Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [133]
In the late autumn a theatrical performance was given for charity in the town. I went to the governor’s box, having been invited during the entr’acte, and looked and saw Anna Alexeyevna sitting with the governor’s wife; and again there was the same overwhelming and irresistible impression of beauty, and the adorable caressing eyes, and again the same feeling of closeness.
We sat side by side, and later went out in the foyer.
“You have grown thinner,” she said. “Have you been ill?”
“Yes, I have had rheumatism in my shoulder, and in rainy weather I sleep atrociously.”
“You look worn out. When you came to dinner with us in the spring, you seemed younger, livelier. You were excited, and you talked a good deal, and you were very interesting, and I confess I was a little carried away by you. For some reason during the summer I often found myself thinking about you, and today when I was getting ready for the theater I felt sure I would see you.”
And she laughed.
“You look tired tonight,” she repeated. “It makes you look older.”
The next day I had lunch at the Luganoviches’, and after lunch they drove out to their summer villa to make arrangements for the winter, and I went with them. And then we all returned to town, and at midnight drank tea together in quiet domesticity, while the fire blazed and the young mother kept going to see if her little girl was asleep. And after that, whenever I went to town, I would always visit with the Luganoviches. They became accustomed to me, and I to them. I would usually go unannounced, as one of the family.
“Who is there?” would come a voice from some distant room, a soft lingering voice which seemed very sweet to me.
“It is Pavel Konstantinovich,” the maid or the nurse would answer.
And then Anna Alexeyevna would come out to meet me with a preoccupied air, and invariably she would say: “Why is it so long since you came? Is something wrong?”
Her gaze, and the elegant, aristocratic hands she offered me, her house dress, her hair style, her voice, her step, all these always produced on me the impression of something new and quite extraordinary in my life, and very meaningful. We would talk for a long time, and for a long time we would surrender to silences, thinking our own thoughts, or else she would play for me on the piano. If there was no one at home, I stayed and waited till they returned, talked to the nurse, played with the child, or lay down on the Turkish divan in the study to read the newspaper, and when Anna Alexeyevna returned I would go out and meet her in the hall and take all her parcels from her, and for some reason I always found myself carrying these parcels with as much love, as much pride, as though I were a boy.
There is a proverb which runs: “Women with no worries go off and buy pigs.” The Luganoviches had no worries, so they made friends with me. If there were long intervals between my visits to town, they would think I was ill or something had happened to me, and they would be worried to death. It distressed them that I, an educated man with a knowledge of languages, instead of devoting myself to scholarship or literary work, lived in the country, ran around like a squirrel in a cage, and worked hard without a penny to show for it. They thought I was unhappy, and that I only talked, laughed, and ate in order to conceal my sufferings, and even during those happy moments when everything went well with me, I was aware of their searching gaze. They were especially touching at times when I was really depressed, when I was being hounded by creditors, or when it happened that I was unable to make a payment which fell due. Then husband and wife