Short Stories by Chekhov
that was hanging over him worried him extremely. Olga Mihalovna
remembered how on his return from the unfortunate session he had tried
to conceal from his household how troubled he was, and how dissatisfied
with himself. As an intelligent man he could not help feeling that he
had gone too far in expressing his disagreement; and how much lying had
been needful to conceal that feeling from himself and from others! How
many unnecessary conversations there had been! How much grumbling and
insincere laughter at what was not laughable! When he learned that he
was to be brought up before the Court, he seemed at once harassed and
depressed; he began to sleep badly, stood oftener than ever at the
windows, drumming on the panes with his fingers. And he was ashamed to
let his wife see that he was worried, and it vexed her.
"They say you have been in the province of Poltava?" Lubotchka
questioned him.
"Yes," answered Pyotr Dmitritch. "I came back the day before yesterday."
"I expect it is very nice there."
"Yes, it is very nice, very nice indeed; in fact, I arrived just in time
for the haymaking, I must tell you, and in the Ukraine the haymaking is
the most poetical moment of the year. Here we have a big house, a big
garden, a lot of servants, and a lot going on, so that you don't see the
haymaking; here it all passes unnoticed. There, at the farm, I have a
meadow of forty-five acres as flat as my hand. You can see the men
mowing from any window you stand at. They are mowing in the meadow, they
are mowing in the garden. There are no visitors, no fuss nor hurry
either, so that you can't help seeing, feeling, hearing nothing but the
haymaking. There is a smell of hay indoors and outdoors. There's the
sound of the scythes from sunrise to sunset. Altogether Little Russia is
a charming country. Would you believe it, when I was drinking water from
the rustic wells and filthy vodka in some Jew's tavern, when on quiet
evenings the strains of the Little Russian fiddle and the tambourines
reached me, I was tempted by a fascinating idea--to settle down on my
place and live there as long as I chose, far away from Circuit Courts,
intellectual conversations, philosophizing women, long dinners. . . ."
Pyotr Dmitritch was not lying. He was unhappy and really longed to rest.
And he had visited his Poltava property simply to avoid seeing his
study, his servants, his acquaintances, and everything that could remind
him of his wounded vanity and his mistakes.
Lubotchka suddenly jumped up and waved her hands about in horror.
"Oh! A bee, a bee!" she shrieked. "It will sting!"
"Nonsense; it won't sting," said Pyotr Dmitritch. "What a coward you
are!"
"No, no, no," cried Lubotchka; and looking round at the bees, she walked
rapidly back.
Pyotr Dmitritch walked away after her, looking at her with a softened
and melancholy face. He was probably thinking, as he looked at her, of
his farm, of solitude, and--who knows?--perhaps he was even thinking how
snug and cosy life would be at the farm if his wife had been this
girl--young, pure, fresh, not corrupted by higher education, not with
child. . . .
When the sound of their footsteps had died away, Olga Mihalovna came out
of the shanty and turned towards the house. She wanted to cry. She was
by now acutely jealous. She could understand that her husband was
worried, dissatisfied with himself and ashamed, and when people are
ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest to them, and are
unreserved with strangers; she could understand, also, that she had
nothing to fear from Lubotchka or from those women who were now drinking
coffee indoors. But everything in general was terrible,
incomprehensible, and it already seemed to Olga Mihalovna that Pyotr
Dmitritch only half belonged to her.
"He has no right to do it!" she muttered, trying to formulate her
jealousy and her vexation with her husband. "He has no right at all. I
will tell him so plainly!"
She made up her mind to find her husband at once and tell him all about
it: it was disgusting, absolutely disgusting, that he was attractive to
other women and sought their admiration as though it were some heavenly
manna; it was unjust and dishonourable that he should give to others
what belonged by right to his wife, that he should hide his soul and his
conscience from his wife to reveal them to the first pretty face he came
across. What harm had his wife done him? How was she to blame? Long ago
she had been sickened by his lying: he was for ever posing, flirting,
saying what he did not think, and trying to seem different from what he
was and what he ought to be. Why this falsity? Was it seemly in a decent
man? If he lied he was demeaning himself and those to whom he lied, and
slighting what he lied about. Could he not understand that if he
swaggered and posed at the judicial table, or held forth at dinner on
the prerogatives of Government, that he, simply to provoke her uncle,
was showing thereby that he had not a ha'p'orth of respect for the
Court, or himself, or any of the people who were listening and looking
at him?
Coming out into the big avenue, Olga Mihalovna assumed an expression of
face as though she had just gone away to look after some domestic
matter. In the verandah the gentlemen were drinking liqueur and eating
strawberries: one of them, the Examining Magistrate--a stout elderly man,
blagueur and wit--must have been telling some rather free anecdote, for,
seeing their hostess, he suddenly clapped his hands over his fat lips,
rolled his eyes, and sat down. Olga Mihalovna did not like the local
officials. She did not care for their clumsy, ceremonious wives, their
scandal-mongering, their frequent visits, their flattery of her husband,
whom they all hated. Now, when they were drinking, were replete with
food and showed no signs of going away, she felt their presence an
agonizing weariness; but not to appear impolite, she smiled cordially to
the Magistrate, and shook her finger at him. She walked across the
dining-room and drawing-room smiling, and looking as though she had gone
to give some order and make some arrangement. "God grant no one stops
me," she thought, but she forced herself to stop in the drawing-room to
listen from politeness to a young man who was sitting at the piano
playing: after standing for a minute, she cried, "Bravo, bravo, M.
Georges!" and clapping her hands twice, she went on.
She found her husband in his study. He was sitting at the table,
thinking of something. His face looked stern, thoughtful, and guilty.
This was not the same Pyotr Dmitritch who had been arguing at dinner and
whom his guests knew, but a different man--wearied, feeling guilty and
dissatisfied with himself, whom nobody knew but his wife. He must have
come to the study to get cigarettes. Before him lay an open cigarette-
case full of cigarettes, and one of his hands was in the table drawer;
he had paused and sunk into thought as he was taking the cigarettes.
Olga Mihalovna felt sorry for him. It was as clear as day that this man
was harassed, could find no rest, and was perhaps struggling with
himself. Olga Mihalovna went up to the table in silence: wanting to show
that she had forgotten the argument at dinner and was not cross, she
shut the cigarette-case and put it in her husband's coat pocket.
"What should I say to him?" she wondered; "I shall say that lying is
like a forest--the further one goes into it the more difficult it is to
get out of it. I will say to him, 'You have been carried away by the
false part you are playing; you have insulted people who were attached
to you and have done you no harm. Go and apologize to them, laugh at
yourself, and you will feel better. And if you want peace and solitude,
let us go away together.'"
Meeting his wife's gaze, Pyotr Dmitritch's face immediately assumed the
expression it had worn at dinner and in the garden--indifferent and
slightly ironical. He yawned and got up.
"It's past five," he said, looking at his watch. "If our visitors are
merciful and leave us at eleven, even then we have another six hours of
it. It's a cheerful prospect, there's no denying!"
And whistling something, he walked slowly out of the study with his
usual dignified gait. She could hear him with dignified firmness cross
the dining-room, then the drawing-room, laugh with dignified assurance,
and say to the young man who was playing, "Bravo! bravo!" Soon his
footsteps died away: he must have gone out into the garden. And now not
jealousy, not vexation, but real hatred of his footsteps, his insincere
laugh and voice, took possession of Olga Mihalovna. She went to the
window and looked out into the garden. Pyotr Dmitritch was already
walking along the avenue. Putting one hand in his pocket and snapping
the fingers of the other, he walked with confident swinging steps,
throwing his head back a little, and looking as though he were very well
satisfied with himself, with his dinner, with his digestion, and with
nature. . . .
Two little schoolboys, the children of Madame Tchizhevsky, who had only
just arrived, made their appearance in the avenue, accompanied by their
tutor, a student wearing a white tunic and very narrow trousers. When
they reached Pyotr Dmitritch, the boys and the student stopped, and
probably congratulated him on his name-day. With a graceful swing of his
shoulders, he patted the children on their cheeks, and carelessly
offered the student his hand without looking at him. The student must
have praised the weather and compared it with the climate of Petersburg,
for Pyotr Dmitritch said in a loud voice, in a tone as though he were
not speaking to a guest, but to an usher of the court or a witness:
"What! It's cold in Petersburg? And here, my good sir, we have a
salubrious atmosphere and the fruits of the earth in abundance. Eh?
What?"
And thrusting one hand in his pocket and snapping the fingers of the
other, he walked on. Till he had disappeared behind the nut bushes, Olga
Mihalovna watched the back of his head in perplexity. How had this man
of thirty-four come by the dignified deportment of a general? How had he
come by that impressive, elegant manner? Where had he got that vibration
of authority in his voice? Where had he got these "what's," "to be
sure's," and "my good sir's"?
Olga Mihalovna remembered how in the first months of her marriage she
had felt dreary at home alone and had driven into the town to the
Circuit Court, at which Pyotr Dmitritch had sometimes presided in place
of her godfather, Count Alexey Petrovitch. In the presidential chair,
wearing his uniform and a chain on his breast, he was completely
changed. Stately gestures, a voice of thunder, "what," "to be sure,"
careless tones. . . . Everything, all that was ordinary and human, all
that was individual and personal to himself that Olga Mihalovna was
accustomed to seeing in him at home, vanished in grandeur, and in the
presidential chair there sat not Pyotr Dmitritch, but another man whom
every one called Mr. President. This consciousness of power prevented
him from sitting still in his place, and he seized every opportunity to
ring his bell, to glance sternly at the public, to shout. . . . Where
had he got his short-sight and his deafness when he suddenly began to
see and hear with difficulty, and, frowning majestically, insisted on
people speaking louder and coming closer to the table? From the height
of his grandeur he could hardly distinguish faces or sounds, so that it
seemed that if Olga Mihalovna herself had gone up to him he would have
shouted even to her, "Your name?" Peasant witnesses he addressed
familiarly, he shouted at the public so that his voice could be heard
even in the street, and behaved incredibly with the lawyers. If a lawyer