Short Fiction, Anton Chekhov [websites to read books for free .TXT] 📗

“A wonderfully nasty position!” he reflected, trying to assume an air of unconcern. “A collegiate assessor walking down the street with a baby! Good heavens! if anyone sees me and understands the position, I am done for.⁠ ⁠… I’d better put it on this doorstep.⁠ ⁠… No, stay, the windows are open and perhaps someone is looking. Where shall I put it? I know! I’ll take it to the merchant Myelkin’s.⁠ ⁠… Merchants are rich people and tenderhearted; very likely they will say thank you and adopt it.”

And Miguev made up his mind to take the baby to Myelkin’s, although the merchant’s villa was in the furthest street, close to the river.

“If only it does not begin screaming or wriggle out of the bundle,” thought the collegiate assessor. “This is indeed a pleasant surprise! Here I am carrying a human being under my arm as though it were a portfolio. A human being, alive, with soul, with feelings like anyone else.⁠ ⁠… If by good luck the Myelkins adopt him, he may turn out somebody.⁠ ⁠… Maybe he will become a professor, a great general, an author.⁠ ⁠… Anything may happen! Now I am carrying him under my arm like a bundle of rubbish, and perhaps in thirty or forty years I may not dare to sit down in his presence.⁠ ⁠…”

As Miguev was walking along a narrow, deserted alley, beside a long row of fences, in the thick black shade of the lime trees, it suddenly struck him that he was doing something very cruel and criminal.

“How mean it is really!” he thought. “So mean that one can’t imagine anything meaner.⁠ ⁠… Why are we shifting this poor baby from door to door? It’s not its fault that it’s been born. It’s done us no harm. We are scoundrels.⁠ ⁠… We take our pleasure, and the innocent babies have to pay the penalty. Only to think of all this wretched business! I’ve done wrong and the child has a cruel fate before it. If I lay it at the Myelkins’ door, they’ll send it to the foundling hospital, and there it will grow up among strangers, in mechanical routine,⁠ ⁠… no love, no petting, no spoiling.⁠ ⁠… And then he’ll be apprenticed to a shoemaker,⁠ ⁠… he’ll take to drink, will learn to use filthy language, will go hungry. A shoemaker! and he the son of a collegiate assessor, of good family.⁠ ⁠… He is my flesh and blood,⁠ ⁠…”

Miguev came out of the shade of the lime trees into the bright moonlight of the open road, and opening the bundle, he looked at the baby.

“Asleep!” he murmured. “You little rascal! why, you’ve an aquiline nose like your father’s.⁠ ⁠… He sleeps and doesn’t feel that it’s his own father looking at him!⁠ ⁠… It’s a drama, my boy⁠ ⁠… Well, well, you must forgive me. Forgive me, old boy.⁠ ⁠… It seems it’s your fate.⁠ ⁠…”

The collegiate assessor blinked and felt a spasm running down his cheeks.⁠ ⁠… He wrapped up the baby, put him under his arm, and strode on. All the way to the Myelkins’ villa social questions were swarming in his brain and conscience was gnawing in his bosom.

“If I were a decent, honest man,” he thought, “I should damn everything, go with this baby to Anna Filippovna, fall on my knees before her, and say: ‘Forgive me! I have sinned! Torture me, but we won’t ruin an innocent child. We have no children; let us adopt him!’ She’s a good sort, she’d consent.⁠ ⁠… And then my child would be with me.⁠ ⁠… Ech!”

He reached the Myelkins’ villa and stood still hesitating. He imagined himself in the parlor at home, sitting reading the paper while a little boy with an aquiline nose played with the tassels of his dressing gown. At the same time visions forced themselves on his brain of his winking colleagues, and of his Excellency digging him in the ribs and guffawing.⁠ ⁠… Besides the pricking of his conscience, there was something warm, sad, and tender in his heart.⁠ ⁠…

Cautiously the collegiate assessor laid the baby on the verandah step and waved his hand. Again he felt a spasm run over his face.⁠ ⁠…

“Forgive me, old fellow! I am a scoundrel,” he muttered. “Don’t remember evil against me.”

He stepped back, but immediately cleared his throat resolutely and said:

“Oh, come what will! Damn it all! I’ll take him, and let people say what they like!”

Miguev took the baby and strode rapidly back.

“Let them say what they like,” he thought. “I’ll go at once, fall on my knees, and say: ‘Anna Filippovna!’ Anna is a good sort, she’ll understand.⁠ ⁠… And we’ll bring him up.⁠ ⁠… If it’s a boy we’ll call him Vladimir, and if it’s a girl we’ll call her Anna! Anyway, it will be a comfort in our old age.”

And he did as he determined. Weeping and almost faint with shame and terror, full of hope and vague rapture, he went into his bungalow, went up to his wife, and fell on his knees before her.

“Anna Filippovna!” he said with a sob, and he laid the baby on the floor. “Hear me before you punish.⁠ ⁠… I have sinned! This is my child.⁠ ⁠… You remember Agnia? Well, it was the devil drove me to it.⁠ ⁠…”

And, almost unconscious with shame and terror, he jumped up without waiting for an answer, and ran out into the open air as though he had received a thrashing.⁠ ⁠…

“I’ll stay here outside till she calls me,” he thought. “I’ll give her time to recover, and to think it over.⁠ ⁠…”

The porter Yermolay passed him with his balalaika, glanced at him and shrugged his shoulders. A minute later he passed him again, and again he shrugged his shoulders.

“Here’s a go! Did you ever!” he muttered grinning. “Aksinya, the washerwoman, was here just now, Semyon Erastovitch. The silly woman put her baby down on the steps here, and while she was indoors with me, someone took and carried off the baby⁠ ⁠… Who’d have thought it!”

“What? What are you saying?” shouted Miguev at the top of his voice.

Yermolay,