Short Stories by Chekhov
Near a white, lately stuccoed two-storey house the coachman pulled up
his horse, and began to turn to the right. They were expected, and near
the gate stood two policemen and the porter in a new full-skirted coat,
high boots, and goloshes. The whole space, from the middle of the street
to the gates and all over the yard from the porch, was strewn with fresh
sand. The porter took off his hat, the policemen saluted. Near the
entrance Fyodor met them with a very serious face.
"Very glad to make your acquaintance, little sister," he said, kissing
Yulia's hand. "You're very welcome."
He led her upstairs on his arm, and then along a corridor through a
crowd of men and women. The anteroom was crowded too, and smelt of
incense.
"I will introduce you to our father directly," whispered Fyodor in the
midst of a solemn, deathly silence. "A venerable old man, _pater-
familias_."
In the big drawing-room, by a table prepared for service, Fyodor
Stepanovitch stood, evidently waiting for them, and with him the priest
in a calotte, and a deacon. The old man shook hands with Yulia without
saying a word. Every one was silent. Yulia was overcome with confusion.
The priest and the deacon began putting on their vestments. A censer was
brought in, giving off sparks and fumes of incense and charcoal. The
candles were lighted. The clerks walked into the drawing-room on tiptoe
and stood in two rows along the wall. There was perfect stillness, no
one even coughed.
"The blessing of God," began the deacon. The service was read with great
solemnity; nothing was left out and two canticles were sung --to
sweetest Jesus and the most Holy Mother of God. The singers sang very
slowly, holding up the music before them. Laptev noticed how confused
his wife was. While they were singing the canticles, and the singers in
different keys brought out "Lord have mercy on us," he kept expecting in
nervous suspense that the old man would make some remark such as, "You
don't know how to cross yourself," and he felt vexed. Why this crowd,
and why this ceremony with priests and choristers? It was too bourgeois.
But when she, like the old man, put her head under the gospel and
afterwards several times dropped upon her knees, he realised that she
liked it all, and was reassured.
At the end of the service, during "Many, many years," the priest gave
the old man and Alexey the cross to kiss, but when Yulia went up, he put
his hand over the cross, and showed he wanted to speak. Signs were made
to the singers to stop.
"The prophet Samuel," began the priest, "went to Bethlehem at the
bidding of the Lord, and there the elders of the town with fear and
trembling asked him: 'Comest thou peaceably?' And the prophet answered:
'Peaceably: I am come to sacrifice unto the Lord: sanctify yourselves
and come with me to the sacrifice.' Even so, Yulia, servant of God,
shall we ask of thee, Dost thou come bringing peace into this house?"
Yulia flushed with emotion. As he finished, the priest gave her the
cross to kiss, and said in quite a different tone of voice:
"Now Fyodor Fyodorovitch must be married; it's high time."
The choir began singing once more, people began moving, and the room was
noisy again. The old man, much touched, with his eyes full of tears,
kissed Yulia three times, made the sign of the cross over her face, and
said:
"This is your home. I'm an old man and need nothing."
The clerks congratulated her and said something, but the choir was
singing so loud that nothing else could be heard. Then they had lunch
and drank champagne. She sat beside the old father, and he talked to
her, saying that families ought not to be parted but live together in
one house; that separation and disunion led to permanent rupture.
"I've made money and the children only do the spending of it," he said.
"Now, you live with me and save money. It's time for an old man like me
to rest."
Yulia had all the time a vision of Fyodor flitting about so like her
husband, but shyer and more restless; he fussed about her and often
kissed her hand.
"We are plain people, little sister," he said, and patches of red came
into his face as he spoke. "We live simply in Russian style, like
Christians, little sister."
As they went home, Laptev felt greatly relieved that everything had gone
off so well, and that nothing outrageous had happened as he had
expected. He said to his wife:
"You're surprised that such a stalwart, broad-shouldered father should
have such stunted, narrow-chested sons as Fyodor and me. Yes; but it's
easy to explain! My father married my mother when he was forty-five, and
she was only seventeen. She turned pale and trembled in his presence.
Nina was born first--born of a comparatively healthy mother, and so she
was finer and sturdier than we were. Fyodor and I were begotten and born
after mother had been worn out by terror. I can remember my father
correcting me--or, to speak plainly, beating me--before I was five years
old. He used to thrash me with a birch, pull my ears, hit me on the
head, and every morning when I woke up my first thought was whether he
would beat me that day. Play and childish mischief was forbidden us. We
had to go to morning service and to early mass. When we met priests or
monks we had to kiss their hands; at home we had to sing hymns. Here you
are religious and love all that, but I'm afraid of religion, and when I
pass a church I remember my childhood, and am overcome with horror. I
was taken to the warehouse as soon as I was eight years old. I worked
like a working boy, and it was bad for my health, for I used to be
beaten there every day. Afterwards when I went to the high school, I
used to go to school till dinner-time, and after dinner I had to sit in
that warehouse till evening; and things went on like that till I was
twenty-two, till I got to know Yartsev, and he persuaded me to leave my
father's house. That Yartsev did a great deal for me. I tell you what,"
said Laptev, and he laughed with pleasure: "let us go and pay Yartsev a
visit at once. He's a very fine fellow! How touched he will be!"
VII
On a Saturday in November Anton Rubinstein was conducting in a symphony
concert. It was very hot and crowded. Laptev stood behind the columns,
while his wife and Kostya Kotchevoy were sitting in the third or fourth
row some distance in front. At the very beginning of an interval a
"certain person," Polina Nikolaevna Razsudin, quite unexpectedly passed
by him. He had often since his marriage thought with trepidation of a
possible meeting with her. When now she looked at him openly and
directly, he realised that he had all this time shirked having things
out with her, or writing her two or three friendly lines, as though he
had been hiding from her; he felt ashamed and flushed crimson. She
pressed his hand tightly and impulsively and asked:
"Have you seen Yartsev?"
And without waiting for an answer she went striding on impetuously as
though some one were pushing her on from behind.
She was very thin and plain, with a long nose; her face always looked
tired, and exhausted, and it seemed as though it were an effort to her
to keep her eyes open, and not to fall down. She had fine, dark eyes,
and an intelligent, kind, sincere expression, but her movements were
awkward and abrupt. It was hard to talk to her, because she could not
talk or listen quietly. Loving her was not easy. Sometimes when she was
alone with Laptev she would go on laughing for a long time, hiding her
face in her hands, and would declare that love was not the chief thing
in life for her, and would be as whimsical as a girl of seventeen; and
before kissing her he would have to put out all the candles. She was
thirty. She was married to a schoolmaster, but had not lived with her
husband for years. She earned her living by giving music lessons and
playing in quartettes.
During the ninth symphony she passed again as though by accident, but
the crowd of men standing like a thick wall behind the columns prevented
her going further, and she remained beside him. Laptev saw that she was
wearing the same little velvet blouse she had worn at concerts last year
and the year before. Her gloves were new, and her fan, too, was new, but
it was a common one. She was fond of fine clothes, but she did not know
how to dress, and grudged spending money on it. She dressed so badly and
untidily that when she was going to her lessons striding hurriedly down
the street, she might easily have been taken for a young monk.
The public applauded and shouted encore.
"You'll spend the evening with me," said Polina Nikolaevna, going up to
Laptev and looking at him severely. "When this is over we'll go and have
tea. Do you hear? I insist on it. You owe me a great deal, and haven't
the moral right to refuse me such a trifle."
"Very well; let us go," Laptev assented.
Endless calls followed the conclusion of the concert. The audience got
up from their seats and went out very slowly, and Laptev could not go
away without telling his wife. He had to stand at the door and wait.
"I'm dying for some tea," Polina Nikolaevna said plaintively. "My very
soul is parched."
"You can get something to drink here," said Laptev. "Let's go to the
buffet."
"Oh, I've no money to fling away on waiters. I'm not a shopkeeper."
He offered her his arm; she refused, in a long, wearisome sentence which
he had heard many times, to the effect that she did not class herself
with the feebler fair sex, and did not depend on the services of
gentlemen.
As she talked to him she kept looking about at the audience and greeting
acquaintances; they were her fellow-students at the higher courses and
at the conservatorium, and her pupils. She gripped their hands abruptly,
as though she were tugging at them. But then she began twitching her
shoulders, and trembling as though she were in a fever, and at last said
softly, looking at Laptev with horror:
"Who is it you've married? Where were your eyes, you mad fellow? What
did you see in that stupid, insignificant girl? Why, I loved you for
your mind, for your soul, but that china doll wants nothing but your
money!"
"Let us drop that, Polina," he said in a voice of supplication. "All
that you can say to me about my marriage I've said to myself many times
already. Don't cause me unnecessary pain."
Yulia Sergeyevna made her appearance, wearing a black dress with a big
diamond brooch, which her father-in-law had sent her after the service.
She was followed by her suite--Kotchevoy, two doctors of their
acquaintance, an officer, and a stout young man in student's uniform,
called Kish.
"You go on with Kostya," Laptev said to his wife. "I'm coming later."
Yulia nodded and went on. Polina Nikolaevna gazed after her, quivering
all over and twitching nervously, and in her eyes there was a look of
repulsion, hatred, and pain.
Laptev was afraid to go home with her, foreseeing an unpleasant
discussion, cutting words, and tears, and he suggested that they should
go and have tea at a restaurant. But she said:
"No, no. I want to go home. Don't dare to talk to me of restaurants."
She did not like being in a restaurant, because the atmosphere of
restaurants seemed to her poisoned by tobacco smoke and the breath of
men. Against all men she did not know she cherished a strange prejudice,
regarding them all as immoral rakes, capable of attacking her at any
moment. Besides, the music played at restaurants jarred on her nerves
and gave her a headache.
Coming out of the Hall of Nobility, they took a sledge in Ostozhenka and
drove to Savelovsky Lane, where she lodged. All the way Laptev thought
about her. It was true that he owed her a great deal. He had made her
acquaintance at the flat of his friend Yartsev, to whom she was giving