"There's no making you out . . .", says Lidotchka. "You are angry because I am not learned, and at the same time you hate learned women; you are annoyed because I have no ideas in my letter, and yet you yourself are opposed to my studying. . . ."
"You do catch me up at a word, my dear," yawns Somov, pouring out a second glass of vodka in his boredom.
Under the influence of vodka and a good dinner, Somov grows more good-humoured, lively, and soft. . . . He watches his pretty wife making the salad with an anxious face and a rush of affection for her, of indulgence and forgiveness comes over him.
"It was stupid of me to depress her, poor girl . . . ," he thought. "Why did I say such a lot of dreadful things? She is silly, that's true, uncivilised and narrow; but . . . there are two sides to the question, and audiatur et altera pars. . . . Perhaps people are perfectly right when they say that woman's shallowness rests on her very vocation. Granted that it is her vocation to love her husband, to bear children, and to mix salad, what the devil does she want with learning? No, indeed!"
At that point he remembers that learned women are usually tedious, that they are exacting, strict, and unyielding; and, on the other hand, how easy it is to get on with silly Lidotchka, who never pokes her nose into anything, does not understand so much, and never obtrudes her criticism. There is peace and comfort with Lidotchka, and no risk of being interfered with.
"Confound them, those clever and learned women! It's better and easier to live with simple ones," he thinks, as he takes a plate of chicken from Lidotchka.
He recollects that a civilised man sometimes feels a desire to talk and share his thoughts with a clever and well-educated woman. "What of it?" thinks Somov. "If I want to talk of intellectual subjects, I'll go to Natalya Andreyevna . . . or to Marya Frantsovna. . . . It's very simple! But no, I shan't go. One can discuss intellectual subjects with men," he finally decides.
AT A SUMMER VILLA
"I LOVE YOU. You are my life, my happiness—everything to me! Forgive the avowal, but I have not the strength to suffer and be silent. I ask not for love in return, but for sympathy. Be at the old arbour at eight o'clock this evening. . . . To sign my name is unnecessary I think, but do not be uneasy at my being anonymous. I am young, nice-looking . . . what more do you want?"
When Pavel Ivanitch Vyhodtsev, a practical married man who was spending his holidays at a summer villa, read this letter, he shrugged his shoulders and scratched his forehead in perplexity.
"What devilry is this?" he thought. "I'm a married man, and to send me such a queer . . . silly letter! Who wrote it?"
Pavel Ivanitch turned the letter over and over before his eyes, read it through again, and spat with disgust.
"'I love you'" . . . he said jeeringly. "A nice boy she has pitched on! So I'm to run off to meet you in the arbour! . . . I got over all such romances and fleurs d'amour years ago, my girl. . . . Hm! She must be some reckless, immoral creature. . . . Well, these women are a set! What a whirligig—God forgive us!—she must be to write a letter like that to a stranger, and a married man, too! It's real demoralisation!"
In the course of his eight years of married life Pavel Ivanitch had completely got over all sentimental feeling, and he had received no letters from ladies except letters of congratulation, and so, although he tried to carry it off with disdain, the letter quoted above greatly intrigued and agitated him.
An hour after receiving it, he was lying on his sofa, thinking:
"Of course I am not a silly boy, and I am not going to rush off to this idiotic rendezvous; but yet it would be interesting to know who wrote it! Hm. . . . It is certainly a woman's writing. . . . The letter is written with genuine feeling, and so it can hardly be a joke. . . . Most likely it's some neurotic girl, or perhaps a widow . . . widows are frivolous and eccentric as a rule. Hm. . . . Who could it be?"
What made it the more difficult to decide the question was that Pavel Ivanitch had not one feminine acquaintance among all the summer visitors, except his wife.
"It is queer . . ." he mused. "'I love you!'. . . When did she manage to fall in love? Amazing woman! To fall in love like this, apropos of nothing, without making any acquaintance and finding out what sort of man I am. . . . She must be extremely young and romantic if she is capable of falling in love after two or three looks at me. . . . But . . . who is she?"
Pavel Ivanitch suddenly recalled that when he had been walking among the summer villas the day before, and the day before that, he had several times been met by a fair young lady with a light blue hat and a turn-up nose. The fair charmer had kept looking at him, and when he sat down on a seat she had sat down beside him. . . .
"Can it be she?" Vyhodtsev wondered. "It can't be! Could a delicate ephemeral creature like that fall in love with a worn-out old eel like me? No, it's impossible!"
At dinner Pavel Ivanitch looked blankly at his wife while he meditated:
"She writes that she is young and nice-looking. . . . So she's not old. . . . Hm. . . . To tell the truth, honestly I am not so old and plain that no one could fall in love with me. My wife loves me! Besides, love is blind, we all know. . . ."
"What are you thinking about?" his wife asked him.
"Oh. . . my head aches a little. . ." Pavel Ivanitch said, quite untruly.
He made up his mind that it was stupid to pay attention to such a nonsensical thing as a love-letter, and laughed at it and at its authoress, but—alas!—powerful is the "dacha" enemy of mankind! After dinner, Pavel Ivanitch lay down on his bed, and instead of going to sleep, reflected:
"But there, I daresay she is expecting me to come! What a silly! I can just imagine what a nervous fidget she'll be in and how her tournure will quiver when she does not find me in the arbour! I shan't go, though. . . . Bother her!"
But, I repeat, powerful is the enemy of mankind.
"Though I might, perhaps, just out of curiosity . . ." he was musing, half an hour later. "I might go and look from a distance what sort of a creature she is. . . . It would be interesting to have a look at her! It would be fun, and that's all! After all, why shouldn't I have a little fun since such a chance has turned up?"
Pavel Ivanitch got up from his bed and began dressing. "What are you getting yourself up so smartly for?" his wife asked, noticing that he was putting on a clean shirt and a fashionable tie.
"Oh, nothing. . . . I must have a walk. . . . My head aches. . . .
Hm."
Pavel Ivanitch dressed in his best, and waiting till eight o'clock, went out of the house. When the figures of gaily dressed summer visitors of both sexes began passing before his eyes against the bright green background, his heart throbbed.
"Which of them is it? . . ." he wondered, advancing irresolutely.
"Come, what am I afraid of? Why, I am not going to the rendezvous!
What . . . a fool! Go forward boldly! And what if I go into the
arbour? Well, well . . . there is no reason I should."
Pavel Ivanitch's heart beat still more violently. . . . Involuntarily, with no desire to do so, he suddenly pictured to himself the half-darkness of the arbour. . . . A graceful fair girl with a little blue hat and a turn-up nose rose before his imagination. He saw her, abashed by her love and trembling all over, timidly approach him, breathing excitedly, and . . . suddenly clasping him in her arms.
"If I weren't married it would be all right . . ." he mused, driving sinful ideas out of his head. "Though . . . for once in my life, it would do no harm to have the experience, or else one will die without knowing what. . . . And my wife, what will it matter to her? Thank God, for eight years I've never moved one step away from her. . . . Eight years of irreproachable duty! Enough of her. . . . It's positively vexatious. . . . I'm ready to go to spite her!"