Short Stories by Chekhov
"I know nothing about it, madam," she said, and suddenly burst into
tears.
"You are lying!" cried the lady, and her eyes flashed angrily at her. "I
know all about it! I've known you a long time. I know that for the last
month he has been spending every day with you!"
"Yes. What then? What of it? I have a great many visitors, but I don't
force anyone to come. He is free to do as he likes."
"I tell you they have discovered that money is missing! He has embezzled
money at the office! For the sake of such a . . . creature as you, for
your sake he has actually committed a crime. Listen," said the lady in a
resolute voice, stopping short, facing Pasha. "You can have no
principles; you live simply to do harm-that's your object; but one can't
imagine you have fallen so low that you have no trace of human feeling
left! He has a wife, children. . . . If he is condemned and sent into
exile we shall starve, the children and I. . . . Understand that! And
yet there is a chance of saving him and us from destitution and
disgrace. If I take them nine hundred roubles to-day they will let him
alone. Only nine hundred roubles!"
"What nine hundred roubles?" Pasha asked softly. "I . . . I don't know.
. . . I haven't taken it."
"I am not asking you for nine hundred roubles. . . . You have no money,
and I don't want your money. I ask you for something else. . . . Men
usually give expensive things to women like you. Only give me back the
things my husband has given you!"
"Madam, he has never made me a present of anything!" Pasha wailed,
beginning to understand.
"Where is the money? He has squandered his own and mine and other
people's. . . . What has become of it all? Listen, I beg you! I was
carried away by indignation and have said a lot of nasty things to you,
but I apologize. You must hate me, I know, but if you are capable of
sympathy, put yourself in my position! I implore you to give me back the
things!"
"H'm!" said Pasha, and she shrugged her shoulders. "I would with
pleasure, but God is my witness, he never made me a present of anything.
Believe me, on my conscience. However, you are right, though," said the
singer in confusion, "he did bring me two little things. Certainly I
will give them back, if you wish it."
Pasha pulled out one of the drawers in the toilet-table and took out of
it a hollow gold bracelet and a thin ring with a ruby in it.
"Here, madam!" she said, handing the visitor these articles.
The lady flushed and her face quivered. She was offended.
"What are you giving me?" she said. "I am not asking for charity, but
for what does not belong to you . . . what you have taken advantage of
your position to squeeze out of my husband . . . that weak, unhappy man.
. . . On Thursday, when I saw you with my husband at the harbour you
were wearing expensive brooches and bracelets. So it's no use your
playing the innocent lamb to me! I ask you for the last time: will you
give me the things, or not?"
"You are a queer one, upon my word," said Pasha, beginning to feel
offended. "I assure you that, except the bracelet and this little ring,
I've never seen a thing from your Nikolay Petrovitch. He brings me
nothing but sweet cakes."
"Sweet cakes!" laughed the stranger. "At home the children have nothing
to eat, and here you have sweet cakes. You absolutely refuse to restore
the presents?"
Receiving no answer, the lady sat down and stared into space, pondering.
"What's to be done now?" she said. "If I don't get nine hundred roubles,
he is ruined, and the children and I am ruined, too. Shall I kill this
low woman or go down on my knees to her?"
The lady pressed her handkerchief to her face and broke into sobs.
"I beg you!" Pasha heard through the stranger's sobs. "You see you have
plundered and ruined my husband. Save him. . . . You have no feeling for
him, but the children . . . the children . . . What have the children
done?"
Pasha imagined little children standing in the street, crying with
hunger, and she, too, sobbed.
"What can I do, madam?" she said. "You say that I am a low woman and
that I have ruined Nikolay Petrovitch, and I assure you . . . before God
Almighty, I have had nothing from him whatever. . . . There is only one
girl in our chorus who has a rich admirer; all the rest of us live from
hand to mouth on bread and kvass. Nikolay Petrovitch is a highly
educated, refined gentleman, so I've made him welcome. We are bound to
make gentlemen welcome."
"I ask you for the things! Give me the things! I am crying. . . . I am
humiliating myself. . . . If you like I will go down on my knees! If you
wish it!"
Pasha shrieked with horror and waved her hands. She felt that this pale,
beautiful lady who expressed herself so grandly, as though she were on
the stage, really might go down on her knees to her, simply from pride,
from grandeur, to exalt herself and humiliate the chorus girl.
"Very well, I will give you things!" said Pasha, wiping her eyes and
bustling about. "By all means. Only they are not from Nikolay
Petrovitch. . . . I got these from other gentlemen. As you please. . .
."
Pasha pulled out the upper drawer of the chest, took out a diamond
brooch, a coral necklace, some rings and bracelets, and gave them all to
the lady.
"Take them if you like, only I've never had anything from your husband.
Take them and grow rich," Pasha went on, offended at the threat to go
down on her knees. "And if you are a lady . . . his lawful wife, you
should keep him to yourself. I should think so! I did not ask him to
come; he came of himself."
Through her tears the lady scrutinized the articles given her and said:
"This isn't everything. . . . There won't be five hundred roubles' worth
here."
Pasha impulsively flung out of the chest a gold watch, a cigar-case and
studs, and said, flinging up her hands:
"I've nothing else left. . . . You can search!"
The visitor gave a sigh, with trembling hands twisted the things up in
her handkerchief, and went out without uttering a word, without even
nodding her head.
The door from the next room opened and Kolpakov walked in. He was pale
and kept shaking his head nervously, as though he had swallowed
something very bitter; tears were glistening in his eyes.
"What presents did you make me?" Pasha asked, pouncing upon him. "When
did you, allow me to ask you?"
"Presents . . . that's no matter!" said Kolpakov, and he tossed his
head. "My God! She cried before you, she humbled herself. . . ."
"I am asking you, what presents did you make me?" Pasha cried.
"My God! She, a lady, so proud, so pure. . . . She was ready to go down
on her knees to . . . to this wench! And I've brought her to this! I've
allowed it!"
He clutched his head in his hands and moaned.
"No, I shall never forgive myself for this! I shall never forgive
myself! Get away from me . . . you low creature!" he cried with
repulsion, backing away from Pasha, and thrusting her off with trembling
hands. "She would have gone down on her knees, and . . . and to you! Oh,
my God!"
He rapidly dressed, and pushing Pasha aside contemptuously, made for the
door and went out.
Pasha lay down and began wailing aloud. She was already regretting her
things which she had given away so impulsively, and her feelings were
hurt. She remembered how three years ago a merchant had beaten her for
no sort of reason, and she wailed more loudly than ever. VEROTCHKA
IVAN ALEXEYITCH OGNEV remembers how on that August evening he opened the
glass door with a rattle and went out on to the verandah. He was wearing
a light Inverness cape and a wide-brimmed straw hat, the very one that
was lying with his top-boots in the dust under his bed. In one hand he
had a big bundle of books and notebooks, in the other a thick knotted
stick.
Behind the door, holding the lamp to show the way, stood the master of
the house, Kuznetsov, a bald old man with a long grey beard, in a snow-
white piqué jacket. The old man was smiling cordially and nodding his
head.
"Good-bye, old fellow!" said Ognev.
Kuznetsov put the lamp on a little table and went out to the verandah.
Two long narrow shadows moved down the steps towards the flower-beds,
swayed to and fro, and leaned their heads on the trunks of the lime-
trees.
"Good-bye and once more thank you, my dear fellow!" said Ivan
Alexeyitch. "Thank you for your welcome, for your kindness, for your
affection. . . . I shall never forget your hospitality as long as I
live. You are so good, and your daughter is so good, and everyone here
is so kind, so good-humoured and friendly . . . Such a splendid set of
people that I don't know how to say what I feel!"
From excess of feeling and under the influence of the home-made wine he
had just drunk, Ognev talked in a singing voice like a divinity student,
and was so touched that he expressed his feelings not so much by words
as by the blinking of his eyes and the twitching of his shoulders.
Kuznetsov, who had also drunk a good deal and was touched, craned
forward to the young man and kissed him.
"I've grown as fond of you as if I were your dog," Ognev went on. "I've
been turning up here almost every day; I've stayed the night a dozen
times. It's dreadful to think of all the home-made wine I've drunk. And
thank you most of all for your co-operation and help. Without you I
should have been busy here over my statistics till October. I shall put
in my preface: 'I think it my duty to express my gratitude to the
President of the District Zemstvo of N--, Kuznetsov, for his kind co-
operation.' There is a brilliant future before statistics! My humble
respects to Vera Gavrilovna, and tell the doctors, both the lawyers and
your secretary, that I shall never forget their help! And now, old
fellow, let us embrace one another and kiss for the last time!"
Ognev, limp with emotion, kissed the old man once more and began going
down the steps. On the last step he looked round and asked: "Shall we
meet again some day?"
"God knows!" said the old man. "Most likely not!"
"Yes, that's true! Nothing will tempt you to Petersburg and I am never
likely to turn up in this district again. Well, good-bye!"
"You had better leave the books behind!" Kuznetsov called after him.
"You don't want to drag such a weight with you. I would send them by a
servant to-morrow!"
But Ognev was rapidly walking away from the house and was not listening.
His heart, warmed by the wine, was brimming over with good-humour,
friendliness, and sadness. He walked along thinking how frequently one
met with good people, and what a pity it was that nothing was left of
those meetings but memories. At times one catches a glimpse of cranes on
the horizon, and a faint gust of wind brings their plaintive, ecstatic
cry, and a minute later, however greedily one scans the blue distance,
one cannot see a speck nor catch a sound; and like that, people with
their faces and their words flit through our lives and are drowned in
the past, leaving nothing except faint traces in the memory. Having been
in the N-- District from the early spring, and having been almost every
day at the friendly Kuznetsovs', Ivan Alexeyitch had become as much at
home with the old man, his daughter, and the servants as though they
were his own people; he had grown familiar with the whole house to the
smallest detail, with the cosy verandah, the windings of the avenues,
the silhouettes of the trees over the kitchen and the bath-house; but as
soon as he was out of the gate all this would be changed to memory and
would lose its meaning as reality for ever, and in a year or two all
these dear images would grow as dim in his consciousness as stories he
had read or things he had imagined.
"Nothing in life is so precious as people!" Ognev thought in his