The Tales of Chekhov, vol 3 | Page 4

a single barge was rocking on the waves,
and a lantern was blinking sleepily on it.
They found a cab and drove to Oreanda.
"I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the
board--Von Diderits," said Gurov. "Is your husband a German?"
"No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox
Russian himself."
At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at
the sea, and were silent. Yalta was hardly visible through the morning
mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves
did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous
hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of
the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was
no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as
indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this
constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of
us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the
unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards
perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so
lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings--the sea,
mountains, clouds, the open sky--Gurov thought how in reality
everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything
except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human
dignity and the higher aims of our existence.

A man walked up to them--probably a keeper--looked at them and
walked away. And this detail seemed mysterious and beautiful, too.
They saw a steamer come from Theodosia, with its lights out in the
glow of dawn.
"There is dew on the grass," said Anna Sergeyevna, after a silence.
"Yes. It's time to go home."
They went back to the town.
Then they met every day at twelve o'clock on the sea-front, lunched
and dined together, went for walks, admired the sea. She complained
that she slept badly, that her heart throbbed violently; asked the same
questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the fear that he did not
respect her sufficiently. And often in the square or gardens, when there
was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her
passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight while he
looked round in dread of some one's seeing them, the heat, the smell of
the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle,
well-dressed, well-fed people, made a new man of him; he told Anna
Sergeyevna how beautiful she was, how fascinating. He was
impatiently passionate, he would not move a step away from her, while
she was often pensive and continually urged him to confess that he did
not respect her, did not love her in the least, and thought of her as
nothing but a common woman. Rather late almost every evening they
drove somewhere out of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the
expedition was always a success, the scenery invariably impressed
them as grand and beautiful.
They were expecting her husband to come, but a letter came from him,
saying that there was something wrong with his eyes, and he entreated
his wife to come home as quickly as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made
haste to go.
"It's a good thing I am going away," she said to Gurov. "It's the finger
of destiny!"
She went by coach and he went with her. They were driving the whole
day. When she had got into a compartment of the express, and when the
second bell had rung, she said:
"Let me look at you once more . . . look at you once again. That's
right."
She did not shed tears, but was so sad that she seemed ill, and her face

was quivering.
"I shall remember you . . . think of you," she said. "God be with you; be
happy. Don't remember evil against me. We are parting forever --it
must be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with you."
The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a
minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had
conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium,
that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark
distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum
of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up.
And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or
adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of
it