All were silent. The clerk moved, came still nearer, and, evidently unwilling to be behindhand, began with a smile.
‘Yes, a young fellow of ours had a scandal. It was a difficult case to deal with. It too was a case of a woman who was a bad lot. She began to play the devil, and the young fellow is respectable and cultured. At first it was with one of the office-clerks. The husband tried to persuade her with kindness. She would not stop, but played all sorts of dirty tricks. Then she began to steal his money. He beat her, but she only grew worse. Carried on intrigues, if I may mention it, with an unchristened Jew. What was he to do? He turned her out altogether and lives as a bachelor, while she gads about.’
‘Because he is a fool,’ said the old man. ‘If he’d pulled her up properly from the first and not let her have her way, she’d be living with him, no fear! It’s giving way at first that counts. Don’t trust your horse in the field, or your wife in the house.’
At that moment the guard entered to collect the tickets for the next station. The old man gave up his.
‘Yes, the female sex must be curbed in time or else all is lost!’
‘Yes, but you yourself just now were speaking about the way married men amuse themselves at the Kunávin Fair,’ I could not help saying.8
‘That’s a different matter,’ said the old man and relapsed into silence.
When the whistle sounded the tradesman rose, got out his bag from under the seat, buttoned up his coat, and slightly lifting his cap went out of the carriage.
II
AS soon as the old man had gone several voices were raised.
‘A daddy of the old style!’ remarked the clerk.
‘A living Domostróy!’3 said the lady. ‘What barbarous views of women and marriage!’
‘Yes, we are far from the European understanding of marriage,’ said the lawyer.4
‘The chief thing such people do not understand,’ continued the lady, ‘is that marriage without love is not marriage; that love alone sanctifies marriage, and that real marriage is only such as is sanctified by love.’
The clerk listened smilingly, trying to store up for future use all he could of the clever conversation.
In the midst of the lady’s remarks we heard, behind me, a sound like that of a broken laugh or sob; and on turning round we saw my neighbour, the lonely grey-haired man with the glittering eyes, who had approached unnoticed during our conversation, which evidently interested him. He stood with his arms on the back of the seat, evidently much excited; his face was red9 and a muscle twitched in his cheek.
‘What kind of love … love … is it that sanctifies marriage?’ he asked hesitatingly.10
Noticing the speaker’s agitation, the lady tried to answer him as gently and fully as possible.
‘True love … When such love exists between a man and a woman, then marriage is possible,’ she said.
‘Yes, but how is one to understand what is meant by “true love”?’ said the gentleman with the glittering eyes timidly and with an awkward smile.
‘Everybody knows what love is,’ replied the lady, evidently wishing to break off her conversation with him.
‘But I don’t,’ said the man. ‘You must define what you understand …’
‘Why? It’s very simple,’ she said, but stopped to consider. ‘Love? Love is an exclusive preference for one above everybody else,’ said the lady.
‘Preference for how long? A month, two days, or half an hour?’ said the grey-haired man and began to laugh.
‘Excuse me, we are evidently not speaking of the same thing.’
‘Oh, yes! Exactly the same.’
‘She means,’ interposed the lawyer, pointing to the lady, ‘that in the first place marriage must be the outcome of attachment – or love, if you please – and only where that exists is marriage sacred, so to speak. Secondly, that marriage when not based on natural attachment – love, if you prefer the word – lacks the element that makes it morally binding. Do I understand you rightly?’ he added, addressing the lady.
The lady indicated her approval of his explanation by a nod of her head.
‘It follows …’ the lawyer continued – but the nervous man whose eyes now glowed as if aflame and who had evidently restrained himself with difficulty, began without letting the lawyer finish:
‘Yes, I mean exactly the same thing, a preference for one person over everybody else, and I am only asking: a preference for how long?’
‘For how long? For a long time; for life sometimes,’ replied the lady, shrugging her shoulders.
‘Oh, but that happens only in novels and never in real life. In real life this preference for one may last for years (that happens very rarely), more often for months, or perhaps for weeks, days, or hours,’ he said, evidently aware that he was astonishing everybody by his views and pleased that it was so.
‘Oh, what are you saying?’ ‘But no …’ ‘No, allow me we all three began at once. Even the clerk uttered an indefinite sound of disapproval.
