Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (480 page)

CHAPTER XXIII

Somebody tapped gently at my window. The little house in which I lived stood on the high road, and was one of the first houses in the village, and I often heard a tap at my window, especially in bad weather when a wayfarer sought a night’s lodging. This time it was no wayfarer who knocked at my window. I went up to the window and waited there for a flash of lightning, when I saw the dark silhouette of a tall thin man. He was standing before the window and seemed to be shivering with cold. I opened the window.

‘Who is there? What do you want?’ I asked.

‘Sergey Petrovich, it’s me!’ I heard a plaintive voice, such as people have who are starved with cold and fright, it’s me! I’ve come to you, dear friend!’

To my great astonishment, I recognized in the plaintive voice of the dark silhouette the voice of my friend Doctor Pavel Ivanovich. This visit from ‘Screw’, who led a regular life and went to bed before twelve, was quite incomprehensible. What could have caused him to change his rules and appear at my house at two o’clock in the night, and in such weather too?

‘What do you want?’ I asked, at the same time in the bottom of my heart sending this unexpected guest to the devil.

‘Forgive me, golubchek... I wanted to knock at the door, but your Polycarp is sure to be sleeping like a dead man now, so I decided to tap at the window.’

‘But what do you want?’

Pavel Ivanovich came close up to my window and mumbled something incomprehensible. He was trembling, and looked like a drunken man.

‘I am listening!’ I said, losing my patience.

‘You... you are angry, I see; but... if you only knew all that has happened you would cease to be angry at your sleep being disturbed by visitors at an unseemly hour. It’s no time for sleep now. Oh, my God, my God! I have lived in the world for thirty years, and today is the first time I’ve ever been so terribly unhappy! I am unhappy, Sergey Petrovich!’

‘Ach! but what has happened? And what have I to do with it? I myself can scarcely stand on my legs... I can’t be bothered about others!’

‘Sergey Petrovich!’ Screw said in a plaintive voice, stretching out towards my head his hand wet with rain. ‘Honest man! My friend!’

And then I heard a man crying. The doctor wept.

‘Pavel Ivanovich, go home!’ I said after a short silence. ‘I can’t talk with you now... I am afraid of my own mood, and of yours. We won’t understand each other...’

‘My dear friend!’ the doctor said in an imploring voice. ‘Marry her!’

‘You’ve gone mad!’ I said, and banged the window to...

First the parrot, then the doctor suffered from my mood. I did not ask him to come in, and I slammed the window in his face. Two rude and indecorous sallies for which I would have challenged anybody, even a woman, to a duel.
 
But meek and good-natured ‘Screw’ had no ideas about duels. He did not know what it is to be angry.

About two minutes later there was a flash of lightning, and glancing out of the window I saw the bent figure of my guest. His pose this time was one of supplication, of expectancy, the pose of a beggar watching for alms. He was probably waiting for me to pardon him, and to allow him to say what he had to communicate.

Fortunately my conscience was moved; I was sorry for myself, sorry that nature had implanted in me so much violence and meanness. My base soul as well as my healthy body were as hard as flint.

I went to the window and opened it.

‘Come into the room!’ I said.

‘Never! Every minute is precious! Poor Nadia has poisoned herself, and the doctor cannot leave her side... With difficulty we saved the poor thing... Such a misfortune! And you don’t want to hear it and slam the window to!’

‘Still she is alive?’

‘ “Still”! My good friend, that is not the way to speak about misfortunes! Who could have supposed that such a clever, honest nature would want to depart this life on account of such a creature as that Count? No, my friend, it is a misfortune for men that women cannot be perfect! However clever a woman may be, with whatever perfections she may be endowed, she has still something contrary about her that prevents her and other people from living easily... For instance, let us take Nadia... Why did she do it? Self-love, nothing but self-love! Unhealthy self-love! In order to wound you she conceived the idea of marrying this Count... She neither wanted his money nor his title... she only wanted to satisfy her monstrous self-love... Suddenly a failure! You know that
his
wife has arrived... It appears that this debauchee is married... And people say that women are more long-suffering, that they know how to endure things better than men! Where is there endurance here, when such a miserable cause makes them snatch up sulphur matches? This is not endurance, it is vanity!’

‘You will catch cold...’

‘What I have just seen is worse than any cold... Those eyes, that pallor... Oh! To unsuccessful love, to the unsuccessful attempt to humiliate you is now added unsuccessful suicide... It is difficult to imagine greater misfortunes! My dear fellow, if you have but a drop of compassion, if... if you would see her... Well, why should you not go to her? You love her! Even if you do not love her, why should you not give up a little of your time to her? Human life is precious, and for it one can give... all! Save her life!’

Somebody knocked loudly at my door. I shuddered... My heart bled... I do not believe in presentiments, but this time my alarm was not without cause... Somebody was knocking at my door from without...

‘Who is there?’ I cried out of the window.

‘A message, your Honour!’

‘What do you want?’

‘A letter from the Count, your Honour! There has been a murder!’

A dark figure muffled up in a sheepskin coat came to the window and, swearing at the weather, handed me a letter... I hurried away from the window, lit a candle, and read the following:

For God’s sake forget everything in the world and come at once! Olga has been murdered. I have lost my head and am mad’ - Yours, A. K.

Olga murdered! My head grew dizzy, and it was black before my eyes from this short phrase... I sat down on the bed and my hands fell at my sides. I was unable to reason!

‘Is that you, Pavel Ivanovich?’ I heard the voice of the muzhik who had been sent to me ask. ‘I was just going to drive on to you... I have a letter for you, too.’

Five minutes later ‘Screw’ and I were driving in a closed carriage towards the Count’s estate. The rain rattled on the roof of the carriage, and throughout our journey the path was lit by blinding flashes of lightning.

CHAPTER XXIV

We heard the roar of the lake...

The last act of the drama was just beginning, and two of the actors were driving to see a harrowing sight.

‘Well, and what do you think awaits us?’ I asked dear Pavel Ivanovich.

‘I can’t imagine... I don’t know...’

‘I also don’t know...’

‘Hamlet once regretted that the Lord of heaven and earth had forbidden the sin of suicide; in like manner I regret that fate has made me a doctor... I regret it deeply!’

‘I fear that, in my turn, I must regret that I am an examining magistrate,’ I said, if the Count has not made a mistake and confounded murder with suicide, and if Olga has really been murdered, my poor nerves will have much to suffer!’

‘You could always refuse the case!’

I looked inquiringly at Pavel Ivanovich, but, of course, owing to the darkness, I could see nothing... How did he know that I could refuse the case? I was Olga’s lover, but who knew it, with the exception of Olga herself and perhaps also Pshekhotsky, who had favoured me once with his silent applause?

‘What makes you think I can refuse?’ I asked ‘Screw’.

‘You could fall ill, or tender your resignation. There is no disgrace in that, because somebody else can take your place. A doctor is placed in quite a different position.’

‘Only that?’ I thought.

Our carriage, after a long, wearisome drive over the muddy roads stopped at last before the porch. Two windows just above the porch were brightly illuminated. Through the one on the right side, which was in Olga’s room, a dim light issued. All the other windows looked like black spots. On the stairs we met the Scops-Owl. She looked at me with her piercing little eyes, and her wrinkled face became more wrinkled in an evil, mocking smile.

Her eyes seemed to say ‘You’ll have a great surprise!’

She probably thought we had come to carouse, and that we did not know there was grief in the house.

‘Let me draw your attention to this,’ I said to Pavel Ivanovich, as I pulled the cap off the old woman’s head and exposed her completely bare pate. ‘This old witch is ninety years old, my good soul. If some day you and I had to make a post-mortem examination of her, we should arrive at very different conclusions. You would find senile atrophy of the brain, and I would assure you that she was the cleverest and the most cunning creature in the whole district... The devil in petticoats!’

I was astounded when I entered the ballroom. The picture I saw there was quite unexpected. All the chairs and sofas were occupied by people... Groups of people were standing about in the corners and near the windows... Where had they all come from? If anybody had told me I would meet these people there, I would have laughed at him. Their presence was so improbable and out of place in the Count’s house at that time, when in one of the rooms Olga was either dying or already lying dead. They were the gipsy chorus of the chief gipsy Karpov from the Restaurant London; the same chorus which is known to the reader from one of the first chapters of this book.

When I entered the room my old friend Tina, having recognized me, left one of the groups and came towards me with a cry of joy. A smile spread over her pale and dark complexioned cheeks when I gave her my hand, and tears rose to her eyes when she wanted to tell me something... Tears prevented her from speaking, and I was not able to obtain a single word from her. I turned to the other gipsies, and they explained their presence in the house in this way. In the morning the Count had sent them a telegram demanding that the whole chorus should be at the Count’s estate without fail by nine o’clock that evening. In execution of this order they had taken the train and had been in this hall by eight o’clock.

‘We had thought to afford pleasure to his Excellency and his guests... We know so many new songs! And suddenly...’

‘And suddenly a muzhik arrived on horseback, with the news that a brutal murder had been committed at the shooting party and with the order to prepare a bed for Olga Nikolaevna. The muzhik was not believed, because he was as drunk as a swine, but when a noise was heard on the stairs and a black figure was borne through the dancing hall, it was no longer possible to doubt...

‘And now we don’t know what to do! We can’t remain here... When the priest arrives it is time for the entertainers to depart... Besides, all the chorus girls are frightened and crying... They can’t be in the same house with a corpse... We must go away, but they won’t give us horses! His Excellency the Count is lying ill in bed and will not see anybody, and the servants only laugh at us when we ask for horses... How can we go on foot in such weather and on such a dark night? The servants are in general terribly rude! When we asked for a samovar for our ladies they told us to go to the devil...’

All these complaints ended in tearful requests to my magnanimity. Could I not obtain vehicles to enable them to depart from this ‘accursed’ house?

‘If all the horses are not in the paddocks, and the coachmen have not been sent somewhere, you shall get away,’ I said. ‘I’ll give the order...’

The poor people, dressed out in their burlesque costumes, and accustomed to flaunt about in a swaggering manner, looked very awkward with their sober countenances and undecided poses. My promise to have them taken to the station somewhat encouraged them. The whispers of the men turned into loud talk, and the women ceased crying.