THE SHOOTING PARTY. Антон Чехов

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that he could not lie. Whether I should have lost my bet or not, the reader will see further on.

      His chestnut hair and beard were thick and soft as silk. It is often said that soft hair is the sign of a sweet, sensitive, ‘silken’ soul. Criminals and wicked obstinate characters have, in most cases, coarse hair. If this be true or not the reader will also see further on. Neither the expression of his face, nor the softness of his beard was as soft and delicate in this gentleman with the cockade as the movements of his bulky form. These movements seemed to denote education, lightness, grace, and if you will forgive the expression, something womanly. It would cause my hero but a slight effort to bend a horseshoe or to flatten out a sardine tin with his fist, yet at the same time not one of his movements showed his physical strength. He took hold of the door handle or of his hat, as if they were butterflies — delicately, carefully, hardly touching them with his fingers. He walked noiselessly, he pressed my hand lightly. When looking at him you forgot that he was as strong as Goliath, and that he could lift with one hand weights that five men like our office servant Andrey could not have moved. Looking at his light movements, it was impossible to believe that he was strong and heavy. Spencer might have called him a model of grace.

      When he entered my office he became confused. His delicate, sensitive nature was probably shocked by my frowning, dissatisfied face.

      ‘For God’s sake forgive me!’ he began in a soft, mellow baritone voice. ‘I have broken in upon you not at the appointed time, and I have forced you to make an exception for me. You are very busy! But, Mr Editor, you see, this is how the case stands. Tomorrow I must start for Odessa on very important business… If I had been able to put off this journey till Saturday, I can assure you I would not have asked you to make this exception for me. I submit to rules because I love order…’

      ‘How much he talks!’ I thought as I stretched out my hand towards the pen, showing by this movement I was pressed for time. (I was heartily sick of visitors just then.)

      ‘I will only take up a moment of your time,’ my hero continued in an apologetic tone. ‘But first allow me to introduce myself… Ivan Petrovich Kamyshev, Bachelor of Law and former examining magistrate. I have not the honour of belonging to the fellowship of authors, nevertheless I appear before you from motives that are purely those of a writer. Notwithstanding his forty years, you have before you a man who wishes to be a beginner… Better late than never!’

      ‘Very pleased… What can I do for you?’

      The man wishing to be a beginner sat down and continued, looking at the floor with his imploring eyes:

      ‘I have brought you a novel which I would like to see published in your journal. Mr Editor, I will tell you quite candidly I have not written this story to attain an author’s celebrity, nor for the sake of sweet-sounding words. I am too old to enjoy such things. I venture on the writer’s path from purely commercial motives… I want to earn something… At the present moment I have absolutely no occupation. I was a magistrate in the S — district for more than five years, but I did not make a fortune, nor did I keep my innocence either…’

      Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes and laughed gently.

      ‘Service is tiresome… I served and served till I was quite fed up, and chucked it. I have no occupation now, sometimes I have nothing to eat… If, despite its unworthiness, you will publish my story, you will do me more than a great favour… You will help me… A journal is not an almshouse, nor an old-age asylum… I know that, but… if you’d be so kind…’

      ‘He is lying,’ I thought.

      The ornaments on his watch-chain and the diamond ring on his little finger belied his having written simply for money. Besides, a slight cloud passed over Kamyshev’s face such as only an experienced eye can trace on the faces of people who seldom lie.

      ‘What is the subject of your story?’ I asked.

      ‘The subject? What can I tell you? The subject is not new… Love and murder… But read it, you will see… “From the Notes of an Examining Magistrate”..

      I probably frowned, for Kamyshev looked confused, his eyes began to blink, he started and continued speaking rapidly:

      ‘My story is written in the conventional style of former examining magistrates, but… you will find in it facts, the truth… All that is written, from beginning to end, happened before my eyes… Indeed, I was not only a witness but one of the actors.’

      ‘The truth does not matter… It is not absolutely necessary to see a thing to describe it. That is unimportant. The fact is our poor readers have long been fed up with Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky. They are tired of all those mysterious murders, those artful devices of the detectives, and the extraordinary resourcefulness of the examining magistrate. The reading public, of course, varies, but I am talking of the public that reads our newspaper. What is the title of your story?’

      ‘The Shooting Party.’

      ‘Hm! That’s rather sensational, you know… And, to be quite frank with you, I have such an amount of copy on hand that it is quite impossible to accept new things, even if they are of undoubted merit.’

      ‘Pray look at my work… You say it is sensational, but… it is difficult to tell what something is like until you have seen it… Besides, it seems to me you refuse to admit that an examining magistrate can write serious works.’

      All this Kamyshev said stammeringly, twisting a pencil about between his fingers and looking at his feet. He finished by blinking his eyes and becoming exceedingly confused. I was sorry for him.

      ‘All right, leave it,’ I said. ‘But I can’t promise that your story will be read very soon. You will have to wait…’

      ‘How long?’

      ‘I don’t know. Look in… in about two to three months…’

      ‘That’s a pretty long time… But I dare not insist… Let it be as you say…’

      Kamyshev rose and took up his cap.

      ‘Thank you for the audience,’ he said. ‘I will now go home and dwell in hope. Three months of hope! However, I am boring you. I have the honour to bid you goodbye!’

      ‘One word more, please,’ I said as I turned over the pages of his thick copybook, which were written in a very small handwriting.

      ‘You write here in the first person You therefore mean the examining magistrate to be yourself?’

      ‘Yes, but under another name. The part I play in this story is somewhat scandalous… It would have been awkward to give my own name… In three months, then?’

      ‘Yes, not earlier, please… Goodbye!’

      The former examining magistrate bowed gallantly, turned the door handle gingerly, and disappeared, leaving his work on my writing table. I took up the copybook and put it away in the table drawer.

      Handsome Kamyshev’s story reposed in my table drawer for two months. One day, when leaving my office to go to the country, I remembered it and took it with me.

      When I was seated in the railway coach I opened the copybook and began to read from the middle. The middle interested me. That same evening, notwithstanding my want of leisure, I read the whole story from the beginning to the words ‘The End’, which were written with a great СКАЧАТЬ