Short Stories by Chekhov
said, rousing herself. "Come and have a drink. My best wishes for
Christmas, my dears. I never drink with any one else, but I drink with
you, sinful woman as I am. Please God!"
Anna Akimovna fancied that after yesterday Pimenov despised her as a
philanthropist, but was fascinated by her as a woman. She looked at him
and thought that he behaved very charmingly and was nicely dressed. It
is true that the sleeves of his coat were not quite long enough, and the
coat itself seemed short-waisted, and his trousers were not wide and
fashionable, but his tie was tied carelessly and with taste and was not
as gaudy as the others'. And he seemed to be a good-natured man, for he
ate submissively whatever Auntie put on his plate. She remembered how
black he had been the day before, and how sleepy, and the thought of it
for some reason touched her.
When the men were preparing to go, Anna Akimovna put out her hand to
Pimenov. She wanted to ask him to come in sometimes to see her, without
ceremony, but she did not know how to--her tongue would not obey her; and
that they might not think she was attracted by Pimenov, she shook hands
with his companions, too.
Then the boys from the school of which she was a patroness came. They
all had their heads closely cropped and all wore grey blouses of the
same pattern. The teacher--a tall, beardless young man with patches of
red on his face--was visibly agitated as he formed the boys into rows;
the boys sang in tune, but with harsh, disagreeable voices. The manager
of the factory, Nazaritch, a bald, sharp-eyed Old Believer, could never
get on with the teachers, but the one who was now anxiously waving his
hands he despised and hated, though he could not have said why. He
behaved rudely and condescendingly to the young man, kept back his
salary, meddled with the teaching, and had finally tried to dislodge him
by appointing, a fortnight before Christmas, as porter to the school a
drunken peasant, a distant relation of his wife's, who disobeyed the
teacher and said rude things to him before the boys.
Anna Akimovna was aware of all this, but she could be of no help, for
she was afraid of Nazaritch herself. Now she wanted at least to be very
nice to the schoolmaster, to tell him she was very much pleased with
him; but when after the singing he began apologizing for something in
great confusion, and Auntie began to address him familiarly as she drew
him without ceremony to the table, she felt, for some reason, bored and
awkward, and giving orders that the children should be given sweets,
went upstairs.
"In reality there is something cruel in these Christmas customs," she
said a little while afterwards, as it were to herself, looking out of
window at the boys, who were flocking from the house to the gates and
shivering with cold, putting their coats on as they ran. "At Christmas
one wants to rest, to sit at home with one's own people, and the poor
boys, the teacher, and the clerks and foremen, are obliged for some
reason to go through the frost, then to offer their greetings, show
their respect, be put to confusion . . ."
Mishenka, who was standing at the door of the drawing-room and overheard
this, said:
"It has not come from us, and it will not end with us. Of course, I am
not an educated man, Anna Akimovna, but I do understand that the poor
must always respect the rich. It is well said, 'God marks the rogue.' In
prisons, night refuges, and pot-houses you never see any but the poor,
while decent people, you may notice, are always rich. It has been said
of the rich, 'Deep calls to deep.'"
"You always express yourself so tediously and incomprehensibly," said
Anna Akimovna, and she walked to the other end of the big drawing-room.
It was only just past eleven. The stillness of the big room, only broken
by the singing that floated up from below, made her yawn. The bronzes,
the albums, and the pictures on the walls, representing a ship at sea,
cows in a meadow, and views of the Rhine, were so absolutely stale that
her eyes simply glided over them without observing them. The holiday
mood was already growing tedious. As before, Anna Akimovna felt that she
was beautiful, good-natured, and wonderful, but now it seemed to her
that that was of no use to any one; it seemed to her that she did not
know for whom and for what she had put on this expensive dress, too,
and, as always happened on all holidays, she began to be fretted by
loneliness and the persistent thought that her beauty, her health, and
her wealth, were a mere cheat, since she was not wanted, was of no use
to any one, and nobody loved her. She walked through all the rooms,
humming and looking out of window; stopping in the drawing-room, she
could not resist beginning to talk to Mishenka.
"I don't know what you think of yourself, Misha," she said, and heaved a
sigh. "Really, God might punish you for it."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. Excuse my meddling in your affairs. But it seems
you are spoiling your own life out of obstinacy. You'll admit that it is
high time you got married, and she is an excellent and deserving girl.
You will never find any one better. She's a beauty, clever, gentle, and
devoted. . . . And her appearance! . . . If she belonged to our circle
or a higher one, people would be falling in love with her for her red
hair alone. See how beautifully her hair goes with her complexion. Oh,
goodness! You don't understand anything, and don't know what you want,"
Anna Akimovna said bitterly, and tears came into her eyes. "Poor girl, I
am so sorry for her! I know you want a wife with money, but I have told
you already I will give Masha a dowry."
Mishenka could not picture his future spouse in his imagination except
as a tall, plump, substantial, pious woman, stepping like a peacock,
and, for some reason, with a long shawl over her shoulders; while Masha
was thin, slender, tightly laced, and walked with little steps, and,
worst of all, she was too fascinating and at times extremely attractive
to Mishenka, and that, in his opinion, was incongruous with matrimony
and only in keeping with loose behaviour. When Anna Akimovna had
promised to give Masha a dowry, he had hesitated for a time; but once a
poor student in a brown overcoat over his uniform, coming with a letter
for Anna Akimovna, was fascinated by Masha, and could not resist
embracing her near the hat-stand, and she had uttered a faint shriek;
Mishenka, standing on the stairs above, had seen this, and from that
time had begun to cherish a feeling of disgust for Masha. A poor
student! Who knows, if she had been embraced by a rich student or an
officer the consequences might have been different.
"Why don't you wish it?" Anna Akimovna asked. "What more do you want?"
Mishenka was silent and looked at the arm-chair fixedly, and raised his
eyebrows.
"Do you love some one else?"
Silence. The red-haired Masha came in with letters and visiting cards on
a tray. Guessing that they were talking about her, she blushed to tears.
"The postmen have come," she muttered. "And there is a clerk called
Tchalikov waiting below. He says you told him to come to-day for
something."
"What insolence!" said Anna Akimovna, moved to anger. "I gave him no
orders. Tell him to take himself off; say I am not at home!"
A ring was heard. It was the priests from her parish. They were always
shown into the aristocratic part of the house--that is, upstairs. After
the priests, Nazaritch, the manager of the factory, came to pay his
visit, and then the factory doctor; then Mishenka announced the
inspector of the elementary schools. Visitors kept arriving.
When there was a moment free, Anna Akimovna sat down in a deep arm-chair
in the drawing-room, and shutting her eyes, thought that her loneliness
was quite natural because she had not married and never would marry. . .
. But that was not her fault. Fate itself had flung her out of the
simple working-class surroundings in which, if she could trust her
memory, she had felt so snug and at home, into these immense rooms,
where she could never think what to do with herself, and could not
understand why so many people kept passing before her eyes. What was
happening now seemed to her trivial, useless, since it did not and could
not give her happiness for one minute.
"If I could fall in love," she thought, stretching; the very thought of
this sent a rush of warmth to her heart. "And if I could escape from the
factory . . ." she mused, imagining how the weight of those factory
buildings, barracks, and schools would roll off her conscience, roll off
her mind. . . . Then she remembered her father, and thought if he had
lived longer he would certainly have married her to a working man--to
Pimenov, for instance. He would have told her to marry, and that would
have been all about it. And it would have been a good thing; then the
factory would have passed into capable hands.
She pictured his curly head, his bold profile, his delicate, ironical
lips and the strength, the tremendous strength, in his shoulders, in his
arms, in his chest, and the tenderness with which he had looked at her
watch that day.
"Well," she said, "it would have been all right. I would have married
him."
"Anna Akimovna," said Mishenka, coming noiselessly into the drawing-
room.
"How you frightened me!" she said, trembling all over. "What do you
want?"
"Anna Akimovna," he said, laying his hand on his heart and raising his
eyebrows, "you are my mistress and my benefactress, and no one but you
can tell me what I ought to do about marriage, for you are as good as a
mother to me. . . . But kindly forbid them to laugh and jeer at me
downstairs. They won't let me pass without it."
"How do they jeer at you?"
"They call me Mashenka's Mishenka."
"Pooh, what nonsense!" cried Anna Akimovna indignantly. "How stupid you
all are! What a stupid you are, Misha! How sick I am of you! I can't
bear the sight of you." III
Dinner
Just as the year before, the last to pay her visits were Krylin, an
actual civil councillor, and Lysevitch, a well-known barrister. It was
already dark when they arrived. Krylin, a man of sixty, with a wide
mouth and with grey whiskers close to his ears, with a face like a lynx,
was wearing a uniform with an Anna ribbon, and white trousers. He held
Anna Akimovna's hand in both of his for a long while, looked intently in
her face, moved his lips, and at last said, drawling upon one note:
"I used to respect your uncle . . . and your father, and enjoyed the
privilege of their friendship. Now I feel it an agreeable duty, as you
see, to present my Christmas wishes to their honoured heiress in spite
of my infirmities and the distance I have to come. . . . And I am very
glad to see you in good health."
The lawyer Lysevitch, a tall, handsome fair man, with a slight
sprinkling of grey on his temples and beard, was distinguished by
exceptionally elegant manners; he walked with a swaying step, bowed as
it were reluctantly, and shrugged his shoulders as he talked, and all
this with an indolent grace, like a spoiled horse fresh from the stable.
He was well fed, extremely healthy, and very well off; on one occasion
he had won forty thousand roubles, but concealed the fact from his
friends. He was fond of good fare, especially cheese, truffles, and
grated radish with hemp oil; while in Paris he had eaten, so he said,
baked but unwashed guts. He spoke smoothly, fluently, without
hesitation, and only occasionally, for the sake of effect, permitted
himself to hesitate and snap his fingers as if picking up a word. He had
long ceased to believe in anything he had to say in the law courts, or
perhaps he did believe in it, but attached no kind of significance to
it; it had all so long been familiar, stale, ordinary. . . . He believed