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

He had never been so polite before, and Laptev saw that he knew of his offer; he did not like that either. He was sitting now in the drawing room, and the room impressed him strangely, with its poor, common decorations, its wretched pictures, and though there were armchairs in it, and a huge lamp with a shade over it, it still looked like an uninhabited place, a huge barn, and it was obvious that no one could feel at home in such a room, except a man like the doctor. The next room, almost twice as large, was called the reception room, and in it there were only rows of chairs, as though for a dancing class. And while Laptev was sitting in the drawing room talking to the doctor about his sister, he began to be tortured by a suspicion. Had not Yulia Sergeyevna been to his sister Nina’s, and then brought him here to tell him that she would accept him? Oh, how awful it was! But the most awful thing of all was that his soul was capable of such a suspicion. And he imagined how the father and the daughter had spent the evening, and perhaps the night before, in prolonged consultation, perhaps dispute, and at last had come to the conclusion that Yulia had acted thoughtlessly in refusing a rich man. The words that parents use in such cases kept ringing in his ears:

“It is true you don’t love him, but think what good you could do!”

The doctor was going out to see patients. Laptev would have gone with him, but Yulia Sergeyevna said:

“I beg you to stay.”

She was distressed and dispirited, and told herself now that to refuse an honourable, good man who loved her, simply because he was not attractive, especially when marrying him would make it possible for her to change her mode of life, her cheerless, monotonous, idle life in which youth was passing with no prospect of anything better in the future⁠—to refuse him under such circumstances was madness, caprice and folly, and that God might even punish her for it.

The father went out. When the sound of his steps had died away, she suddenly stood up before Laptev and said resolutely, turning horribly white as she did so:

“I thought for a long time yesterday, Alexey Fyodorovitch.⁠ ⁠… I accept your offer.”

He bent down and kissed her hand. She kissed him awkwardly on the head with cold lips.

He felt that in this love scene the chief thing⁠—her love⁠—was lacking, and that there was a great deal that was not wanted; and he longed to cry out, to run away, to go back to Moscow at once. But she was close to him, and she seemed to him so lovely, and he was suddenly overcome by passion. He reflected that it was too late for deliberation now; he embraced her passionately, and muttered some words, calling her “thou”; he kissed her on the neck, and then on the cheek, on the head.⁠ ⁠…

She walked away to the window, dismayed by these demonstrations, and both of them were already regretting what they had said and both were asking themselves in confusion:

“Why has this happened?”

“If only you knew how miserable I am!” she said, wringing her hands.

“What is it?” he said, going up to her, wringing his hands too. “My dear, for God’s sake, tell me⁠—what is it? Only tell the truth, I entreat you⁠—nothing but the truth!”

“Don’t pay any attention to it,” she said, and forced herself to smile. “I promise you I’ll be a faithful, devoted wife.⁠ ⁠… Come this evening.”

Sitting afterwards with his sister and reading aloud an historical novel, he recalled it all and felt wounded that his splendid, pure, rich feeling was met with such a shallow response. He was not loved, but his offer had been accepted⁠—in all probability because he was rich: that is, what was thought most of in him was what he valued least of all in himself. It was quite possible that Yulia, who was so pure and believed in God, had not once thought of his money; but she did not love him⁠—did not love him, and evidently she had interested motives, vague, perhaps, and not fully thought out⁠—still, it was so. The doctor’s house with its common furniture was repulsive to him, and he looked upon the doctor himself as a wretched, greasy miser, a sort of operatic Gaspard from Les Cloches de Corneville. The very name “Yulia” had a vulgar sound. He imagined how he and his Yulia would stand at their wedding, in reality complete strangers to one another, without a trace of feeling on her side, just as though their marriage had been made by a professional matchmaker; and the only consolation left him now, as commonplace as the marriage itself, was the reflection that he was not the first, and would not be the last; that thousands of people were married like that; and that with time, when Yulia came to know him better, she would perhaps grow fond of him.

“Romeo and Juliet!” he said, as he shut the novel, and he laughed. “I am Romeo, Nina. You may congratulate me. I made an offer to Yulia Byelavin today.”

Nina Fyodorovna thought he was joking, but when she believed it, she began to cry; she was not pleased at the news.

“Well, I congratulate you,” she said. “But why is it so sudden?”

“No, it’s not sudden. It’s been going on since March, only you don’t notice anything.⁠ ⁠… I fell in love with her last March when I made her acquaintance here, in your rooms.”

“I thought you would marry someone in our Moscow set,” said Nina Fyodorovna after a pause. “Girls in our set are simpler. But what matters, Alyosha, is that you should be happy⁠—that matters most. My Grigory Nikolaitch did not love me, and there’s no concealing it; you can see what our life is. Of course any woman