The Collected Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov (200+ Titles in Multiple Translations). Anton Chekhov
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too will be all the worse for it. You love me, and you are making a useless bargain with your conscience."
Seeing that she was leaving him he seized her by her lace sleeve and ended quickly :
"If not to-day, then to-morrow ; but you will have to give in. What's the good of putting if off ? My dear, my darling Sonia, the verdict has been pronounced. Why postpone the execution ? Why deceive yourself?"
Sophia Pietrovna broke away from him and suddenly disappeared inside the door. She returned to the drawing-room, shut the piano mechanically, stared for a long time at the cover of a music book, and sat down. She could neither stand nor think. . . . From her agitation and passion remained only an awful weakness mingled with laziness and tiredness. Her conscience whispered to her that she had behaved wickedly and foolishly to-night, like a mad-woman ; that just now she had been kissed on the terrace, and even now she had some strange sensation in her waist and in her elbow. Not a soul was in the drawing-room. Only a single candle was burning. Madame Loubianzev sat on a little round stool before the piano without strirring as if waiting for something, and as if taking advantage of her extreme exhaustion and the dark a heavy unconquerable desire began to possess her. Like a boa-constrictor, it enchained her limbs and soul. It grew every second and was no longer threatening, but stood clear before her in all its nakedness.
She sat thus for half an hour, not moving, and not stopping herself from thinking of Ilyin. Then she got up lazily and went slowly into the bed-room. Andrey Ilyitch was in bed already. She sat by the window and gave herself to her desire. She felt no more "confusion." All her feelings and thoughts pressed lovingly round some clear purpose. She still had a mind to struggle, but instantly she waved her hand impotently, realising the strength and the determination of the foe. To fight him power and strength were necessary, but her birth, upbringing and life had given her nothing on which to lean.
"You're immoral, you're horrible," she tormented herself for her weakness. " You're a nice sort, you are ! "
So indignant was her insulted modesty at this weakness that she called herself all the bad names that she knew and she related to herself many insulting, degrading truths. Thus she told herself that she never was moral, and she had not fallen before only because there was no pretext, that her day-long struggle had been nothing but a game and a comedy. . . .
"Let us admit that I struggled," she thought, "but what kind of a fight was it ? Even prostitutes struggle before they sell themselves, and still they do sell themselves. It's a pretty sort of fight. Like milk, turns in a day." She realised that it was not love that drew her from her home nor Ilyin's personality, but the sensations which await her. ... A little week-end type like the rest of them.
"When the young bird's mother was killed," a hoarse tenor finished singing.
If I am going, it's time, thought Sophia Pietrovna. Her heart began to beat with a frightful force.
"Andrey," she almost cried. " Listen. Shall we go away ? Shall we ? Yes ? "
"Yes. . . . I've told you already. You go alone."
"But listen," she said, " if you don't come too, you may lose me. I seem to be in love already."
"Who with ? " Andrey Ilyitch asked.
"It must be all the same for you, who with," Sophia Pietrovna cried out.
Andrey Ilyitch got up, dangled his feet over the side of the bed, with a look of surprise at the dark form of his wife.
"Imagination," he yawned.
He could not believe her, but all the same he was frightened. After having thought for a while, and asked his wife some unimportant questions, he gave his views of the family, of infidelity. . . . He spoke sleepily for about ten minutes and then lay down again. His remarks had no success. There are a great many opinions in this world, and more than half of them belong to people who have never known misery.
In spite of the late hour, the bungalow people were still moving behind their windows. Sophia Pietrovna put on a long coat and stood for a while, thinking. She still had force of mind to say to her sleepy husband :
"Are you asleep ? I'm going for a little walk. Would you like to come with me ? "
That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, he walked out. It was breezy and cool. She did not feel the breeze or the darkness but walked on and on. . . . . An irresistible power drove her, and it seemed to her that if she stopped that power would push her in the back. "You're an immoral woman," she murmured mechanically. " You're horrible."
She was choking for breath, burning with shame, did not feel her feet under her, for that which drove her along was stronger than her shame, her reason, her fear. . . .
A MISFORTUNE
[trans. by Constance Garnett]
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.