Short Stories by Chekhov
ahead, a dim green light was glimmering peacefully.
"So everything is well," I thought, looking at them.
I had a quiet, peaceful, comfortable feeling in my heart. I was
returning from a tryst, I had no need to hurry; I was not sleepy, and I
was conscious of youth and health in every sigh, every step I took,
rousing a dull echo in the monotonous hum of the night. I don't know
what I was feeling then, but I remember I was happy, very happy.
I had gone not more than three-quarters of a mile when I suddenly heard
behind me a monotonous sound, a rumbling, rather like the roar of a
great stream. It grew louder and louder every second, and sounded nearer
and nearer. I looked round; a hundred paces from me was the dark copse
from which I had only just come; there the embankment turned to the
right in a graceful curve and vanished among the trees. I stood still in
perplexity and waited. A huge black body appeared at once at the turn,
noisily darted towards me, and with the swiftness of a bird flew past me
along the rails. Less than half a minute passed and the blur had
vanished, the rumble melted away into the noise of the night.
It was an ordinary goods truck. There was nothing peculiar about it in
itself, but its appearance without an engine and in the night puzzled
me. Where could it have come from and what force sent it flying so
rapidly along the rails? Where did it come from and where was it flying
to?
If I had been superstitious I should have made up my mind it was a party
of demons and witches journeying to a devils' sabbath, and should have
gone on my way; but as it was, the phenomenon was absolutely
inexplicable to me. I did not believe my eyes, and was entangled in
conjectures like a fly in a spider's web....
I suddenly realized that I was utterly alone on the whole vast plain;
that the night, which by now seemed inhospitable, was peeping into my
face and dogging my footsteps; all the sounds, the cries of the birds,
the whisperings of the trees, seemed sinister, and existing simply to
alarm my imagination. I dashed on like a madman, and without realizing
what I was doing I ran, trying to run faster and faster. And at once I
heard something to which I had paid no attention before: that is, the
plaintive whining of the telegraph wires.
"This is beyond everything," I said, trying to shame myself. "It's
cowardice! it's silly!"
But cowardice was stronger than common sense. I only slackened my pace
when I reached the green light, where I saw a dark signal-box, and near
it on the embankment the figure of a man, probably the signalman.
"Did you see it?" I asked breathlessly.
"See whom? What?"
"Why, a truck ran by."
"I saw it,..." the peasant said reluctantly. "It broke away from the
goods train. There is an incline at the ninetieth mile...; the train is
dragged uphill. The coupling on the last truck gave way, so it broke off
and ran back.... There is no catching it now!..."
The strange phenomenon was explained and its fantastic character
vanished. My panic was over and I was able to go on my way.
My third fright came upon me as I was going home from stand shooting in
early spring. It was in the dusk of evening. The forest road was covered
with pools from a recent shower of rain, and the earth squelched under
one's feet. The crimson glow of sunset flooded the whole forest,
coloring the white stems of the birches and the young leaves. I was
exhausted and could hardly move.
Four or five miles from home, walking along the forest road, I suddenly
met a big black dog of the water spaniel breed. As he ran by, the dog
looked intently at me, straight in my face, and ran on.
"A nice dog!" I thought. "Whose is it?"
I looked round. The dog was standing ten paces off with his eyes fixed
on me. For a minute we scanned each other in silence, then the dog,
probably flattered by my attention, came slowly up to me and wagged his
tail.
I walked on, the dog following me.
"Whose dog can it be?" I kept asking myself. "Where does he come from?"
I knew all the country gentry for twenty or thirty miles round, and knew
all their dogs. Not one of them had a spaniel like that. How did he come
to be in the depths of the forest, on a track used for nothing but
carting timber? He could hardly have dropped behind someone passing
through, for there was nowhere for the gentry to drive to along that
road.
I sat down on a stump to rest, and began scrutinizing my companion. He,
too, sat down, raised his head, and fastened upon me an intent stare. He
gazed at me without blinking. I don't know whether it was the influence
of the stillness, the shadows and sounds of the forest, or perhaps a
result of exhaustion, but I suddenly felt uneasy under the steady gaze
of his ordinary doggy eyes. I thought of Faust and his bulldog, and of
the fact that nervous people sometimes when exhausted have
hallucinations. That was enough to make me get up hurriedly and
hurriedly walk on. The dog followed me.
"Go away!" I shouted.
The dog probably liked my voice, for he gave a gleeful jump and ran
about in front of me.
"Go away!" I shouted again.
The dog looked round, stared at me intently, and wagged his tail good-
humoredly. Evidently my threatening tone amused him. I ought to have
patted him, but I could not get Faust's dog out of my head, and the
feeling of panic grew more and more acute... Darkness was coming on,
which completed my confusion, and every time the dog ran up to me and
hit me with his tail, like a coward I shut my eyes. The same thing
happened as with the light in the belfry and the truck on the railway: I
could not stand it and rushed away.
At home I found a visitor, an old friend, who, after greeting me, began
to complain that as he was driving to me he had lost his way in the
forest, and a splendid valuable dog of his had dropped behind.
THE BET
IT WAS a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his
study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party
one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had
been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of
capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among whom were many
journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They
considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable
for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty
ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.
"I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not tried
either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge
a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than
imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but
lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more
humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out
of you in the course of many years?"
"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they both
have the same object--to take away life. The State is not God. It has not
the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to."
Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty.
When he was asked his opinion, he said:
"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I
had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I
would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at
all."
A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous
in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the
table with his fist and shouted at the young man:
"It's not true! I'll bet you two millions you wouldn't stay in solitary
confinement for five years."
"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the bet,
but I would stay not five but fifteen years."
"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two millions!"
"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said the young
man.
And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt and
frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the bet.
At supper he made fun of the young man, and said:
"Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me two
millions are a trifle, but you are losing three or four of the best
years of your life. I say three or four, because you won't stay longer.
Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a
great deal harder to bear than compulsory. The thought that you have the
right to step out in liberty at any moment will poison your whole
existence in prison. I am sorry for you."
And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked
himself: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that
man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two
millions? Can it prove that the death penalty is better or worse than
imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless.
On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple
greed for money...."
Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided that the
young man should spend the years of his captivity under the strictest
supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's garden. It was agreed
that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the threshold of
the lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive
letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and
books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke. By
the terms of the agreement, the only relations he could have with the
outer world were by a little window made purposely for that object. He
might have anything he wanted--books, music, wine, and so on--in any
quantity he desired by writing an order, but could only receive them
through the window. The agreement provided for every detail and every
trifle that would make his imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the
young man to stay there exactly fifteen years, beginning from twelve
o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at twelve o'clock of November
14, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part to break the conditions, if
only two minutes before the end, released the banker from the obligation
to pay him two millions.
For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge from
his brief notes, the prisoner suffered severely from loneliness and
depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard continually day and
night from his lodge. He refused wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote,
excites the desires, and desires are the worst foes of the prisoner; and
besides, nothing could be more dreary than drinking good wine and seeing
no one. And tobacco spoilt the air of his room. In the first year the
books he sent for were principally of a light character; novels with a
complicated love plot, sensational and fantastic stories, and so on.
In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the prisoner
asked only for the classics. In the fifth year music was audible again,
and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him through the
window said that all that year he spent doing nothing but eating and
drinking and lying on his bed, frequently yawning and angrily talking to
himself. He did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to
write; he would spend hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that
he had written. More than once he could be heard crying.
In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began zealously
studying languages, philosophy, and history. He threw himself eagerly
into these studies--so much so that the banker had enough to do to get