never spared any one, and the holier the place, the more chance of its
suffering from your loving-kindness and angelic sweetness. Why do you
come here? What do you want with the monks here, allow me to ask you?
What is Hecuba to you or you to Hecuba? It's another farce, another
amusement for you, another sacrilege against human dignity, and nothing
more. Why, you don't believe in the monks' God; you've a God of your own
in your heart, whom you've evolved for yourself at spiritualist
séances. You look with condescension upon the ritual of the Church; you
don't go to mass or vespers; you sleep till midday. . . . Why do you
come here? . . . You come with a God of your own into a monastery you
have nothing to do with, and you imagine that the monks look upon it as
a very great honour. To be sure they do! You'd better ask, by the way,
what your visits cost the monastery. You were graciously pleased to
arrive here this evening, and a messenger from your estate arrived on
horseback the day before yesterday to warn them of your coming. They
were the whole day yesterday getting the rooms ready and expecting you.
This morning your advance-guard arrived--an insolent maid, who keeps
running across the courtyard, rustling her skirts, pestering them with
questions, giving orders. . . . I can't endure it! The monks have been
on the lookout all day, for if you were not met with due ceremony, there
would be trouble! You'd complain to the bishop! 'The monks don't like
me, your holiness; I don't know what I've done to displease them. It's
true I'm a great sinner, but I'm so unhappy!' Already one monastery has
been in hot water over you. The Father Superior is a busy, learned man;
he hasn't a free moment, and you keep sending for him to come to your
rooms. Not a trace of respect for age or for rank! If at least you were
a bountiful giver to the monastery, one wouldn't resent it so much, but
all this time the monks have not received a hundred roubles from you!"
Whenever people worried the princess, misunderstood her, or mortified
her, and when she did not know what to say or do, she usually began to
cry. And on this occasion, too, she ended by hiding her face in her
hands and crying aloud in a thin treble like a child. The doctor
suddenly stopped and looked at her. His face darkened and grew stern.
"Forgive me, Princess," he said in a hollow voice. "I've given way to a
malicious feeling and forgotten myself. It was not right."
And coughing in an embarrassed way, he walked away quickly, without
remembering to put his hat on.
Stars were already twinkling in the sky. The moon must have been rising
on the further side of the monastery, for the sky was clear, soft, and
transparent. Bats were flitting noiselessly along the white monastery
wall.
The clock slowly struck three quarters, probably a quarter to nine. The
princess got up and walked slowly to the gate. She felt wounded and was
crying, and she felt that the trees and the stars and even the bats were
pitying her, and that the clock struck musically only to express its
sympathy with her. She cried and thought how nice it would be to go into
a monastery for the rest of her life. On still summer evenings she would
walk alone through the avenues, insulted, injured, misunderstood by
people, and only God and the starry heavens would see the martyr's
tears. The evening service was still going on in the church. The
princess stopped and listened to the singing; how beautiful the singing
sounded in the still darkness! How sweet to weep and suffer to the sound
of that singing!
Going into her rooms, she looked at her tear-stained face in the glass
and powdered it, then she sat down to supper. The monks knew that she
liked pickled sturgeon, little mushrooms, Malaga and plain honey-cakes
that left a taste of cypress in the mouth, and every time she came they
gave her all these dishes. As she ate the mushrooms and drank the
Malaga, the princess dreamed of how she would be finally ruined and
deserted--how all her stewards, bailiffs, clerks, and maid-servants for
whom she had done so much, would be false to her, and begin to say rude
things; how people all the world over would set upon her, speak ill of
her, jeer at her. She would renounce her title, would renounce society
and luxury, and would go into a convent without one word of reproach to
any one; she would pray for her enemies--and then they would all
understand her and come to beg her forgiveness, but by that time it
would be too late. . . .
After supper she knelt down in the corner before the ikon and read two
chapters of the Gospel. Then her maid made her bed and she got into it.
Stretching herself under the white quilt, she heaved a sweet, deep sigh,
as one sighs after crying, closed her eyes, and began to fall asleep.
In the morning she waked up and glanced at her watch. It was half-past
nine. On the carpet near the bed was a bright, narrow streak of sunlight
from a ray which came in at the window and dimly lighted up the room.
Flies were buzzing behind the black curtain at the window. "It's early,"
thought the princess, and she closed her eyes.
Stretching and lying snug in her bed, she recalled her meeting yesterday
with the doctor and all the thoughts with which she had gone to sleep
the night before: she remembered she was unhappy. Then she thought of
her husband living in Petersburg, her stewards, doctors, neighbours, the
officials of her acquaintance . . . a long procession of familiar
masculine faces passed before her imagination. She smiled and thought,
if only these people could see into her heart and understand her, they
would all be at her feet.
At a quarter past eleven she called her maid.
"Help me to dress, Dasha," she said languidly. "But go first and tell
them to get out the horses. I must set off for Klavdia Nikolaevna's."
Going out to get into the carriage, she blinked at the glaring daylight
and laughed with pleasure: it was a wonderfully fine day! As she scanned
from her half-closed eyes the monks who had gathered round the steps to
see her off, she nodded graciously and said:
"Good-bye, my friends! Till the day after tomorrow."
It was an agreeable surprise to her that the doctor was with the monks
by the steps. His face was pale and severe.
"Princess," he said with a guilty smile, taking off his hat, "I've been
waiting here a long time to see you. Forgive me, for God's sake. . . . I
was carried away yesterday by an evil, vindictive feeling and I talked .
. . nonsense. In short, I beg your pardon."
The princess smiled graciously, and held out her hand for him to kiss.
He kissed it, turning red.
Trying to look like a bird, the princess fluttered into the carriage and
nodded in all directions. There was a gay, warm, serene feeling in her
heart, and she felt herself that her smile was particularly soft and
friendly. As the carriage rolled towards the gates, and afterwards along
the dusty road past huts and gardens, past long trains of waggons and
strings of pilgrims on their way to the monastery, she still screwed up
her eyes and smiled softly. She was thinking there was no higher bliss
than to bring warmth, light, and joy wherever one went, to forgive
injuries, to smile graciously on one's enemies. The peasants she passed
bowed to her, the carriage rustled softly, clouds of dust rose from
under the wheels and floated over the golden rye, and it seemed to the
princess that her body was swaying not on carriage cushions but on
clouds, and that she herself was like a light, transparent little cloud.
. . .
"How happy I am!" she murmured, shutting her eyes. "How happy I am!"
THE CHEMIST'S WIFE
THE little town of B----, consisting of two or three crooked streets, was
sound asleep. There was a complete stillness in the motionless air.
Nothing could be heard but far away, outside the town no doubt, the
barking of a dog in a thin, hoarse tenor. It was close upon daybreak.
Everything had long been asleep. The only person not asleep was the
young wife of Tchernomordik, a qualified dispenser who kept a chemist's
shop at B----. She had gone to bed and got up again three times, but could
not sleep, she did not know why. She sat at the open window in her
nightdress and looked into the street. She felt bored, depressed, vexed
. . . so vexed that she felt quite inclined to cry--again she did not
know why. There seemed to be a lump in her chest that kept rising into
her throat. . . . A few paces behind her Tchernomordik lay curled up
close to the wall, snoring sweetly. A greedy flea was stabbing the
bridge of his nose, but he did not feel it, and was positively smiling,
for he was dreaming that every one in the town had a cough, and was
buying from him the King of Denmark's cough-drops. He could not have
been wakened now by pinpricks or by cannon or by caresses.
The chemist's shop was almost at the extreme end of the town, so that
the chemist's wife could see far into the fields. She could see the
eastern horizon growing pale by degrees, then turning crimson as though
from a great fire. A big broad-faced moon peeped out unexpectedly from
behind bushes in the distance. It was red (as a rule when the moon
emerges from behind bushes it appears to be blushing).
Suddenly in the stillness of the night there came the sounds of
footsteps and a jingle of spurs. She could hear voices.
"That must be the officers going home to the camp from the Police
Captain's," thought the chemist's wife.
Soon afterwards two figures wearing officers' white tunics came into
sight: one big and tall, the other thinner and shorter. . . . They
slouched along by the fence, dragging one leg after the other and
talking loudly together. As they passed the chemist's shop, they walked
more slowly than ever, and glanced up at the windows.
"It smells like a chemist's," said the thin one. "And so it is! Ah, I
remember. . . . I came here last week to buy some castor-oil. There's a
chemist here with a sour face and the jawbone of an ass! Such a jawbone,
my dear fellow! It must have been a jawbone like that Samson killed the
Philistines with."
"M'yes," said the big one in a bass voice. "The pharmacist is asleep.
And his wife is asleep too. She is a pretty woman, Obtyosov."
"I saw her. I liked her very much. . . . Tell me, doctor, can she
possibly love that jawbone of an ass? Can she?"
"No, most likely she does not love him," sighed the doctor, speaking as
though he were sorry for the chemist. "The little woman is asleep behind
the window, Obtyosov, what? Tossing with the heat, her little mouth half
open . . . and one little foot hanging out of bed. I bet that fool the
chemist doesn't realise what a lucky fellow he is. . . . No doubt he
sees no difference between a woman and a bottle of carbolic!"
"I say, doctor," said the officer, stopping. "Let us go into the shop
and buy something. Perhaps we shall see her."
"What an idea--in the night!"
"What of it? They are obliged to serve one even at night. My dear
fellow, let us go in!"
"If you like. . . ."
The chemist's wife, hiding behind the curtain, heard a muffled ring.
Looking round at her husband, who was smiling and snoring sweetly as
before, she threw on her dress, slid her bare feet into her slippers,
and ran to the shop.
On the other side of the glass door she could see two shadows. The
chemist's wife turned up the lamp and hurried to the door to open it,
and now she felt neither vexed nor bored nor inclined to cry, though her
heart was thumping. The big doctor and the slender Obtyosov walked in.
Now she could get a view of them. The doctor was corpulent and swarthy;
he wore a beard and was slow in his movements. At the slightest motion
his tunic seemed as though it would crack, and perspiration came on to
his face. The officer was rosy, clean-shaven, feminine-looking, and as
supple as an English whip.
"What may I give you?" asked the chemist's wife, holding her dress
across her bosom.
"Give us . . . er-er . . . four pennyworth of peppermint lozenges!"
Without haste the chemist's wife took down a jar from a shelf and began
weighing out lozenges. The customers stared fixedly at her back; the
doctor screwed up his eyes like a well-fed cat, while the lieutenant was
very grave.
"It's the first time I've seen a lady serving in a chemist's shop,"
observed the doctor.
"There's nothing out of the way in it," replied the chemist's wife,
looking out of the corner of her eye at the rosy-cheeked officer. "My
husband has no assistant, and I always help him."
"To be sure. . . . You have a charming little shop! What a number of
different . . . jars! And you are not afraid of moving about among the
poisons? Brrr!"
The chemist's wife sealed up the parcel and handed it to the doctor.
Obtyosov gave her the money. Half a minute of silence followed. . . .
The men exchanged glances, took a step towards the door, then looked at
one another again.
"Will you give me two pennyworth of soda?" said the doctor.
Again the chemist's wife slowly and languidly raised her hand to the
shelf.
"Haven't you in the shop anything . . . such as . . ." muttered
Obtyosov, moving his fingers, "something, so to say, allegorical . . .
revivifying . . . seltzer-water, for instance. Have you any seltzer-
water?"
"Yes," answered the chemist's wife.
"Bravo! You're a fairy, not a woman! Give us three bottles!"
The chemist's wife hurriedly sealed up the soda and vanished through the
door into the darkness.
"A peach!" said the doctor, with a wink. "You wouldn't find a pineapple
like that in the island of Madeira! Eh? What do you say? Do you hear the
snoring, though? That's his worship the chemist enjoying sweet repose."
A minute later the chemist's wife came back and set five bottles on the
counter. She had just been in the cellar, and so was flushed and rather
excited.
"Sh-sh! . . . quietly!" said Obtyosov when, after uncorking the bottles,
she dropped the corkscrew. "Don't make such a noise; you'll wake your
husband."
"Well, what if I do wake him?"
"He is sleeping so sweetly . . . he must be dreaming of you. . . . To
your health!"
"Besides," boomed the doctor, hiccupping after the seltzer-water,
"husbands are such a dull business that it would be very nice of them to
be always asleep. How good a drop of red wine would be in this water!"
"What an idea!" laughed the chemist's wife.
"That would be splendid. What a pity they don't sell spirits in
chemist's shops! Though you ought to sell wine as a medicine. Have you
any vinum gallicum rubrum?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, give us some! Bring it here, damn it!"
"How much do you want?"
"Quantum satis. . . . Give us an ounce each in the water, and afterwards
we'll see. . . . Obtyosov, what do you say? First with water and
afterwards per se. . . ."
The doctor and Obtyosov sat down to the counter, took off their caps,
and began drinking the wine.
"The wine, one must admit, is wretched stuff! Vinum nastissimum! Though
in the presence of . . . er . . . it tastes like nectar. You are
enchanting, madam! In imagination I kiss your hand."
"I would give a great deal to do so not in imagination," said Obtyosov.
"On my honour, I'd give my life."
"That's enough," said Madame Tchernomordik, flushing and assuming a
serious expression.
"What a flirt you are, though!" the doctor laughed softly, looking slyly
at her from under his brows. "Your eyes seem to be firing shot: piff-
paff! I congratulate you: you've conquered! We are vanquished!"
The chemist's wife looked at their ruddy faces, listened to their
chatter, and soon she, too, grew quite lively. Oh, she felt so gay! She
entered into the conversation, she laughed, flirted, and even, after
repeated requests from the customers, drank two ounces of wine.
"You officers ought to come in oftener from the camp," she said; "it's
awful how dreary it is here. I'm simply dying of it."
"I should think so!" said the doctor indignantly. "Such a peach, a
miracle of nature, thrown away in the wilds! How well Griboyedov said,
'Into the wilds, to Saratov'! It's time for us to be off, though.
Delighted to have made your acquaintance . . . very. How much do we owe
you?"
The chemist's wife raised her eyes to the ceiling and her lips moved for
some time.
"Twelve roubles forty-eight kopecks," she said.
Obtyosov took out of his pocket a fat pocket-book, and after fumbling
for some time among the notes, paid.
"Your husband's sleeping sweetly . . . he must be dreaming," he
muttered, pressing her hand at parting.
"I don't like to hear silly remarks. . . ."
"What silly remarks? On the contrary, it's not silly at all . . . even
Shakespeare said: 'Happy is he who in his youth is young.'"
"Let go of my hand."
At last after much talk and after kissing the lady's hand at parting,
the customers went out of the shop irresolutely, as though they were
wondering whether they had not forgotten something.
She ran quickly into the bedroom and sat down in the same place. She saw
the doctor and the officer, on coming out of the shop, walk lazily away
a distance of twenty paces; then they stopped and began whispering
together. What about? Her heart throbbed, there was a pulsing in her
temples, and why she did not know. . . . Her heart beat violently as
though those two whispering outside were deciding her fate.
Five minutes later the doctor parted from Obtyosov and walked on, while
Obtyosov came back. He walked past the shop once and a second time. . .
. He would stop near the door and then take a few steps again. At last
the bell tinkled discreetly.
"What? Who is there?" the chemist's wife heard her husband's voice
suddenly. "There's a ring at the bell, and you don't hear it," he said
severely. "Is that the way to do things?"
He got up, put on his dressing-gown, and staggering, half asleep,
flopped in his slippers to the shop.
"What . . . is it?" he asked Obtyosov.
"Give me . . . give me four pennyworth of peppermint lozenges."
Sniffing continually, yawning, dropping asleep as he moved, and knocking
his knees against the counter, the chemist went to the shelf and reached
down the jar.
Two minutes later the chemist's wife saw Obtyosov go out of the shop,
and, after he had gone some steps, she saw him throw the packet of
peppermints on the dusty road. The doctor came from behind a corner to
meet him. . . . They met and, gesticulating, vanished in the morning
mist.
"How unhappy I am!" said the chemist's wife, looking angrily at her
husband, who was undressing quickly to get into bed again. "Oh, how
unhappy I am!" she repeated, suddenly melting into bitter tears. "And
nobody knows, nobody knows. . . ."
"I forgot fourpence on the counter," muttered the chemist, pulling the
quilt over him. "Put it away in the till, please. . . ."
And at once he fell asleep again.
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
AT half-past eight they drove out of the town.
The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but the
snow was still lying in the ditches and in the woods. Winter, dark,
long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of a sudden.
But neither the warmth nor the languid transparent woods, warmed by the
breath of spring, nor the black flocks of birds flying over the huge
puddles that were like lakes, nor the marvelous fathomless sky, into
which it seemed one would have gone away so joyfully, presented anything
new or interesting to Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For
thirteen years she had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning
how many times during all those years she had been to the town for her
salary; and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or
winter, it was all the same to her, and she always--invariably--longed for
one thing only, to get to the end of her journey as quickly as could be.
She felt as though she had been living in that part of the country for
ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew
every stone, every tree on the road from the town to her school. Her
past was here, her present was here, and she could imagine no other
future than the school, the road to the town and back again, and again
the school and again the road....
She had got out of the habit of thinking of her past before she became a
schoolmistress, and had almost forgotten it. She had once had a father
and mother; they had lived in Moscow in a big flat near the Red Gate,
but of all that life there was left in her memory only something vague
and fluid like a dream. Her father had died when she was ten years old,
and her mother had died soon after.... She had a brother, an officer; at
first they used to write to each other, then her brother had given up
answering her letters, he had got out of the way of writing. Of her old
belongings, all that was left was a photograph of her mother, but it had
grown dim from the dampness of the school, and now nothing could be seen
but the hair and the eyebrows.
When they had driven a couple of miles, old Semyon, who was driving,
turned round and said:
"They have caught a government clerk in the town. They have taken him
away. The story is that with some Germans he killed Alexeyev, the Mayor,
in Moscow."
"Who told you that?"
"They were reading it in the paper, in Ivan Ionov's tavern."
And again they were silent for a long time. Marya Vassilyevna thought of
her school, of the examination that was coming soon, and of the girl and
four boys she was sending up for it. And just as she was thinking about
the examination, she was overtaken by a neighboring landowner called
Hanov in a carriage with four horses, the very man who had been examiner
in her school the year before. When he came up to her he recognized her
and bowed.
"Good-morning," he said to her. "You are driving home, I suppose."
This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face that
showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was still handsome
and admired by women. He lived in his big homestead alone, and was not
in the service; and people used to say of him that he did nothing at
home but walk up and down the room whistling, or play chess with his old
footman. People said, too, that he drank heavily. And indeed at the
examination the year before the very papers he brought with him smelt of
wine and scent. He had been dressed all in new clothes on that occasion,
and Marya Vassilyevna thought him very attractive, and all the while she
sat beside him she had felt embarrassed. She was accustomed to see
frigid and sensible examiners at the school, while this one did not
remember a single prayer, or know what to ask questions about, and was
exceedingly courteous and delicate, giving nothing but the highest
marks.
"I am going to visit Bakvist," he went on, addressing Marya Vassilyevna,
"but I am told he is not at home."
They turned off the highroad into a by-road to the village, Hanov
leading the way and Semyon following. The four horses moved at a walking
pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage through the mud. Semyon
tacked from side to side, keeping to the edge of the road, at one time
through a snowdrift, at another through a pool, often jumping out of the
cart and helping the horse. Marya Vassilyevna was still thinking about
the school, wondering whether the arithmetic questions at the
examination would be difficult or easy. And she felt annoyed with the
Zemstvo board at which she had found no one the day before. How
unbusiness-like! Here she had been asking them for the last two years to
dismiss the watchman, who did nothing, was rude to her, and hit the
schoolboys; but no one paid any attention. It was hard to find the
president at the office, and when one did find him he would say with
tears in his eyes that he hadn't a moment to spare; the inspector
visited the school at most once in three years, and knew nothing
whatever about his work, as he had been in the Excise Duties Department,
and had received the post of school inspector through influence. The
School Council met very rarely, and there was no knowing where it met;
the school guardian was an almost illiterate peasant, the head of a
tanning business, unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the
watchman's--and goodness knows to whom she could appeal with complaints
or inquiries....
"He really is handsome," she thought, glancing at Hanov.
The road grew worse and worse.... They drove into the wood. Here there
was no room to turn round, the wheels sank deeply in, water splashed and
gurgled through them, and sharp twigs struck them in the face.
"What a road!" said Hanov, and he laughed.
The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why this queer
man lived here. What could his money, his interesting appearance, his
refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in this God-forsaken,
dreary place? He got no special advantages out of life, and here, like
Semyon, was driving at a jog-trot on an appalling road and enduring the
same discomforts. Why live here if one could live in Petersburg or
abroad? And one would have thought it would be nothing for a rich man
like him to make a good road instead of this bad one, to avoid enduring
this misery and seeing the despair on the faces of his coachman and
Semyon; but he only laughed, and apparently did not mind, and wanted no
better life. He was kind, soft, naive, and he did not understand this
coarse life, just as at the examination he did not know the prayers. He
subscribed nothing to the schools but globes, and genuinely regarded
himself as a useful person and a prominent worker in the cause of
popular education. And what use were his globes here?
"Hold on, Vassilyevna!" said Semyon.