Short Stories by Chekhov
"What you say is not true," she went on, after a moment's thought. "You
only come here on account of Dmitri Petrovitch. Well, I am very glad.
One does not often see such friendships nowadays."
"Aha!" I thought, and, not knowing what to say, I asked: "Would you care
for a turn in the garden?"
I went out upon the verandah. Nervous shudders were running over my head
and I felt chilly with excitement. I was convinced now that our
conversation would be utterly trivial, and that there was nothing
particular we should be able to say to one another, but that, that
night, what I did not dare to dream of was bound to happen--that it was
bound to be that night or never.
"What lovely weather!" I said aloud.
"It makes absolutely no difference to me," she answered.
I went into the drawing-room. Marya Sergeyevna was standing, as before,
near the fireplace, with her hands behind her back, looking away and
thinking of something.
"Why does it make no difference to you?" I asked.
"Because I am bored. You are only bored without your friend, but I am
always bored. However . . . that is of no interest to you."
I sat down to the piano and struck a few chords, waiting to hear what
she would say.
"Please don't stand on ceremony," she said, looking angrily at me, and
she seemed as though on the point of crying with vexation. "If you are
sleepy, go to bed. Because you are Dmitri Petrovitch's friend, you are
not in duty bound to be bored with his wife's company. I don't want a
sacrifice. Please go."
I did not, of course, go to bed. She went out on the verandah while I
remained in the drawing-room and spent five minutes turning over the
music. Then I went out, too. We stood close together in the shadow of
the curtains, and below us were the steps bathed in moonlight. The black
shadows of the trees stretched across the flower beds and the yellow
sand of the paths.
"I shall have to go away tomorrow, too," I said.
"Of course, if my husband's not at home you can't stay here," she said
sarcastically. "I can imagine how miserable you would be if you were in
love with me! Wait a bit: one day I shall throw myself on your neck. . .
. I shall see with what horror you will run away from me. That would be
interesting."
Her words and her pale face were angry, but her eyes were full of tender
passionate love. I already looked upon this lovely creature as my
property, and then for the first time I noticed that she had golden
eyebrows, exquisite eyebrows. I had never seen such eyebrows before. The
thought that I might at once press her to my heart, caress her, touch
her wonderful hair, seemed to me such a miracle that I laughed and shut
my eyes.
"It's bed-time now. . . . A peaceful night," she said.
"I don't want a peaceful night," I said, laughing, following her into
the drawing-room. "I shall curse this night if it is a peaceful one."
Pressing her hand, and escorting her to the door, I saw by her face that
she understood me, and was glad that I understood her, too.
I went to my room. Near the books on the table lay Dmitri Petrovitch's
cap, and that reminded me of his affection for me. I took my stick and
went out into the garden. The mist had risen here, too, and the same
tall, narrow, ghostly shapes which I had seen earlier on the river were
trailing round the trees and bushes and wrapping about them. What a pity
I could not talk to them!
In the extraordinarily transparent air, each leaf, each drop of dew
stood out distinctly; it was all smiling at me in the stillness half
asleep, and as I passed the green seats I recalled the words in some
play of Shakespeare's: "How sweetly falls the moonlight on yon seat!"
There was a mound in the garden; I went up it and sat down. I was
tormented by a delicious feeling. I knew for certain that in a moment I
should hold in my arms, should press to my heart her magnificent body,
should kiss her golden eyebrows; and I wanted to disbelieve it, to
tantalize myself, and was sorry that she had cost me so little trouble
and had yielded so soon.
But suddenly I heard heavy footsteps. A man of medium height appeared in
the avenue, and I recognized him at once as Forty Martyrs. He sat down
on the bench and heaved a deep sigh, then crossed himself three times
and lay down. A minute later he got up and lay on the other side. The
gnats and the dampness of the night prevented his sleeping.
"Oh, life!" he said. "Wretched, bitter life!"
Looking at his bent, wasted body and hearing his heavy, noisy sighs, I
thought of an unhappy, bitter life of which the confession had been made
to me that day, and I felt uneasy and frightened at my blissful mood. I
came down the knoll and went to the house.
"Life, as he thinks, is terrible," I thought, "so don't stand on
ceremony with it, bend it to your will, and until it crushes you, snatch
all you can wring from it."
Marya Sergeyevna was standing on the verandah. I put my arms round her
without a word, and began greedily kissing her eyebrows, her temples,
her neck. . . .
In my room she told me she had loved me for a long time, more than a
year. She vowed eternal love, cried and begged me to take her away with
me. I repeatedly took her to the window to look at her face in the
moonlight, and she seemed to me a lovely dream, and I made haste to hold
her tight to convince myself of the truth of it. It was long since I had
known such raptures. . . . Yet somewhere far away at the bottom of my
heart I felt an awkwardness, and I was ill at ease. In her love for me
there was something incongruous and burdensome, just as in Dmitri
Petrovitch's friendship. It was a great, serious passion with tears and
vows, and I wanted nothing serious in it--no tears, no vows, no talk of
the future. Let that moonlight night flash through our lives like a
meteor and--basta!
At three o'clock she went out of my room, and, while I was standing in
the doorway, looking after her, at the end of the corridor Dmitri
Petrovitch suddenly made his appearance; she started and stood aside to
let him pass, and her whole figure was expressive of repulsion. He gave
a strange smile, coughed, and came into my room.
"I forgot my cap here yesterday," he said without looking at me.
He found it and, holding it in both hands, put it on his head; then he
looked at my confused face, at my slippers, and said in a strange, husky
voice unlike his own:
"I suppose it must be my fate that I should understand nothing. . . . If
you understand anything, I congratulate you. It's all darkness before my
eyes."
And he went out, clearing his throat. Afterwards from the window I saw
him by the stable, harnessing the horses with his own hands. His hands
were trembling, he was in nervous haste and kept looking round at the
house; probably he was feeling terror. Then he got into the gig, and,
with a strange expression as though afraid of being pursued, lashed the
horses.
Shortly afterwards I set off, too. The sun was already rising, and the
mist of the previous day clung timidly to the bushes and the hillocks.
On the box of the carriage was sitting Forty Martyrs; he had already
succeeded in getting drunk and was muttering tipsy nonsense.
"I am a free man," he shouted to the horses. "Ah, my honeys, I am a
nobleman in my own right, if you care to know!"
The terror of Dmitri Petrovitch, the thought of whom I could not get out
of my head, infected me. I thought of what had happened and could make
nothing of it. I looked at the rooks, and it seemed so strange and
terrible that they were flying.
"Why have I done this?" I kept asking myself in bewilderment and
despair. "Why has it turned out like this and not differently? To whom
and for what was it necessary that she should love me in earnest, and
that he should come into my room to fetch his cap? What had a cap to do
with it?"
I set off for Petersburg that day, and I have not seen Dmitri Petrovitch
nor his wife since. I am told that they are still living together.
A WOMAN'S KINGDOM I
Christmas Eve
HERE was a thick roll of notes. It came from the bailiff at the forest
villa; he wrote that he was sending fifteen hundred roubles, which he
had been awarded as damages, having won an appeal. Anna Akimovna
disliked and feared such words as "awarded damages" and "won the suit."
She knew that it was impossible to do without the law, but for some
reason, whenever Nazaritch, the manager of the factory, or the bailiff
of her villa in the country, both of whom frequently went to law, used
to win lawsuits of some sort for her benefit, she always felt uneasy
and, as it were, ashamed. On this occasion, too, she felt uneasy and
awkward, and wanted to put that fifteen hundred roubles further away
that it might be out of her sight.
She thought with vexation that other girls of her age--she was in her
twenty-sixth year--were now busy looking after their households, were
weary and would sleep sound, and would wake up tomorrow morning in
holiday mood; many of them had long been married and had children. Only
she, for some reason, was compelled to sit like an old woman over these
letters, to make notes upon them, to write answers, then to do nothing
the whole evening till midnight, but wait till she was sleepy; and
tomorrow they would all day long be coming with Christmas greetings and
asking for favours; and the day after tomorrow there would certainly be
some scandal at the factory--some one would be beaten or would die of
drinking too much vodka, and she would be fretted by pangs of
conscience; and after the holidays Nazaritch would turn off some twenty
of the workpeople for absence from work, and all of the twenty would
hang about at the front door, without their caps on, and she would be
ashamed to go out to them, and they would be driven away like dogs. And
all her acquaintances would say behind her back, and write to her in
anonymous letters, that she was a millionaire and exploiter --that she
was devouring other men's lives and sucking the blood of the workers.
Here there lay a heap of letters read through and laid aside already.
They were all begging letters. They were from people who were hungry,
drunken, dragged down by large families, sick, degraded, despised . . .
. Anna Akimovna had already noted on each letter, three roubles to be
paid to one, five to another; these letters would go the same day to the
office, and next the distribution of assistance would take place, or, as
the clerks used to say, the beasts would be fed.
They would distribute also in small sums four hundred and seventy
roubles--the interest on a sum bequeathed by the late Akim Ivanovitch for
the relief of the poor and needy. There would be a hideous crush. From
the gates to the doors of the office there would stretch a long file of
strange people with brutal faces, in rags, numb with cold, hungry and
already drunk, in husky voices calling down blessings upon Anna
Akimovna, their benefactress, and her parents: those at the back would
press upon those in front, and those in front would abuse them with bad
language. The clerk would get tired of the noise, the swearing, and the
sing-song whining and blessing; would fly out and give some one a box on
the ear to the delight of all. And her own people, the factory hands,
who received nothing at Christmas but their wages, and had already spent
every farthing of it, would stand in the middle of the yard, looking on
and laughing--some enviously, others ironically.
"Merchants, and still more their wives, are fonder of beggars than they
are of their own workpeople," thought Anna Akimovna. "It's always so."
Her eye fell upon the roll of money. It would be nice to distribute that
hateful, useless money among the workpeople tomorrow, but it did not do