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

it, it is evident that he is working for the amusement of a rapacious and unclean animal, and is supporting the existing order. And I don’t care to work and I won’t work.⁠ ⁠… Nothing is any use; let the earth sink to perdition!”

“Misuce, go out of the room!” said Lida to her sister, apparently thinking my words pernicious to the young girl.

Genya looked mournfully at her mother and sister, and went out of the room.

“These are the charming things people say when they want to justify their indifference,” said Lida. “It is easier to disapprove of schools and hospitals, than to teach or heal.”

“That’s true, Lida⁠—that’s true,” the mother assented.

“You threaten to give up working,” said Lida. “You evidently set a high value on your work. Let us give up arguing; we shall never agree, since I put the most imperfect dispensary or library of which you have just spoken so contemptuously on a higher level than any landscape.” And turning at once to her mother, she began speaking in quite a different tone: “The prince is very much changed, and much thinner than when he was with us last. He is being sent to Vichy.”

She told her mother about the prince in order to avoid talking to me. Her face glowed, and to hide her feeling she bent low over the table as though she were shortsighted, and made a show of reading the newspaper. My presence was disagreeable to her. I said goodbye and went home.

IV

It was quite still out of doors; the village on the further side of the pond was already asleep; there was not a light to be seen, and only the stars were faintly reflected in the pond. At the gate with the lions on it Genya was standing motionless, waiting to escort me.

“Everyone is asleep in the village,” I said to her, trying to make out her face in the darkness, and I saw her mournful dark eyes fixed upon me. “The publican and the horse-stealers are asleep, while we, well-bred people, argue and irritate each other.”

It was a melancholy August night⁠—melancholy because there was already a feeling of autumn; the moon was rising behind a purple cloud, and it shed a faint light upon the road and on the dark fields of winter corn by the sides. From time to time a star fell. Genya walked beside me along the road, and tried not to look at the sky, that she might not see the falling stars, which for some reason frightened her.

“I believe you are right,” she said, shivering with the damp night air. “If people, all together, could devote themselves to spiritual ends, they would soon know everything.”

“Of course. We are higher beings, and if we were really to recognise the whole force of human genius and lived only for higher ends, we should in the end become like gods. But that will never be⁠—mankind will degenerate till no traces of genius remain.”

When the gates were out of sight, Genya stopped and shook hands with me.

“Good night,” she said, shivering; she had nothing but her blouse over her shoulders and was shrinking with cold. “Come tomorrow.”

I felt wretched at the thought of being left alone, irritated and dissatisfied with myself and other people; and I, too, tried not to look at the falling stars. “Stay another minute,” I said to her, “I entreat you.”

I loved Genya. I must have loved her because she met me when I came and saw me off when I went away; because she looked at me tenderly and enthusiastically. How touchingly beautiful were her pale face, slender neck, slender arms, her weakness, her idleness, her reading. And intelligence? I suspected in her intelligence above the average. I was fascinated by the breadth of her views, perhaps because they were different from those of the stern, handsome Lida, who disliked me. Genya liked me, because I was an artist. I had conquered her heart by my talent, and had a passionate desire to paint for her sake alone; and I dreamed of her as of my little queen who with me would possess those trees, those fields, the mists, the dawn, the exquisite and beautiful scenery in the midst of which I had felt myself hopelessly solitary and useless.

“Stay another minute,” I begged her. “I beseech you.”

I took off my overcoat and put it over her chilly shoulders; afraid of looking ugly and absurd in a man’s overcoat, she laughed, threw it off, and at that instant I put my arms round her and covered her face, shoulders, and hands with kisses.

“Till tomorrow,” she whispered, and softly, as though afraid of breaking upon the silence of the night, she embraced me. “We have no secrets from one another. I must tell my mother and my sister at once.⁠ ⁠… It’s so dreadful! Mother is all right; mother likes you⁠—but Lida!”

She ran to the gates.

“Goodbye!” she called.

And then for two minutes I heard her running. I did not want to go home, and I had nothing to go for. I stood still for a little time hesitating, and made my way slowly back, to look once more at the house in which she lived, the sweet, simple old house, which seemed to be watching me from the windows of its upper storey, and understanding all about it. I walked by the terrace, sat on the seat by the tennis ground, in the dark under the old elm tree, and looked from there at the house. In the windows of the top storey where Misuce slept there appeared a bright light, which changed to a soft green⁠—they had covered the lamp with the shade. Shadows began to move.⁠ ⁠… I was full of tenderness, peace, and satisfaction with myself⁠—satisfaction at having been able to be carried away by my feelings and having fallen in love, and at the same time I felt uncomfortable at the thought that only a few steps away from me, in one