THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
VOLUME 3
BY
ANTON TCHEKHOV
Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT
| 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 |
IT was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady witha little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, who had by then been a fortnightat Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an interestin new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on thesea-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 squareseveral times a day. She was walking alone, always wearing the samebéret, 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 amissto make her acquaintance," Gurov reflected.
He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, andtwo sons at school. He had been married young, when he was a student inhis second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he. Shewas a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, asshe said of herself, intellectual. She read a great deal, used phoneticspelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretlyconsidered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, anddid not like to be at home. He had begun being unfaithful to her longago—had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account,almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in hispresence, used to call them "the lower race."
It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience thathe might call them what he liked, and yet he could not get on for twodays together without "the lower race." In the society of men he wasbored and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; butwhen he was in the company of women he felt free, and knew what to sayto them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he wassilent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, therewas something attractive and elusive which allured women and disposedthem 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 longago that with decent people, especially Moscow people—always