Tales of Chekhov 03-The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories

Yes, that's true. I love to sit in your study in the evening and let my thoughts carry me far, far away.... It's pleasant sometimes to dream. Let us dream aloud, George.'

'I've never been at a girls' boarding-school; I never learnt the art.'

'You are out of humour?' said Zinaida Fyodorovna, taking Orlov's hand. 'Tell me why. When you are like that, I'm afraid. I don't know whether your head aches or whether you are angry with me....'

Again there was a silence lasting several long minutes.

'Why have you changed?' she said softly. 'Why are you never so tender or so gay as you used to be at Znamensky Street? I've been with you almost a month, but it seems to me as though we had not yet begun to live, and have not yet talked of anything as we ought to. You always answer me with jokes or else with a long cold lecture like a teacher. And there is something cold in your jokes.... Why have you given up talking to me seriously?'

'I always talk seriously.'

'Well, then, let us talk. For God's sake, George.... Shall we?'

'Certainly, but about what?'

'Let us talk of our life, of our future,' said Zinaida Fyodorovna dreamily. 'I keep making plans for our life, plans and plans—and I enjoy doing it so! George, I'll begin with the question, when are you going to give up your post?'

'What for?' asked Orlov, taking his hand from his forehead.

'With your views you cannot remain in the service. You are out of place there.'

'My views?' Orlov repeated. 'My views? In conviction and temperament I am an ordinary official, one of Shtchedrin's heroes. You take me for something different, I venture to assure you.'

'Joking again, George!'

'Not in the least. The service does not satisfy me, perhaps; but, anyway, it is better for me than anything else. I am used to it, and in it I meet men of my own sort; I am in my place there and find it tolerable.'

'You hate the service and it revolts you.'

'Indeed? If I resign my post, take to dreaming aloud and letting myself be carried away into another world, do you suppose that that world would be less hateful to me than the service?'

'You are ready to libel yourself in order to contradict me.' Zinaida Fyodorovna was offended and got up. 'I am sorry I began this talk.'

'Why are you angry? I am not angry with you for not being an official. Every one lives as he likes best.'

'Why, do you live as you like best? Are you free? To spend your life writing documents that are opposed to your own ideas,' Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, clasping her hands in despair: 'to submit to authority, congratulate your superiors at the New Year, and then cards and nothing but cards: worst of all, to be working for a system which must be distasteful to you—no, George, no! You should not make such horrid jokes. It's dreadful. You are a man of ideas, and you ought to be working for your ideas and nothing else.'

'You really take me for quite a different person from what I am,' sighed Orlov.

'Say simply that you don't want to talk to me. You dislike me, that's all,' said Zinaida Fyodorovna through her tears.

'Look here, my dear,' said Orlov admonishingly, sitting up in his chair. 'You were pleased to observe yourself that I am a clever, well-read man, and to teach one who knows does nothing but harm. I know very well all the ideas, great and small, which you mean when you call me a man of ideas. So if I prefer the service and cards to those ideas, you may be sure I have good grounds for it. That's one thing. Secondly, you have, so far as I know, never been in the service, and can only have drawn your ideas of Government service from anecdotes and indifferent novels. So it would not be amiss for us to make a compact, once for all, not to talk of things we know already or of things about which we are not competent to speak.'

'Why do you speak to me like that?' said Zinaida Fyodorovna, stepping back as though in horror. 'What for? George, for God's sake, think what you are saying!'

Her voice quivered and broke; she was evidently trying to restrain her tears, but she suddenly broke into sobs.

'George, my darling, I am perishing!' she said in French, dropping down before Orlov, and laying her head on his knees. 'I am miserable, I am exhausted. I can't bear it, I can't bear it.... In my childhood my hateful, depraved stepmother, then my husband, now you ... you!... You meet my mad love with coldness and irony.... And that horrible, insolent servant,' she went on, sobbing. 'Yes, yes, I see: I am not your wife nor your friend, but a woman you don't respect because she has become your mistress.... I shall kill myself!'

I had not expected that her words and her tears would make such an impression on Orlov. He flushed, moved uneasily in his chair, and instead of irony, his face wore a look of stupid, schoolboyish dismay.

'My darling, you misunderstood me,' he muttered helplessly, touching her hair and her shoulders. 'Forgive me, I entreat you. I was unjust and I hate myself.'

'I insult you with my whining and complaints. You are a true, generous ... rare man—I am conscious of it every minute; but I've been horribly depressed for the last few days ...'

Zinaida Fyodorovna impulsively embraced Orlov and kissed him on the cheek.

'Only please don't cry,' he said.

'No, no.... I've had my cry, and now I am better.'

'As for the servant, she shall be gone to-morrow,' he said, still moving uneasily in his chair.

'No, she must stay, George! Do you hear? I am not afraid of her now.... One must rise above trifles and not imagine silly things. You are right! You are a wonderful, rare person!'

She soon left off crying. With tears glistening on her eyelashes, sitting on Orlov's knee, she told him in a low voice something touching, something like a reminiscence of childhood and youth. She stroked his face, kissed him, and carefully examined his hands with the rings on them and the charms on his watch-chain. She was carried away by what she was saying, and by being near the man she loved, and probably because her tears had cleared and refreshed her soul, there was a note of wonderful candour and sincerity in her voice. And Orlov played with her chestnut hair and kissed her hands, noiselessly pressing them to his lips.

Then they had tea in the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna read aloud some letters. Soon after midnight they went to bed. I had a fearful pain in my side that night, and I could not get warm or go to sleep till morning. I could hear Orlov go from the bedroom into his study. After sitting there about an hour, he rang the bell. In my pain and exhaustion I forgot all the rules and conventions, and went to his study in my night attire, barefooted. Orlov, in his dressing-gown and cap, was standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

'When you are sent for you should come dressed,' he said sternly. 'Bring some fresh candles.'

I was about to apologise, but suddenly broke into a violent cough, and clutched at the side of the door to save myself from falling.

'Are you ill?' said Orlov.

I believe it was the first time of our acquaintance that he addressed me not in the singular—goodness knows why. Most likely, in my night clothes and with my face distorted by coughing, I played my part poorly, and was very little like a flunkey.

'If you are ill, why do you take a place?' he said.

'That I may not die of starvation,' I answered.

'How disgusting it all is, really!' he said softly, going up to his table.

While hurriedly getting into my coat, I put up and lighted fresh candles. He was sitting at the table, with feet stretched out on a low chair, cutting a book.

I left him deeply engrossed, and the book did not drop out of his hands as it had done in the evening.

VII

Now that I am writing these lines I am restrained by that dread of appearing sentimental and ridiculous, in which I have been trained from childhood; when I want to be affectionate or to say anything tender, I don't know how to be natural. And it is that dread, together with lack of practice, that prevents me from being able to express with perfect clearness what was passing in my soul at that time.

I was not in love with Zinaida Fyodorovna, but in the ordinary human feeling I had for her, there was far more youth, freshness, and joyousness than in Orlov's love.