Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (478 page)

CHAPTER XXI

It was a fine August day.

The sun warmed as in summer, and the blue sky fondly enticed you to wander far afield, but the air already bore presages of autumn. In the green foliage of the pensive forest the worn-out leaves were already assuming golden tints and the darkening fields looked melancholy and sad.

A dull presentiment of inevitable autumn weighed heavily on us all. It was not difficult to foresee the nearness of a catastrophe. The roll of thunder and the rain must soon come to refresh the sultry atmosphere. It is sultry before a thunderstorm when dark leaden clouds approach in the sky, and moral sultriness was oppressing us all. It was apparent in everything - in our movements, in our smiles, in our speech.

I was driving in a light wagonette. The daughter of the Justice of the Peace, Nadenka, was sitting beside me. She was white as snow, her chin and lips trembled as they do before tears, her deep eyes were full of sorrow, while all the time she laughed and tried to appear very gay.

In front and behind us a number of vehicles of all sorts, of all ages and all sizes were moving in the same direction. Ladies and men on horseback were riding on either side. Count Karnéev, clad in a green shooting costume that looked more like a buffoon’s than a sportsman’s, bending slightly forward and to one side, galloped about relentlessly on his black horse. Looking at his bent body and at the expression of pain that constantly appeared on his lean face, one could have thought that he was riding for the first time. A new double-barrelled gun was slung across his back, and at his side he had a game-bag in which a wounded woodcock tossed about.

Olga Urbenin was the ornament of the cavalcade. Seated on a black horse, which the Count had given her, dressed in a black riding-habit, with a white feather in her hat, she no longer resembled that ‘girl in red’ who had met us in the wood only a few months before. Now there was something majestic, something of th
e grande dame
in her figure. Each flourish of her whip, each smile was calculated to look aristocratic and majestic. In her movements, in her smiles there was something provocative, something incendiary. She held her head high in a foppishly arrogant manner, and from the height of her mount poured contempt on the whole company, as if in disdain of the loud remarks that were sent after her by our virtuous ladies. Coquetting with her impudence and her position ‘at the Count’s’, she seemed to defy everybody, just as if she did not know that the Count was already tired of her, and was only awaiting the moment when he could disentangle himself from her.

‘The Count wants to send me away!’ she said to me with a loud laugh when the cavalcade rode out of the yard. It was clear she knew her position and understood it.

But why that loud laugh? I looked at her and was perplexed. Where could this dweller in the forests have found so much arrogance? When had she found time to sit her horse with so much grace, to move her nostrils proudly, and to show off with such commanding gestures?

‘A depraved woman is like a swine,’ Doctor Pavel Ivanovich said to me. if you set her down to table she puts her legs on it.’

But his explanation was too simple. Nobody could be more infatuated with Olga than I was, and I was the first to be ready to throw stones at her; still, the uneasy voice of truth whispered to me that this was not arrogance nor the swagger of a prosperous and satisfied woman, but the despairing presentiment of the near and inevitable catastrophe.

We were returning from the shoot to which we had gone early in the morning. The sport had been bad. Near the marshes, on which we had set great hopes, we met a party of sportsmen, who told us the game was wild. Three woodcocks and one duckling was all the game we were able to send to the other world as the net result of ten guns. At last one of the lady riders had an attack of toothache and we were obliged to hurry back. We returned along a good road that passed through the fields on which the sheaves of newly reaped rye were looking yellow against the background of the dark, gloomy forests... Near the horizon the church and houses of the Count’s estate gleamed white. To their right the mirror-like surface of the lake stretched out wide, and to the left the ‘Stone Grave’ rose darkly...

‘What a terrible woman!’ Nadenka whispered to me every time Olga came up to our wagonette. ‘What a terrible woman! She’s as bad as she’s pretty! How long ago is it since you were best man at her wedding? She has not had time to wear out her wedding shoes, and she is already wearing another man’s silk and is flaunting in another man’s diamonds. If she has such instincts it would have been more tactful had she waited a year or two...’

‘She’s in a hurry to live! She has no time to wait!’ I sighed.

‘Do you know what has become of her husband?’

‘I hear he is drinking...

‘Yes... The day before yesterday father was in town and saw him driving in a droshky. His head was hanging to one side, he was without a hat, and his face was dirty... He’s a lost man! He’s terribly poor, I hear; they have nothing to eat, the flat is not paid for. Poor little Sasha is for days without food. Father described all this to the Count... You know the Count! He is honest, kind, but he is not fond of thinking about anything, or reasoning. “I’ll send him a hundred roubles,” he said. And he did it at once. I don’t think he could have insulted Urbenin more than by sending this money... He’ll feel insulted by the Count’s gift and will drink all the more.’

‘Yes, the Count is stupid,’ I said. ‘He might have sent him the money through me, and in my name.’

‘He had no right to send him money! Have I the right to feed you if I am strangling you, and you hate me?’

‘That is quite true...’

We were silent and pensive... The thought of Urbenin’s fate was always very painful to me; now when the woman who had ruined him was parading herself before me, this thought aroused in me a whole train of sad reflections... What would become of him and of his children? In what way would she end? In what moral puddle would this pitiful, puny Count end his days?

The woman seated next to me was the only one who was respectable and worthy of esteem. There were only two people in our district whom I was capable of liking and respecting, and who alone had the right of turning from me because they stood higher than I did... These were Nadezhda Kalinin and Doctor Pavel Ivanovich... What awaited them?

‘Nadezhda Nikolaevna,’ I said to her, ‘quite without wishing it, I have caused you no little sorrow, and less than anybody else have I the right to expect your confidence. But I swear to you nobody will understand you as well as I can. Your sorrow is my sorrow, your joy is my joy. If I ask you a question, don’t suspect it is from idle curiosity. Tell me, my dear, why do you allow this pigmy Count to approach you? What prevents you from sending him away and not listening to his abominable amiabilities? His courting is no honour to a respectable woman! Why do you give these scandalmongers the right to couple your name with his?’

Nadenka looked at me with her bright eyes, and evidently reading sincerity in my face, she smiled gaily.

‘What do they say?’ she asked.

‘They say your papa and you are trying to catch the Count, and that in the end you’ll find the Count is only playing with you.’

‘They speak so because they don’t know the Count!’ Nadenka flared up. ‘The shameless slanderers! They are used to seeing only the bad side of people... The good is inaccessible to their understanding.’

‘And have you found the good in him?’

‘Yes, I have found it! You are the first who ought to know. I would not have let him approach me if I had not been certain of his honourable intentions!’

‘So your affairs have already reached the stage of “honourable intentions”,’ I said with astonishment. ‘So soon! And on what are they based - these honourable intentions?’

‘Do you wish to know?’ she asked, and her eyes sparkled. ‘Those scandalmongers do not lie: I wish to marry him! Don’t look so surprised, and don’t laugh! You will say that to get married without love is dishonest and so on. It has already been said a thousand times, but... what am I to do? To feel that one is a useless bit of furniture in this world is very hard... It’s hard to live without an object... When this man, whom you dislike so much, will have made me his wife, I shall have an object in life... I will improve him, I will teach him to leave off drinking, I will teach him to work... Look at him! He does not look like a man now, and I will make a man of him.’

‘Et cetera, et cetera,’ I said.
‘You will take care of his enormous fortune, you will do acts of charity... The whole of the district will bless you, and will look upon you as a good angel sent down to comfort the miserable... You will be the mother and the educator of his children... Yes, a great work indeed! You are a clever girl, but you reason like a schoolgirl!’

‘My idea may be worthless, it may be ludicrous and naive, but I live by it... Under its influence I have become well and gay... Do not disenchant me! Let me disenchant myself, but not now, at some other time... afterwards, in the distant future... Let us change the subject!’

‘Just one more indiscreet question! Do you expect him to propose?’

‘Yes... To judge by the note I received from him today, my fate will be decided this evening... today... He writes that he has something very important to say to me... The happiness of the whole of his life depends upon my answer.’

‘Thank you for your frankness,’ I said.

The meaning of the note that Nadia had received was quite clear to me. A base proposal awaited the poor girl. I decided to save her from that ordeal.

‘We have already arrived at our wood,’ the Count said, coming up to our wagonette. ‘Nadezhda Nikolaevna, would you not wish to make a halt here?’

And without waiting for an answer he clapped his hands and ordered in a loud, shaky voice:

‘Ha-a-lt!’

We settled ourselves down on the outskirts of the wood. The sun had sunk behind the trees, illuminating with purple and gold only the summits of the very highest alders and playing on the golden cross of the Count’s church that could be seen in the distance. Flocks of frightened orioles and sparrow hawks soared over our heads. One of the men fired into them, alarming this feathered kingdom still more, and setting up an incessant concert of twitterings. This sort of concert has its charms in the spring and summer, but when you feel the approach of the cold autumn in the air, it only irritates the nerves and reminds one of their near migration.

The coolness of evening spread from the dense forest. The ladies’ noses became blue and the Count began rubbing his hands against the chill. Nothing at that moment could have been more appropriate than the odour of charcoal in the samovars and the clatter of the tea service. One-eyed Kuz’ma, puffing and panting and stumbling about in the long grass, dragged forward a case of cognac. We began to warm ourselves.

A long outing in the fresh cool air acts on the appetite better than any appetising drops, and after it the balyk, the caviar, the roast partridge and the other viands were as caressing to the sight as roses are on an early spring morning.

‘You are wise today,’ I said to the Count as I helped myself to a slice of balyk. ‘Wise as you have never been before. It would have been difficult to arrange things better...’

‘We have arranged it together, the Count and I,’ Kalinin said with a giggle as he winked towards the coachmen, who were getting the hampers and baskets of provisions, wines and crockery out of the vehicles. ‘The little picnic will be a great success... Towards the end there will be champagne!’

On this occasion the face of the Justice of the Peace shone with satisfaction as it had never shone before. Did he not expect that in the evening his Nadenka would have a proposal made to her? Did he not have the champagne prepared in order to drink the health of the young couple? I looked attentively at his face and, as usual, I could read nothing there but careless satisfaction, satiety, and the stupid self-importance that was suffused over the whole of his portly figure.

We fell upon the
hors d’œuvres
gaily. Only two of the guests looked with indifference on the luxurious viands that were spread out on carpets before us: these two were Olga and Nadezhda Kalinin. The first was standing to one side leaning against the back of a wagonette, motionless and silently gazing at the game-bag that the Count had thrown on the ground. In the game-bag a wounded woodcock was moving about. Olga watched the movements of the unfortunate bird and seemed to be expecting its death.