Short Stories by Chekhov
quarter of an hour.... Please do!"
Evidently she did not wish to be left alone with me without a witness.
"Oh, well, I'll wait a quarter of an hour, too," I thought.
"Why, it's snowing!" I said, getting up and looking out of window. "A
good fall of snow! Ivan Ivanitch"--I went on walking about the room--"I do
regret not being a sportsman. I can imagine what a pleasure it must be
coursing hares or hunting wolves in snow like this!"
My wife, standing still, watched my movements, looking out of the corner
of her eyes without turning her head. She looked as though she thought I
had a sharp knife or a revolver in my pocket.
"Ivan Ivanitch, do take me out hunting some day," I went on softly. "I
shall be very, very grateful to you."
At that moment a visitor came into the room. He was a tall, thick-set
gentleman whom I did not know, with a bald head, a big fair beard, and
little eyes. From his baggy, crumpled clothes and his manners I took him
to be a parish clerk or a teacher, but my wife introduced him to me as
Dr. Sobol.
"Very, very glad to make your acquaintance," said the doctor in a loud
tenor voice, shaking hands with me warmly, with a naive smile. "Very
glad!"
He sat down at the table, took a glass of tea, and said in a loud voice:
"Do you happen to have a drop of rum or brandy? Have pity on me, Olya,
and look in the cupboard; I am frozen," he said, addressing the maid.
I sat down by the fire again, looked on, listened, and from time to time
put in a word in the general conversation. My wife smiled graciously to
the visitors and kept a sharp lookout on me, as though I were a wild
beast. She was oppressed by my presence, and this aroused in me
jealousy, annoyance, and an obstinate desire to wound her. "Wife, these
snug rooms, the place by the fire," I thought, "are mine, have been mine
for years, but some crazy Ivan Ivanitch or Sobol has for some reason
more right to them than I. Now I see my wife, not out of window, but
close at hand, in ordinary home surroundings that I feel the want of now
I am growing older, and, in spite of her hatred for me, I miss her as
years ago in my childhood I used to miss my mother and my nurse. And I
feel that now, on the verge of old age, my love for her is purer and
loftier than it was in the past; and that is why I want to go up to her,
to stamp hard on her toe with my heel, to hurt her and smile as I do
it."
"Monsieur Marten," I said, addressing the doctor, "how many hospitals
have we in the district?"
"Sobol," my wife corrected.
"Two," answered Sobol.
"And how many deaths are there every year in each hospital?"
"Pavel Andreitch, I want to speak to you," said my wife.
She apologized to the visitors and went to the next room. I got up and
followed her.
"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this minute," she said.
"You are ill-bred," I said to her.
"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this very minute," she repeated
sharply, and she looked into my face with hatred.
She was standing so near that if I had stooped a little my beard would
have touched her face.
"What is the matter?" I asked. "What harm have I done all at once?"
Her chin quivered, she hastily wiped her eyes, and, with a cursory
glance at the looking-glass, whispered:
"The old story is beginning all over again. Of course you won't go away.
Well, do as you like. I'll go away myself, and you stay."
We returned to the drawing-room, she with a resolute face, while I
shrugged my shoulders and tried to smile. There were some more
visitors--an elderly lady and a young man in spectacles. Without greeting
the new arrivals or taking leave of the others, I went off to my own
rooms.
After what had happened at tea and then again downstairs, it became
clear to me that our "family happiness," which we had begun to forget
about in the course of the last two years, was through some absurd and
trivial reason beginning all over again, and that neither I nor my wife
could now stop ourselves; and that next day or the day after, the
outburst of hatred would, as I knew by experience of past years, be
followed by something revolting which would upset the whole order of our
lives. "So it seems that during these two years we have grown no wiser,
colder, or calmer," I thought as I began walking about the rooms. "So
there will again be tears, outcries, curses, packing up, going abroad,
then the continual sickly fear that she will disgrace me with some
coxcomb out there, Italian or Russian, refusing a passport, letters,
utter loneliness, missing her, and in five years old age, grey hairs." I
walked about, imagining what was really impossible--her, grown handsomer,
stouter, embracing a man I did not know. By now convinced that that
would certainly happen, "'Why," I asked myself, "Why, in one of our long
past quarrels, had not I given her a divorce, or why had she not at that
time left me altogether? I should not have had this yearning for her
now, this hatred, this anxiety; and I should have lived out my life
quietly, working and not worrying about anything."
A carriage with two lamps drove into the yard, then a big sledge with
three horses. My wife was evidently having a party.
Till midnight everything was quiet downstairs and I heard nothing, but
at midnight there was a sound of moving chairs and a clatter of
crockery. So there was supper. Then the chairs moved again, and through
the floor I heard a noise; they seemed to be shouting hurrah. Marya
Gerasimovna was already asleep and I was quite alone in the whole upper
storey; the portraits of my forefathers, cruel, insignificant people,
looked at me from the walls of the drawing-room, and the reflection of
my lamp in the window winked unpleasantly. And with a feeling of
jealousy and envy for what was going on downstairs, I listened and
thought: "I am master here; if I like, I can in a moment turn out all
that fine crew." But I knew that all that was nonsense, that I could not
turn out any one, and the word "master" had no meaning. One may think
oneself master, married, rich, a kammer-junker, as much as one likes,
and at the same time not know what it means.
After supper some one downstairs began singing in a tenor voice.
"Why, nothing special has happened," I tried to persuade myself. "Why am
I so upset? I won't go downstairs tomorrow, that's all; and that will be
the end of our quarrel."
At a quarter past one I went to bed.
"Have the visitors downstairs gone?" I asked Alexey as he was undressing
me.
"Yes, sir, they've gone."
"And why were they shouting hurrah?"
"Alexey Dmitritch Mahonov subscribed for the famine fund a thousand
bushels of flour and a thousand roubles. And the old lady--I don't know
her name--promised to set up a soup kitchen on her estate to feed a
hundred and fifty people. Thank God... Natalya Gavrilovna has been
pleased to arrange that all the gentry should assemble every Friday."
"To assemble here, downstairs?"
"Yes, sir. Before supper they read a list: since August up to today
Natalya Gavrilovna has collected eight thousand roubles, besides corn.
Thank God.... What I think is that if our mistress does take trouble for
the salvation of her soul, she will soon collect a lot. There are plenty
of rich people here."
Dismissing Alexey, I put out the light and drew the bedclothes over my
head.
"After all, why am I so troubled?" I thought. "What force draws me to
the starving peasants like a butterfly to a flame? I don't know them, I
don't understand them; I have never seen them and I don't like them. Why
this uneasiness?"
I suddenly crossed myself under the quilt.
"But what a woman she is!" I said to myself, thinking of my wife.
"There's a regular committee held in the house without my knowing. Why
this secrecy? Why this conspiracy? What have I done to them? Ivan
Ivanitch is right--I must go away."
Next morning I woke up firmly resolved to go away. The events of the
previous day--the conversation at tea, my wife, Sobol, the supper, my
apprehensions--worried me, and I felt glad to think of getting away from
the surroundings which reminded me of all that. While I was drinking my
coffee the bailiff gave me a long report on various matters. The most
agreeable item he saved for the last.
"The thieves who stole our rye have been found," he announced with a
smile. "The magistrate arrested three peasants at Pestrovo yesterday."
"Go away!" I shouted at him; and a propos of nothing, I picked up the
cake-basket and flung it on the floor.
IV
After lunch I rubbed my hands, and thought I must go to my wife and tell
her that I was going away. Why? Who cared? Nobody cares, I answered, but
why shouldn't I tell her, especially as it would give her nothing but
pleasure? Besides, to go away after our yesterday's quarrel without
saying a word would not be quite tactful: she might think that I was
frightened of her, and perhaps the thought that she has driven me out of
my house may weigh upon her. It would be just as well, too, to tell her
that I subscribe five thousand, and to give her some advice about the
organization, and to warn her that her inexperience in such a
complicated and responsible matter might lead to most lamentable
results. In short, I wanted to see my wife, and while I thought of
various pretexts for going to her, I had a firm conviction in my heart
that I should do so.
It was still light when I went in to her, and the lamps had not yet been
lighted. She was sitting in her study, which led from the drawing-room
to her bedroom, and, bending low over the table, was writing something
quickly. Seeing me, she started, got up from the table, and remained
standing in an attitude such as to screen her papers from me.
"I beg your pardon, I have only come for a minute," I said, and, I don't
know why, I was overcome with embarrassment. "I have learnt by chance
that you are organizing relief for the famine, Natalie."
"Yes, I am. But that's my business," she answered.
"Yes, it is your business," I said softly. "I am glad of it, for it just
fits in with my intentions. I beg your permission to take part in it."
"Forgive me, I cannot let you do it," she said in response, and looked
away.
"Why not, Natalie?" I said quietly. "Why not? I, too, am well fed and I,
too, want to help the hungry."
"I don't know what it has to do with you," she said with a contemptuous
smile, shrugging her shoulders. "Nobody asks you."
"Nobody asks you, either, and yet you have got up a regular committee in
my house," I said.
"I am asked, but you can have my word for it no one will ever ask you.
Go and help where you are not known."
"For God's sake, don't talk to me in that tone." I tried to be mild, and
besought myself most earnestly not to lose my temper. For the first few
minutes I felt glad to be with my wife. I felt an atmosphere of youth,
of home, of feminine softness, of the most refined elegance--exactly what
was lacking on my floor and in my life altogether. My wife was wearing a
pink flannel dressing-gown; it made her look much younger, and gave a
softness to her rapid and sometimes abrupt movements. Her beautiful dark
hair, the mere sight of which at one time stirred me to passion, had
from sitting so long with her head bent come loose from the comb and was
untidy, but, to my eyes, that only made it look more rich and luxuriant.
All this, though is banal to the point of vulgarity. Before me stood an
ordinary woman, perhaps neither beautiful nor elegant, but this was my
wife with whom I had once lived, and with whom I should have been living
to this day if it had not been for her unfortunate character; she was
the one human being on the terrestrial globe whom I loved. At this
moment, just before going away, when I knew that I should no longer see