Short Stories by Chekhov
per annum, and that the Laptevs' fortune, reckoning only money and paper
securities, amounted to six million roubles.
When at one o'clock at night, after balancing the accounts, Laptev went
out into the open air, he was still under the spell of those figures. It
was a still, sultry, moonlight night. The white walls of the houses
beyond the river, the heavy barred gates, the stillness and the black
shadows, combined to give the impression of a fortress, and nothing was
wanting to complete the picture but a sentinel with a gun. Laptev went
into the garden and sat down on a seat near the fence, which divided
them from the neighbour's yard, where there was a garden, too. The bird-
cherry was in bloom. Laptev remembered that the tree had been just as
gnarled and just as big when he was a child, and had not changed at all
since then. Every corner of the garden and of the yard recalled the far-
away past. And in his childhood, too, just as now, the whole yard bathed
in moonlight could be seen through the sparse trees, the shadows had
been mysterious and forbidding, a black dog had lain in the middle of
the yard, and the clerks' windows had stood wide open. And all these
were cheerless memories.
The other side of the fence, in the neighbour's yard, there was a sound
of light steps.
"My sweet, my precious . . ." said a man's voice so near the fence that
Laptev could hear the man's breathing.
Now they were kissing. Laptev was convinced that the millions and the
business which was so distasteful to him were ruining his life, and
would make him a complete slave. He imagined how, little by little, he
would grow accustomed to his position; would, little by little, enter
into the part of the head of a great firm; would begin to grow dull and
old, die in the end, as the average man usually does die, in a decrepit,
soured old age, making every one about him miserable and depressed. But
what hindered him from giving up those millions and that business, and
leaving that yard and garden which had been hateful to him from his
childhood?
The whispering and kisses the other side of the fence disturbed him. He
moved into the middle of the yard, and, unbuttoning his shirt over his
chest, looked at the moon, and it seemed to him that he would order the
gate to be unlocked, and would go out and never come back again. His
heart ached sweetly with the foretaste of freedom; he laughed joyously,
and pictured how exquisite, poetical, and even holy, life might be. . .
.
But he still stood and did not go away, and kept asking himself: "What
keeps me here?" And he felt angry with himself and with the black dog,
which still lay stretched on the stone yard, instead of running off to
the open country, to the woods, where it would have been free and happy.
It was clear that that dog and he were prevented from leaving the yard
by the same thing; the habit of bondage, of servitude. . . .
At midday next morning he went to see his wife, and that he might not be
dull, asked Yartsev to go with him. Yulia Sergeyevna was staying in a
summer villa at Butovo, and he had not been to see her for five days.
When they reached the station the friends got into a carriage, and all
the way there Yartsev was singing and in raptures over the exquisite
weather. The villa was in a great park not far from the station. At the
beginning of an avenue, about twenty paces from the gates, Yulia
Sergeyevna was sitting under a broad, spreading poplar, waiting for her
guests. She had on a light, elegant dress of a pale cream colour trimmed
with lace, and in her hand she had the old familiar parasol. Yartsev
greeted her and went on to the villa from which came the sound of
Sasha's and Lida's voices, while Laptev sat down beside her to talk of
business matters.
"Why is it you haven't been for so long?" she said, keeping his hand in
hers. "I have been sitting here for days watching for you to come. I
miss you so when you are away!"
She stood up and passed her hand over his hair, and scanned his face,
his shoulders, his hat, with interest.
"You know I love you," she said, and flushed crimson. "You are precious
to me. Here you've come. I see you, and I'm so happy I can't tell you.
Well, let us talk. Tell me something."
She had told him she loved him, and he could only feel as though he had
been married to her for ten years, and that he was hungry for his lunch.
She had put her arm round his neck, tickling his cheek with the silk of
her dress; he cautiously removed her hand, stood up, and without
uttering a single word, walked to the villa. The little girls ran to
meet him.
"How they have grown!" he thought. "And what changes in these three
years. . . . But one may have to live another thirteen years, another
thirty years. . . . What is there in store for us in the future? If we
live, we shall see."
He embraced Sasha and Lida, who hung upon his neck, and said:
"Grandpapa sends his love. . . . Uncle Fyodor is dying. Uncle Kostya has
sent a letter from America and sends you his love in it. He's bored at
the exhibition and will soon be back. And Uncle Alyosha is hungry."
Then he sat on the verandah and saw his wife walking slowly along the
avenue towards the house. She was deep in thought; there was a mournful,
charming expression in her face, and her eyes were bright with tears.
She was not now the slender, fragile, pale-faced girl she used to be;
she was a mature, beautiful, vigorous woman. And Laptev saw the
enthusiasm with which Yartsev looked at her when he met her, and the way
her new, lovely expression was reflected in his face, which looked
mournful and ecstatic too. One would have thought that he was seeing her
for the first time in his life. And while they were at lunch on the
verandah, Yartsev smiled with a sort of joyous shyness, and kept gazing
atYulia and at her beautiful neck. Laptev could not help watching them
while he thought that he had perhaps another thirteen, another thirty
years of life before him. . . . And what would he have to live through
in that time? What is in store for us in the future?
And he thought:
"Let us live, and we shall see."