debted to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you!’
No, it is too much! The one means of being saved from bank-II
ruptcy and disgrace is the death of that man!” It struck three o’clock, the banker listened; everyone was The old banker remembered all this, and thought: asleep in the house and nothing could be heard outside but
“To-morrow at twelve o’clock he will regain his freedom.
the rustling of the chilled trees. Trying to make no noise, he By our agreement I ought to pay him two millions. If I do took from a fireproof safe the key of the door which had not pay him, it is all over with me: I shall be utterly ruined.” been opened for fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went Fifteen years before, his millions had been beyond his reck-out of the house.
oning; now he was afraid to ask himself which were greater, It was dark and cold in the garden. Rain was falling. A damp his debts or his assets. Desperate gambling on the Stock Ex-cutting wind was racing about the garden, howling and giv-138
The Schoolmistress and other stories ing the trees no rest. The banker strained his eyes, but could teen years’ imprisonment had taught him to sit still. The banker see neither the earth nor the white statues, nor the lodge, nor tapped at the window with his finger, and the prisoner made the trees. Going to the spot where the lodge stood, he twice no movement whatever in response. Then the banker cautiously called the watchman. No answer followed. Evidently the broke the seals off the door and put the key in the keyhole.
watchman had sought shelter from the weather, and was now The rusty lock gave a grating sound and the door creaked. The asleep somewhere either in the kitchen or in the greenhouse.
banker expected to hear at once footsteps and a cry of astonish-
“If I had the pluck to carry out my intention,” thought the ment, but three minutes passed and it was as quiet as ever in the old man, “Suspicion would fall first upon the watchman.” room. He made up his mind to go in.
He felt in the darkness for the steps and the door, and went At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting mo-into the entry of the lodge. Then he groped his way into a tionless. He was a skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his little passage and lighted a match. There was not a soul there.
bones, with long curls like a woman’s and a shaggy beard. His There was a bedstead with no bedding on it, and in the cor-face was yellow with an earthy tint in it, his cheeks were hol-ner there was a dark cast-iron stove. The seals on the door low, his back long and narrow, and the hand on which his leading to the prisoner’s rooms were intact.
shaggy head was propped was so thin and delicate that it was When the match went out the old man, trembling with dreadful to look at it. His hair was already streaked with sil-emotion, peeped through the little window. A candle was ver, and seeing his emaciated, aged-looking face, no one would burning dimly in the prisoner’s room. He was sitting at the have believed that he was only forty. He was asleep… . In table. Nothing could be seen but his back, the hair on his front of his bowed head there lay on the table a sheet of paper head, and his hands. Open books were lying on the table, on on which there was something written in fine handwriting.
the two easy-chairs, and on the carpet near the table.
“Poor creature!” thought the banker, “he is asleep and most Five minutes passed and the prisoner did not once stir. Fif-likely dreaming of the millions. And I have only to take this 139
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half-dead man, throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with have watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the the pillow, and the most conscientious expert would find no mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I have watched from sign of a violent death. But let us first read what he has writ-there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the ten here… .”
storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, The banker took the page from the table and read as fol-towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains lows:
of the shepherds’ pipes; I have touched the wings of comely
“To-morrow at twelve o’clock I regain my freedom and the devils who flew down to converse with me of God… . In right to associate with other men, but before I leave this room your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, per-and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to formed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, you. With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who conquered whole kingdoms… .
beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and
“Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting all that in your books is called the good things of the world.
thought of man has created in the ages is compressed into a
“For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life.
small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all It is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books of you.
I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted
“And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the bless-stags and wild boars in the forests, have loved women… .
ings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whis-but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though pered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and whirl. In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and or freeze together with the earthly globe.
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“You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You pear. The banker went at once with the servants to the lodge have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You and made sure of the flight of his prisoner. To avoid arousing would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs unnecessary talk, he took from the table the writing in which and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead the millions were renounced, and when he got home locked of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I it up in the fireproof safe.
marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don’t want to understand you.
“To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact… .” When the banker had read this he laid the page on the table, kissed the strange man on the head, and went out of the lodge, weeping. At no other time, even when he had lost heavily on the Stock Exchange, had he felt so great a contempt for himself. When he got home he lay on his bed, but his tears and emotion kept him for hours from sleeping.
Next morning the watchmen ran in with pale faces, and told him they had seen the man who lived in the lodge climb out of the window into the garden, go to the gate, and disap-141
Anton Chekhov
THE HEAD-GARDENER’S STORY
could do gave him greater pleasure than lending him some new book or talking to him, for instance, about Ibsen.
A SALE OF FLOWERS was taking place in Count N.’s greenhouses.
He had his weaknesses, but they were innocent ones: he The purchasers were few in number — a landowner who was called himself the head gardener, though there were no un-a neighbor of mine, a young timber-merchant, and myself.
der-gardeners; the expression of his face was unusually digni-While the workmen were carrying out our magnificent pur-fied and haughty; he could not endure to be contradicted, chases and packing them into the carts, we sat at the entry of and liked to be listened to with respect and attention.
the greenhouse and chatted about one thing and another. It is
“That young fellow there I can recommend to you as an extremely pleasant to sit in a garden on a still April morning, awful rascal,” said my neighbor, pointing to a laborer with a listening to the birds, and watching the flowers brought out swarthy, gipsy face, who drove by with the water-barrel. “Last into the open air and basking in the sunshine.
week he was tried in the town for burglary and was acquit-The head-gardener, Mihail Karlovitch, a venerable old man ted; they pronounced him mentally deranged, and yet look with a full shaven face, wearing a fur waistcoat and no coat, at him, he is the picture of health. Scoundrels are very often superintended the packing of the plants himself, but at the same acquitted nowadays in Russia on grounds of abnormality time he listened to our conversation in the hope of hearing and aberration, yet these acquittals, these unmistakable something new. He was an intelligent, very good-hearted man, proofs of an indulgent attitude to crime, lead to no good.
respected by everyone. He was for some reason looked upon They demoralize the masses, the sense of justice is blunted by everyone as a German, though he was in reality on his father’s in all as they become accustomed to seeing vice unpunished, side Swedish, on his mother’s side Russian, and attended the and you know in our age one may boldly say in the words Orthodox church. He knew Russian, Swedish, and German.
of Shakespeare that in our evil and corrupt age virtue must He had read a good deal in those languages, and nothing one ask forgiveness of vice.”
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The Schoolmistress and other stories
“That’s very true,” the merchant assented. “Owing to these But we begged him to tell it and not to be put off by the frequent acquittals, murder and arson have become much more coarseness of the Russian language. Much gratified, he delib-common. Ask the peasants.”
erately lighted his pipe, looked angrily at the laborers, and Mihail Karlovitch turned towards us and said: began:
“As far as I am concerned, gentlemen, I am always delighted
“There settled in a certain little town a solitary, plain, eld-to meet with these verdicts of not guilty. I am not afraid for erly gentleman called Thomson or Wilson — but that does morality and justice when they say ‘Not guilty,’ but on the not matter; the surname is not the point. He followed an contrary I feel pleased. Even when my conscience tells me the honorable profession: he was a doctor. He was always morose jury have made a mistake in acquitting the criminal, even and unsociable, and only spoke when required by his profes-then I am triumphant. Judge for yourselves, gentlemen; if sion. He never visited anyone, never extended his acquain-the judges and the jury have more faith in _man_ than in tance beyond a silent bow, and lived as humbly as a hermit.
evidence, material proofs, and speeches for the prosecution, is The fact was, he was a learned man, and in those days learned not that faith in man in itself higher than any ordinary con-men were not like other people. They spent their days and siderations? Such faith is only attainable by those few who nights in contemplation, in reading and in healing disease, understand and feel Christ.”
looked upon everything else as trivial, and had no time to
“A fine thought,” I said.
waste a word. The inhabitants of the town understood this,
“But it’s not a new one. I remember a very long time ago I and tried not to worry him with their visits and empty chat-heard a legend on that subject. A very charming legend,” said ter. They were very glad that God had sent them at last a man the gardener, and he smiled. “I was told it by my grandmother, who could heal diseases, and were proud that such a remark-my father’s mother, an excellent old lady. She told me it in able man was living in their town. ‘He knows everything,’
Swedish, and it does not sound so fine, so classical, in Russian.” they said about him.
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“But that was not enough. They ought to have also said, or windows, in complete confidence that there was no thief
‘He loves everyone.’ In the breast of that learned man there who could bring himself to do him wrong. He often had in beat a wonderful angelic heart. Though the people of that the course of his medical duties to walk along the highroads, town were strangers and not his own people, yet he loved through the forests and mountains haunted by numbers of them like children, and did not spare himself for them. He hungry vagrants; but he felt that he was in perfect security.
was himself ill with consumption, he had a cough, but when
“One night he was returning from a patient when robbers he was summoned to the sick he forgot his own illness he did fell upon him in the forest, but when they recognized him, not spare himself and, gasping for breath, climbed up the they took off their hats respectfully and offered him some-hills however high they might be. He disregarded the sultry thing to eat. When he answered that he was not hungry, they heat and the cold, despised thirst and hunger. He would ac-gave him a warm wrap and accompanied him as far as the cept no money and strange to say, when one of his patients town, happy that fate had given them the chance in some died, he would follow the coffin with the relations, weeping.
small way to show their gratitude to the benevolent man.
“And soon he became so necessary to the town that the Well, to be sure, my grandmother told me that even the horses inhabitants wondered how they could have got on before with-and the cows and the dogs knew him and expressed their joy out the man. Their gratitude knew no bounds. Grown-up when they met him.
people and children, good and bad alike, honest men and
“And this man who seemed by his sanctity to have guarded cheats — all in fact, respected him and knew his value. In the himself from every evil, to whom even brigands and frenzied little town and all the surrounding neighborhood there was men wished nothing but good, was one fine morning found no man who would allow himself to do anything disagree-murdered. Covered with blood, with his skull broken, he able to him; indeed, they would never have dreamed of it.
was lying in a ravine, and his pale face wore an expression of When he came out of his lodging, he never fastened the doors amazement. Yes, not horror but amazement was the emotion 144
The Schoolmistress and other stories that had been fixed upon his face when he saw the murderer an obvious lie. A search was made, and in his bed was found before him. You can imagine the grief that overwhelmed the a shirt with stains of blood on the sleeves, and a doctor’s lan-inhabitants of the town and the surrounding districts. All were cet set in gold. What more evidence was wanted? They put in despair, unable to believe their eyes, wondering who could the criminal in prison. The inhabitants were indignant, and have killed the man. The judges who conducted the inquiry at the same time said:
and examined the doctor’s body said: ‘Here we have all the
“‘It’s incredible! It can’t be so! Take care that a mistake is signs of a murder, but as there is not a man in the world not made; it does happen, you know, that evidence tells a capable of murdering our doctor, obviously it was not a case false tale.’
of murder, and the combination of evidence is due to simple
“At his trial the murderer obstinately denied his guilt. Ev-chance. We must suppose that in the darkness he fell into the erything was against him, and to be convinced of his guilt ravine of himself and was mortally injured.’
was as easy as to believe that this earth is black; but the judges
“The whole town agreed with this opinion. The doctor seem to have gone mad: they weighed every proof ten times, was buried, and nothing more was said about a violent death.
looked distrustfully at the witnesses, flushed crimson and The existence of a man who could have the baseness and wick-sipped water… . The trial began early in the morning and edness to kill the doctor seemed incredible. There is a limit was only finished in the evening.
even to wickedness, isn’t there?
“‘Accused!’ the chief judge said, addressing the murderer,
“All at once, would you believe it, chance led them to dis-
‘the court has found you guilty of murdering Dr. So-and-so, covering the murderer. A vagrant who had been many times and has sentenced you to… .’
convicted, notorious for his vicious life, was seen selling for
“The chief judge meant to say ‘to the death penalty,’ but he drink a snuff-box and watch that had belonged to the doctor.
dropped from his hands the paper on which the sentence was When he was questioned he was confused, and answered with written, wiped the cold sweat from his face, and cried out: 145
Anton Chekhov
“‘No! May God punish me if I judge wrongly, but I swear away to the carts, and, with an expression of dignity, went on he is not guilty. I cannot admit the thought that there exists a looking after the packing.
man who would dare to murder our friend the doctor! A man could not sink so low!’
“‘There cannot be such a man!’ the other judges assented.
“‘No,’ the crowd cried. ‘Let him go!’
“The murderer was set free to go where he chose, and not one soul blamed the court for an unjust verdict. And my grandmother used to say that for such faith in humanity God forgave the sins of all the inhabitants of that town. He rejoices when people believe that man is His image and semblance, and grieves if, forgetful of human dignity, they judge worse of men than of dogs. The sentence of acquittal may bring harm to the inhabitants of the town, but on the other hand, think of the beneficial influence upon them of that faith in man — a faith which does not remain dead, you know; it raises up generous feelings in us, and always impels us to love and respect every man. Every man! And that is important.” Mihail Karlovitch had finished. My neighbor would have urged some objection, but the head-gardener made a gesture that signified that he did not like objections; then he walked 146
The Schoolmistress and other stories THE BEAUTIES
chibouk sticking out of it. This little head was clumsily at-tached to a lean hunch-back carcass attired in a fantastic garb, I
a short red jacket, and full bright blue trousers. This figure walked straddling its legs and shuffling with its slippers, spoke I REMEMBER, WHEN I was a high school boy in the fifth or sixth without taking the chibouk out of its mouth, and behaved class, I was driving with my grandfather from the village of with truly Armenian dignity, not smiling, but staring with Bolshoe Kryepkoe in the Don region to Rostov-on-the-Don.
wide-open eyes and trying to take as little notice as possible It was a sultry, languidly dreary day of August. Our eyes were of its guests.
glued together, and our mouths were parched from the heat There was neither wind nor dust in the Armenian’s rooms, and the dry burning wind which drove clouds of dust to meet but it was just as unpleasant, stifling, and dreary as in the us; one did not want to look or speak or think, and when our steppe and on the road. I remember, dusty and exhausted by drowsy driver, a Little Russian called Karpo, swung his whip the heat, I sat in the corner on a green box. The unpainted at the horses and lashed me on my cap, I did not protest or wooden walls, the furniture, and the floors colored with yel-utter a sound, but only, rousing myself from half-slumber, low ocher smelt of dry wood baked by the sun. Wherever I gazed mildly and dejectedly into the distance to see whether looked there were flies and flies and flies… . Grandfather and there was a village visible through the dust. We stopped to the Armenian were talking about grazing, about manure, and feed the horses in a big Armenian village at a rich Armenian’s about oats… . I knew that they would be a good hour get-whom my grandfather knew. Never in my life have I seen a ting the samovar; that grandfather would be not less than an greater caricature than that Armenian. Imagine a little shaven hour drinking his tea, and then would lie down to sleep for head with thick overhanging eyebrows, a beak of a nose, long two or three hours; that I should waste a quarter of the day gray mustaches, and a wide mouth with a long cherry-wood waiting, after which there would be again the heat, the dust, 147
Anton Chekhov
the jolting cart. I heard the muttering of the two voices, and most beautiful face I have ever met in real life or in my dreams.
it began to seem to me that I had been seeing the Armenian, Before me stood a beauty, and I recognized that at the first the cupboard with the crockery, the flies, the windows with glance as I should have recognized lightning.
the burning sun beating on them, for ages and ages, and should I am ready to swear that Masha — or, as her father called only cease to see them in the far-off future, and I was seized her, Mashya — was a real beauty, but I don’t know how to with hatred for the steppe, the sun, the flies.…
prove it. It sometimes happens that clouds are huddled to-A Little Russian peasant woman in a kerchief brought in a gether in disorder on the horizon, and the sun hiding behind tray of tea-things, then the samovar. The Armenian went them colors them and the sky with tints of every possible slowly out into the passage and shouted: “Mashya, come and shade—crimson, orange, gold, lilac, muddy pink; one cloud pour out tea! Where are you, Mashya?” is like a monk, another like a fish, a third like a Turk in a Hurried footsteps were heard, and there came into the room turban. The glow of sunset enveloping a third of the sky gleams a girl of sixteen in a simple cotton dress and a white kerchief.
on the cross on the church, flashes on the windows of the As she washed the crockery and poured out the tea, she was manor house, is reflected in the river and the puddles, quivers standing with her back to me, and all I could see was that she on the trees; far, far away against the background of the sun-was of a slender figure, barefooted, and that her little bare set, a flock of wild ducks is flying homewards… . And the heels were covered by long trousers.
boy herding the cows, and the surveyor driving in his chaise The Armenian invited me to have tea. Sitting down to the over the dam, and the gentleman out for a walk, all gaze at table, I glanced at the girl, who was handing me a glass of tea, the sunset, and every one of them thinks it terribly beautiful, and felt all at once as though a wind were blowing over my but no one knows or can say in what its beauty lies.
soul and blowing away all the impressions of the day with I was not the only one to think the Armenian girl beautiful.
their dust and dreariness. I saw the bewitching features of the My grandfather, an old man of seventy, gruff and indifferent 148
The Schoolmistress and other stories to women and the beauties of nature, looked caressingly at extraordinarily pleasant, sincere, beautiful, as beautiful as she Masha for a full minute, and asked: herself was.
“Is that your daughter, Avert Nazaritch?” At first I felt hurt and abashed that Masha took no notice
“Yes, she is my daughter,” answered the Armenian.
of me, but was all the time looking down; it seemed to me as
“A fine young lady,” said my grandfather approvingly.
though a peculiar atmosphere, proud and happy, separated An artist would have called the Armenian girl’s beauty clasher from me and jealously screened her from my eyes.
sical and severe, it was just that beauty, the contemplation of
“That’s because I am covered with dust,” I thought, “am which — God knows why!— inspires in one the conviction sunburnt, and am still a boy.”
that one is seeing correct features; that hair, eyes, nose, mouth, But little by little I forgot myself, and gave myself up entirely neck, bosom, and every movement of the young body all go to the consciousness of beauty. I thought no more now of the together in one complete harmonious accord in which nature dreary steppe, of the dust, no longer heard the buzzing of the has not blundered over the smallest line. You fancy for some flies, no longer tasted the tea, and felt nothing except that a reason that the ideally beautiful woman must have such a beautiful girl was standing only the other side of the table.
nose as Masha’s, straight and slightly aquiline, just such great I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ec-dark eyes, such long lashes, such a languid glance; you fancy stacy, nor enjoyment that Masha excited in me, but a painful that her black curly hair and eyebrows go with the soft white though pleasant sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined tint of her brow and cheeks as the green reeds go with the as a dream. For some reason I felt sorry for myself, for my quiet stream. Masha’s white neck and her youthful bosom grandfather and for the Armenian, even for the girl herself, were not fully developed, but you fancy the sculptor would and I had a feeling as though we all four had lost something need a great creative genius to mold them. You gaze, and little important and essential to life which we should never find by little the desire comes over you to say to Masha something again. My grandfather, too, grew melancholy; he talked no 149
Anton Chekhov
more about manure or about oats, but sat silent, looking pen-fect clouds of golden chaff from under their hoofs and car-sively at Masha.
ried it away far beyond the hurdle. Near the tall fresh stacks After tea my grandfather lay down for a nap while I went out peasant women were swarming with rakes, and carts were of the house into the porch. The house, like all the houses in moving, and beyond the stacks in another yard another dozen the Armenian village stood in the full sun; there was not a tree, similar horses were running round a post, and a similar Little not an awning, no shade. The Armenian’s great courtyard, over-Russian was cracking his whip and jeering at the horses.
grown with goosefoot and wild mallows, was lively and full of The steps on which I was sitting were hot; on the thin rails gaiety in spite of the great heat. Threshing was going on behind and here and there on the window-frames sap was oozing out one of the low hurdles which intersected the big yard here and of the wood from the heat; red ladybirds were huddling to-there. Round a post stuck into the middle of the threshing-gether in the streaks of shadow under the steps and under the floor ran a dozen horses harnessed side by side, so that they shutters. The sun was baking me on my head, on my chest, formed one long radius. A Little Russian in a long waistcoat and on my back, but I did not notice it, and was conscious and full trousers was walking beside them, cracking a whip and only of the thud of bare feet on the uneven floor in the pas-shouting in a tone that sounded as though he were jeering at sage and in the rooms behind me. After clearing away the tea-the horses and showing off his power over them.
things, Masha ran down the steps, fluttering the air as she
“A—a—a, you damned brutes! … A—a—a, plague take passed, and like a bird flew into a little grimy outhouse—I you! Are you frightened?”
suppose the kitchen—from which came the smell of roast The horses, sorrel, white, and piebald, not understanding mutton and the sound of angry talk in Armenian. She van-why they were made to run round in one place and to crush ished into the dark doorway, and in her place there appeared the wheat straw, ran unwillingly as though with effort, swing-on the threshold an old bent, red-faced Armenian woman ing their tails with an offended air. The wind raised up per-wearing green trousers. The old woman was angry and was 150
The Schoolmistress and other stories scolding someone. Soon afterwards Masha appeared in the her every time she ran through the cloud of chaff to the carts.
doorway, flushed with the heat of the kitchen and carrying a Whether it was envy of her beauty, or that I was regretting big black loaf on her shoulder; swaying gracefully under the that the girl was not mine, and never would be, or that I was weight of the bread, she ran across the yard to the threshing-a stranger to her; or whether I vaguely felt that her rare beauty floor, darted over the hurdle, and, wrapt in a cloud of golden was accidental, unnecessary, and, like everything on earth, of chaff, vanished behind the carts. The Little Russian who was short duration; or whether, perhaps, my sadness was that pe-driving the horses lowered his whip, sank into silence, and culiar feeling which is excited in man by the contemplation gazed for a minute in the direction of the carts. Then when of real beauty, God only knows.
the Armenian girl darted again by the horses and leaped over The three hours of waiting passed unnoticed. It seemed to