"Checkov, Anton - The Wife And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

As for the members of my own household, the last thing I could
look for was help or support from them. Of my father's household,
of the household of my childhood, once a big and noisy family, no
one remained but the governess Mademoiselle Marie, or, as she was
now called, Marya Gerasimovna, an absolutely insignificant
person. She was a precise little old lady of seventy, who wore a
light grey dress and a cap with white ribbons, and looked like a
china doll. She always sat in the drawing-room reading.

Whenever I passed by her, she would say, knowing the reason for
my brooding:

"What can you expect, Pasha? I told you how it would be before.
You can judge from our servants."

My wife, Natalya Gavrilovna, lived on the lower storey, all the
rooms of which she occupied. She slept, had her meals, and
received her visitors downstairs in her own rooms, and took not
the slightest interest in how I dined, or slept, or whom I saw.
Our relations with one another were simple and not strained, but
cold, empty, and dreary as relations are between people who have
been so long estranged, that even living under the same roof
gives no semblance of nearness. There was no trace now of the
passionate and tormenting love -- at one time sweet, at another
bitter as wormwood -- which I had once felt for Natalya
Gavrilovna. There was nothing left, either, of the outbursts of
the past -- the
loud altercations, upbraidings, complaints, and gusts of hatred
which had usually ended in my wife's going abroad or to her own
people, and in my sending money in small but frequent instalments
that I might sting her pride oftener. (My proud and sensitive
wife and her family live at my expense, and much as she would
have liked to do so, my wife could not refuse my money: that
afforded me satisfaction and was one comfort in my sorrow.) Now
when we chanced to meet in the corridor downstairs or in the
yard, I bowed, she smiled graciously. We spoke of the weather,
said that it seemed time to put in the double windows, and that
some one with bells on their harness had driven over the dam. And
at such times I read in her face: "I am faithful to you and am
not disgracing your good name which you think so much about; you
are sensible and do not worry me; we are quits."

I assured myself that my love had died long ago, that I was too
much absorbed in my work to think seriously of my relations with
my wife. But, alas! that was only what I imagined. When my wife
talked aloud downstairs I listened intently to her voice, though
I could not distinguish one word. When she played the piano
downstairs I stood up and listened. When her carriage or her
saddlehorse was brought to the door, I went to the window and