The Tales of Chekhov, vol 5 | Page 5

precise little old lady of seventy, who wore a light grey dress and
a cap with white ribbons, and looked like a china doll. She always sat
in the drawing-room reading.
Whenever I passed by her, she would say, knowing the reason for my
brooding:
"What can you expect, Pasha? I told you how it would be before. You
can judge from our servants."
My wife, Natalya Gavrilovna, lived on the lower storey, all the rooms
of which she occupied. She slept, had her meals, and received her
visitors downstairs in her own rooms, and took not the slightest interest
in how I dined, or slept, or whom I saw. Our relations with one another
were simple and not strained, but cold, empty, and dreary as relations
are between people who have been so long estranged, that even living
under the same roof gives no semblance of nearness. There was no
trace now of the passionate and tormenting love -- at one time sweet, at
another bitter as wormwood -- which I had once felt for Natalya
Gavrilovna. There was nothing left, either, of the outbursts of the past
-- the loud altercations, upbraidings, complaints, and gusts of hatred
which had usually ended in my wife's going abroad or to her own
people, and in my sending money in small but frequent instalments that

I might sting her pride oftener. (My proud and sensitive wife and her
family live at my expense, and much as she would have liked to do so,
my wife could not refuse my money: that afforded me satisfaction and
was one comfort in my sorrow.) Now when we chanced to meet in the
corridor downstairs or in the yard, I bowed, she smiled graciously. We
spoke of the weather, said that it seemed time to put in the double
windows, and that some one with bells on their harness had driven over
the dam. And at such times I read in her face: "I am faithful to you and
am not disgracing your good name which you think so much about; you
are sensible and do not worry me; we are quits."
I assured myself that my love had died long ago, that I was too much
absorbed in my work to think seriously of my relations with my wife.
But, alas! that was only what I imagined. When my wife talked aloud
downstairs I listened intently to her voice, though I could not
distinguish one word. When she played the piano downstairs I stood up
and listened. When her carriage or her saddlehorse was brought to the
door, I went to the window and waited to see her out of the house; then
I watched her get into her carriage or mount her horse and ride out of
the yard. I felt that there was something wrong with me, and was afraid
the expression of my eyes or my face might betray me. I looked after
my wife and then watched for her to come back that I might see again
from the window her face, her shoulders, her fur coat, her hat. I felt
dreary, sad, infinitely regretful, and felt inclined in her absence to walk
through her rooms, and longed that the problem that my wife and I had
not been able to solve because our characters were incompatible,
should solve itself in the natural way as soon as possible -- that is, that
this beautiful woman of twenty-seven might make haste and grow old,
and that my head might be grey and bald.
One day at lunch my bailiff informed me that the Pestrovo peasants had
begun to pull the thatch off the roofs to feed their cattle. Marya
Gerasimovna looked at me in alarm and perplexity.
"What can I do?" I said to her. "One cannot fight single-handed, and I
have never experienced such loneliness as I do now. I would give a
great deal to find one man in the whole province on whom I could
rely."
"Invite Ivan Ivanitch," said Marya Gerasimovna.
"To be sure!" I thought, delighted. "That is an idea! _C'est raison_," I

hummed, going to my study to write to Ivan Ivanitch. "_C'est raison,
c'est raison_."
II
Of all the mass of acquaintances who, in this house twenty-five to
thirty-five years ago, had eaten, drunk, masqueraded, fallen in love,
married bored us with accounts of their splendid packs of hounds and
horses, the only one still living was Ivan Ivanitch Bragin. At one time
he had been very active, talkative, noisy, and given to falling in love,
and had been famous for his extreme views and for the peculiar charm
of his face, which fascinated men as well as women; now he was an old
man, had grown corpulent, and was living out his days with neither