Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ being an actor or for any other art, he will never make an official or a landowner. You are a woman, and you do not understand, but one must understand that."

      "I understand, Yegor Vlassitch."

      "You don't understand if you are going to cry...."

      "I... I'm not crying," said Pelagea, turning away. "It's a sin, Yegor Vlassitch! You might stay a day with luckless me, anyway. It's twelve years since I was married to you, and... and... there has never once been love between us!... I... I am not crying."

      "Love..." muttered Yegor, scratching his hand. "There can't be any love. It's only in name we are husband and wife; we aren't really. In your eyes I am a wild man, and in mine you are a simple peasant woman with no understanding. Are we well matched? I am a free, pampered, profligate man, while you are a working woman, going in bark shoes and never straightening your back. The way I think of myself is that I am the foremost man in every kind of sport, and you look at me with pity.... Is that being well matched?"

      "But we are married, you know, Yegor Vlassitch," sobbed Pelagea.

      "Not married of our free will.... Have you forgotten? You have to thank Count Sergey Paylovitch and yourself. Out of envy, because I shot better than he did, the Count kept giving me wine for a whole month, and when a man's drunk you could make him change his religion, let alone getting married. To pay me out he married me to you when I was drunk.... A huntsman to a herd-girl! You saw I was drunk, why did you marry me? You were not a serf, you know; you could have resisted. Of course it was a bit of luck for a herd-girl to marry a huntsman, but you ought to have thought about it. Well, now be miserable, cry. It's a joke for the Count, but a crying matter for you.... Beat yourself against the wall."

      A silence followed. Three wild ducks flew over the clearing. Yegor followed them with his eyes till, transformed into three scarcely visible dots, they sank down far beyond the forest.

      "How do you live?" he asked, moving his eyes from the ducks to Pelagea.

      "Now I am going out to work, and in the winter I take a child from the Foundling Hospital and bring it up on the bottle. They give me a rouble and a half a month."

      "Oh...."

      Again a silence. From the strip that had been reaped floated a soft song which broke off at the very beginning. It was too hot to sing.

      "They say you have put up a new hut for Akulina," said Pelagea.

      Yegor did not speak.

      "So she is dear to you...."

      "It's your luck, it's fate!" said the huntsman, stretching. "You must put up with it, poor thing. But good-bye, I've been chattering long enough.... I must be at Boltovo by the evening."

      Yegor rose, stretched himself, and slung his gun over his shoulder; Pelagea got up.

      "And when are you coming to the village?" she asked softly.

      "I have no reason to, I shall never come sober, and you have little to gain from me drunk; I am spiteful when I am drunk. Good-bye!"

      "Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch."

      Yegor put his cap on the back of his head and, clicking to his dog, went on his way. Pelagea stood still looking after him.... She saw his moving shoulder-blades, his jaunty cap, his lazy, careless step, and her eyes were full of sadness and tender affection.... Her gaze flitted over her husband's tall, lean figure and caressed and fondled it.... He, as though he felt that gaze, stopped and looked round.... He did not speak, but from his face, from his shrugged shoulders, Pelagea could see that he wanted to say something to her. She went up to him timidly and looked at him with imploring eyes.

      "Take it," he said, turning round.

      He gave her a crumpled rouble note and walked quickly away.

      "Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch," she said, mechanically taking the rouble.

      He walked by a long road, straight as a taut strap. She, pale and motionless as a statue, stood, her eyes seizing every step he took. But the red of his shirt melted into the dark colour of his trousers, his step could not be seen, and the dog could not be distinguished from the boots. Nothing could be seen but the cap, and... suddenly Yegor turned off sharply into the clearing and the cap vanished in the greenness.

      "Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch," whispered Pelagea, and she stood on tiptoe to see the white cap once more.

      A MALEFACTOR

      An exceedingly lean little peasant, in a striped hempen shirt and patched drawers, stands facing the investigating magistrate. His face overgrown with hair and pitted with smallpox, and his eyes scarcely visible under thick, overhanging eyebrows have an expression of sullen moroseness. On his head there is a perfect mop of tangled, unkempt hair, which gives him an even more spider-like air of moroseness. He is barefooted.

      "Denis Grigoryev!" the magistrate begins. "Come nearer, and answer my questions. On the seventh of this July the railway watchman, Ivan Semyonovitch Akinfov, going along the line in the morning, found you at the hundred-and-forty-first mile engaged in unscrewing a nut by which the rails are made fast to the sleepers. Here it is, the nut!... With the aforesaid nut he detained you. Was that so?"

      "Wha-at?"

      "Was this all as Akinfov states?"

      "To be sure, it was."

      "Very good; well, what were you unscrewing the nut for?"

      "Wha-at?"

      "Drop that 'wha-at' and answer the question; what were you unscrewing the nut for?"

      "If I hadn't wanted it I shouldn't have unscrewed it," croaks Denis, looking at the ceiling.

      "What did you want that nut for?"

      "The nut? We make weights out of those nuts for our lines."

      "Who is 'we'?"

      "We, people.... The Klimovo peasants, that is."

      "Listen, my man; don't play the idiot to me, but speak sensibly. It's no use telling lies here about weights!"

      "I've never been a liar from a child, and now I'm telling lies..." mutters Denis, blinking. "But can you do without a weight, your honour? If you put live bait or maggots on a hook, would it go to the bottom without a weight?... I am telling lies," grins Denis.... "What the devil is the use of the worm if it swims on the surface! The perch and the pike and the eel-pout always go to the bottom, and a bait on the surface is only taken by a shillisper, not very often then, and there are no shillispers in our river.... That fish likes plenty of room."

      "Why are you telling me about shillispers?"

      "Wha-at? Why, you asked me yourself! The gentry catch fish that way too in our parts. The silliest little boy would not try to catch a fish without a weight. Of course anyone who did not understand might go to fish without a weight. There is no rule for a fool."

      "So you say you unscrewed this nut to make a weight for your fishing line out of it?"

      "What else for? It wasn't to play knuckle-bones with!"

      "But СКАЧАТЬ