Short Stories by Chekhov
yourself in my place. I am afraid of my mother. She is stern and
irritable. When she knows that you won't marry me, and that it's all
nothing . . . she'll begin to give it to me. Oh, how wretched I am! And
you haven't paid for your rooms, either! . . . ."
"Damn her! I'll pay."
Yegor Savvitch got up and began walking to and fro.
"I ought to be abroad!" he said. And the artist told her that nothing
was easier than to go abroad. One need do nothing but paint a picture
and sell it.
"Of course!" Katya assented. "Why haven't you painted one in the
summer?"
"Do you suppose I can work in a barn like this?" the artist said ill-
humouredly. "And where should I get models?"
Some one banged the door viciously in the storey below. Katya, who was
expecting her mother's return from minute to minute, jumped up and ran
away. The artist was left alone. For a long time he walked to and fro,
threading his way between the chairs and the piles of untidy objects of
all sorts. He heard the widow rattling the crockery and loudly abusing
the peasants who had asked her two roubles for each cart. In his disgust
Yegor Savvitch stopped before the cupboard and stared for a long while,
frowning at the decanter of vodka.
"Ah, blast you!" he heard the widow railing at Katya. "Damnation take
you!"
The artist drank a glass of vodka, and the dark cloud in his soul
gradually disappeared, and he felt as though all his inside was smiling
within him. He began dreaming. . . . His fancy pictured how he would
become great. He could not imagine his future works but he could see
distinctly how the papers would talk of him, how the shops would sell
his photographs, with what envy his friends would look after him. He
tried to picture himself in a magnificent drawing-room surrounded by
pretty and adoring women; but the picture was misty, vague, as he had
never in his life seen a drawing-room. The pretty and adoring women were
not a success either, for, except Katya, he knew no adoring woman, not
even one respectable girl. People who know nothing about life usually
picture life from books, but Yegor Savvitch knew no books either. He had
tried to read Gogol, but had fallen asleep on the second page.
"It won't burn, drat the thing!" the widow bawled down below, as she set
the samovar. "Katya, give me some charcoal!"
The dreamy artist felt a longing to share his hopes and dreams with some
one. He went downstairs into the kitchen, where the stout widow and
Katya were busy about a dirty stove in the midst of charcoal fumes from
the samovar. There he sat down on a bench close to a big pot and began:
"It's a fine thing to be an artist! I can go just where I like, do what
I like. One has not to work in an office or in the fields. I've no
superiors or officers over me. . . . I'm my own superior. And with all
that I'm doing good to humanity!"
And after dinner he composed himself for a "rest." He usually slept till
the twilight of evening. But this time soon after dinner he felt that
some one was pulling at his leg. Some one kept laughing and shouting his
name. He opened his eyes and saw his friend Ukleikin, the landscape
painter, who had been away all the summer in the Kostroma district.
"Bah!" he cried, delighted. "What do I see?"
There followed handshakes, questions.
"Well, have you brought anything? I suppose you've knocked off hundreds
of sketches?" said Yegor Savvitch, watching Ukleikin taking his
belongings out of his trunk.
"H'm! . . . Yes. I have done something. And how are you getting on? Have
you been painting anything?"
Yegor Savvitch dived behind the bed, and crimson in the face, extracted
a canvas in a frame covered with dust and spider webs.
"See here. . . . A girl at the window after parting from her betrothed.
In three sittings. Not nearly finished yet."
The picture represented Katya faintly outlined sitting at an open
window, from which could be seen a garden and lilac distance. Ukleikin
did not like the picture.
"H'm! . . . There is air and . . . and there is expression," he said.
"There's a feeling of distance, but . . . but that bush is screaming . .
. screaming horribly!"
The decanter was brought on to the scene.
Towards evening Kostyliov, also a promising beginner, an historical
painter, came in to see Yegor Savvitch. He was a friend staying at the
next villa, and was a man of five-and-thirty. He had long hair, and wore
a blouse with a Shakespeare collar, and had a dignified manner. Seeing
the vodka, he frowned, complained of his chest, but yielding to his
friends' entreaties, drank a glass.
"I've thought of a subject, my friends," he began, getting drunk. "I
want to paint some new . . . Herod or Clepentian, or some blackguard of
that description, you understand, and to contrast with him the idea of
Christianity. On the one side Rome, you understand, and on the other
Christianity. . . . I want to represent the spirit, you understand? The
spirit!"
And the widow downstairs shouted continually:
"Katya, give me the cucumbers! Go to Sidorov's and get some kvass, you
jade!"
Like wolves in a cage, the three friends kept pacing to and fro from one
end of the room to the other. They talked without ceasing, talked, hotly
and genuinely; all three were excited, carried away. To listen to them
it would seem they had the future, fame, money, in their hands. And it
never occurred to either of them that time was passing, that every day
life was nearing its close, that they had lived at other people's
expense a great deal and nothing yet was accomplished; that they were
all bound by the inexorable law by which of a hundred promising
beginners only two or three rise to any position and all the others draw
blanks in the lottery, perish playing the part of flesh for the cannon.
. . . They were gay and happy, and looked the future boldly in the face!
At one o'clock in the morning Kostyliov said good-bye, and smoothing out
his Shakespeare collar, went home. The landscape painter remained to
sleep at Yegor Savvitch's. Before going to bed, Yegor Savvitch took a
candle and made his way into the kitchen to get a drink of water. In the
dark, narrow passage Katya was sitting, on a box, and, with her hands
clasped on her knees, was looking upwards. A blissful smile was straying
on her pale, exhausted face, and her eyes were beaming.
"Is that you? What are you thinking about?" Yegor Savvitch asked her.
"I am thinking of how you'll be famous," she said in a half-whisper. "I
keep fancying how you'll become a famous man. . . . I overheard all your
talk. . . . I keep dreaming and dreaming. . . ."
Katya went off into a happy laugh, cried, and laid her hands reverently
on her idol's shoulders.
AN ARTIST'S STORY
I
IT was six or seven years ago when I was living in one of the districts
of the province of T----, on the estate of a young landowner called
Byelokurov, who used to get up very early, wear a peasant tunic, drink
beer in the evenings, and continually complain to me that he never met
with sympathy from any one. He lived in the lodge in the garden, and I
in the old seigniorial house, in a big room with columns, where there
was no furniture except a wide sofa on which I used to sleep, and a
table on which I used to lay out patience. There was always, even in
still weather, a droning noise in the old Amos stoves, and in thunder-
storms the whole house shook and seemed to be cracking into pieces; and
it was rather terrifying, especially at night, when all the ten big
windows were suddenly lit up by lightning.
Condemned by destiny to perpetual idleness, I did absolutely nothing.
For hours together I gazed out of window at the sky, at the birds, at
the avenue, read everything that was brought me by post, slept.
Sometimes I went out of the house and wandered about till late in the
evening.
One day as I was returning home, I accidentally strayed into a place I
did not know. The sun was already sinking, and the shades of evening lay
across the flowering rye. Two rows of old, closely planted, very tall
fir-trees stood like two dense walls forming a picturesque, gloomy
avenue. I easily climbed over the fence and walked along the avenue,
slipping over the fir-needles which lay two inches deep on the ground.
It was still and dark, and only here and there on the high tree-tops the
vivid golden light quivered and made rainbows in the spiders' webs.
There was a strong, almost stifling smell of resin. Then I turned into a
long avenue of limes. Here, too, all was desolation and age; last year's
leaves rusted mournfully under my feet and in the twilight shadows
lurked between the trees. From the old orchard on the right came the
faint, reluctant note of the golden oriole, who must have been old too.
But at last the limes ended. I walked by an old white house of two
storeys with a terrace, and there suddenly opened before me a view of a
courtyard, a large pond with a bathing-house, a group of green willows,
and a village on the further bank, with a high, narrow belfry on which
there glittered a cross reflecting the setting sun.
For a moment it breathed upon me the fascination of something near and
very familiar, as though I had seen that landscape at some time in my
childhood.
At the white stone gates which led from the yard to the fields, old-
fashioned solid gates with lions on them, were standing two girls. One
of them, the elder, a slim, pale, very handsome girl with a perfect
haystack of chestnut hair and a little obstinate mouth, had a severe
expression and scarcely took notice of me, while the other, who was
still very young, not more than seventeen or eighteen, and was also slim
and pale, with a large mouth and large eyes, looked at me with
astonishment as I passed by, said something in English, and was overcome
with embarrassment. And it seemed to me that these two charming faces,
too, had long been familiar to me. And I returned home feeling as though
I had had a delightful dream.
One morning soon afterwards, as Byelokurov and I were walking near the
house, a carriage drove unexpectedly into the yard, rustling over the
grass, and in it was sitting one of those girls. It was the elder one.
She had come to ask for subscriptions for some villagers whose cottages
had been burnt down. Speaking with great earnestness and precision, and
not looking at us, she told us how many houses in the village of
Siyanovo had been burnt, how many men, women, and children were left
homeless, and what steps were proposed, to begin with, by the Relief
Committee, of which she was now a member. After handing us the
subscription list for our signatures, she put it away and immediately
began to take leave of us.
"You have quite forgotten us, Pyotr Petrovitch," she said to Byelokurov
as she shook hands with him. "Do come, and if Monsieur N. (she mentioned
my name) cares to make the acquaintance of admirers of his work, and
will come and see us, mother and I will be delighted."
I bowed.
When she had gone Pyotr Petrovitch began to tell me about her. The girl
was, he said, of good family, and her name was Lidia Voltchaninov, and
the estate on which she lived with her mother and sister, like the
village on the other side of the pond, was called Shelkovka. Her father
had once held an important position in Moscow, and had died with the
rank of privy councillor. Although they had ample means, the
Voltchaninovs lived on their estate summer and winter without going
away. Lidia was a teacher in the Zemstvo school in her own village, and
received a salary of twenty-five roubles a month. She spent nothing on
herself but her salary, and was proud of earning her own living.
"An interesting family," said Byelokurov. "Let us go over one day. They
will be delighted to see you."