It looked as though he wanted to tell a story. People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about. In to^ bachelors visit baths and restaurants in order to have a chance to talk, and sometimes tell very interesting stories to bath attendants and waiters; in the country they usually unbosom themselves to their guests. At the moment we could see a gray sky from the windows and trees drenched with rain; in such weather we could go nowhere and there was nothing for us to do but to tell and listen to stories.
"I have been living at Sofyino and been farming for a long time," Alyohin began, "ever since I graduated from the University. My education did not fit me for rough work and temperamentally I am a bookish fellow, but when I came here the estate was heavily mortgaged, and as my father had gone into debt partly because he had spent a great deal on my education, I decided not to leave the place but to work till I had paid off the debt. I made up my mind to this and set to work, not, I must confess, without some repugnance. The land here does not yield much, and if you are not to farm at a loss you must employ serf labor or hired help, which comes to almost the same thing, or work it like a peas- ant—that is, you must work in the fields yourself with your family. There is no middle way. But in those days I did not go into such niceties. I did not leave an inch of earth unturned; I got together all the peasants, men and women, from the neighboring villages; the work hummed. I myself plowed and sowed and reaped, and found it awfully tedious, and frowned with disgust, like a village cat driven by hunger to eat cucumbers in the kitchen garden. My body ached, and I slept on my feet.
"At first it seemed to me that I could easily reconcile this life of toil with civilized living; to achieve that, I thought, all that was necessary was to secure a certain external order. I established myself upstairs here in the best rooms, and had them serve me coffee and liqueurs after lunch and dinner, and every night I read The Mes- senger of Europe in bed. But one day our priest, Father Ivan, came and drank up all my liqueurs at one sitting, and the The Messenger of Europe went to the priest's daughters, because in summer, especially at haymaking time, I couldn't drag myself to bed at all, but fell asleep on a sledge in the shed or somewhere in a shack in the woods, and how could I think of reading? Little by little I moved do^stairs, began to eat in the servants' kitchen, and nothing is left of my former luxury but the people who were in father's service and whom it would be pain- ful to discharge.
"Before I had been here many years I was elected honorary justice of the peace. Now and then I had to go to to^ and take part in the assizes of the peace and the sessions of the circuit court, and this diverted me. When you live here for two or three months without seeing a soul, especially in winter, you begin at last to pine for a black coat. And at the circuit court there were black coats and uniforms and frock coats, too, all worn by lawyers, educated men; there were always people to talk to. After sleeping on the sledge and dining in the kitchen, to sit in an armchair wearing clean linen, in light boots, with the chain of office around one's neck—that was such luxury!
"I would be warmly received in the town. I made friends readily. And of all my friendships the most in- timate and, to tell the truth, the most agreeable to me was my acquaintance with Luganovich, the assistant president of the circuit court. You both know him: an extremely charming man. This was just after the cele- brated arson case; the preliminary investigation had lasted two days and we were worn out. Luganovich looked at me and said:
" 'You know what? Come and dine with me.'
"This was unexpected, as I knew Luganovich very slightly, only officially, and I had never been to his house. I went to my hotel room for a minute to change and then went off to dinner. And here came my oppor- tunity to meet Anna Alexeyevna, Luganovich's wife. She was then still a very young woman, not more than twenty-two, and her first baby had been born just six months before. It is all a thing of the past; and now I should find it hard to determine what was so exceptional about her, what it was about her that I liked so much; but at the time, at dinner, it was all perfectly clear to me. I saw a young woman, beautiful, kind, intelligent, fascinating, such a woman as I had never met before; and at once I sensed in her a being near to me and al- ready familiar, as though I had seen that face, those friendly, intelligent eyes long ago, in my childhood, in the album which lay on my mother's chest of drawers.
"In the arson case the defendants were four Jews who were charged with collusion, and in my opinion they were quite innocent. At dinner I was very much agitated and out of sorts, and I don't recall what I said, but Anna Alexeyevna kept shaking her head, and saying to her husband,
" 'Dmitry, how can this be?'
"Luganovich is one of those good-natured, simple- minded people who firmly adhere to the belief that once a man is indicted in court he is guilty, and that one should not express doubt as to the correctness of a ver- dict except with all legal formalities on paper, but never at dinner and in private conversation.
" 'You and I didn't commit arson,' he said gently, 'and you see we are not on trial and not in prison.'
"Both husband and wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as possible. From some details, from the way they made the coffee together, for instance, and the way they understood each other without completing their phrases, I gathered that they lived in peace and harmony, and that they were glad of a guest. After din- ner they played a duet on the piano; then it got dark, and I drove home.
"That was at the beginning of spring. I spent the whole summer at Sofyino without a break, and I had no time even to think of the town, but the memory of the willowy, fair-haired woman remained in my mind all those months; I did not think of her, but it was as though her shadow were lying lightly on my soul.
"In the late autumn a benefit performance was given in the town. I entered the governor's box (I had been invited there in the intermission); and there I saw Anna Alexeyevna sitting beside the governor's wife; and again there was the same irresistible, striking impression of beauty and lovely, caressing eyes, and again the same feeling of nearness. We sat side by side, then went out into the foyer.
" 'You've grown thinner,' she said; 'have you been ill?'
" 'Yes, I had rheumatism in my shoulder, and in rainy weather I sleep badly.'
" 'You look listless. In spring, when you came to din- ner, you seemed younger, livelier. You were animated, and talked a great deal then; you were very interesting, and I must confess I was a little carried away. For some reason I often thought of you during the summer, and this evening when I was getting ready to go to the theater it occurred to me that I might see you.'
"And she laughed.
" 'But you look listless tonight,' she repeated; 'it makes you seem older.'
"The next day I lunched at the Luganoviches'. After lunch they drove out to their summer villa, to make ar- rangements to close it up for the winter, and I went along. I went back to the town with them, and at mid- night we had tea together in quiet domesticity, while the fire glowed, and the young mother kept going to see if her little girl were asleep. And after that, every time I went to the town I never failed to visit the Lu- ganoviches. They grew used to me and I grew used to them. As a rule I went in unannounced, as though I were one of the family.
" 'Who is there?' would be heard from a faraway room, in the drawling voice that seemed to me so lovely.
" 'It is Pavel Konstantinovich,' the maid or the nurse would answer.
"Anna Alexeyevna would come out to me with an anxious air and would invariably ask, 'Why haven't we seen you for so long? Is anything wrong?'