared his throat angrily and heaved a sigh.
'Sanctity of marriage . . .' he muttered. 'Oh, Lord!'
Yes, yes. . . . I love my husband, I respect him; and in any case I value the peace of my home. I would rather let myself be killed than be a cause of unhappiness to Andrey and his daughter. . . . And I beg you, Ivan Mihalovitch, for God's sake, leave me in peace! Let us be as good, true friends as we used to be, and give up these sighs and groans, which really don't suit you. It's settled and over! Not a word more about it. Let us talk of something else.'
Sofya Petrovna again stole a glance at Ilyin's face. Ilyin was looking up; he was pale, and was angrily biting his quivering lips. She could not understand why he was angry and why he was indignant, but his pallor touched her.
'Don't be angry; let us be friends,' she said affectionately. 'Agreed? Here's my hand.'
Ilyin took her plump little hand in both of his, squeezed it, and slowly raised it to his lips.
'I am not a schoolboy,' he muttered. 'I am not in the least tempted by friendship with the woman I love.'
'Enough, enough! It's settled and done with. We have reached the seat; let us sit down.'
Sofya Petrovna's soul was filled with a sweet sense of relief: the most difficult and delicate thing had been said, the painful question was settled and done with. Now she could breathe freely and look Ilyin straight in the face. She looked at him, and the egoistic feeling of the superiority of the woman over the man who loves her, agreeably flattered her. It pleased her to see this huge, strong man, with his manly, angry face and his big black beard -- clever, cultivated, and, people said, talented -- sit down obediently beside her and bow his head dejectedly. For two or three minutes they sat without speaking.
'Nothing is settled or done with,' began Ilyin. 'You repeat copy-book maxims to me. 'I love and respect my husband . . . the sanctity of marriage. . . .' I know all that without your help, and I could tell you more, too. I tell you truthfully and honestly that I consider the way I am behaving as criminal and immoral. What more can one say than that? But what's the good of saying what everybody knows? Instead of feeding nightingales with paltry words, you had much better tell me what I am to do.'
'I've told you already -- go away.'
'As you know perfectly well, I have gone away five times, and every time I turned back on the way. I can show you my through tickets -- I've kept them all. I have not will enough to run away from you! I am struggling. I am struggling horribly; but what the devil am I good for if I have no backbone, if I am weak, cowardly! I can't
