Anton Chekhov: Plays, Short Stories, Diary & Letters (Collected Edition). Anton Chekhov
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as a gentleman… .”
Nikolay Sergeitch walked about the room, heaved a sigh, and went on:
“Then you want me to have it rankling here, under my heart…. You want my conscience to torment me… .”
“I know it’s not your fault, Nikolay Sergeitch,” said Mashenka, looking him full in the face with her big tear-stained eyes. “Why should you worry yourself?”
“Of course, no…. But still, don’t you… go away. I entreat you.”
Mashenka shook her head. Nikolay Sergeitch stopped at the window and drummed on the pane with his finger-tips.
“Such misunderstandings are simply torture to me,” he said. “Why, do you want me to go down on my knees to you, or what? Your pride is wounded, and here you’ve been crying and packing up to go; but I have pride, too, and you do not spare it! Or do you want me to tell you what I would not tell as Confession? Do you? Listen; you want me to tell you what I won’t tell the priest on my deathbed?”
Mashenka made no answer.
“I took my wife’s brooch,” Nikolay Sergeitch said quickly. “Is that enough now? Are you satisfied? Yes, I… took it…. But, of course, I count on your discretion…. For God’s sake, not a word, not half a hint to any one!”
Mashenka, amazed and frightened, went on packing; she snatched her things, crumpled them up, and thrust them anyhow into the box and the basket. Now, after this candid avowal on the part of Nikolay Sergeitch, she could not remain another minute, and could not understand how she could have gone on living in the house before.
“And it’s nothing to wonder at,” Nikolay Sergeitch went on after a pause. “It’s an everyday story! I need money, and she… won’t give it to me. It was my father’s money that bought this house and everything, you know! It’s all mine, and the brooch belonged to my mother, and… it’s all mine! And she took it, took possession of everything…. I can’t go to law with her, you’ll admit…. I beg you most earnestly, overlook it… stay on. Tout comprendre, tout pardonner. Will you stay?”
“No!” said Mashenka resolutely, beginning to tremble. “Let me alone, I entreat you!”
“Well, God bless you!” sighed Nikolay Sergeitch, sitting down on the stool near the box. “I must own I like people who still can feel resentment, contempt, and so on. I could sit here forever and look at your indignant face…. So you won’t stay, then? I understand…. It’s bound to be so… Yes, of course…. It’s all right for you, but for me — wo-o-o-o!… I can’t stir a step out of this cellar. I’d go off to one of our estates, but in every one of them there are some of my wife’s rascals… stewards, experts, damn them all! They mortgage and remortgage…. You mustn’t catch fish, must keep off the grass, mustn’t break the trees.”
“Nikolay Sergeitch!” his wife’s voice called from the drawing-room. “Agnia, call your master!”
“Then you won’t stay?” asked Nikolay Sergeitch, getting up quickly and going towards the door. “You might as well stay, really. In the evenings I could come and have a talk with you. Eh? Stay! If you go, there won’t be a human face left in the house. It’s awful!”
Nikolay Sergeitch’s pale, exhausted face besought her, but Mashenka shook her head, and with a wave of his hand he went out.
Half an hour later she was on her way.
AN ACTOR’S END
Translation By Constance Garnett
SHTCHIPTSOV, the “heavy father” and “good-hearted simpleton,” a tall and thick-set old man, not so much distinguished by his talents as an actor as by his exceptional physical strength, had a desperate quarrel with the manager during the performance, and just when the storm of words was at its height felt as though something had snapped in his chest. Zhukov, the manager, as a rule began at the end of every heated discussion to laugh hysterically and to fall into a swoon; on this occasion, however, Shtchiptsov did not remain for this climax, but hurried home. The high words and the sensation of something ruptured in his chest so agitated him as he left the theatre that he forgot to wash off his paint, and did nothing but take off his beard.
When he reached his hotel room, Shtchiptsov spent a long time pacing up and down, then sat down on the bed, propped his head on his fists, and sank into thought. He sat like that without stirring or uttering a sound till two o’clock the next afternoon, when Sigaev, the comic man, walked into his room.
“Why is it you did not come to the rehearsal, Booby Ivanitch?” the comic man began, panting and filling the room with fumes of vodka. “Where have you been?”
Shtchiptsov made no answer, but simply stared at the comic man with lustreless eyes, under which there were smudges of paint.
“You might at least have washed your phiz!” Sigaev went on. “You are a disgraceful sight! Have you been boozing, or… are you ill, or what? But why don’t you speak? I am asking you: are you ill?”
Shtchiptsov did not speak. In spite of the paint on his face, the comic man could not help noticing his striking pallor, the drops of sweat on his forehead, and the twitching of his lips. His hands and feet were trembling too, and the whole huge figure of the “goodnatured simpleton” looked somehow crushed and flattened. The comic man took a rapid glance round the room, but saw neither bottle nor flask nor any other suspicious vessel.
“I say, Mishutka, you know you are ill!” he said in a flutter. “Strike me dead, you are ill! You don’t look yourself!”
Shtchiptsov remained silent and stared disconsolately at the floor.
“You must have caught cold,” said Sigaev, taking him by the hand. “Oh, dear, how hot your hands are! What’s the trouble?”
“I wa-ant to go home,” muttered Shtchiptsov.
“But you are at home now, aren’t you?”
“No…. To Vyazma… .”
“Oh, my, anywhere else! It would take you three years to get to your Vyazma…. What? do you want to go and see your daddy and mummy? I’ll be bound, they’ve kicked the bucket years ago, and you won’t find their graves… .”
“My ho-ome’s there.”
“Come, it’s no good giving way to the dismal dumps. These neurotic feelings are the limit, old man. You must get well, for you have to play Mitka in ‘The Terrible Tsar’ tomorrow. There is nobody else to do it. Drink something hot and take some castor-oil? Have you got the money for some castor-oil? Or, stay, I’ll run and buy some.”
The comic man fumbled in his pockets, found a fifteen-kopeck piece, and ran to the chemist’s. A quarter of an hour later he came back.
“Come, drink it,” he said, holding the bottle to the “heavy father’s” mouth. “Drink it straight out of the bottle…. All at a go! That’s the way…. Now nibble at a clove that your very soul mayn’t stink of the filthy stuff.”
The comic man sat a little longer with his sick friend, then kissed him tenderly, and went away. Towards evening the jeune premier, Brama-Glinsky, ran in to see Shtchiptsov. The gifted actor was wearing a pair of prunella boots, had a glove on his left hand, was smoking a cigar, and even smelt of heliotrope, yet nevertheless he strongly suggested a traveller cast away in some land in which there were neither baths nor laundresses nor tailors….
“I hear you are ill?” he said to Shtchiptsov, twirling round on his heel. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you, really? …”
Shtchiptsov