The Shooting Party

by

Anton Chekhov

translated by

A. E. Chamot

London

Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd.

Contents

Introduction

Chekhov's works have probably never enjoyed such a degree of popularity in his own country as they do in England to-day. There is an ever increasing demand for his admirable short stories, and his plays, despite their gloomy and depressing character—so contrary to all that English audiences require when they go to the theatre—have attained great success and attracted large numbers of people to the little theatre at Barnes, as well as to the West End houses where they have been given.

Deeming that the time has now come when readers, who have shown so much admiration for his works, would like to have a deeper insight into the development of this remarkable genius, we are here offering, for the first time in English, a translation of one of his early works, which is perhaps his most ambitious effort—at least with regard to length and to complexity of plot. “The Shooting Party” was written in 1885, in the early and difficult period of Chekhov's life. While still a student at the University, he found himself obliged to support his family with his pen, and when he wrote this novel he was only beginning to make his way to the forefront of literature.

Anton Chekhov was only sixteen years old when his father failed in the business he had carried on for many years in Taganrog, and was obliged to go to Moscow in search of employment. Shortly after his mother and his younger brother and sister joined the father, and Anton was left to complete his course of studies at the Taganrog Gymnasium. During the three years he remained in Taganrog Anton lived as tutor in the family of a Mr. Selivanov, who had bought the Chekhov's house at the auction of their property. In 1879, having gone through all the classes of the Gymnasium, Anton joined his family in Moscow, where he entered the University to study medicine. At that time his father had a small post in a merchant's office, and lived and was boarded in his employer's house. Two of Chekhov's elder brothers had left the home some years before, and Anton found himself at the head of the family, which was in great straits. In order to help in its support every one of the children did what they could. It was then that Anton Chekhov began writing his short stories for a number of provincial newspapers and magazines. These stories attracted general attention, and the editors of the Press of the two capitals soon asked him to contribute to their magazines also. The stories and sketches he wrote at that time appeared above the nom de plume of Antosha Tchekhonte, a nickname that had been given him at school. They are chiefly of a humorous character and mostly of an ephemeral nature, having been dashed off in haste as potboilers. There is a marked difference between these early works and the tales he wrote during the last fifteen years of his short life.

In the year 1885 the first collection of Chekhov's tales appeared in book form; it was followed by several other volumes of stories, and in 1899 Chekhov sold the copyright of all his works, that had already been published or that he might yet write, to the publishing firm of A. F. Marks. By the terms of the contract which he made with Marks he ceded to them the exclusive rights of publishing his works in book form, but he retained the right of first publishing in periodicals any stories he might write in the future. He was then at the height of his popularity, and all the best magazines and newspapers were eager to obtain contributions from his pen.

A re-issue of Chekhov's complete works was also contemplated, subject to the selection and revision of the author. This project was carried out by Marks in an edition that formed eleven volumes. This edition comprises all Chekhov's best works, selected by himself from the very voluminous contributions he had made to the periodical Press during the twenty years he had devoted his talents to literature, and this collection may be looked upon as representing the works by which Chekhov wished to be remembered. In the choice of the 240 novelettes and stories that are comprised in these volumes the author evidently applied very strict criticism, with the result that they are of an astonishingly high and even standard of merit. The task of selection was no easy one for the author, as his writings were so numerous, and were scattered in many periodicals and newspapers. But few of the early stories were included in these volumes. However, after his death in 1904, there was a general demand for a more complete edition of his works, and regrets were expressed that so many of his stories, written in early life, were hidden away in old periodicals inaccessible to his admirers. For this reason his publisher, A. F. Marks, decided to add several supplementary volumes containing all that could be found of the early writings of this popular author, to the already published collected works. In a prefatory notice the editor of these volumes says that the desire of having all that Chekhov had written was very natural, as everything that had come from his pen was dear to his friends, no matter at what time it had been written, nor however critically the author, in his maturer years, might have looked upon these works, as they show the development and the extraordinary growth of his fine and subtle talent and his outlook on the world at various periods of his life. Besides the desire to have everything Chekhov had written there were also just grounds for thinking that, if he had not been cut off so prematurely by death, he would himself have added the greater number of these stories and sketches to his collected works.

In the opinion of the critics Chekhov's early works are also “documents of Russian life collected by a great literary artist with rare knowledge and care illuminated with conscious discernment and thoughtful humour and exploring depths of human grief and suffering that touch the heart of the reader profoundly. Besides it must be added that in these forgotten tales there are many glimpses of the real Chekhov qualities, of his poetic imagination, his meditative sadness, his subtle spiritual nature and entirely truthful portrayal of actualities.”

Three hundred and fifty tales are published in these supplementary volumes. They vary in length from the novelette to mere sketches of barely a page and they were all written between the years 1880 and 1888. Many of them had been carefully collected by Chekhov himself with the assistance of his friends, the rest were unearthed by the assiduity of the publishers. They are arranged as much as possible chronologically and most of them are dated.

These youthful efforts of an author, who afterwards attained to such world-wide popularity, are interesting as showing the development and growth of his remarkable talents and the change of his method from the light sketches written, for provincial newspapers and humorous magazines to the stories he produced in his maturer years, and though not equal in power to the latter, many of them are well worth reading.

Among these works there are several of considerable length, and “The Shooting Party,” which we now offer to the English reader, has almost the dimensions of a novel and it is more in the style of the sensation novels of the time when it was written, than the episodic character of Chekhov's later works, and though we find in it occasional awkward blendings of conventional phraseology with snatches of brilliant impressionism—one of the peculiar features of this work,—it already shows many of the author's characteristics.

At that time Chekhov had been supplementing his slender income by reporting law cases for the Press, and the insight he obtained into the backwash of many a crime probably weighed on his mind until it found expression in the present work, which is perhaps the blackest indictment of the proceedings of Russian provincial Law Courts that has ever been written. Besides these descriptions he gives us graphic pictures of the looseness of provincial life in the heart of Russia which is sad and hopeless in the extreme. The story is written in the first person and the hero makes his confessions with a cynical frankness which rivals that of Jean Jacques Rousseau himself. He is supposed to be an examining magistrate, a functionary, who in Russia performs the combined duties of a coroner and a magistrate; he it is who is called upon to make the preliminary investigations of criminal cases, and who draws up the first reports. Chekhov himself plays the part of editor and offers his comments and reflections on the events and on the manner in which they are described in footnotes signed with his initials. The characters are drawn with much of the Chekhov touch and, as in so many of his works, they are all more or less failures or degenerates, and there is little of lighter elements to relieve the tragic gloom, however the dramatic interest is well sustained throughout and carries the reader on so that he is not likely to lay the book aside before he reaches the end.

In this novel one notices here and there signs of inexperience in the construction and the development of a plot, with all its intricacies, a fact of which Chekhov seemed well aware, as in many of his letters he mentions that he always felt difficulties assailing him when he arrived at the middle of a long story, and thought he was only fit to write short ones. It shows the development of his art, so unlike that of the old masters of literature, who employed a large canvas and filled in all the details in order to produce their effects, while his style resembles rather that of the impressionists, who with a few bold strokes bring out the salient points of what they wish to depict. We find already short word-pictures of nature, that give the necessary atmosphere, a few pregnant words, that denote the mood, while acts and deeds express character without lengthy analysis and long descriptions. The Shooting Party shows signs of the perfecting of his technique and an increase of his power and for that reason it will be a precious document for every student of Chekhov, one of the great masters whose works did so much towards the evolution of the modern short story.

A. E. C.

Prelude

On an April day of the year 1880 the doorkeeper Andrey came into my private room and told me in a mysterious whisper that a gentleman had come to the editorial office and demanded insistently to see the editor.

“He appears to be a chinovnik,”[1] Andrey added. “He has a cockade.…”

“Ask him to come another time,” I said, “I am busy to-day. Tell him the editor only receives on Saturdays.”

“He was here the day before yesterday and asked for you. He says his business is urgent. He begs, almost with tears in his eyes, to see you. He says he is not free on Saturday.… Will you receive him?”

I sighed, laid down my pen, and settled myself in my chair to receive the gentleman with the cockade. Young authors, and in general everybody who is not initiated into the secrets of the profession, are generally so overcome by holy awe at the words “editorial office” that they make you wait a considerable time for them. After the editor's “Show him in,” they cough and blow their noses for a long time, open the door very slowly, come into the room still more slowly, and thus rob you of no little time. The gentleman with the cockade did not make me wait. The door had scarcely had time to close after Andrey before I saw in my office a tall, broad-shouldered man holding a paper parcel in one hand and a cap with a cockade in the other.

This man, who had succeeded in obtaining an interview with me, plays a very prominent part in my story. It is necessary to describe his appearance.

He was, as I have already said, tall and broad-shouldered and as vigorous as a fine cart horse. His whole body seemed to exhale health and strength. His face was rosy, his hands large, his chest broad and as muscular as a strong boy's. He was over forty. He was dressed with taste, according to the last fashion, in a new tweed suit, evidently just come from the tailor's. A thick gold watch-chain with breloques hung across his chest, and on his little finger a diamond ring sparkled with brilliant tiny stars. But, what is most important, and so essential to the hero of a novel or story, with the slightest pretension to respectability, is that he was extremely handsome. I am neither a woman nor an artist. I have but little understanding of manly beauty, but the appearance of the gentleman with the cockade made an impression on me. His large muscular face remained for ever impressed on my memory. On that face you could see a real Greek nose with a slight hook, thin lips and nice blue eyes from which shone goodness and something else, for which it is difficult to find an appropriate name. That “something” can be seen in the eyes of little animals when they are sad or ill. Something imploring, childish, resignedly suffering.… Cunning or very clever people never have such eyes.

His whole face seemed to breathe candour, a broad, simple nature, and truth.… If it be not a falsehood that the face is the mirror of the soul, I could have sworn from the very first day of my acquaintance with the gentleman with the cockade that he was unable to lie. I might even have betted that he could not lie. Whether I should have lost my bet or not, the reader will see further on.

His chestnut hair and beard were thick and soft as silk. It is often said that soft hair is the sign of a sweet, sensitive, “silken” soul. Criminals and wicked obstinate characters have, in most cases, harsh hair. If this be true or not the reader will also see further on. Neither the expression of his face, nor the softness of his beard was as soft and delicate in this gentleman with the cockade as the movements of his huge form. These movements seemed to denote education, lightness, grace, and if you will forgive the expression, something womanly. It would cause my hero but a slight effort to bend a horseshoe or to flatten out a tin sardine box, with his fist and at the same time not one of his movements showed his physical strength. He took hold of the door handle or of his hat, as if they were butterflies—delicately, carefully, hardly touching them with his fingers. He walked noiselessly, he pressed my hand feebly. When looking at him you forgot that he was as strong as Goliath, and that he could lift with one hand weights that five men like our office servant Andrey could not have moved. Looking at his light movements, it was impossible to believe that he was strong and heavy. Spencer might have called him a model of grace.

When he entered my office he became confused. His delicate, sensitive nature was probably shocked by my frowning, dissatisfied face.

“For God's sake forgive me!” he began in a soft, mellow baritone voice. “I have broken in upon you not at the appointed time, and I have forced you to make an exception for me. You are very busy! But, Mr. Editor, you see, this is how the case stands. To-morrow I must start for Odessa on very important business.… If I had been able to put off this journey till Saturday, I can assure you I would not have asked you to make this exception for me. I submit to rules because I love order.…”

“How much he talks!” I thought as I stretched out my hand towards the pen, showing by this movement I was pressed for time. (I was terribly bored by visitors just then.)

“I will only take up a moment of your time,” my hero continued in an apologetic tone. “But first allow me to introduce myself.… Ivan Petrovich Kamyshev, Bachelor of Law and former examining magistrate. I have not the honour of belonging to the fellowship of authors, nevertheless I appear before you from motives that are purely those of a writer. Notwithstanding his forty years, you have before you a man who wishes to be a beginner.… Better late than never!”

“Very pleased.… What can I do for you?”

The man wishing to be a beginner sat down and continued, looking at the floor with his imploring eyes:

“I have brought you a short story which I would like to see published in your journal. Mr. Editor, I will tell you quite candidly I have not written this story to attain an author's celebrity, nor for the sake of sweet-sounding words. I am too old for these good things. I venture on the writer's path from purely commercial motives.… I want to earn something.… At the present moment I have absolutely no occupation. I was a magistrate in the S—— district for more than five years, but I did not make a fortune, nor did I keep my innocence either.…”

Kamyshev glanced at me with his kind eyes and laughed gently.

“Service is tiresome.… I served and served till I was quite fed up, and chucked it. I have no occupation now, sometimes I have nothing to eat.… If, despite its unworthiness, you will publish my story, you will do me more than a great favour.… You will help me.… A journal is not an alms-house, nor an old-age asylum.… I know that, but … won't you be so kind.…”

“He is lying,” I thought.

The breloques and the diamond ring on his little finger belied his having written for the sake of a piece of bread. Besides, a slight cloud passed over Kamyshev's face such as only an experienced eye can trace on the faces of people who seldom lie.

“What is the subject of your story?” I asked.

“The subject? What can I tell you? The subject is not new.… Love and murder.… But read it, you will see.… ‘From the Notes of an Examining Magistrate.’ …”

I probably frowned, for Kamyshev looked confused, his eyes began to blink, he started and continued speaking rapidly:

“My story is written in the conventional style of former examining magistrates, but … you will find in it facts, the truth.… All that is written, from beginning to end, happened before my eyes.… Indeed, I was not only a witness but one of the actors.”

“The truth does not matter.… It is not absolutely necessary to see a thing to describe it. That is unimportant. The fact is our poor readers have long been fed up with Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky.[2] They are tired of all those mysterious murders, those artful devices of the detectives, and the extraordinary resourcefulness of the examining magistrate. The reading public, of course, varies, but I am talking of the public that reads our newspaper. What is the title of your story?”

“The Shooting Party.”

“Hm!… That's not serious, you know.… And, to be quite frank with you, I have such an amount of copy on hand that it is quite impossible to accept new things, even if they are of undoubted merit.”

“Pray accept my work,… You say it is not serious, but … it is difficult to give a title to a thing before you have seen it.… Besides, is it possible you cannot admit that an examining magistrate can write serious works?”

All this Kamyshev said stammeringly, twisting a pencil about between his fingers and looking at his feet. He finished by blinking his eyes and becoming exceedingly confused. I was sorry for him.

“All right, leave it,” I said. “But I can't promise that your story will be read very soon. You will have to wait.…”

“How long?”

“I don't know. Look in … in about two to three months.…”

“That's pretty long.… But I dare not insist.… Let it be as you say.…”

Kamyshev rose and took up his cap.

“Thank you for the audience,” he said. “I will now go home and dwell in hope. Three months of hope! However, I am boring you. I have the honour to bid you good-bye!”

“One word more, please,” I said as I turned over the pages of his thick copy-book, which were written in a very small handwriting. “You write here in the first person.… You therefore mean the examining magistrate to be yourself?”

“Yes, but under another name. The part I play in this story is somewhat scandalous.… It would have been awkward to give my own name.… In three months, then?”

“Yes, not earlier, please.… Good-bye!”

The former examining magistrate bowed gallantly, turned the door handle gingerly, and disappeared, leaving his work on my writing table. I took up the copy-book and put it away in the table drawer.

Handsome Kamyshev's story reposed in my table drawer for two months. One day, when leaving my office to go to the country, I remembered it and took it with me.

When I was seated in the railway coach I opened the copy-book and began to read from the middle. The middle interested me. That same evening, notwithstanding my want of leisure, I read the whole story from the beginning to the words “The End,” which were written with a great flourish. That night I read the whole story through again, and at sunrise I was walking about the terrace from corner to corner, rubbing my temples as if I wanted to rub out of my head some new and painful thoughts that had suddenly entered my mind.… The thoughts were really painful, unbearably sharp. It appeared to me that I, neither an examining magistrate nor even a psychological juryman, had discovered the terrible secret of a man, a secret that did not concern me in the slightest degree. I paced the terrace and tried to persuade myself not to believe in my discovery.…

Kamyshev's story did not appear in my newspaper for reasons that I will explain at the end of my talk with the reader. I shall meet the reader once again. Now, when I am leaving him for a long time, I offer Kamyshev's story for his perusal.

This story is not remarkable in any way. It has many lengthy passages and many inequalities.… The author is too fond of effects and strong expressions.… It is evident that he is writing for the first time, his hand is unaccustomed, uneducated. Nevertheless his narrative reads easily. There is a plot, a meaning, too, and what is most important, it is original, very characteristic and what may be called sui generis. It also possesses certain literary qualities. It is worth reading. Here it is.

The Shooting Party

From the Notebook of an Examining Magistrate

I

“The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are! Give me some sugar!”

These cries awoke me. I stretched myself, feeling indisposition and heaviness in every limb. One can lie upon one's legs or arms until they are numb, but now it seemed to me that my whole body, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, was benumbed. An afternoon snooze in a sultry, dry atmosphere amid the buzzing and humming of flies and mosquitoes does not act in an invigorating manner but has an enervating effect. Broken and bathed in perspiration, I rose and went to the window. The sun was still high and baked with the same ardour it had done three hours before. Many hours still remained until sunset and the coolness of evening.

“The husband killed his wife!”

“Stop lying, Ivan Dem'yanych!” I said as I gave a slight tap to Ivan Dem'yanych's nose. “Husbands kill their wives only in novels and in the tropics, where African passions boil over, my dear. For us such horrors as thefts and burglaries or people living on false passports are quite enough.”

“Thefts and burglaries!” Ivan Dem'yanych murmured through his hooked nose. “Oh, how stupid you are!”

“What's to be done, my dear? In what way are we mortals to blame for our brain having its limits? Besides, Ivan Dem'yanych, it is no sin to be a fool in such a temperature. You're my clever darling, but doubtless your brain, too, gets addled and stupid in such heat.”

My parrot is not called Polly or by any other of the names given to birds, but he is called Ivan Dem'yanych. He got this name quite by chance. One day, when my man Polycarp was cleaning the cage, he suddenly made a discovery without which my noble bird would still have been called Polly. My lazy servant was suddenly blessed with the idea that my parrot's beak was very like the nose of our village shopkeeper, Ivan Dem'yanych, and from that time the name and patronymic of our long-nosed shopkeeper stuck to my parrot. From that day Polycarp and the whole village christened my extraordinary bird “Ivan Dem'yanych.” By Polycarp's will the bird became a personage, and the shopkeeper lost his own name, and to the end of his days he will be known among the villagers under the nickname of the “magistrate's parrot.”

I had bought Ivan Dem'yanych from the mother of my predecessor, the examining magistrate, Pospelov, who had died shortly before my appointment. I bought him together with some old oak furniture, various rubbishy kitchen utensils, and in general the whole of the household goods that remained after the deceased. My walls are still decorated with photographs of his relatives, and the portrait of the former occupant is still hanging above my bed. The departed, a lean, muscular man with a red moustache and a thick under-lip, sits looking at me with staring eyes from his faded nutwood frame all the time I am lying on his bed.… I had not taken down a single photograph, I had left the house just as I found it. I am too lazy to think of my own comfort, and I don't prevent either corpses or living men from hanging on my walls if the latter wish to do so.[3]

Ivan Dem'yanych found it as sultry as I did. He fluffed out his feathers, spread his wings, and shrieked out the phrases he had been taught by my predecessor, Pospelov, and by Polycarp. To occupy in some way my after-dinner leisure, I sat down in front of the cage and began to watch the movements of my parrot, who was industriously trying, but without success, to escape from the torments he suffered from the suffocating heat and the insects that dwelt among his feathers.… The poor thing seemed very unhappy.…

“At what time does he awake?” was borne to me in a bass voice from the lobby.

“That depends!” Polycarp's voice answered. “Sometimes he wakes at five o'clock, and sometimes he sleeps like a log till morning.… Everybody knows he has nothing to do.”

“You're his valet, I suppose?”

“His servant. Now don't bother me; hold your tongue. Don't you see I'm reading?”

I peeped into the lobby. My Polycarp was there, lolling on the large red trunk, and, as usual, reading a book. With his sleepy, unblinking eyes fixed attentively on his book, he was moving his lips and frowning. He was evidently irritated by the presence of the stranger, a tall, bearded muzhik, who was standing near the trunk persistently trying to inveigle him into conversation. At my appearance the muzhik took a step away from the trunk and drew himself up at attention. Polycarp looked dissatisfied, and without removing his eyes from the book he rose slightly.

“What do you want?” I asked the muzhik.

“I have come from the Count, your honour. The Count sends you his greetings, and begs you to come to him at once.…”

“Has the Count arrived?” I asked, much astonished.

“Just so, your honour.… He arrived last night.… Here's a letter, sir.…”

“What the devil has brought him back!” my Polycarp grumbled. “Two summers we've lived peacefully without him, and this year he'll again make a pigsty of the district. We'll again not escape without shame.”

“Hold your tongue, your opinion is not asked!”

“I need not be asked.… I'll speak unasked. You'll again come home from him in drunken disorder and bathe in the lake just as you are, in all your clothes.… I've to clean them afterwards! They cannot be cleaned in three days!”

“What's the Count doing now?” I asked the muzhik.

“He was just sitting down to dinner when he sent me to you.… Before dinner he fished from the bathing house, sir.… What answer is there?”

I opened the letter and read the following:

“My Dear Lecoq,—If you are still alive, well, and have not forgotten your ever-drunken friend, do not delay a moment. Array yourself in your clothing and fly to me. I only arrived last night and am already dying from ennui. The impatience I feel to see you knows no bounds. I myself wanted to drive over to see you and carry you off to my den, but the heat has fettered all my limbs. I am sitting on one spot fanning myself. Well, how are you? How is your clever Ivan Dem'yanych? Are you still at war with your pedant, Polycarp? Come quickly and tell me everything.—Your A. K.”

It was not necessary to look at the signature to recognize the drunken, sprawling, ugly handwriting of my friend, Count Alexey Karnéev. The shortness of the letter, its pretension to a certain playfulness and vivacity proved that my friend, with his limited capacities, must have torn up much notepaper before he was able to compose this epistle.

The pronoun “which” was absent from this letter, and adverbs were carefully avoided—both being grammatical forms that were seldom achieved by the Count at a single sitting.

“What answer is there, sir?” the muzhik repeated.

At first I did not reply to this question, and every clean-minded man in my place would have hesitated too. The Count was fond of me, and quite sincerely obtruded his friendship on me. I, on my part, felt nothing like friendship for the Count; I even disliked him. It would therefore have been more honest to reject his friendship once for all than to go to him and dissimulate. Besides, to go to the Count's meant to plunge once more into the life my Polycarp had characterized as a “pigsty,” which two years before during the Count's residence on his estate and until he left for Petersburg had injured my good health and had dried up my brain. That loose, unaccustomed life so full of show and drunken madness, had not had time to shatter my constitution, but it had made me notorious in the whole Government … I was popular.…

My reason told me the whole truth, a blush of shame for the not distant past suffused my face, my heart sank with fear that I would not possess sufficient manliness to refuse to go to the Count's, but I did not hesitate long. The struggle lasted not more than a minute.

“Give my compliments to the Count,” I said to his messenger, “and thank him for thinking of me.… Tell him I am busy, and that.… Tell him that I …”

And at the very moment my tongue was about to pronounce a decisive “No,” I was suddenly overpowered by a feeling of dullness.… The young man, full of life, strength and desires, who by the decrees of fate had been cast into this forest village, was seized by a sensation of ennui, of loneliness.…

I remembered the Count's gardens with the exuberant vegetation of their cool conservatories, and the semi-darkness of the narrow, neglected avenues.… Those avenues protected from the sun by arches of the entwined branches of old limes know me well; they also know the women who sought my love and semi-darkness.… I remembered the luxurious drawing-room with the sweet indolence of its velvet sofas, heavy curtains and thick carpets, soft as down, with the laziness so loved by young healthy animals.… There recurred to my mind my drunken audacity that knew no limits to its boundless satanic pride, and contempt of life. My large body wearied by sleep again longed for movement.…

“Tell him I'll come!”

The muzhik bowed and retired.

“If I'd known, I wouldn't have let that devil in!” Polycarp grumbled, quickly turning over the pages of his book in an objectless manner.

“Put that book away and go and saddle Zorka,” I said. “Look sharp!”

“Look sharp! Oh, of course, certainly.… I'm just going to rush off.… It would be all right to go on business, but he'll go to break the devil's horns!”

This was said in an undertone, but loud enough for me to hear it. Having whispered this impertinence, my servant drew himself up before me and waited for me to flare up in reply, but I pretended not to have heard his words. My silence was the best and sharpest arms I could use in my contests with Polycarp. This contemptuous manner of allowing his venomous words to pass unheeded disarmed him and cut the ground away from under his feet. As a punishment it acted better than a box on the ear or a flood of vituperation.… When Polycarp had gone into the yard to saddle Zorka, I peeped into the book which he had been prevented from reading. It was The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas' terrible romance.… My civilized fool read everything, beginning with the signboards of the public houses and finishing with Auguste Comte, which was lying in my trunk together with other neglected books that I did not read; but of the whole mass of written and printed matter he only approved of terrible, strongly exciting novels with “celebrated personages,” poison and subterranean passages; all the rest he dubbed “nonsense.” I shall have again to recur to his reading, now I had to ride off. A quarter of an hour later the hoofs of my Zorka were raising the dust on the road from the village to the Count's estate. The sun was near setting, but the heat and the sultriness were still felt. The hot air was dry and motionless, although my road led along the banks of an enormous lake.… On my right I saw the great expanse of water, on the left my sight was caressed by the young vernal foliage of an oak forest; nevertheless, my cheeks suffered the dryness of Sahara. “If there could only be a storm!” I thought, dreaming of a good cool downpour.

The lake slept peacefully. It did not greet with a single sound the flight of my Zorka, and it was only the piping of a young snipe that broke the grave-like silence of the motionless giant. The sun looked at itself in it as in a huge mirror, and shed a blinding light on the whole of its breadth that extended from my road to the opposite distant banks. And it seemed to my blinded eyes that nature received light from the lake and not from the sun.

The sultriness impelled to slumber the whole of that life in which the lake and its green banks so richly abounded. The birds had hidden themselves, the fish did not splash in the water, the field crickets and the grasshoppers waited in silence for coolness to set in. All around was a waste. From time to time my Zorka bore me into a thick cloud of littoral mosquitoes, and far away on the lake, scarcely moving, I could see the three black boats belonging to old Mikhey, our fisherman, who leased the fishing rights of the whole lake.

II

I did not ride in a straight line as I had to make a circuit along the road that skirted the round lake. It was only possible to go in a straight line by boat, while those who went by the road had to make a large round and the distance was almost eight versts farther. All the way, when looking at the lake, I could see beyond it the opposite clayey banks, on which the bright strip of a blossoming cherry orchard gleamed white, while farther still I could see the roofs of the Count's barns dotted all over with many coloured pigeons, and rising still higher the small white belfry of the Count's chapel. At the foot of the clayey banks was the bathing house with sailcloth nailed on the sides and sheets hanging to dry on its railings. I saw all this, and it appeared to me as if only a verst separated me from my friend the Count, while in order to reach his estate I had to ride about sixteen versts.

On the way, I thought of my strange relations to the Count. It was interesting for me to give myself an account of how we stood and try to settle it, but, alas! that account was a task beyond my strength. However much I thought, I could come to no satisfactory decision, and at last I arrived at the conclusion that I was but a bad judge of myself and of man in general. The people who knew both the Count and me explained our mutual connexion. The narrow-browed, who see nothing beyond the tip of their nose, were fond of asserting that the illustrious Count found in the “poor and undistinguished” magistrate a congenial hanger-on and boon companion. To their understanding I, the writer of these lines, fawned and cringed before the Count for the sake of the crumbs and scraps that fell from his table. In their opinion the illustrious millionaire, who was both the bugbear and the envy of the whole of the S—— district, was very clever and liberal; otherwise his gracious condescension that went as far as friendship for an indigent magistrate and the genuine liberalism that made the Count tolerate my familiarity in addressing him as “thou,” would be quite incomprehensible. Cleverer people explained our intimacy by our common “spiritual interests.” The Count and I were of the same age. We had finished our studies in the same university, we were both jurists, and we both knew very little: I knew a little, but the Count had forgotten and drowned in alcohol the little he had ever known. We were both proud, and by virtue of some reason which was only known to ourselves, we shunned the world like misanthropes. We were both indifferent to the opinion of the world—that is of the S—— district—we were both immoral, and would certainly both end badly. These were the “spiritual interests” that united us. This was all that the people who knew us could say about our relations.

They would, of course, have spoken differently had they known how weak, soft and yielding was the nature of my friend, the Count, and how strong and hard was mine. They would have had much to say had they known how fond this infirm man was of me, and how I disliked him! He was the first to offer his friendship and I was the first to say “thou” to him, but with what a difference in the tone! In a fit of kindly feeling he embraced me, and asked me timidly to be his friend. I, on the other hand, once seized by a feeling of contempt and aversion, said to him:

“Canst thou not cease jabbering nonsense?”

And he accepted this “thou” as an expression of friendship and submitted to it from that time, repaying me with an honest, brotherly “thou.”

Yes, it would have been better and more honest had I turned my Zorka's head homewards and ridden back to Polycarp and my Ivan Dem'yanych.

Afterwards I often thought: “How much misfortune I would have avoided bearing on my shoulders, how much good I would have brought to my neighbours, if on that night I had had the resolution to turn back, if only my Zorka had gone mad and had carried me far away from that terribly large lake! What numbers of tormenting recollections which now cause my hand to quit the pen and seize my head would not have pressed so heavily on my mind!” But I must not anticipate, all the more as farther on I shall often have to pause on misfortunes. Now for gaiety.…

My Zorka bore me into the gates of the Count's yard. At the very gates she stumbled, and I, losing the stirrup, almost fell to the ground.

“An ill omen, sir!” a muzhik, who was standing at one of the doors of the Count's long line of stables, called to me.

I believe that a man falling from a horse may break his neck, but I do not believe in prognostications. Having given the bridle to the muzhik, I beat the dust off my top-boots with my riding-whip and ran into the house. Nobody met me. All the doors and windows of the rooms were wide open, nevertheless the air in the house was heavy, and had a strange smell. It was a mixture of the odour of ancient, deserted apartments with the tart narcotic scent of hothouse plants that have but recently been brought from the conservatories into the rooms.… In the drawing-room, two tumbled cushions were lying on one of the sofas that was covered with a light blue silk material, and on a round table before the sofa I saw a glass containing a few drops of a liquid that exhaled an odour of strong Riga balsam. All this denoted that the house was inhabited, but I did not meet a living soul in any of the eleven rooms that I traversed. The same desertion that was round the lake reigned in the house.…

A glass door led into the garden from the so-called “mosaic” drawing-room. I opened it with noise and went down the marble stairs into the garden. I had gone but a few steps through the avenue when I met Nastasia, an old woman of ninety, who had formerly been the Count's nurse. This little wrinkled old creature, forgotten by death, had a bald head and piercing eyes. When you looked at her face you involuntarily remembered the nickname “Scops-Owl” that had been given her in the village.… When she saw me she trembled and almost dropped a glass of milk she was carrying in both hands.

“How do you do, Scops?” I said to her.

She gave me a sidelong glance and silently went on her way.… I seized her by the shoulder.

“Don't be afraid, fool.… Where's the Count?”

The old woman pointed to her ear.

“Are you deaf? How long have you been deaf?”

Despite her great age, the old woman heard and saw very well, but she found it useful to calumniate her senses. I shook my finger at her and let her go.

Having gone on a few steps farther, I heard voices, and soon after saw people. At the spot where the avenue widened out and formed an open space surrounded by iron benches and shaded by tall white acacias, stood a table on which a samovar shone brightly. People were seated at the table, talking. I went quietly across the grass to the open space and, hiding behind a lilac bush, searched for the Count with my eyes.

My friend, Count Karnéev, was seated at the table on a folding cane-bottomed chair, drinking tea. He was dressed in the same many-coloured dressing-gown in which I had seen him two years before, and he wore a straw hat. His face had a troubled, concentrated expression, and it was very wrinkled, so that a man not acquainted with him might have imagined he was troubled at that moment by some serious thought or anxiety.… The Count had not changed at all in appearance during the two years since last we met. He had the same small thin body, as frail and wizened as the body of a corn-crake. He had the same narrow, consumptive shoulders, surmounted by a small red-haired head. His small nose was as red as formerly, and his cheeks were flabby and hanging like rags, as they had been two years before. On his face there was nothing of boldness, strength or manliness.… All was weak, apathetic and languid. The only imposing thing about him was his long, drooping moustache. Somebody had told my friend that a long moustache was very becoming to him. He believed it, and every morning since then he had measured how much longer the growth on his pale lips had become. With this moustache he reminded you of a moustached but very young and puny kitten.

Sitting next to the Count at the table was a stout man with a large closely-cropped head and very dark eyebrows, who was unknown to me. His face was fat and shone like a ripe melon. His moustache was longer than the Count's, his forehead was low, his lips were compressed, and his eyes gazed lazily into the sky.… The features of his face were bloated, but nevertheless they were as hard as dried-up skin. The type was not Russian.… The stout man was without his coat or waistcoat, and on his shirt there were dark spots caused by perspiration. He was not drinking tea but Seltzer water.

At a respectful distance from the table a short, thick-set man with a stout red neck and sticking out ears was standing. This man was Urbenin, the Count's bailiff. In honour of the Count's arrival he was dressed in a new black suit and was now suffering torments. The perspiration was pouring in streams from his red, sunburnt face. Next to the bailiff stood the muzhik, who had come to me with the letter. It was only here I noticed that this muzhik had only one eye. Standing at attention, not allowing himself the slightest movement, he was like a statue, and waited to be questioned.

“Kusma, you deserve to be thrashed black and blue with your own whip,” the bailiff said to him in his reproachful soft bass voice, pausing between each word. “Is it possible to execute the master's orders in such a careless way. You ought to have requested him to come here at once and to have found out when he could be expected.”

“Yes, yes, yes …” the Count exclaimed nervously. “You ought to have found out everything! He said: ‘I'll come!’ But that's not enough! I want him at once! Pos‑i‑tively at once! You asked him to come, but he did not understand!”

“Why do you require him?” the fat man asked the Count.

“I want to see him!”

“Only that? To my mind, Alexey, that magistrate would do far better if he remained at home to-day. I have no wish for guests.”

I opened my eyes. What was the meaning of that masterful, authoritative “I”?

“But he's not a guest!” my friend said in an imploring tone. “He won't prevent you from resting after the journey. I beg you not to stand on ceremonies with him.… You'll like him at once, my dear boy, and you'll soon be friends with him!”

I came out of my hiding place behind the lilac bushes and went up to the tables. The Count saw and recognized me, and his face brightened with a pleased smile.

“Here he is! Here he is!” he exclaimed, getting red with pleasure, and he jumped up from the table. “How good of you to come!”

He ran towards me, seized me in his arms, embraced me and scratched my cheeks several times with his bristly moustache. These kisses were followed by lengthy shaking of my hand and long looks into my eyes.

“You, Sergey, have not changed at all! You're still the same! The same handsome and strong fellow! Thank you for accepting my invitation and coming at once!”

When released from the Count's embrace, I greeted the bailiff, who was an old friend of mine, and sat down at the table.

“Oh, Golubchek!”[4] the Count continued in an excitedly anxious tone. “If you only knew how delighted I am to see your serious countenance again. You are not acquainted? Allow me to introduce you—my good friend, Kaetan Kazimirovich Pshekhotsky. And this,” he continued, introducing me to the fat man, “is my good old friend, Sergey Petrovich Zinov'ev! Our magistrate.”

The stout, dark-browed man rose slightly from his seat and offered me his fat, and terribly sweaty hand.

“Very pleased,” he mumbled, examining me from head to foot. “Very glad!”

Having given vent to his feelings and become calm again, the Count filled a glass with cold, dark brown tea for me and moved a box of biscuits towards my hand.

“Eat.… When passing through Moscow I bought them at Einem's. I'm very angry with you, Serezha, so angry that I wanted to quarrel with you!… Not only have you not written me a line during the whole of the past two years, but you did not even think a single one of my letters worth answering! That's not friendly!”

“I don't know how to write letters,” I said. “Besides, I have no time for letter writing. Can you tell me what could I have written to you about?”

“There must have been many things!”

“Indeed, there was nothing. I admit of only three sorts of letters: love, congratulatory, and business letters. The first I did not write to you because you are not a woman, and I am not in love with you; the second you don't require; and from the third category we are relieved as from our birth we have never had any business connexion together.”

“That's about true,” the Count said, agreeing readily and quickly with everything; “but all the same, you might have written, if only a line.… And what's more, as Pëtr Egorych tells me, all these two years you've not set foot here, as though you were living a thousand versts away or disdained my property. You might have lived here, shot over my grounds. Many things might have happened here while I was away.”

The Count spoke much and long. When once he began talking about anything, his tongue chattered on without ceasing and without end, quite regardless of the triviality or insignificance of his subject.

In the utterance of sounds he was as untiring as my Ivan Dem'yanych. I could hardly stand him for that facility. This time he was stopped by his butler, Il'ya, a tall, thin man in a well-worn, much-stained livery, who brought the Count a wineglass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a silver tray. The Count swallowed the vodka, washed it down with some water, making a grimace with a shake of the head.

“So it seems you have not yet stopped tippling vodka!” I said.

“No, Serezha, I have not.”

“Well, you might at least drop that drunken habit of making faces and shaking your head! It's disgusting!”

“My dear boy, I'm going to drop everything.… The doctors have forbidden me to drink. I drink now only because it's unhealthy to drop habits all at once.… It must be done gradually.…”

I looked at the Count's unhealthy, worn face, at the wineglass, at the butler in yellow shoes. I looked at the dark-browed Pole, who from the very first moment for some reason had appeared to me to be a scoundrel and a blackguard. I looked at the one-eyed muzhik, who stood there at attention, and a feeling of dread and of oppression came over me.… I suddenly wanted to leave this dirty atmosphere, having first opened the Count's eyes to all the unlimited antipathy I felt for him.… There was a moment when I was ready to rise and depart.… But I did not go away.… I was prevented (I'm ashamed to confess it!) by physical laziness.…

“Give me a glass of vodka, too!” I said to Il'ya.

Long shadows began to be cast on the avenue and on the open space where we were sitting.…

The distant croaking of frogs, the cawing of crows and the singing of orioles greeted the setting of the sun. A gay evening was just beginning.…

“Tell Urbenin to sit down,” I whispered to the Count, “He's standing before you like a boy.”

“Oh, I never thought of that! Pëtr Egorych,” the Count addressed his bailiff, “sit down, please! Why are you standing there?”

Urbenin sat down, casting a grateful glance at me. He who was always healthy and gay appeared to me now to be ill and dull. His face seemed wrinkled and sleepy, his eyes looked at us lazily and as if unwillingly.

“Well, Pëtr Egorych, what's new here? Any pretty girls, eh?” Karnéev asked him. “Isn't there something special … something out of the common?”

“It's always the same, your Excellency.…”

“Are there no new … nice little girls, Pëtr Egorych?”

Moral Pëtr Egorych blushed.

“I don't know, your Excellency.… I don't occupy myself with that.…”

“There are, your Excellency,” broke in the deep bass voice of one-eyed Kuz'ma, who had been silent all the time. “And quite worth notice, too.”

“Are they pretty?”

“There are all sorts, your Excellency, for all tastes … There are dark ones and fair ones—all sorts.…”

“O, ho!… Stop a minute, stop a minute.… I remember you now.… My former Leporello, a sort of secretary.… Your name's Kuz'ma, I think?”

“Yes, your Excellency.…”

“I remember, I remember.… Well, and what have you now in view? Something new, all peasant girls?”

“Mostly peasants, of course, but there are finer ones, too.…”

“Where have you found finer ones …” Il'ya asked, winking at Kuz'ma.

“At Easter the postman's sister-in-law came to stay with him … Nastasia Ivanovna.… A girl all on springs. I myself would like to eat her, but money is wanted.… Cheeks like peaches, and all the rest as good.… There's something finer than that, too. It's only waiting for you, your Excellency. Young, plump, jolly … a beauty! Such a beauty, your Excellency, as you've scarcely found in Petersburg.…”

“Who is it?”

“Olenka, the forester Skvortsov's daughter.”

Urbenin's chair cracked under him. Supporting himself with his hands on the table, purple in the face, the bailiff rose slowly and turned towards one-eyed Kuz'ma. The expression on his face of dullness and fatigue had given place to one of great anger.

“Hold your tongue, serf!” he grumbled. “One-eyed vermin! Say what you please, but don't dare to touch respectable people!”

“I'm not touching you, Pëtr Egorych,” Kuz'ma said imperturbably.

“I'm not talking about myself, blockhead! Besides.… Forgive me, your Excellency,” the bailiff turned to the Count, “forgive me for making a scene, but I would beg your Excellency to forbid your Leporello, as you were pleased to call him, to extend his zeal to persons who are worthy of all respect!”

“I don't understand …” the Count lisped naively. “He has said nothing very offensive.”

Insulted and excited to a degree, Urbenin went away from the table and stood with his side towards us. With his arms crossed on his breast and his eyes blinking, hiding his purple face from us behind the branches of the bushes, he stood plunged in thought.

Had not this man a presentiment that in the near future his moral feelings would have to suffer offences a thousand times more bitter?

“I don't understand what has offended him!” the Count whispered in my ear. “What a caution! There was nothing offensive in what was said.”

After two years of sober life, the glass of vodka acted on me in a slightly intoxicating manner. A feeling of lightness, of pleasure, was diffused in my brain and through my whole body. Added to this, I began to feel the coolness of evening, which little by little was supplanting the sultriness of the day. I proposed to take a stroll. The Count and his new Polish friend had their coats brought from the house, and we set off. Urbenin followed us.

III

The Count's gardens in which we were walking are worthy of special description owing to their striking luxuriousness. From a botanical or an economical point of view, and in many other ways, they are richer and grander than any other gardens I have ever seen. Besides the above-mentioned avenue with its green vaults, you found in them everything that capricious indulgence can demand from pleasure gardens. You found here every variety of indigenous and foreign fruit tree, beginning with the wild cherry and plum and finishing with apricots that were the size of a goose's egg. You came across mulberry trees, barberry bushes, and even olive trees at every step.… Here there were half-ruined, moss-grown grottoes, fountains, little ponds destined for goldfish and tame carp, hillocks, pavilions and costly conservatories.… And all this rare luxury which had been collected by the hands of grandfathers and fathers, all this wealth of large, full roses, poetical grottoes and endless avenues, was barbarously abandoned to neglect, and given over to the power of weeds, the thievish hatchet and the rooks who unceremoniously built their ugly nests on the branches of rare trees! The lawful possessor of all this wealth walked beside me, and the muscles of his lean, satiated face were no more moved by the sight of this neglect, this crying human slovenliness, than if he had not been the owner of these gardens. Once only, by way of making some remark, he said to his bailiff that it would not be a bad thing if the paths were sanded. He noticed the absence of the sand that was not wanted by anybody, but he did not notice the bare trees that had been frozen in the hard winters, or the cows that were walking about in the garden. In reply to his remark, Urbenin said it would require ten men to keep the garden in order, and as his Excellency was not pleased to reside on his estate, the outlay on the garden would be a useless and unproductive luxury. The Count, of course, agreed with this argument.

“Besides, I must confess I have no time for it!” Urbenin said with a wave of the hand. “All the summer in the fields, and in winter selling the corn in town.… There's no time for gardens here!”

The charm of the principal, the so-called “main avenue,” consisted in its old broad-spreading limes, and in the masses of tulips that stretched out in two variegated borders at each side of its whole length and finished at the end in a yellow spot. This was a yellow stone pavilion, which at one time had contained a refreshment room, billiards, skittles and other games. We wandered, without any object, towards this pavilion. At its door we were met by a live creature which somewhat unsettled the nerves of my companion, who was never very courageous.

“A snake!” the Count shrieked, seizing me by the hand and turning pale. “Look!”

The Pole stepped back, and then stood stock still with his arms outstretched as if he wanted to bar the way for the apparition. On the upper step of the half-crumbled stone stair there lay a young snake of our ordinary Russian species. When it saw us it raised its head and moved. The Count shrieked again and hid behind me.

“Don't be afraid, your Excellency.…” Urbenin said lazily as he placed his foot on the first step.

“But if it bites?”

“It won't bite. Besides, the danger from the bite of these snakes is much exaggerated. I was once bitten by an old snake, and, as you see, I didn't die. The sting of a man is worse than a snake's!” Urbenin said with a sigh, wishing to point a moral.

Indeed, the bailiff had not had time to mount two or three steps before the snake stretched out to its full length, and with the rapidity of lightning vanished into a crevice between two stones. When we entered the pavilion we saw another living creature. Lying on the torn and faded cloth of the old billiard table there was an elderly man of middle height in a blue jacket, striped trousers, and a jockey cap. He was sleeping sweetly and quietly. Around his toothless gaping mouth and on his pointed nose flies were making themselves at home. Thin as a skeleton, with an open mouth, lying there immovable, he looked like a corpse that had only just been brought in from the mortuary to be dissected.

“Franz!” said Urbenin, poking him. “Franz!”

After being poked five or six times, Franz shut his mouth, sat up, looked round at us, and lay down again. A minute later his mouth was again open and the flies that were walking about his nose were again disturbed by the slight vibration of his snores.

“He's asleep, the lewd swine!” Urbenin sighed.

“Is he not our gardener, Tricher?” the Count asked.

“No other.… That's how he is every day … He sleeps like a dead man all day and plays cards all night. I was told he gambled last night till six in the morning.”

“What do they play?”

“Games of hazard.… Chiefly stukolka.”

“Well, such gentlemen work badly. They draw their wages for nothing!”

“It was not to complain, your Excellency,” Urbenin hastened to say, “that I told you this, or to express my dissatisfaction; it was only.… I am only sorry that so capable a man is a slave to his passions. He really is a hard-working man, capable too.… He does not receive wages for nothing.”

We glanced again at the gambler Franz and left the pavilion. We then turned towards the garden gate and went into the fields.

There are but few novels in which the garden gate does not play an important part. If you have not noticed this, you have only to inquire of my man Polycarp, who in his lifetime has swallowed multitudes of terrible and not terrible novels, and he will doubtless confirm this insignificant but characteristic fact.

My novel has also not escaped the inevitable garden gate. But my gate is different from others in this, that my pen will have to lead through it many unfortunate and scarcely any happy people; and even this in a direction contrary to the one found in other novels. And what is worse, I had once to describe this gate not as a novel-writer but as an examining magistrate. In my novel more criminals than lovers will pass through it.

A quarter of an hour later, supporting ourselves on our walking sticks, we wound our way up the hill to what is known as the “Stone Grave.” In the surrounding villages there is a legend that under this heap of stones there reposes the body of a Tartar Khan, who, fearing that after his death the enemy would desecrate his ashes, had ordered that a mound of stones was to be made above his body. This legend, however, is scarcely correct. The layers of stone, their size and relative position, exclude the possibility of man's hand having had a part in the formation of this mound. It stands solitary in the midst of fields and has the aspect of an overturned dome.

From the top of this mound we could see the lake to the whole of its captivating extent and indescribable beauty. The sun, no longer reflected in it, had set, leaving behind a broad purple stripe that illuminated the surroundings with a pleasing rosy-yellow tint. The Count's manor and homestead with their houses, church and gardens, lay at our feet, and on the other side of the lake the little village where it was my fate to live looked grey in the distance. As before, the surface of the lake was without a ripple. Old Mikhey's little boats, separated from one another, were hurrying towards the shore.

To the left of my little village the buildings of the railway station stood out dark beneath the smoke from the engines, and behind us at the foot of the Stone Grave the road was bordered on either side by towering old poplars. This road leads to the Count's forest that extends to the very horizon.

The Count and I stood on the top of the hill. Urbenin and the Pole being heavy men preferred to wait for us on the road below.

“Who's that cove?” I asked the Count, nodding towards the Pole. “Where did you pick him up?”

“He's a very nice fellow, Serezha; very nice!” the Count said in an agitated voice. “You'll soon be the best of friends.”

“Oh, that's not likely! Why does he never speak?”

“He is silent by nature! But he's very clever!”

“But what sort of a man is he?”

“I became acquainted with him in Moscow. He is very nice. You'll hear all about it afterwards, Serezha; don't ask now. Let's go down.”

We descended the hill and went along the road towards the forest. It began to be perceptibly darker. The cry of the cuckoo, and the tired vocal warbles of a possibly youthful nightingale were heard in the forest.

“Hollo! Hollo! Catch me!” we heard a high-pitched voice of a child shout as we approached the forest.

A little girl of about five with hair as white as flax, dressed in a sky-blue frock, ran out of the wood. When she saw us she laughed aloud, and with a skip and a jump put her arms round Urbenin's knee. Urbenin lifted her up and kissed her cheek.

“My daughter Sasha!” he said. “Let me introduce her!”

Sasha was pursued out of the wood by a schoolboy of about fifteen, Urbenin's son. When he saw us he pulled off his cap hesitatingly, put it on, and pulled it off again. He was followed quietly by a red spot. This red spot attracted our attention at once. “What a beautiful apparition!” the Count exclaimed, catching hold of my hand. “Look! How charming! What girl is this? I did not know that my forests were inhabited by such naiads!”

I looked round at Urbenin in order to ask him who this girl was, and, strange to say, it was only at that moment I noticed that he was terribly drunk. He was as red as a crawfish, he tottered and, seizing my elbow, he whispered into my ear, exhaling the fumes of spirit on me:

“Sergey Petrovich, I implore you prevent the Count from making any further remarks about this girl! He may, from habit say too much; she is a most worthy person!”

This “most worthy person” was represented by a girl of about nineteen, with beautiful fair hair, kind blue eyes and long curls. She was dressed in a bright red frock, made in a fashion that was neither that of a child nor of a young girl. Her legs, straight as needles, in red stockings, were shod with tiny shoes that were small as a child's. All the time I was admiring her she moved about her well-rounded shoulders coquettishly, as if they were cold or as if my gaze bit her.

“Such a young face, and such developed contours!” whispered the Count, who from his earliest youth had lost the capacity of respecting women, and never looked at them otherwise than from the point of view of a spoilt animal.

I remember that a good feeling was ignited in my breast. I was still a poet, and in the company of the woods, of a May night, and the first twinkling of the evening stars, I could only look at a woman as a poet does.… I looked at “the girl in red” with the same veneration I was accustomed to look upon the forests, the hills and the blue sky. I still had a certain amount of the sentimentality I had inherited from my German mother.

“Who is she?” the Count asked.

“She is the daughter of our forester Skvortsov, your Excellency!” Urbenin replied.

“Is she the Olenka, the one-eyed muzhik spoke of?”

“Yes, he mentioned her name,” the bailiff answered, looking at me with large, imploring eyes.

The girl in red let us go past her, turning away without taking any notice of us. Her eyes were looking at something at the side, but I, a man who knows women, felt her pupils resting on my face.

“Which of them is the Count?” I heard her whisper behind us.

“That one with the long moustache,” the schoolboy answered.

And we heard silvery laughter behind us. It was the laughter of disenchantment. She had thought that the Count, the owner of these immense forests and the broad lake, was I, and not that pigmy with the worn face and long moustache.

I heard a deep sigh issue from Urbenin's powerful breast. That iron man could scarcely move.

“Dismiss the bailiff,” I whispered to the Count. “He is ill or—drunk.”

“Pëtr Egorych, you seem to be unwell,” the Count said, turning to Urbenin. “I do not require you just now, so I will not detain you any longer.”

“Your Excellency need not trouble about me. Thank you for your attention, but I am not ill.”

I looked back. The red spot had not moved, but was looking after us.

Poor, fair little head! Did I think on that quiet, peaceful May evening that she would afterwards become the heroine of my troubled romance?

Now, while I write these lines, the autumn rain beats fiercely against my warm windows, and the wind howls above me. I gaze at the dark window and on the dark background of night beyond, trying by the strength of my imagination to conjure up again the charming image of my heroine.… I see her with her innocent, childish, naive, kind little face and loving eyes, and I wish to throw down my pen and tear up and burn all that I have already written.

But here, next to my inkstand, is her photograph. Here, the fair little head is represented in all the vain majesty of a beautiful but deeply-fallen woman. Her weary eyes, proud of their depravity, are motionless. Here she is just the serpent, the harm of whose bite Urbenin would scarcely have called exaggerated.

She gave a kiss to the storm, and the storm broke the flower at the very roots. Much was taken, but too dearly was it paid for. The reader will forgive her her sins!

IV

We walked through the wood.

The pines were dull in their silent monotony. They all grow in the same way, one like the others, and at every season of the year they retain the same appearance, knowing neither death nor the renewal of spring. Still, they are attractive in their moroseness: immovable, soundless they seem to think mournful thoughts.

“Hadn't we better turn back?” the Count suggested.

This question received no reply. It was all the same to the Pole where he was. Urbenin did not consider his voice decisive, and I was too much delighted with the coolness of the forest and its resinous air to wish to turn back. Besides, it was necessary to kill time till night, even by a simple walk. The thoughts of the approaching wild night were accompanied by a sweet sinking of the heart. I am afraid to confess that I thought of it, and had already mentally a foretaste of its enjoyments. Judging by the impatience with which the Count constantly looked at his watch, it was evident that he, too, was tormented by expectations. We felt that we understood each other.

Near the forester's house, which nestled between pines on a small square open space, we were met by the loud-sounding bark of two small fiery-yellow dogs, of a breed that was unknown to me; they were as glossy and supple as eels. Recognizing Urbenin, they joyfully wagged their tails and ran towards him, from which one could deduce that the bailiff often visited the forester's house. Here, too, near the house, we were met by a lad without boots or cap, with large freckles on his astonished face. For a moment he looked at us in silence with staring eyes, then, evidently recognizing the Count, he gave an exclamation and rushed headlong into the house.

“I know what he's gone for,” the Count said, laughing. “I remember him.… It's Mit'ka.”

The Count was not mistaken. In less than a minute Mit'ka came out of the house carrying a tray with a glass of vodka and a tumbler half full of water.

“For your good health, your Excellency!” he said, a broad grin suffusing the whole of his stupid, astonished face.

The Count drank off the vodka, washed it down with water in lieu of a snack, but this time he made no wry face. A hundred paces from the house there was an iron seat, as old as the pines above it. We sat down on it and contemplated the May evening in all its tranquil beauty.… The frightened crows flew cawing above our heads, the song of nightingales was borne towards us from all sides; these were the only sounds that broke the pervading stillness.

The Count does not know how to be silent, even on such a calm spring evening, when the voice of man is the least agreeable sound.

“I don't know if you will be satisfied?” he said to me. “I have ordered a fish-soup and game for supper. With the vodka we shall have cold sturgeon and sucking-pig with horse-radish.”

As if angered at this prosaic observation, the poetical pines suddenly shook their tops and a gentle rustle passed through the wood. A fresh breeze swept over the glade and played with the grass.

“Down, down!” Urbenin cried to the flame-coloured dogs, who were preventing him from lighting his cigarette with their caresses. “I think we shall have rain before night. I feel it in the air. It was so terribly hot to-day that it does not require a learned professor to prophesy rain. It will be a good thing for the corn.”

“What's the use of corn to you,” I thought, “if the Count will spend it all on drink? The rain need not trouble about it.”

Once more a light breeze passed over the forest, but this time it was stronger. The pines and the grass rustled louder.

“Let us go home.”

We rose and strolled lazily back towards the little house.

“It is better to be this fair-haired Olenka,” I said, addressing myself to Urbenin, “and to live here with the beasts than to be a magistrate and live among men.… It's more peaceful. Is it not so, Pëtr Egorych?”

“It's all the same what one is, Sergey Petrovich, if only the soul is at peace.”

“Is pretty Olenka's soul at peace?”

“God alone knows the secrets of other people's souls, but I think she has nothing to trouble her. She has not much to worry her, and no more sins than an infant.… She's a very good girl! Ah, now the sky is at last beginning to talk of rain.…”

A rumble was heard, somewhat like the sound of a distant vehicle or the rattle of a game of skittles. Somewhere, far beyond the forest, there was a peal of thunder. Mit'ka, who had been watching us the whole time, shuddered and crossed himself.

“A thunderstorm!” the Count exclaimed with a start. “What a surprise! The rain will overtake us on our way home.… How dark it is! I said we ought to have turned back! And you wouldn't, and went on and on.”

“We might wait in the cottage till the storm is over,” I suggested.

“Why in the cottage?” Urbenin said hastily, and his eyes blinked in a strange manner. “It will rain all night, so you'll have to remain all night in the cottage! Please, don't trouble.… Go quietly on, and Mit'ka shall run on and order your carriage to come to meet you.”

“Never mind, perhaps it won't rain all night.… Storm clouds usually pass by quickly.… Besides, I don't know the new forester as yet, and I'd also like to have a chat with this Olenka … and find out what sort of a dickey bird she is.…”

“I've no objections!” the Count agreed.

“How can you go there, if—if the place is not—not in order?” Urbenin mumbled anxiously. “Why should your Excellency sit there in a stuffy room when you could be at home? I don't understand what pleasure that can be!… How can you get to know the forester if he is ill?…”

It was very evident that the bailiff strongly objected to our going into the forester's house. He even spread his arms as if he wanted to bar the way.… I understood by his face that he had reasons for preventing us from going in. I respect other people's reasons and secrets, but on this occasion my curiosity was greatly excited. I persisted, and we entered the house.

“Walk into the drawing-room, please,” bare-footed Mit'ka spluttered almost choking with delight.

Try to imagine the very smallest drawing-room in the world, with unpainted deal walls. These walls are hung all over with oleographs from the “Niva,” photographs in frames made of shells, and testimonials. One testimonial is from a certain baron, expressing his gratitude for many years of service; all the others are for horses. Here and there ivy climbs up the wall.… In a corner a small lamp, whose tiny blue flame is faintly reflected on the silver mounting, burns peacefully before a little icon. Chairs that have evidently been only recently bought are pressed close together round the walls. Too many had been purchased, and they had been squeezed together, as there was nowhere else to put them.… Here, also, there are armchairs and a sofa in snow-white covers with flounces and laces, crowded up with a polished round table. A tame hare dozes on the sofa.… The room is cosy, clean and warm.… The presence of a woman can be noticed everywhere. Even the whatnot with books has a look of innocence and womanliness; it appears to be anxious to say that there is nothing on its shelves but wishy-washy novels and mawkish verse.… The charm of such warm, cosy rooms is not so much felt in spring as in autumn, when you look for a refuge from the cold and dampness.

After much loud snivelling, blowing, and noisy striking of matches, Mit'ka lit two candles and placed them on the table as carefully as if they had been milk. We sat down in the arm-chairs, looked at each other, and laughed.

“Nikolai Efimych is ill in bed,” Urbenin said, to explain the absence of the master, “and Olga Nikolaevna has probably gone to accompany my children.…”

“Mit'ka, are the doors shut?” we heard a weak tenor voice asking from the next room.

“They're all shut, Nikolai Efimych!” Mit'ka shouted hoarsely, and he rushed headlong into the next room.

“That's right! See that they are all shut,” the same weak voice said again. “And locked—firmly locked.… If thieves break in, you must tell me.… I'll shoot the villains with my gun … the scoundrels!”

“Certainly, Nikolai Efimych!”

We laughed and looked inquiringly at Urbenin. He grew very red, and in order to hide his confusion he began to arrange the curtains of the windows.… What does this dream mean? We again looked at each other.

We had no time for perplexity. Hasty steps were heard outside, then a noise in the porch and the slamming of doors. And the “girl in red” rushed into the room.

“I love the thunder in early May,” she sang in a loud, shrill soprano voice, and she cut short her song with a burst of laughter, but when she saw us she suddenly stood still and was silent,—she became embarrassed, and went as quietly as a lamb into the room in which the voice of Nikolai Efimych, her father, had been heard.

“She did not expect to see you,” Urbenin said, laughing.

A few minutes later she again came quietly into the room, sat down on the chair nearest the door and began to examine us. She stared at us boldly, not as if we were new people for her, but as if we were animals in the Zoological Gardens. For a minute we too looked at her in silence without moving.… I would have agreed to sit still and look at her for a whole hour in this way—she was so lovely that evening. As fresh as the air, rosy, breathing rapidly, her bosom rising and falling, her curls scattered wildly on her forehead, on her shoulders, and on her right hand that was raised to arrange her collar; with large, sparkling eyes.… And all this was found on one little body that a single glance could envelop. If you glanced for a moment at this small object you saw more than you would if you looked for a whole century at the endless horizon.… She looked at me seriously, from my feet upwards, inquiringly; when her eyes left me and passed to the Count or to the Pole I began to read in them the contrary: a glance that passed from the head to the feet, and laughter.…

I was the first to speak.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, rising and going up to her. “Zinov'ev.… And let me introduce my friend, Count Karnéev.… We beg you to pardon us for breaking into your nice little house without an invitation.… We would, of course, never have done so if the storm had not driven us in.…”

“But that won't cause our little house to tumble down!” she said, laughing and giving me her hand.

She displayed her splendid white teeth. I sat down on a chair next to her, and told her how quite unexpectedly the storm had overtaken us on our walk. Our conversation began with the weather—the beginning of all beginnings. While we were talking, Mit'ka had had time to offer the Count two glasses of vodka with the inseparable tumbler of water. Thinking that I was not looking at him, the Count made a sweet grimace and shook his head after each glass.

“Perhaps you would like some refreshments?” Olenka asked me, and, not waiting for an answer, she left the room.

The first drops of rain rattled against the panes.… I went up to the windows.… It was now quite dark, and through the glass I could see nothing but the raindrops creeping down and the reflection of my own nose. There was a flash of lightning, which illuminated some of the nearest pines.

“Are the doors shut?” I heard the same tenor voice ask again. “Mit'ka, come here, you vile-spirited scoundrel! Shut the doors! Oh, Lord, what torments!”