Short Stories by Chekhov
strained and unnatural, and that consequently the officers who knew how
to sit in their saddles must please Masha more than he could. And he was
jealous of the officers.
As they rode by the suburban gardens some one suggested their going in
and getting some seltzer-water. They went in. There were no trees but
oaks in the gardens; they had only just come into leaf, so that through
the young foliage the whole garden could still be seen with its
platform, little tables, and swings, and the crows' nests were visible,
looking like big hats. The party dismounted near a table and asked for
seltzer-water. People they knew, walking about the garden, came up to
them. Among them the army doctor in high boots, and the conductor of the
band, waiting for the musicians. The doctor must have taken Nikitin for
a student, for he asked: "Have you come for the summer holidays?"
"No, I am here permanently," answered Nikitin. "I am a teacher at the
school."
"You don't say so?" said the doctor, with surprise. "So young and
already a teacher?"
"Young, indeed! My goodness, I'm twenty-six!
"You have a beard and moustache, but yet one would never guess you were
more than twenty-two or twenty-three. How young-looking you are!"
"What a beast!" thought Nikitin. "He, too, takes me for a whipper-
snapper!"
He disliked it extremely when people referred to his youth, especially
in the presence of women or the schoolboys. Ever since he had come to
the town as a master in the school he had detested his own youthful
appearance. The schoolboys were not afraid of him, old people called him
"young man," ladies preferred dancing with him to listening to his long
arguments, and he would have given a great deal to be ten years older.
From the garden they went on to the Shelestovs' farm. There they stopped
at the gate and asked the bailiff's wife, Praskovya, to bring some new
milk. Nobody drank the milk; they all looked at one another, laughed,
and galloped back. As they rode back the band was playing in the
suburban garden; the sun was setting behind the cemetery, and half the
sky was crimson from the sunset.
Masha again rode beside Nikitin. He wanted to tell her how passionately
he loved her, but he was afraid he would be overheard by the officers
and Varya, and he was silent. Masha was silent, too, and he felt why she
was silent and why she was riding beside him, and was so happy that the
earth, the sky, the lights of the town, the black outline of the
brewery--all blended for him into something very pleasant and comforting,
and it seemed to him as though Count Nulin were stepping on air and
would climb up into the crimson sky.
They arrived home. The samovar was already boiling on the table, old
Shelestov was sitting with his friends, officials in the Circuit Court,
and as usual he was criticizing something.
"It's loutishness!" he said. "Loutishness and nothing more. Yes!"
Since Nikitin had been in love with Masha, everything at the Shelestovs'
pleased him: the house, the garden, and the evening tea, and the
wickerwork chairs, and the old nurse, and even the word "loutishness,"
which the old man was fond of using. The only thing he did not like was
the number of cats and dogs and the Egyptian pigeons, who moaned
disconsolately in a big cage in the verandah. There were so many house-
dogs and yard-dogs that he had only learnt to recognize two of them in
the course of his acquaintance with the Shelestovs: Mushka and Som.
Mushka was a little mangy dog with a shaggy face, spiteful and spoiled.
She hated Nikitin: when she saw him she put her head on one side, showed
her teeth, and began: "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . rrr . . . !" Then she
would get under his chair, and when he would try to drive her away she
would go off into piercing yaps, and the family would say: "Don't be
frightened. She doesn't bite. She is a good dog."
Som was a tall black dog with long legs and a tail as hard as a stick.
At dinner and tea he usually moved about under the table, and thumped on
people's boots and on the legs of the table with his tail. He was a
good-natured, stupid dog, but Nikitin could not endure him because he
had the habit of putting his head on people's knees at dinner and
messing their trousers with saliva. Nikitin had more than once tried to
hit him on his head with a knife-handle, to flip him on the nose, had
abused him, had complained of him, but nothing saved his trousers.
After their ride the tea, jam, rusks, and butter seemed very nice. They
all drank their first glass in silence and with great relish; over the
second they began an argument. It was always Varya who started the
arguments at tea; she was good-looking, handsomer than Masha, and was
considered the cleverest and most cultured person in the house, and she
behaved with dignity and severity, as an eldest daughter should who has
taken the place of her dead mother in the house. As the mistress of the
house, she felt herself entitled to wear a dressing-gown in the presence
of her guests, and to call the officers by their surnames; she looked on
Masha as a little girl, and talked to her as though she were a
schoolmistress. She used to speak of herself as an old maid--so she was
certain she would marry.
Every conversation, even about the weather, she invariably turned into
an argument. She had a passion for catching at words, pouncing on
contradictions, quibbling over phrases. You would begin talking to her,
and she would stare at you and suddenly interrupt: "Excuse me, excuse
me, Petrov, the other day you said the very opposite!"
Or she would smile ironically and say: "I notice, though, you begin to
advocate the principles of the secret police. I congratulate you."
If you jested or made a pun, you would hear her voice at once: "That's
stale," "That's pointless." If an officer ventured on a joke, she would
make a contemptuous grimace and say, "An army joke!"
And she rolled the r so impressively that Mushka invariably answered
from under a chair, "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . !"
On this occasion at tea the argument began with Nikitin's mentioning the
school examinations.
"Excuse me, Sergey Vassilitch," Varya interrupted him. "You say it's
difficult for the boys. And whose fault is that, let me ask you? For
instance, you set the boys in the eighth class an essay on 'Pushkin as a
Psychologist.' To begin with, you shouldn't set such a difficult
subject; and, secondly, Pushkin was not a psychologist. Shtchedrin now,
or Dostoevsky let us say, is a different matter, but Pushkin is a great
poet and nothing more."
"Shtchedrin is one thing, and Pushkin is another," Nikitin answered
sulkily.
"I know you don't think much of Shtchedrin at the high school, but
that's not the point. Tell me, in what sense is Pushkin a psychologist?"
"Why, do you mean to say he was not a psychologist? If you like, I'll
give you examples."
And Nikitin recited several passages from "Onyegin" and then from "Boris
Godunov."
"I see no psychology in that." Varya sighed. "The psychologist is the
man who describes the recesses of the human soul, and that's fine poetry
and nothing more."
"I know the sort of psychology you want," said Nikitin, offended. "You
want some one to saw my finger with a blunt saw while I howl at the top
of my voice--that's what you mean by psychology."
"That's poor! But still you haven't shown me in what sense Pushkin is a
psychologist?"
When Nikitin had to argue against anything that seemed to him narrow,
conventional, or something of that kind, he usually leaped up from his
seat, clutched at his head with both hands, and began with a moan,
running from one end of the room to another. And it was the same now: he
jumped up, clutched his head in his hands, and with a moan walked round
the table, then he sat down a little way off.
The officers took his part. Captain Polyansky began assuring Varya that
Pushkin really was a psychologist, and to prove it quoted two lines from
Lermontov; Lieutenant Gernet said that if Pushkin had not been a
psychologist they would not have erected a monument to him in Moscow.
"That's loutishness!" was heard from the other end of the table. "I said
as much to the governor: 'It's loutishness, your Excellency,' I said."
"I won't argue any more," cried Nikitin. "It's unending. . . . Enough!
Ach, get away, you nasty dog!" he cried to Som, who laid his head and
paw on his knee.
"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga!" came from under the table.
"Admit that you are wrong!" cried Varya. "Own up!"
But some young ladies came in, and the argument dropped of itself. They
all went into the drawing-room. Varya sat down at the piano and began
playing dances. They danced first a waltz, then a polka, then a
quadrille with a grand chain which Captain Polyansky led through all the
rooms, then a waltz again.
During the dancing the old men sat in the drawing-room, smoking and
looking at the young people. Among them was Shebaldin, the director of
the municipal bank, who was famed for his love of literature and
dramatic art. He had founded the local Musical and Dramatic Society, and
took part in the performances himself, confining himself, for some
reason, to playing comic footmen or to reading in a sing-song voice "The
Woman who was a Sinner." His nickname in the town was "the Mummy," as he
was tall, very lean and scraggy, and always had a solemn air and a
fixed, lustreless eye. He was so devoted to the dramatic art that he
even shaved his moustache and beard, and this made him still more like a
mummy.
After the grand chain, he shuffled up to Nikitin sideways, coughed, and
said:
"I had the pleasure of being present during the argument at tea. I fully
share your opinion. We are of one mind, and it would be a great pleasure
to me to talk to you. Have you read Lessing on the dramatic art of
Hamburg?"
"No, I haven't."
Shebaldin was horrified, and waved his hands as though he had burnt his
fingers, and saying nothing more, staggered back from Nikitin.
Shebaldin's appearance, his question, and his surprise, struck Nikitin
as funny, but he thought none the less:
"It really is awkward. I am a teacher of literature, and to this day
I've not read Lessing. I must read him."
Before supper the whole company, old and young, sat down to play "fate."
They took two packs of cards: one pack was dealt round to the company,
the other was laid on the table face downwards.
"The one who has this card in his hand," old Shelestov began solemnly,
lifting the top card of the second pack, "is fated to go into the
nursery and kiss nurse."
The pleasure of kissing the nurse fell to the lot of Shebaldin. They all
crowded round him, took him to the nursery, and laughing and clapping
their hands, made him kiss the nurse. There was a great uproar and
shouting.
"Not so ardently!" cried Shelestov with tears of laughter. "Not so
ardently!"
It was Nikitin's "fate" to hear the confessions of all. He sat on a
chair in the middle of the drawing-room. A shawl was brought and put
over his head. The first who came to confess to him was Varya.
"I know your sins," Nikitin began, looking in the darkness at her stern
profile. "Tell me, madam, how do you explain your walking with Polyansky
every day? Oh, it's not for nothing she walks with an hussar!"
"That's poor," said Varya, and walked away.
Then under the shawl he saw the shine of big motionless eyes, caught the
lines of a dear profile in the dark, together with a familiar, precious
fragrance which reminded Nikitin of Masha's room.
"Marie Godefroi," he said, and did not know his own voice, it was so
soft and tender, "what are your sins?"
Masha screwed up her eyes and put out the tip of her tongue at him, then
she laughed and went away. And a minute later she was standing in the