THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ANTON CHEKHOV. Anton Chekhov
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Название: THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ANTON CHEKHOV
Автор: Anton Chekhov
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027201389
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‘My connection with Olga has nothing to do with the matter. Whether or not he’s her husband is all one, but since he has robbed me, I must be plain, and call him a thief. But let us leave this roguery alone. Tell me, is it honest or dishonest to receive a salary and for whole days to lie about dead drunk? He is drunk every day. There wasn’t a single day that I did not see him reeling about! Low and disgusting! Decent people don’t act in that way.’
‘It’s just because he’s decent that he gets drunk,’ I said.
‘You have a kind of passion for taking the part of such gentlemen. But I have decided to be unmerciful. I paid him off today and told him to clear out and make room for another. My patience is exhausted!’
I considered it unnecessary to try to convince the Count that he was unjust, impractical and stupid. It was not for me to defend Urbenin against the Count.
Five days later I heard that Urbenin with his schoolboy son and his little daughter had gone to live in the town. I was told that he drove to town drunk, half-dead, and that he had twice fallen out of the cart. The schoolboy and Sasha had cried all the way.
CHAPTER XX
Shortly after Urbenin had left, I was obliged to go to the Count’s estate, quite against my will. One of the Count’s stables had been broken into at night and several valuable saddles had been carried off by the thieves. The examining magistrate, that is I, had been informed and nolens-volens, I was obliged to go there.
I found the Count drunk and angry. He was wandering about the rooms seeking a refuge from his melancholy but could not find one.
I am worried by that Olga!’ he said waving his hand. ‘She got angry with me this morning and she left the house threatening to drown herself! And, as you see, there are no signs of her yet. I know she won’t drown herself. Still, it is very unpleasant of her. Yesterday, all day long, she was rubbing her eyes and breaking crockery; the day before she over-ate herself with chocolate. The devil only knows what such natures are!’
I comforted the Count as well as I could and sat down to dinner with him.
‘No, it’s time to give up such childishness,’ he kept mumbling during dinner, it’s high time, for it is all stupid and ridiculous. Besides, I must also confess she is beginning to bore me with her sudden changes and tantrums. I want something quiet, orderly, modest, you know — something like Nadenka Kalinin… a splendid girl!’
After dinner when I was walking in the garden I met the ‘drowned girl’. When she saw me she became very red and (strange woman) she began to laugh with joy. The shame on her face was mingled with pleasure, sorrow with happiness. For a moment she looked at me askance, then she rushed towards me and hung on my neck without saying a word.
‘I love you!’ she whispered, clinging to my neck. ‘I have been so sad without you. I should have died if you had not come.’
I embraced her and silently led her to one of the summer-houses.
Ten minutes later when parting from her, I took out of my pocket a twenty-five-rouble note and handed it to her. She opened her eyes wide.
‘What is that for?’
‘I am paying you for today’s love.’
Olga did not understand and continued to look at me with astonishment.
‘You see, there are women who make love for money,’ I explained. ‘They are venal. They must be paid for with money. Take it! If you take money from others, why don’t you want to take anything from me? I wish for no favours!’
Olga did not understand my cynicism in insulting her in this way. She did not know life as yet, and she did not understand the meaning of ‘venal women’.
CHAPTER XXI
It was a fine August day.
The sun warmed as in summer, and the blue sky fondly enticed you to wander far afield, but the air already bore presages of autumn. In the green foliage of the pensive forest the worn-out leaves were already assuming golden tints and the darkening fields looked melancholy and sad.
A dull presentiment of inevitable autumn weighed heavily on us all. It was not difficult to foresee the nearness of a catastrophe. The roll of thunder and the rain must soon come to refresh the sultry atmosphere. It is sultry before a thunderstorm when dark leaden clouds approach in the sky, and moral sultriness was oppressing us all. It was apparent in everything - in our movements, in our smiles, in our speech.
I was driving in a light wagonette. The daughter of the Justice of the Peace, Nadenka, was sitting beside me. She was white as snow, her chin and lips trembled as they do before tears, her deep eyes were full of sorrow, while all the time she laughed and tried to appear very gay.
In front and behind us a number of vehicles of all sorts, of all ages and all sizes were moving in the same direction. Ladies and men on horseback were riding on either side. Count Karnéev, clad in a green shooting costume that looked more like a buffoon’s than a sportsman’s, bending slightly forward and to one side, galloped about relentlessly on his black horse. Looking at his bent body and at the expression of pain that constantly appeared on his lean face, one could have thought that he was riding for the first time. A new double-barrelled gun was slung across his back, and at his side he had a game-bag in which a wounded woodcock tossed about.
Olga Urbenin was the ornament of the cavalcade. Seated on a black horse, which the Count had given her, dressed in a black riding-habit, with a white feather in her hat, she no longer resembled that ‘girl in red’ who had met us in the wood only a few months before. Now there was something majestic, something of the grande dame in her figure. Each flourish of her whip, each smile was calculated to look aristocratic and majestic. In her movements, in her smiles there was something provocative, something incendiary. She held her head high in a foppishly arrogant manner, and from the height of her mount poured contempt on the whole company, as if in disdain of the loud remarks that were sent after her by our virtuous ladies. Coquetting with her impudence and her position ‘at the Count’s’, she seemed to defy everybody, just as if she did not know that the Count was already tired of her, and was only awaiting the moment when he could disentangle himself from her.
‘The Count wants to send me away!’ she said to me with a loud laugh when the cavalcade rode out of the yard. It was clear she knew her position and understood it.
But why that loud laugh? I looked at her and was perplexed. Where could this dweller in the forests have found so much arrogance? When had she found time to sit her horse with so much grace, to move her nostrils proudly, and to show off with such commanding gestures?
‘A depraved woman is like a swine,’ Doctor Pavel Ivanovich said to me. if you set her down to table she puts her legs СКАЧАТЬ