The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ to be done?” sighed Grontovsky. “If you had come not ten but a hundred thousand miles, if the king even had come from America or from some other distant land, even then I should think it my duty… sacred, so to say, obligation …”

      “Does the forest belong to Nadyezhda Lvovna?” asked the prince.

      “Yes, Nadyezhda Lvovna …”

      “Is she at home now?”

      “Yes… I tell you what, you go to her, it is not more than half a mile from here; if she gives you a note, then I…. I needn’t say! Ha — ha… he — he — !”

      “By all means,” I agreed. “It’s much nearer than to go back…. You go to her, Sergey Ivanitch,” I said, addressing the prince. “You know her.”

      The prince, who had been gazing the whole time at the crushed agaric, raised his eyes to me, thought a minute, and said:

      “I used to know her at one time, but… it’s rather awkward for me to go to her. Besides, I am in shabby clothes…. You go, you don’t know her…. It’s more suitable for you to go.”

      I agreed. We got into our chaise and, followed by Grontovsky’s smiles, drove along the edge of the forest to the manor house. I was not acquainted with Nadyezhda Lvovna Kandurin, née Shabelsky. I had never seen her at close quarters, and knew her only by hearsay. I knew that she was incredibly wealthy, richer than anyone else in the province. After the death of her father, Shabelsky, who was a landowner with no other children, she was left with several estates, a stud farm, and a lot of money. I had heard that, though she was only twenty-five or twenty-six, she was ugly, uninteresting, and as insignificant as anybody, and was only distinguished from the ordinary ladies of the district by her immense wealth.

      It has always seemed to me that wealth is felt, and that the rich must have special feelings unknown to the poor. Often as I passed by Nadyezhda Lvovna’s big fruit garden, in which stood the large, heavy house with its windows always curtained, I thought: “What is she thinking at this moment? Is there happiness behind those blinds?” and so on. Once I saw her from a distance in a fine light cabriolet, driving a handsome white horse, and, sinful man that I am, I not only envied her, but even thought that in her poses, in her movements, there was something special, not to be found in people who are not rich, just as persons of a servile nature succeed in discovering “good family” at the first glance in people of the most ordinary exterior, if they are a little more distinguished than themselves. Nadyezhda Lvovna’s inner life was only known to me by scandal. It was said in the district that five or six years ago, before she was married, during her father’s lifetime, she had been passionately in love with Prince Sergey Ivanitch, who was now beside me in the chaise. The prince had been fond of visiting her father, and used to spend whole days in his billiard room, where he played pyramids indefatigably till his arms and legs ached. Six months before the old man’s death he had suddenly given up visiting the Shabelskys. The gossip of the district having no positive facts to go upon explained this abrupt change in their relations in various ways. Some said that the prince, having observed the plain daughter’s feeling for him and being unable to reciprocate it, considered it the duty of a gentleman to cut short his visits. Others maintained that old Shabelsky had discovered why his daughter was pining away, and had proposed to the poverty-stricken prince that he should marry her; the prince, imagining in his narrow-minded way that they were trying to buy him together with his title, was indignant, said foolish things, and quarrelled with them. What was true and what was false in this nonsense was difficult to say. But that there was a portion of truth in it was evident, from the fact that the prince always avoided conversation about Nadyezhda Lvovna.

      I knew that soon after her father’s death Nadyezhda Lvovna had married one Kandurin, a bachelor of law, not wealthy, but adroit, who had come on a visit to the neighbourhood. She married him not from love, but because she was touched by the love of the legal gentleman who, so it was said, had cleverly played the love-sick swain. At the time I am describing, Kandurin was for some reason living in Cairo, and writing thence to his friend, the marshal of the district, “Notes of Travel,” while she sat languishing behind lowered blinds, surrounded by idle parasites, and whiled away her dreary days in petty philanthropy.

      On the way to the house the prince fell to talking.

      “It’s three days since I have been at home,” he said in a half whisper, with a sidelong glance at the driver. “I am not a child, nor a silly woman, and I have no prejudices, but I can’t stand the bailiffs. When I see a bailiff in my house I turn pale and tremble, and even have a twitching in the calves of my legs. Do you know Rogozhin refused to honour my note?”

      The prince did not, as a rule, like to complain of his straitened circumstances; where poverty was concerned he was reserved and exceedingly proud and sensitive, and so this announcement surprised me. He stared a long time at the yellow clearing, warmed by the sun, watched a long string of cranes float in the azure sky, and turned facing me.

      “And by the sixth of September I must have the money ready for the bank… the interest for my estate,” he said aloud, by now regardless of the coachman. “And where am I to get it? Altogether, old man, I am in a tight fix! An awfully tight fix!”

      The prince examined the cock of his gun, blew on it for some reason, and began looking for the cranes which by now were out of sight.

      “Sergey Ivanitch,” I asked, after a minute’s silence, “imagine if they sell your Shatilovka, what will you do?”

      “I? I don’t know! Shatilovka can’t be saved, that’s clear as daylight, but I cannot imagine such a calamity. I can’t imagine myself without my daily bread secure. What can I do? I have had hardly any education; I have not tried working yet; for government service it is late to begin,… Besides, where could I serve? Where could I be of use? Admitting that no great cleverness is needed for serving in our Zemstvo, for example, yet I suffer from… the devil knows what, a sort of faintheartedness, I haven’t a ha’p’orth of pluck. If I went into the Service I should always feel I was not in my right place. I am not an idealist; I am not a Utopian; I haven’t any special principles; but am simply, I suppose, stupid and thoroughly incompetent, a neurotic and a coward. Altogether not like other people. All other people are like other people, only I seem to be something… a poor thing…. I met Naryagin last Wednesday — you know him? — drunken, slovenly… doesn’t pay his debts, stupid” (the prince frowned and tossed his head)… “a horrible person! He said to me, staggering: ‘I’m being balloted for as a justice of the peace!’ Of course, they won’t elect him, but, you see, he believes he is fit to be a justice of the peace and considers that position within his capacity. He has boldness and self-confidence. I went to see our investigating magistrate too. The man gets two hundred and fifty roubles a month, and does scarcely anything. All he can do is to stride backwards and forwards for days together in nothing but his underclothes, but, ask him, he is convinced he is doing his work and honourably performing his duty. I couldn’t go on like that! I should be ashamed to look the clerk in the face.”

      At that moment Grontovsky, on a chestnut horse, galloped by us with a flourish. On his left arm the basket bobbed up and down with the mushrooms dancing in it. As he passed us he grinned and waved his hand, as though we were old friends.

      “Blockhead!” the prince filtered through his teeth, looking after him. “It’s wonderful how disgusting it sometimes is to see satisfied faces. A stupid, animal feeling due to hunger, I expect…. What was I saying? Oh, yes, about going into the Service,… I should be ashamed to take the salary, and yet, to tell the truth, it is stupid. If one looks at it from a broader point of view, more seriously, I am eating what isn’t mine now. Am I not? But why am I not ashamed of that…. It is a case of habit, I suppose… and not being able to realize СКАЧАТЬ