Short Stories by Chekhov
fence would be broken or the soot afire in the chimney--jobs beyond a
woman, and through our being neighbours, she got into the way of turning
to me for every little thing.... Well, I'd go over, set things to
rights, and give advice.... Naturally, not without going indoors,
drinking a cup of tea and having a little chat with her. I was a young
fellow, intellectual, and fond of talking on all sorts of subjects; she,
too, was well-bred and educated. She was always neatly dressed, and in
summer she walked out with a sunshade. Sometimes I would begin upon
religion or politics with her, and she was flattered and would entertain
me with tea and jam.... In a word, not to make a long story of it, I
must tell you, old man, a year had not passed before the Evil One, the
enemy of all mankind, confounded me. I began to notice that any day I
didn't go to see her, I seemed out of sorts and dull. And I'd be
continually making up something that I must see her about: 'It's high
time,' I'd say to myself, 'to put the double windows in for the winter,'
and the whole day I'd idle away over at her place putting in the windows
and take good care to leave a couple of them over for the next day too.
"'I ought to count over Vasya's pigeons, to see none of them have
strayed,' and so on. I used always to be talking to her across the
fence, and in the end I made a little gate in the fence so as not to
have to go so far round. From womankind comes much evil into the world
and every kind of abomination. Not we sinners only; even the saints
themselves have been led astray by them. Mashenka did not try to keep me
at a distance. Instead of thinking of her husband and being on her
guard, she fell in love with me. I began to notice that she was dull
without me, and was always walking to and fro by the fence looking into
my yard through the cracks.
"My brains were going round in my head in a sort of frenzy. On Thursday
in Holy Week I was going early in the morning--it was scarcely light--to
market. I passed close by her gate, and the Evil One was by me--at my
elbow. I looked--she had a gate with open trellis work at the top--and
there she was, up already, standing in the middle of the yard, feeding
the ducks. I could not restrain myself, and I called her name. She came
up and looked at me through the trellis.... Her little face was white,
her eyes soft and sleepy-looking.... I liked her looks immensely, and I
began paying her compliments, as though we were not at the gate, but
just as one does on namedays, while she blushed, and laughed, and kept
looking straight into my eyes without winking.... I lost all sense and
began to declare my love to her.... She opened the gate, and from that
morning we began to live as man and wife...."
The hunchback Alyoshka came into the yard from the street and ran out of
breath into the house, not looking at any one. A minute later he ran out
of the house with a concertina. Jingling some coppers in his pocket, and
cracking sunflower seeds as he ran, he went out at the gate.
"And who's that, pray?" asked Matvey Savitch.
"My son Alexey," answered Dyudya. "He's off on a spree, the rascal. God
has afflicted him with a hump, so we are not very hard on him."
"And he's always drinking with the other fellows, always drinking,"
sighed Afanasyevna. "Before Carnival we married him, thinking he'd be
steadier, but there! he's worse than ever."
"It's been no use. Simply keeping another man's daughter for nothing,"
said Dyudya.
Somewhere behind the church they began to sing a glorious, mournful
song. The words they could not catch and only the voices could be
heard--two tenors and a bass. All were listening; there was complete
stillness in the yard.... Two voices suddenly broke off with a loud roar
of laughter, but the third, a tenor, still sang on, and took so high a
note that every one instinctively looked upwards, as though the voice
had soared to heaven itself.
Varvara came out of the house, and screening her eyes with her hand, as
though from the sun, she looked towards the church.
"It's the priest's sons with the schoolmaster," she said.
Again all the three voices began to sing together. Matvey Savitch sighed
and went on:
"Well, that's how it was, old man. Two years later we got a letter from
Vasya from Warsaw. He wrote that he was being sent home sick. He was
ill. By that time I had put all that foolishness out of my head, and I
had a fine match picked out all ready for me, only I didn't know how to
break it off with my sweetheart. Every day I'd make up my mind to have
it out with Mashenka, but I didn't know how to approach her so as not to
have a woman's screeching about my ears. The letter freed my hands. I
read it through with Mashenka; she turned white as a sheet, while I said
to her: 'Thank God; now,' says I, 'you'll be a married woman again.' But
says she: 'I'm not going to live with him.' 'Why, isn't he your
husband?' said I. 'Is it an easy thing?... I never loved him and I
married him not of my own free will. My mother made me.' 'Don't try to
get out of it, silly,' said I, 'but tell me this: were you married to
him in church or not?' 'I was married,' she said, 'but it's you that I
love, and I will stay with you to the day of my death. Folks may jeer. I
don't care....' 'You're a Christian woman,' said I, 'and have read the
Scriptures; what is written there?'
"Once married, with her husband she must live," said Dyudya.
"'Man and wife are one flesh. We have sinned,' I said, 'you and I, and
it is enough; we must repent and fear God. We must confess it all to
Vasya,' said I; 'he's a quiet fellow and soft--he won't kill you. And
indeed,' said I, 'better to suffer torments in this world at the hands
of your lawful master than to gnash your teeth at the dread Seat of
Judgment.' The wench wouldn't listen; she stuck to her silly, 'It's you
I love!' and nothing more could I get out of her.
"Vasya came back on the Saturday before Trinity, early in the morning.
From my fence I could see everything; he ran into the house, and came
back a minute later with Kuzka in his arms, and he was laughing and
crying all at once; he was kissing Kuzka and looking up at the hay-loft,
and hadn't the heart to put the child down, and yet he was longing to go
to his pigeons. He was always a soft sort of chap--sentimental. That day
passed off very well, all quiet and proper. They had begun ringing the
church bells for the evening service, when the thought struck me: 'To-
morrow's Trinity Sunday; how is it they are not decking the gates and
the fence with green? Something's wrong,' I thought. I went over to
them. I peeped in, and there he was, sitting on the floor in the middle
of the room, his eyes staring like a drunken man's, the tears streaming
down his cheeks and his hands shaking; he was pulling cracknels,
necklaces, gingerbread nuts, and all sorts of little presents out of his
bundle and flinging them on the floor. Kuzka--he was three years old--was
crawling on the floor, munching the gingerbreads, while Mashenka stood
by the stove, white and shivering all over, muttering: 'I'm not your
wife; I can't live with you,' and all sorts of foolishness. I bowed down
at Vasya's feet, and said: 'We have sinned against you, Vassily
Maximitch; forgive us, for Christ's sake!' Then I got up and spoke to
Mashenka: 'You, Marya Semyonovna, ought now to wash Vassily Maximitch's
feet and drink the water. Do you be an obedient wife to him, and pray to
God for me, that He in His mercy may forgive my transgression.' It came
to me like an inspiration from an angel of Heaven; I gave her solemn
counsel and spoke with such feeling that my own tears flowed too. And so
two days later Vasya comes to me: 'Matyusha,' says he, 'I forgive you
and my wife; God have mercy on you! She was a soldier's wife, a young
thing all alone; it was hard for her to be on her guard. She's not the
first, nor will she be the last. Only,' he says, 'I beg you to behave as
though there had never been anything between you, and to make no sign,
while I,' says he, 'will do my best to please her in every way, so that
she may come to love me again.' He gave me his hand on it, drank a cup
of tea, and went away more cheerful.
"'Well,' thought I, 'thank God!' and I did feel glad that everything had
gone off so well. But no sooner had Vasya gone out of the yard, when in
came Mashenka. Ah! What I had to suffer! She hung on my neck, weeping
and praying: 'For God's sake, don't cast me off; I can't live without
you!'"
"The vile hussy!" sighed Dyudya.
"I swore at her, stamped my foot, and dragging her into the passage, I
fastened the door with the hook. 'Go to your husband,' I cried. 'Don't
shame me before folks. Fear God!' And every day there was a scene of
that sort.
"One morning I was standing in my yard near the stable cleaning a
bridle. All at once I saw her running through the little gate into my
yard, with bare feet, in her petticoat, and straight towards me; she
clutched at the bridle, getting all smeared with the pitch, and shaking
and weeping, she cried: 'I can't stand him; I loathe him; I can't bear
it! If you don't love me, better kill me!' I was angry, and I struck her
twice with the bridle, but at that instant Vasya ran in at the gate, and
in a despairing voice he shouted: 'Don't beat her! Don't beat her!' But
he ran up himself, and waving his arms, as though he were mad, he let
fly with his fists at her with all his might, then flung her on the
ground and kicked her. I tried to defend her, but he snatched up the
reins and thrashed her with them, and all the while, like a colt's
whinny, he went: 'He--he--he!'"
"I'd take the reins and let you feel them," muttered Varvara, moving
away; "murdering our sister, the damned brutes!..."
"Hold your tongue, you jade!" Dyudya shouted at her.
"'He--he--he!'" Matvey Savitch went on. "A carrier ran out of his yard; I
called to my workman, and the three of us got Mashenka away from him and
carried her home in our arms. The disgrace of it! The same day I went
over in the evening to see how things were. She was lying in bed, all
wrapped up in bandages, nothing but her eyes and nose to be seen; she
was looking at the ceiling. I said: 'Good-evening, Marya Semyonovna!'
She did not speak. And Vasya was sitting in the next room, his head in
his hands, crying and saying: 'Brute that I am! I've ruined my life! O
God, let me die!' I sat for half an hour by Mashenka and gave her a good
talking-to. I tried to frighten her a bit. 'The righteous,' said I,
'after this life go to Paradise, but you will go to a Gehenna of fire,
like all adulteresses. Don't strive against your husband, go and lay
yourself at his feet.' But never a word from her; she didn't so much as
blink an eyelid, for all the world as though I were talking to a post.
The next day Vasya fell ill with something like cholera, and in the
evening I heard that he was dead. Well, so they buried him, and Mashenka
did not go to the funeral; she didn't care to show her shameless face
and her bruises. And soon there began to be talk all over the district
that Vasya had not died a natural death, that Mashenka had made away
with him. It got to the ears of the police; they had Vasya dug up and
cut open, and in his stomach they found arsenic. It was clear he had
been poisoned; the police came and took Mashenka away, and with her the
innocent Kuzka. They were put in prison.... The woman had gone too
far--God punished her.... Eight months later they tried her. She sat, I
remember, on a low stool, with a little white kerchief on her head,
wearing a grey gown, and she was so thin, so pale, so sharp-eyed it made
one sad to look at her. Behind her stood a soldier with a gun. She would
not confess her guilt. Some in the court said she had poisoned her