The Tales of Chekhov, vol 3

The Tales of Chekhov, vol 3

Project Gutenberg's The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories, by
Anton Chekhov This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give
it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
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Title: The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories
Author: Anton Chekhov
Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13415]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY
WITH DOG ***

Produced by James Rusk

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
VOLUME 3
THE LADY WITH THE DOG AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ANTON TCHEKHOV
Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

CONTENTS
THE LADY WITH THE DOG A DOCTOR'S VISIT AN UPHEAVAL

IONITCH THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY THE BLACK MONK
VOLODYA AN ANONYMOUS STORY THE HUSBAND

THE LADY WITH THE DOG
I
IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady
with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a
fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an
interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking
on the sea-front, a fair-haired young lady of medium height, wearing a
_béret_; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.
And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square
several times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the same
_béret_, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she
was, and every one called her simply "the lady with the dog."
"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss
to make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.
He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and
two sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student
in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he.
She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified,
and, as she said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used
phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he
secretly considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of
her, and did not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to
her long ago--had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that
account, almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked
about in his presence, used to call them "the lower race."
It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that
he might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for two
days together without "the lower race." In the society of men he was
bored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative;
but when he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what
to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even
when he was silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole
nature, there was something attractive and elusive which allured
women and disposed them in his favour; he knew that, and some force

seemed to draw him, too, to them.
Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long
ago that with decent people, especially Moscow people--always slow to
move and irresolute--every intimacy, which at first so agreeably
diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably
grows into a regular problem of extreme intricacy, and in the long run
the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an
interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory,
and he was eager for life, and everything seemed simple and amusing.
One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the _béret_
came up slowly to take the next table. Her expression, her gait, her
dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she was a lady, that
she was married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and
that she was dull there. . . . The stories told of the immorality in such
places as Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew
that such stories were for the most part made up by persons who would
themselves have been glad to sin if they had been able; but when the
lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he remembered
these tales of easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the
tempting thought of a