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A. P. Chekhov
- The Black Monk
I
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III IV
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VIII
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IV
Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya often quarrelled
and said nasty things to each other.
They quarrelled about something that morning. Tanya burst out
crying and went to her room. She would not come down to dinner
nor to tea. At first Yegor Semyonitch went about looking sulky
and dignified, as though to give every one to understand that
for him the claims of justice and good order were more important
than anything else in the world; but he could not keep it up for
long, and soon sank into depression. He walked about the park
dejectedly, continually sighing: "Oh, my God! My God!" and at
dinner did not eat a morsel. At last, guilty and
conscience-stricken, he knocked at the locked door and called
timidly:
"Tanya! Tanya!"
And from behind the door came a faint voice, weak with crying
but still determined:
"Leave me alone, if you please."
The depression of the master and mistress was reflected in the
whole household, even in the labourers working in the garden.
Kovrin was absorbed in his interesting work, but at last he,
too, felt dreary and uncomfortable. To dissipate the general
ill-humour in some way, he made up his mind to intervene, and
towards evening he knocked at Tanya's door. He was admitted.
"Fie, fie, for shame!" he began playfully, looking with surprise
at Tanya's tear-stained, woebegone face, flushed in patches with
crying. "Is it really so serious? Fie, fie!"
"But if you knew how he tortures me!" she said, and floods of
scalding tears streamed from her big eyes. "He torments me to
death," she went on, wringing her hands. "I said nothing to him
. . . nothing . . . I only said that there was no need to keep .
. . too many labourers . . . if we could hire them by the day
when we wanted them. You know . . . you know the labourers have
been doing nothing for a whole week. . . . I . . . I . . . only
said that, and he shouted and . . . said . . . a lot of horrible
insulting things to me. What for?"
"There, there," said Kovrin, smoothing her hair. "You've
quarrelled with each other, you've cried, and that's enough. You
must not be angry for long -- that's wrong . . . all the more as
he loves you beyond everything."
"He has . . . has spoiled my whole life," Tanya went on,
sobbing. "I hear nothing but abuse and . . . insults. He thinks
I am of no use in the house. Well! He is right. I shall go away
to-morrow; I shall become a telegraph clerk. . . . I don't care.
. . ."
"Come, come, come. . . . You mustn't cry, Tanya. You mustn't,
dear. . . . You are both hot-tempered and irritable, and you are
both to blame. Come along; I will reconcile you."
Kovrin talked affectionately and persuasively, while she went on
crying, twitching her shoulders and wringing her hands, as
though some terrible misfortune had really befallen her. He felt
all the sorrier for her because her grief was not a serious one,
yet she suffered extremely. What trivialities were enough to
make this little creature miserable for a whole day, perhaps for
her whole life! Comforting Tanya, Kovrin thought that, apart
from this girl and her father, he might hunt the world over and
would not find people who would love him as one of themselves,
as one of their kindred. If it had not been for those two he
might very likely, having lost his father and mother in early
childhood, never to the day of his death have known what was
meant by genuine affection and that nave, uncritical love which
is only lavished on very close blood relations; and he felt that
the nerves of this weeping, shaking girl responded to his
half-sick, overstrained nerves like iron to a magnet. He never
could have loved a healthy, strong, rosy-cheeked woman, but
pale, weak, unhappy Tanya attracted him.
And he liked stroking her hair and her shoulders, pressing her
hand and wiping away her tears. . . . At last she left off
crying. She went on for a long time complaining of her father
and her hard, insufferable life in that house, entreating Kovrin
to put himself in her place; then she began, little by little,
smiling, and sighing that God had given her such a bad temper.
At last, laughing aloud, she called herself a fool, and ran out
of the room.
When a little later Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor
Semyonitch and Tanya were walking side by side along an avenue
as though nothing had happened, and both were eating rye bread
with salt on it, as both were hungry.
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