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

At midnight I went with her to the station. She embraced me affectionately, probably feeling grateful to me for not asking unnecessary questions, and she promised to write to me, and I held her hands a long time, and kissed them, hardly able to restrain my tears and not uttering a word.

And when she had gone I stood watching the retreating lights, caressing her in imagination and softly murmuring:

“My darling Masha, glorious Masha.⁠ ⁠…”

I spent the night at Karpovna’s, and next morning I was at work with Radish, recovering the furniture of a rich merchant who was marrying his daughter to a doctor.

My sister came after dinner on Sunday and had tea with me.

“I read a great deal now,” she said, showing me the books which she had fetched from the public library on her way to me. “Thanks to your wife and to Vladimir, they have awakened me to self-realization. They have been my salvation; they have made me feel myself a human being. In old days I used to lie awake at night with worries of all sorts, thinking what a lot of sugar we had used in the week, or hoping the cucumbers would not be too salt. And now, too, I lie awake at night, but I have different thoughts. I am distressed that half my life has been passed in such a foolish, cowardly way. I despise my past; I am ashamed of it. And I look upon our father now as my enemy. Oh, how grateful I am to your wife! And Vladimir! He is such a wonderful person! They have opened my eyes!”

“That’s bad that you don’t sleep at night,” I said.

“Do you think I am ill? Not at all. Vladimir sounded me, and said I was perfectly well. But health is not what matters, it is not so important. Tell me: am I right?”

She needed moral support, that was obvious. Masha had gone away. Dr. Blagovo was in Petersburg, and there was no one left in the town but me, to tell her she was right. She looked intently into my face, trying to read my secret thoughts, and if I were absorbed or silent in her presence she thought this was on her account, and was grieved. I always had to be on my guard, and when she asked me whether she was right I hastened to assure her that she was right, and that I had a deep respect for her.

“Do you know they have given me a part at the Azhogins’?” she went on. “I want to act on the stage, I want to live⁠—in fact, I mean to drain the full cup. I have no talent, none, and the part is only ten lines, but still this is immeasurably finer and loftier than pouring out tea five times a day, and looking to see if the cook has eaten too much. Above all, let my father see I am capable of protest.”

After tea she lay down on my bed, and lay for a little while with her eyes closed, looking very pale.

“What weakness,” she said, getting up. “Vladimir says all city-bred women and girls are anæmic from doing nothing. What a clever man Vladimir is! He is right, absolutely right. We must work!”

Two days later she came to the Azhogins’ with her manuscript for the rehearsal. She was wearing a black dress with a string of coral round her neck, and a brooch that in the distance was like a pastry puff, and in her ears earrings sparkling with brilliants. When I looked at her I felt uncomfortable. I was struck by her lack of taste. That she had very inappropriately put on earrings and brilliants, and that she was strangely dressed, was remarked by other people too; I saw smiles on people’s faces, and heard someone say with a laugh: “Kleopatra of Egypt.”

She was trying to assume society manners, to be unconstrained and at her ease, and so seemed artificial and strange. She had lost simplicity and sweetness.

“I told father just now that I was going to the rehearsal,” she began, coming up to me, “and he shouted that he would not give me his blessing, and actually almost struck me. Only fancy, I don’t know my part,” she said, looking at her manuscript. “I am sure to make a mess of it. So be it, the die is cast,” she went on in intense excitement. “The die is cast.⁠ ⁠…”

It seemed to her that everyone was looking at her, and that all were amazed at the momentous step she had taken, that everyone was expecting something special of her, and it would have been impossible to convince her that no one was paying attention to people so petty and insignificant as she and I were.

She had nothing to do till the third act, and her part, that of a visitor, a provincial crony, consisted only in standing at the door as though listening, and then delivering a brief monologue. In the interval before her appearance, an hour and a half at least, while they were moving about on the stage reading their parts, drinking tea and arguing, she did not leave my side, and was all the time muttering her part and nervously crumpling up the manuscript. And imagining that everyone was looking at her and waiting for her appearance, with a trembling hand she smoothed back her hair and said to me:

“I shall certainly make a mess of it.⁠ ⁠… What a load on my heart, if only you knew! I feel frightened, as though I were just going to be led to execution.”

At last her turn came.

“Kleopatra Alexyevna, it’s your cue!” said the stage manager.

She came forward into the middle of the stage with an expression of horror on her face, looking ugly and angular, and for half a minute stood as though in a trance, perfectly motionless, and only her big earrings shook in her ears.

“The first time