The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ doctor looked at me angrily, sighed, and turned away. I made a general bow and went towards the booths. As I was making my way through the dense crowd, I turned to look back at the Justice’s daughter. She was looking after me and appeared to be seeing whether I could bear her pure, searching gaze, so full of bitter injury and reproach.

      Her eyes said: ‘Why?’

      Something stirred in my breast, and I felt remorse and shame for my silly conduct. I suddenly felt a wish to return and caress and fondle with all the strength of my soft, and not yet quite corrupt, soul this girl who loved me passionately, and who had been so grievously wronged by me; and tell her that it was not I who was at fault, but my accursed pride that prevented me from living, breathing or advancing a step. Silly, conceited, foppish pride, full of vanity. Could I, a frivolous man, stretch out the hand of reconciliation, when I knew and saw that every one of my movements was watched by the eyes of the district gossips and the ‘ill-omened old women’? Sooner let them laugh her to scorn and cover her with derisive glances and smiles, than undeceive them of the ‘inflexibility’ of my character and the pride, which silly women admired so much in me.

      Just before, when I had spoken with Pavel Ivanovich about the reasons that had caused me suddenly to cease my visits to the Kalinins, I had not been candid or accurate… I had held back the real reason; I had concealed it because I was ashamed of its triviality… The cause was as tiny as a grain of dust… It was this. On the occasion of my last visit, after I had given up Zorka to the coachman and was entering the Kalinins’ house, the following phrase reached my ears:

      ‘Nadenka, where are you?… Your betrothed has come!’

      These words were spoken by her father, the Justice of the Peace, who probably did not think that I might hear him. But I heard him, and my self-love was aroused.

      I her betrothed?’ I thought. ‘Who allowed you to call me her betrothed? On what basis?’

      And something snapped in my breast. Pride rebelled within me, and I forgot all I had remembered when riding to Kalinin’s… I forgot that I had lured the young girl, and was myself attracted by her to such a degree that I was unable to pass a single evening without her company… I forgot her lovely eyes that never left my memory either by night or day, her kind smile, her melodious voice… I forgot the quiet summer evenings that will never return either for her or me… Everything had crumbled away under the pressure of the devilish pride that had been aroused by the silly phrase of her simple-minded father… I left the house in a rage, mounted Zorka, and galloped off, vowing to snub Kalinin, who without my permission had dared to consider me as his daughter’s betrothed.

      ‘Besides, Voznesensky is in love with her,’ I thought, trying to justify my sudden departure, as I rode home. ‘He began to pay court to her before I did, and they were considered to be engaged when I made her acquaintance. I won’t interfere with him!’

      From that day I never put a foot in Kalinin’s house, though there were moments when I suffered from longing to see Nadia, and my soul yearned for the renewal of the past… But the whole district knew of the rupture, knew that I had ‘bolted’ from marriage… How could my pride make concessions?

      Who can tell? If Kalinin had not said those words, and if I had not been so stupidly proud and touchy, perhaps I would not have had to look back, nor she to gaze at me with such eyes… But even those eyes were better, even the feeling of being wronged and of reproach was better, than what I saw in those eyes a few months after our meeting in the Tenevo church! The grief that shone in the depths of those black eyes now was only the beginning of the terrible misfortune that, like the sudden onrush of a train, swept that girl from the earth. They were like little flowers compared to those berries that were then already ripening in order to pour terrible poison into her frail body and anguished heart.

      CHAPTER XI

       Table of Contents

      When I left Tenevo I took the same road by which I had come.

      The sun showed it was already midday. As in the morning, peasants’ carts and landowners’ britzkas beguiled my ears with their squeaking and the metallic rumble of their bells. Again, the gardener, Franz, drove past me with his vodka barrel, but this time it was probably full. Again his eyes gave me a sour look, and he touched his cap. His nasty face jarred on me, but this time again the disagreeable impression that the meeting with him had made on me was entirely wiped away by the forester’s daughter, Olenka, whose heavy wagonette caught me up.

      ‘Give me a lift!’ I called to her.

      She nodded gaily to me and stopped her vehicle. I sat down beside her, and the wagonette rattled on along the road, which cut like a light stripe through the three versts of the Tenevo forest. For about two minutes we looked at each other in silence.

      ‘What a pretty girl she really is!’ I thought as I looked at her throat and chubby chin. ‘If I were told to choose between Nadenka and her, I would choose her… She’s more natural, fresher, her nature is more generous, bolder… If she fell into good hands, much could be made of her! The other is morose, visionary… clever.’

      Lying at Olenka’s feet there were two pieces of linen and several parcels.

      ‘What a number of purchases you have made!’ I said. ‘What will you do with so much linen?’

      ‘That’s not all I need!’ Olenka replied. ‘I’ve bought other things too. Today I was a whole hour buying things in the market; tomorrow I must go to make purchases in the town… And then all this has to be made up… I say, don’t you know any woman who would go out to sew?’

      ‘No, I think not… But why have you to buy so many things? Why have they to be sewn? God knows your family is not large… One, two… there I’ve counted you all…’

      ‘How queer all you men are! You don’t understand anything! Wait till you get married, you yourself will be angry then if after the wedding your wife comes to you all slovenly. I know Pëtr Egorych is not in want of anything. Still, it seems a bit awkward not to appear as a good housewife from the first…’

      ‘What has Pëtr Egorych to do with it?’

      ‘Hm! You are laughing at me, as if you don’t know!’ Olenka said and blushed slightly.

      ‘Young lady, you are talking in riddles.’

      ‘Have you really not heard? Why, I am going to marry Pëtr Egorych!’

      ‘Marry?’ I said in astonishment, my eyes growing large. ‘What Pëtr Egorych?’

      ‘Oh, good Lord! Urbenin, of course!’

      I stared at her blushing and smiling face.

      ‘You? Going to marry… Urbenin? What a joke!’

      ‘It’s not a joke at all…I really can’t understand where you see the joke…’

      ‘You to marry… Urbenin…’ I repeated, turning pale, I really don’t know why. if this is not a joke, what is it?’

      ‘What joke! I can’t understand what is so extraordinary — what is so strange in it?’ Olenka said, pouting.

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