Short Stories by Chekhov
for leaving me, to your great satisfaction. And I quite understand your
feelings. To live with an old father, an invalid, half crazy, must be
very irksome at your age. I quite understand you. And the sooner I'm
laid out and in the devil's clutches, the better every one will be
pleased. I congratulate you with all my heart."
"I refused him."
The doctor felt relieved, but he was unable to stop himself and went on:
"I wonder, I've long wondered, why I've not yet been put into a
madhouse--why I'm still wearing this coat instead of a strait-waistcoat?
I still have faith in justice, in goodness. I am a fool, an idealist,
and nowadays that's insanity, isn't it? And how do they repay me for my
honesty? They almost throw stones at me and ride rough-shod over me. And
even my nearest kith and kin do nothing but try to get the better of me.
It's high time the devil fetched an old fool like me. . . ."
"There's no talking to you like a rational being!" said Yulia.
She got up from the table impulsively, and went to her room in great
wrath, remembering how often her father had been unjust to her. But a
little while afterwards she felt sorry for her father, too, and when he
was going to the club she went downstairs with him, and shut the door
after him. It was a rough and stormy night; the door shook with the
violence of the wind, and there were draughts in all directions in the
passage, so that the candle was almost blown out. In her own domain
upstairs Yulia Sergeyevna went the round of all the rooms, making the
sign of the cross over every door and window; the wind howled, and it
sounded as though some one were walking on the roof. Never had it been
so dreary, never had she felt so lonely.
She asked herself whether she had done right in rejecting a man, simply
because his appearance did not attract her. It was true he was a man she
did not love, and to marry him would mean renouncing forever her dreams,
her conceptions of happiness in married life, but would she ever meet
the man of whom she dreamed, and would he love her? She was twenty-one
already. There were no eligible young men in the town. She pictured all
the men she knew--government clerks, schoolmasters, officers, and some
of them were married already, and their domestic life was conspicuous
for its dreariness and triviality; others were uninteresting,
colourless, unintelligent, immoral. Laptev was, anyway, a Moscow man,
had taken his degree at the university, spoke French. He lived in the
capital, where there were lots of clever, noble, remarkable people;
where there was noise and bustle, splendid theatres, musical evenings,
first-rate dressmakers, confectioners. . . . In the Bible it was written
that a wife must love her husband, and great importance was given to
love in novels, but wasn't there exaggeration in it? Was it out of the
question to enter upon married life without love? It was said, of
course, that love soon passed away, and that nothing was left but habit,
and that the object of married life was not to be found in love, nor in
happiness, but in duties, such as the bringing up of one's children, the
care of one's household, and so on. And perhaps what was meant in the
Bible was love for one's husband as one's neighbour, respect for him,
charity.
At night Yulia Sergeyevna read the evening prayers attentively, then
knelt down, and pressing her hands to her bosom, gazing at the flame of
the lamp before the ikon, said with feeling:
"Give me understanding, Holy Mother, our Defender! Give me
understanding, O Lord!"
She had in the course of her life come across elderly maiden ladies,
poor and of no consequence in the world, who bitterly repented and
openly confessed their regret that they had refused suitors in the past.
Would not the same thing happen to her? Had not she better go into a
convent or become a Sister of Mercy?
She undressed and got into bed, crossing herself and crossing the air
around her. Suddenly the bell rang sharply and plaintively in the
corridor.
"Oh, my God!" she said, feeling a nervous irritation all over her at the
sound. She lay still and kept thinking how poor this provincial life was
in events, monotonous and yet not peaceful. One was constantly having to
tremble, to feel apprehensive, angry or guilty, and in the end one's
nerves were so strained, that one was afraid to peep out of the
bedclothes.
A little while afterwards the bell rang just as sharply again. The
servant must have been asleep and had not heard. Yulia Sergeyevna
lighted a candle, and feeling vexed with the servant, began with a
shiver to dress, and when she went out into the corridor, the maid was
already closing the door downstairs.
"I thought it was the master, but it's some one from a patient," she
said.
Yulia Sergeyevna went back to her room. She took a pack of cards out of
the chest of drawers, and decided that if after shuffling the cards well
and cutting, the bottom card turned out to be a red one, it would mean
_yes_--that is, she would accept Laptev's offer; and that if it was a
black, it would mean _no_. The card turned out to be the ten of spades.
That relieved her mind--she fell asleep; but in the morning, she was
wavering again between _yes_ and _no_, and she was dwelling on the
thought that she could, if she chose, change her life. The thought
harassed her, she felt exhausted and unwell; but yet, soon after eleven,
she dressed and went to see Nina Fyodorovna. She wanted to see Laptev:
perhaps now he would seem more attractive to her; perhaps she had been
wrong about him hitherto. . . .
She found it hard to walk against the wind. She struggled along, holding
her hat on with both hands, and could see nothing for the dust.
IV
Going into his sister's room, and seeing to his surprise Yulia
Sergeyevna, Laptev had again the humiliating sensation of a man who
feels himself an object of repulsion. He concluded that if after what
had happened yesterday she could bring herself so easily to visit his
sister and meet him, it must be because she was not concerned about him,
and regarded him as a complete nonentity. But when he greeted her, and
with a pale face and dust under her eyes she looked at him mournfully
and remorsefully, he saw that she, too, was miserable.
She did not feel well. She only stayed ten minutes, and began saying
good-bye. And as she went out she said to Laptev:
"Will you see me home, Alexey Fyodorovitch?"
They walked along the street in silence, holding their hats, and he,
walking a little behind, tried to screen her from the wind. In the lane
it was more sheltered, and they walked side by side.
"Forgive me if I was not nice yesterday;" and her voice quavered as
though she were going to cry. "I was so wretched! I did not sleep all
night."
"I slept well all night," said Laptev, without looking at her; "but that
doesn't mean that I was happy. My life is broken. I'm deeply unhappy,
and after your refusal yesterday I go about like a man poisoned. The
most difficult thing was said yesterday. To-day I feel no embarrassment
and can talk to you frankly. I love you more than my sister, more than
my dead mother. . . . I can live without my sister, and without my
mother, and I have lived without them, but life without you--is
meaningless to me; I can't face it. . . ."
And now too, as usual, he guessed her intention.
He realised that she wanted to go back to what had happened the day
before, and with that object had asked him to accompany her, and now was
taking him home with her. But what could she add to her refusal? What
new idea had she in her head? From everything, from her glances, from
her smile, and even from her tone, from the way she held her head and
shoulders as she walked beside him, he saw that, as before, she did not
love him, that he was a stranger to her. What more did she want to say?
Doctor Sergey Borisovitch was at home.
"You are very welcome. I'm always glad to see you, Fyodor Alexeyitch,"
he said, mixing up his Christian name and his father's. "Delighted,
delighted!"
He had never been so polite before, and Laptev saw that he knew of his
offer; he did not like that either. He was sitting now in the drawing-
room, and the room impressed him strangely, with its poor, common
decorations, its wretched pictures, and though there were arm-chairs in
it, and a huge lamp with a shade over it, it still looked like an
uninhabited place, a huge barn, and it was obvious that no one could
feel at home in such a room, except a man like the doctor. The next
room, almost twice as large, was called the reception-room, and in it
there were only rows of chairs, as though for a dancing class. And while
Laptev was sitting in the drawing-room talking to the doctor about his
sister, he began to be tortured by a suspicion. Had not Yulia Sergeyevna
been to his sister Nina's, and then brought him here to tell him that
she would accept him? Oh, how awful it was! But the most awful thing of
all was that his soul was capable of such a suspicion. And he imagined
how the father and the daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps the
night before, in prolonged consultation, perhaps dispute, and at last
had come to the conclusion that Yulia had acted thoughtlessly in
refusing a rich man. The words that parents use in such cases kept
ringing in his ears:
"It is true you don't love him, but think what good you could do!"
The doctor was going out to see patients. Laptev would have gone with
him, but Yulia Sergeyevna said:
"I beg you to stay."
She was distressed and dispirited, and told herself now that to refuse
an honourable, good man who loved her, simply because he was not
attractive, especially when marrying him would make it possible for her
to change her mode of life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle life in
which youth was passing with no prospect of anything better in the
future--to refuse him under such circumstances was madness, caprice and
folly, and that God might even punish her for it.
The father went out. When the sound of his steps had died away, she
suddenly stood up before Laptev and said resolutely, turning horribly
white as she did so:
"I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey Fyodorovitch. . . . I
accept your offer."
He bent down and kissed her hand. She kissed him awkwardly on the head
with cold lips.
He felt that in this love scene the chief thing--her love--was lacking,
and that there was a great deal that was not wanted; and he longed to
cry out, to run away, to go back to Moscow at once. But she was close to
him, and she seemed to him so lovely, and he was suddenly overcome by
passion. He reflected that it was too late for deliberation now; he
embraced her passionately, and muttered some words, calling her _thou_;
he kissed her on the neck, and then on the cheek, on the head. . . .
She walked away to the window, dismayed by these demonstrations, and
both of them were already regretting what they had said and both were
asking themselves in confusion:
"Why has this happened?"
"If only you knew how miserable I am!" she said, wringing her hands.
"What is it?" he said, going up to her, wringing his hands too. "My
dear, for God's sake, tell me--what is it? Only tell the truth, I
entreat you--nothing but the truth!"
"Don't pay any attention to it," she said, and forced herself to smile.
"I promise you I'll be a faithful, devoted wife. . . . Come this
evening."
Sitting afterwards with his sister and reading aloud an historical
novel, he recalled it all and felt wounded that his splendid, pure, rich
feeling was met with such a shallow response. He was not loved, but his
offer had been accepted--in all probability because he was rich: that
is, what was thought most of in him was what he valued least of all in