“Just so, …” the shopkeeper assented.
harlot… . He has prepared a place for her, and indeed from
“You ought to do penance,” boomed the deacon from the the life of the holy saint, Mariya of Egypt, one may see in depths of the altar, looking contemptuously at Andrey what sense the word is used — excuse me …” Andreyitch’s embarrassed face, “that would teach you to leave The shopkeeper wanted to bring forward some other argu-off being so clever! Your daughter was a well-known actress.
ment in his justification, but took fright and wiped his lips There were even notices of her death in the newspapers… .
with his sleeve
Philosopher!”
“So that’s what you make of it!” cried Father Grigory, clasp-
“To be sure, … certainly,” muttered the shopkeeper, “the ing his hands. “But you see God has forgiven her — do you word is not a seemly one; but I did not say it to judge her, understand? He has forgiven, but you judge her, you slander Father Grigory, I only meant to speak spiritually, … that it her, call her by an unseemly name, and whom! Your own might be clearer to you for whom you were praying. They deceased daughter! Not only in Holy Scripture, but even in write in the memorial notes the various callings, such as the worldly literature you won’t read of such a sin! I tell you again, infant John, the drowned woman Pelagea, the warrior Yegor, 120
The Schoolmistress and other stories the murdered Pavel, and so on… . I meant to do the same.” heard but the metallic click of the censer and slow singing…
“It was foolish, Andrey! God will forgive you, but beware
. Near Andrey Andreyitch stood the verger Matvey, the mid-another time. Above all, don’t be subtle, but think like other wife Makaryevna, and her one-armed son Mitka. There was people. Make ten bows and go your way.” no one else. The sacristan sang badly in an unpleasant, hollow
“I obey,” said the shopkeeper, relieved that the lecture was bass, but the tune and the words were so mournful that the over, and allowing his face to resume its expression of impor-shopkeeper little by little lost the expression of dignity and tance and dignity. “Ten bows? Very good, I understand. But was plunged in sadness. He thought of his Mashutka, … he now, Father, allow me to ask you a favor… . Seeing that I remembered she had been born when he was still a lackey in am, anyway, her father, … you know yourself, whatever she the service of the owner of Verhny Zaprudy. In his busy life as was, she was still my daughter, so I was, … excuse me, mean-a lackey he had not noticed how his girl had grown up. That ing to ask you to sing the requiem today. And allow me to long period during which she was being shaped into a grace-ask you, Father Deacon!”
ful creature, with a little flaxen head and dreamy eyes as big as
“Well, that’s good,” said Father Grigory, taking off his vest-kopeck-pieces passed unnoticed by him. She had been brought ments. “That I commend. I can approve of that! Well, go up like all the children of favorite lackeys, in ease and com-your way. We will come out immediately.” fort in the company of the young ladies. The gentry, to fill Andrey Andreyitch walked with dignity from the altar, and up their idle time, had taught her to read, to write, to dance; with a solemn, requiem-like expression on his red face took he had had no hand in her bringing up. Only from time to his stand in the middle of the church. The verger Matvey set time casually meeting her at the gate or on the landing of the before him a little table with the memorial food upon it, and stairs, he would remember that she was his daughter, and a little later the requiem service began.
would, so far as he had leisure for it, begin teaching her the There was perfect stillness in the church. Nothing could be prayers and the scripture. Oh, even then he had the reputa-121
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tion of an authority on the church rules and the holy scrip-And they spent a fortnight together without speaking or look-tures! Forbidding and stolid as her father’s face was, yet the ing at one another till the day she went away. Before she went girl listened readily. She repeated the prayers after him yawn-away she asked her father to come for a walk on the bank of ing, but on the other hand, when he, hesitating and trying to the river. Painful as it was for him to walk in the light of day, express himself elaborately, began telling her stories, she was in the sight of all honest people, with a daughter who was an all attention. Esau’s pottage, the punishment of Sodom, and actress, he yielded to her request.
the troubles of the boy Joseph made her turn pale and open
“What a lovely place you live in!” she said enthusiastically.
her blue eyes wide.
“What ravines and marshes! Good heavens, how lovely my Afterwards when he gave up being a lackey, and with the native place is!”
money he had saved opened a shop in the village, Mashutka And she had burst into tears.
had gone away to Moscow with his master’s family… .
“The place is simply taking up room, …” Andrey Three years before her death she had come to see her father.
Andreyvitch had thought, looking blankly at the ravines, not He had scarcely recognized her. She was a graceful young understanding his daughter’s enthusiasm. “There is no more woman with the manners of a young lady, and dressed like profit from them than milk from a billy-goat.” one. She talked cleverly, as though from a book, smoked, And she had cried and cried, drawing her breath greedily and slept till midday. When Andrey Andreyitch asked her what with her whole chest, as though she felt she had not a long she was doing, she had announced, looking him boldly straight time left to breathe.
in the face: “I am an actress.” Such frankness struck the former Andrey Andreyitch shook his head like a horse that has been flunkey as the acme of cynicism. Mashutka had begun boast-bitten, and to stifle painful memories began rapidly crossing ing of her successes and her stage life; but seeing that her fa-himself… .
ther only turned crimson and threw up his hands, she ceased.
“Be mindful, O Lord,” he muttered, “of Thy departed ser-122
The Schoolmistress and other stories vant, the harlot Mariya, and forgive her sins, voluntary or IN THE COACH-HOUSE
involuntary… .”
The unseemly word dropped from his lips again, but he IT WAS BETWEEN NINE and ten o’clock in the evening. Stepan the did not notice it: what is firmly imbedded in the conscious-coachman, Mihailo the house-porter, Alyoshka the coachman’s ness cannot be driven out by Father Grigory’s exhortations or grandson, who had come up from the village to stay with his even knocked out by a nail. Makaryevna sighed and whis-grandfather, and Nikandr, an old man of seventy, who used to pered something, drawing in a deep breath, while one-armed come into the yard every evening to sell salt herrings, were sit-Mitka was brooding over something… .
ting round a lantern in the big coach-house, playing “kings.”
“Where there is no sickness, nor grief, nor sighing,” droned Through the wide-open door could be seen the whole yard, the sacristan, covering his right cheek with his hand.
the big house, where the master’s family lived, the gates, the Bluish smoke coiled up from the censer and bathed in the cellars, and the porter’s l odge. It was all shrouded in the dark-broad, slanting patch of sunshine which cut across the gloomy, ness of night, and only the four windows of one of the lodges lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seemed as though the which was let were brightly lit up. The shadows of the coaches soul of the dead woman were soaring into the sunlight to-and sledges with their shafts tipped upwards stretched from the gether with the smoke. The coils of smoke like a child’s curls walls to the doors, quivering and cutting across the shadows eddied round and round, floating upwards to the window cast by the lantern and the players… . On the other side of the and, as it were, holding aloof from the woes and tribulations thin partition that divided the coach-house from the stable were of which that poor soul was full.
the horses. There was a scent of hay, and a disagreeable smell of salt herrings coming from old Nikandr.
The porter won and was king; he assumed an attitude such as was in his opinion befitting a king, and blew his nose loudly 123
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on a red-checked handkerchief.
will pull your ears! Yes, I let the doctors out, and the father and
“Now if I like I can chop off anybody’s head,” he said.
mother in… They have only just arrived. Such crying and wail-Alyoshka, a boy of eight with a head of flaxen hair, left long ing, Lord preserve us! They say he is the only son… . It’s a grief!” uncut, who had only missed being king by two tricks, looked All except Alyoshka, who was absorbed in the game, looked angrily and with envy at the porter. He pouted and frowned.
round at the brightly lighted windows of the lodge.
“I shall give you the trick, grandfather,” he said, pondering
“I have orders to go to the police station tomorrow,” said over his cards; “I know you have got the queen of diamonds.” the porter. “There will be an inquiry … But what do I know
“Well, well, little silly, you have thought enough!” about it? I saw nothing of it. He called me this morning, gave Alyoshka timidly played the knave of diamonds. At that me a letter, and said: ‘Put it in the letter-box for me.’ And his moment a ring was heard from the yard.
eyes were red with crying. His wife and children were not at
“Oh, hang you!” muttered the porter, getting up. “Go and home. They had gone out for a walk. So when I had gone open the gate, O king!”
with the letter, he put a bullet into his forehead from a re-When he came back a little later, Alyoshka was already a volver. When I came back his cook was wailing for the whole prince, the fish-hawker a soldier, and the coachman a peasant.
yard to hear.”
“It’s a nasty business,” said the porter, sitting down to the
“It’s a great sin,” said the fish-hawker in a husky voice, and cards again. “I have just let the doctors out. They have not he shook his head, “a great sin!”
extracted it.”
“From too much learning,” said the porter, taking a trick;
“How could they? Just think, they would have to pick open the
“his wits outstripped his wisdom. Sometimes he would sit brains. If there is a bullet in the head, of what use are doctors?” writing papers all night… . Play, peasant! … But he was a
“He is lying unconscious,” the porter went on. “He is bound nice gentleman. And so white skinned, black-haired and tall!
to die. Alyoshka, don’t look at the cards, you little puppy, or I
… He was a good lodger.”
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The Schoolmistress and other stories
“It seems the fair sex is at the bottom of it,” said the coach-children for the rest of their lives now.” man, slapping the nine of trumps on the king of diamonds.
The porter came back and sat down by the lantern.
“It seems he was fond of another man’s wife and disliked his
“He is dead,” he said. “They have sent to the almshouse for own; it does happen.”
the old women to lay him out.”
“The king rebels,” said the porter.
“The kingdom of heaven and eternal peace to him!” whis-At that moment there was again a ring from the yard. The pered the coachman, and he crossed himself.
rebellious king spat with vexation and went out. Shadows like Looking at him, Alyoshka crossed himself too.
dancing couples flitted across the windows of the lodge. There
“You can’t pray for such as him,” said the fish-hawker.
was the sound of voices and hurried footsteps in the yard.
“Why not?”
“I suppose the doctors have come again,” said the coach-
“It’s a sin.”
man. “Our Mihailo is run off his legs… .”
“That’s true,” the porter assented. “Now his soul has gone A strange wailing voice rang out for a moment in the air.
straight to hell, to the devil… .”
Alyoshka looked in alarm at his grandfather, the coachman;
“It’s a sin,” repeated the fish-hawker; “such as he have no fu-then at the windows, and said:
neral, no requiem, but are buried like carrion with no respect.”
“He stroked me on the head at the gate yesterday, and said, The old man put on his cap and got up.
‘What district do you come from, boy?’ Grandfather, who
“It was the same thing at our lady’s,” he said, pulling his cap was that howled just now?”
on further. “We were serfs in those days; the younger son of His grandfather trimmed the light in the lantern and made our mistress, the General’s lady, shot himself through the no answer.
mouth with a pistol, from too much learning, too. It seems
“The man is lost,” he said a little later, with a yawn. “He is that by law such have to be buried outside the cemetery, with-lost, and his children are ruined, too. It’s a disgrace for his out priests, without a requiem service; but to save disgrace 125
Anton Chekhov
our lady, you know, bribed the police and the doctors, and sacristan. So the sacristan, too, had heard him howling. The they gave her a paper to say her son had done it when deliri-General’s lady saw that it was a bad job; she locked herself in ous, not knowing what he was doing. You can do anything her bedroom with the watchmen. ‘Here, my friends, here are with money. So he had a funeral with priests and every honor, twenty-five roubles for you, and for that go by night in se-the music played, and he was buried in the church; for the cret, so that no one should hear or see you, dig up my un-deceased General had built that church with his own money, happy son, and bury him,’ she said, ‘outside the cemetery.’
and all his family were buried there. Only this is what hap-And I suppose she stood them a glass … And the watchmen pened, friends. One month passed, and then another, and it did so. The stone with the inscription on it is there to this was all right. In the third month they informed the General’s day, but he himself, the General’s son, is outside the cem-lady that the watchmen had come from that same church.
etery… . O Lord, forgive us our transgressions!” sighed the What did they want? They were brought to her, they fell at fish-hawker. “There is only one day in the year when one her feet. ‘We can’t go on serving, your excellency,’ they said.
may pray for such people: the Saturday before Trinity… .
‘Look out for other watchmen and graciously dismiss us.’
You mustn’t give alms to beggars for their sake, it is a sin, but
‘What for?’ ‘No,’ they said, ‘we can’t possibly; your son howls you may feed the birds for the rest of their souls. The General’s under the church all night.’ “
lady used to go out to the crossroads every three days to feed Alyoshka shuddered, and pressed his face to the coachman’s the birds. Once at the cross-roads a black dog suddenly ap-back so as not to see the windows.
peared; it ran up to the bread, and was such a … we all know
“At first the General’s lady would not listen,” continued the what that dog was. The General’s lady was like a half-crazy old man. “‘All this is your fancy, you simple folk have such creature for five days afterwards, she neither ate nor drank… .
notions,’ she said. ‘A dead man cannot howl.’ Some time af-All at once she fell on her knees in the garden, and prayed and terwards the watchmen came to her again, and with them the prayed… . Well, good-by, friends, the blessing of God and 126
The Schoolmistress and other stories the Heavenly Mother be with you. Let us go, Mihailo, you’ll
“Grandfather what are they doing?” asked Alyoshka in a open the gate for me.”
whisper.
The fish-hawker and the porter went out. The coachman
“They are just going to lay him on the tables,” answered his and Alyoshka went out too, so as not to be left in the coach-grandfather. “Let us go, child, it is bedtime.” house.
The coachman and Alyoshka went back to the coach-house.
“The man was living and is dead!” said the coachman, look-They said their prayers, and took off their boots. Stepan lay ing towards the windows where shadows were still flitting to down in a corner on the floor, Alyoshka in a sledge. The doors and fro. “Only this morning he was walking about the yard, of the coach house were shut, there was a horrible stench from and now he is lying dead.”
the extinguished lantern. A little later Alyoshka sat up and
“The time will come and we shall die too,” said the porter, looked about him; through the crack of the door he could walking away with the fish -hawker, and at once they both still see a light from those lighted windows.
vanished from sight in the darkness.
“Grandfather, I am frightened!” he said.
The coachman, and Alyoshka after him, somewhat timidly
“Come, go to sleep, go to sleep! …” went up to the lighted windows. A very pale lady with large
“I tell you I am frightened!”
tear stained eyes, and a fine-looking gray headed man were
“What are you frightened of? What a baby!” moving two card-tables into the middle of the room, prob-They were silent.
ably with the intention of laying the dead man upon them, Alyoshka suddenly jumped out of the sledge and, loudly and on the green cloth of the table numbers could still be weeping, ran to his grandfather.
seen written in chalk. The cook who had run about the yard
“What is it? What’s the matter?” cried the coachman in a wailing in the morning was now standing on a chair, stretch-fright, getting up also.
ing up to try and cover the looking glass with a towel.
“He’s howling!”
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Anton Chekhov
“Who is howling?”
“It’s all right, don’t be frightened… .I am frightened myself… .
“I am frightened, grandfather, do you hear?” Say your prayers!”
The coachman listened.
The door creaked and the porter’s head appeared. “Aren’t
“It’s their crying,” he said. “Come! there, little silly! They you asleep, Stepan?” he asked. “I shan’t get any sleep all night,” are sad, so they are crying.”
he said, coming in. “I shall be opening and shutting the gates
“I want to go home, …” his grandson went on sobbing and all night… . What are you crying for, Alyoshka?” trembling all over. “Grandfather, let us go back to the village,
“He is frightened,” the coachman answered for his grandson.
to mammy; come, grandfather dear, God will give you the Again there was the sound of a wailing voice in the air. The heavenly kingdom for it… .”
porter said:
“What a silly, ah! Come, be quiet, be quiet! Be quiet, I will
“They are crying. The mother can’t believe her eyes… . It’s light the lantern, … silly!”
dreadful how upset she is.”
The coachman fumbled for the matches and lighted the
“And is the father there?”
lantern. But the light did not comfort Alyoshka.
“Yes… . The father is all right. He sits in the corner and says
“Grandfather Stepan, let’s go to the village!” he besought him, nothing. They have taken the children to relations… . Well, weeping. “I am frightened here; oh, oh, how frightened I am!
Stepan, shall we have a game of trumps?” And why did you bring me from the village, accursed man?”
“Yes,” the coachman agreed, scratching himself, “and you,
“Who’s an accursed man? You mustn’t use such disrespect-Alyoshka, go to sleep. Almost big enough to be married, and able words to your lawful grandfather. I shall whip you.” blubbering, you rascal. Come, go along, grandson, go along… .
“Do whip me, grandfather, do; beat me like Sidor’s goat, The presence of the porter reassured Alyoshka. He went, but only take me to mammy, for God’s mercy! …” not very resolutely, towards the sledge and lay down. And
“Come, come, grandson, come!” the coachman said kindly.
while he was falling asleep he heard a half-whisper.
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The Schoolmistress and other stories
“I beat and cover,” said his grandfather.
PANIC FEARS
“I beat and cover,” repeated the porter.
The bell rang in the yard, the door creaked and seemed also DURING ALL THE YEARS I have been living in this world I have saying: “I beat and cover.” When Alyoshka dreamed of the only three times been terrified.
gentleman and, frightened by his eyes, jumped up and burst The first real terror, which made my hair stand on end and out crying, it was morning, his grandfather was snoring, and made shivers run all over me, was caused by a trivial but strange the coach-house no longer seemed terrible.
phenomenon. It happened that, having nothing to do one July evening, I drove to the station for the newspapers. It was a still, warm, almost sultry evening, like all those monotonous evenings in July which, when once they have set in, go on for a week, a fortnight, or sometimes longer, in regular unbroken succession, and are suddenly cut short by a violent thunderstorm and a lavish downpour of rain that refreshes everything for a long time.
The sun had set some time before, and an unbroken gray dusk lay all over the land. The mawkishly sweet scents of the grass and flowers were heavy in the motionless, stagnant air.
I was driving in a rough trolley. Behind my back the gardener’s son Pashka, a boy of eight years old, whom I had taken with me to look after the horse in case of necessity, was gently snoring, with his head on a sack of oats. Our way lay 129
Anton Chekhov
along a narrow by-road, straight as a ruler, which lay hid like
“Have we got to Lukovo?” asked Pashka, lifting his head a great snake in the tall thick rye. There was a pale light from lazily.
the afterglow of sunset; a streak of light cut its way through a
“Yes. Hold the reins! …”
narrow, uncouth-looking cloud, which seemed sometimes like I led the horse down the hill and looked at the village. At a boat and sometimes like a man wrapped in a quilt… .
the first glance one strange circumstance caught my atten-I had driven a mile and a half, or two miles, when against tion: at the very top of the belfry, in the tiny window be-the pale background of the evening glow there came into sight tween the cupola and the bells, a light was twinkling. This one after another some graceful tall poplars; a river glimmered light was like that of a smoldering lamp, at one moment dy-beyond them, and a gorgeous picture suddenly, as though by ing down, at another flickering up. What could it come from?
magic, lay stretched before me. I had to stop the horse, for Its source was beyond my comprehension. It could not be our straight road broke off abruptly and ran down a steep burning at the window, for there were neither ikons nor lamps incline overgrown with bushes. We were standing on the hillin the top turret of the belfry; there was nothing there, as I side and beneath us at the bottom lay a huge hole full of knew, but beams, dust, and spiders’ webs. It was hard to climb twilight, of fantastic shapes, and of space. At the bottom of up into that turret, for the passage to it from the belfry was this hole, in a wide plain guarded by the poplars and caressed closely blocked up.
by the gleaming river, nestled a village. It was now sleeping…
It was more likely than anything else to be the reflection of
. Its huts, its church with the belfry, its trees, stood out against some outside light, but though I strained my eyes to the ut-the gray twilight and were reflected darkly in the smooth sur-most, I could not see one other speck of light in the vast face of the river.
expanse that lay before me. There was no moon. The pale I waked Pashka for fear he should fall out and began cau-and, by now, quite dim streak of the afterglow could not tiously going down.
have been reflected, for the window looked not to the west, 130
The Schoolmistress and other stories but to the east. These and other similar considerations were
“Who can tell?”
straying through my mind all the while that I was going down This brief conversation with the boy reassured me for a the slope with the horse. At the bottom I sat down by the little, but not for long. Pashka, seeing my uneasiness, fas-roadside and looked again at the light. As before it was glim-tened his big eyes upon the light, looked at me again, then mering and flaring up.
again at the light… .
“Strange,” I thought, lost in conjecture. “Very strange.”
“I am frightened,” he whispered.
And little by little I was overcome by an unpleasant feeling.
At this point, beside myself with terror, I clutched the boy At first I thought that this was vexation at not being able to with one hand, huddled up to him, and gave the horse a vio-explain a simple phenomenon; but afterwards, when I sud-lent lash.
denly turned away from the light in horror and caugh t hold
“It’s stupid!” I said to myself. “That phenomenon is only of Pashka with one hand, it became clear that I was overcome terrible because I don’t understand it; everything we don’t un-with terror… .
derstand is mysterious.”
I was seized with a feeling of loneliness, misery, and horror, I tried to persuade myself, but at the same time I did not as though I had been flung down against my will into this leave off lashing the horse. When we reached the posting sta-great hole full of shadows, where I was standing all alone with tion I purposely stayed for a full hour chatting with the over-the belfry looking at me with its red eye.
seer, and read through two or three newspapers, but the feel-
“Pashka!” I cried, closing my eyes in horror.
ing of uneasiness did not leave me. On the way back the light
“Well?”
was not to be seen, but on the other hand the silhouettes of
“Pashka, what’s that gleaming on the belfry?” the huts, of the poplars, and of the hill up which I had to Pashka looked over my shoulder at the belfry and gave a drive, seemed to me as though animated. And why the light yawn.
was there I don’t know to this day.
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The second terror I experienced was excited by a circum-I remember I was happy, very happy.
stance no less trivial… . I was returning from a romantic in-I had gone not more than three-quarters of a mile when I terview. It was one o’clock at night, the time when nature is suddenly heard behind me a monotonous sound, a rumbling, buried in the soundest, sweetest sleep before the dawn. That rather like the roar of a great stream. It grew louder and louder time nature was not sleeping, and one could not call the night every second, and sounded nearer and nearer. I looked round; a still one. Corncrakes, quails, nightingales, and woodcocks a hundred paces from me was the dark copse from which I were calling, crickets and grasshoppers were chirruping. There had only just come; there the embankment turned to the right was a light mist over the grass, and clouds were scurrying in a graceful curve and vanished among the trees. I stood still straight ahead across the sky near the moon. Nature was awake, in perplexity and waited. A huge black body appeared at once as though afraid of missing the best moments of her life.
at the turn, noisily darted towards me, and with the swiftness I walked along a narrow path at the very edge of a railway of a bird flew past me along the rails. Less than half a minute embankment. The moonlight glided over the lines which were passed and the blur had vanished, the rumble melted away already covered with dew. Great shadows from the clouds into the noise of the night.
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