The Chekhov Collection: Novellas, Short Stories, Plays, Letters & Diary. Anton Chekhov

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      Sleep closed my eyes and I heard no more. I was awakened by a bang, and saw my uncle standing In front of Tatiana, looking at her with emotion. His cheeks were burning,

      "My life is over and I have not lived," he was saying. "Your young face reminds me of my lost youth, and I should be happy to sit here looking at you until I died. I should like to take you with me to St. Petersburg."

      "Why?" demanded Theodore in a hoarse voice.

      "I should like to put you under a glass case on my desk; I should delight in contemplating you, and showing you to my friends. Do you know, Pelagia, that we don't have people like you where I live ? We have wealth and fame and sometimes beauty, but we have none of this natural life and this wholesome peacefulness—"

      My uncle sat down in front of Tatiana and took her hand.

      "So you won't come with me to St. Petersburg?" he laughed. "Then at least let me take this hand away with me, this lovely little hand ! You won't ? Very well then, little miser, at least allow me to kiss it ! "

      I heard a chair crack. Theodore sprang to his feet and strode toward his wife with a heavy, measured tread. His face was ashy grey and quivering. He raised his arm and brought his fist down on the table with all his might, saying in a muffled voice:

      "I won't allow it!"

      At the same moment Pobedimski jumped out of his chair, and with a face as pale and angry as the other's, he also advanced toward Tatiana and banged the table with his fist.

      "I—I won't allow it !" he cried.

      "What? What's the matter," asked my uncle in astonishment.

      "I won't allow it !" Theodore repeated, with another blow on the table.

      My uncle jumped up and abjectly blinked his eyes. He wanted to say something, but surprise and fright held him tongue-tied. He gave an embarrassed smile and pattered out of the room with short, senile steps, leaving his hat behind him. When my startled mother came into the room a few moments later, Theodore and Pobedimski were still banging the table with their fists like blacksmiths hammering an anvil, and shouting:

      "I won't allow it!"

      "What has happened here?" demanded my mother. "Why has my brother fainted? What is the matter?"

      When she saw the frightened Tatiana and her angry husband, my mother must have guessed what had been going on, for she sighed and shook her head.

      "Come, come, stop thumping the table!" she commanded. " Stop, Theodore ! And what are you hammering for, Gregory Pobedimski? What business is this of yours?"

      Pobedimski recollected himself and blushed. Theodore glared intently first at him and then at his wife, and began striding up and down the room. After my mother had gone, I saw something that for a long time after I took to be a dream. I saw Theodore seize my tutor, raise him in the air, and fling him out of the door.

      When I awoke next morning my tutor's bed was empty. To my inquiries, my nurse replied in a whisper that he had been taken to the hospital early that morning, to be treated for a broken arm. Saddened by this news, and recalling yesterday's scandal, I went out into the courtyard. The day was overcast. The sky was covered with storm-clouds, and a strong wind was blowing across the earth, whirling before it dust, feathers, and scraps of paper. One could feel the approaching rain, and bad humour was obvious in both men and beasts. When I went back to the house I was told to walk lightly, and not to make a noise because my mother was ill in bed with a headache. What could I do ? I went out of the front gate, and, sitting down on a bench, tried to make out the meaning of what I had seen the night before. The road from our gate wound past a blacksmith's shop and around a damp meadow, turning at last into the main highway. I sat and looked at the telegraph poles around which the dust was whirling, and at the sleepy birds sitting on the wires until, suddenly, such ennui overwhelmed me that I burst into tears.

      A dusty char-a-banc came along the highway filled with townspeople who were probably on a pilgrimage to some shrine. The char-a-banc was scarcely out of sight before a light victoria drawn by a pair of horses appeared. Standing up in the carriage and holding on to the coachman's belt was the rural policeman. To my intense surprise the victoria turned into our road and rolled past me through the gate. While I was still seeking an answer to the riddle of the policeman's appearance at our farm, a troika trotted up harnessed to a landau, and in the landau sat the captain of police pointing out our gate to his coachman.

      "What does this mean?" I asked myself. "Pobedimski must have complained to them about Theodore, and they have come to fetch him away to prison."

      But the problem was not so easily solved. The policeman and the police captain were evidently but the forerunners of some one more important still, for five minutes had scarcely elapsed before a coach drove into our gate. It flashed by me so quickly that, as I glanced in at the window, I could only catch a glimpse of a red beard.

      Lost in conjectures and foreseeing some disaster, I ran into the house. The first person I met in the hall was my mother. Her face was pale, and she was staring with horror at a door from behind which came the sound of men's voices. Some guests had arrived unexpectedly and at the very height of her headache.

      "Who is here, mamma?" I asked.

      "Sister!" we heard my uncle call. "Do give the governor and the rest of us a bite to eat ! "

      "That's easier said than done!" whispered my mother, collapsing with horror. "What can I give them at such short notice ? I shall be disgraced in my declining years ! "

      My mother clasped her head with her hands and hurried into the kitchen. The unexpected arrival of the governor had turned the whole farm upside down. A cruel holocaust immediately began to take place. Ten hens were killed and five turkeys and eight ducks, and in the hurly-burly the old gander was beheaded, the ancestor of all our flock and the favourite of my mother. The coachman and the cook seemed to have gone mad, and frantically slaughtered every bird they could lay hands upon without regard to its age or breed. A pair of my precious turtle doves, as dear to me as the gander was to my mother, were sacrified to make a gravy. It was long before I forgave the governor their death.

      That evening, when the governor and his suite had dined until they could eat no more, and had climbed into their carriages and driven away, I went into the house to look at the remains of the feast. Glancing into the drawing-room from the hall, I saw my mother there with my uncle. My uncle was shrugging his shoulders, and nervously pacing round and round the room with his hands behind his back. My mother looked exhausted and very much thinner. She was sitting on the sofa following my uncle's movements with eyes of suffering.

      "I beg your pardon, sister, but one cannot behave like that ! I introduced the governor to you, and you did not even shake hands with him ! You quite embarrassed the poor man. Yes, it was most unseemly. Simplicity is all very pretty, but even simplicity must not be carried too far, upon my word and honour— And then that dinner ! How could you serve a dinner like that? What was that dish-rag you gave us for the fourth course?"

      "That was duck with apple sauce," answered my mother faintly.

      "Duck! Forgive me, sister, but—but—I have an attack of indigestion ! I'm ill !"

      My uncle pulled a sour, tearful face and continued.

      "The devil the governor had to come here to see me ! Much I wanted a visit from him ! Ouch—oh, my indigestion ! I—I can't work and I can't sleep. I'm completely run down. I don't see СКАЧАТЬ