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The Black Monk
- A.P. Chekhov
I
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VIII
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VI
Learning from Kovrin that not only a romance
had been got up, but that there would even be a wedding, Yegor
Semyonitch spent a long time in pacing from one corner of the
room to the other, trying to conceal his agitation. His hands
began trembling, his neck swelled and turned purple, he ordered
his racing droshky and drove off somewhere. Tanya, seeing how he
lashed the horse, and seeing how he pulled his cap over his
ears, understood what he was feeling, shut herself up in her
room, and cried the whole day.
In the hot-houses the peaches and plums were already ripe; the
packing and sending off of these tender and fragile goods to
Moscow took a great deal of care, work, and trouble. Owing to
the fact that the summer was very hot and dry, it was necessary
to water every tree, and a great deal of time and labour was
spent on doing it. Numbers of caterpillars made their
appearance, which, to Kovrin's disgust, the labourers and even
Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya squashed with their fingers. In spite
of all that, they had already to book autumn orders for fruit
and trees, and to carry on a great deal of correspondence. And
at the very busiest time, when no one seemed to have a free
moment, the work of the fields carried off more than half their
labourers from the garden. Yegor Semyonitch, sunburnt,
exhausted, ill-humoured, galloped from the fields to the garden
and back again; cried that he was being torn to pieces, and that
he should put a bullet through his brains.
Then came the fuss and worry of the trousseau, to which the
Pesotskys attached a good deal of importance. Every one's head
was in a whirl from the snipping of the scissors, the rattle of
the sewing-machine, the smell of hot irons, and the caprices of
the dressmaker, a huffy and nervous lady. And, as ill-luck would
have it, visitors came every day, who had to be entertained,
fed, and even put up for the night. But all this hard labour
passed unnoticed as though in a fog. Tanya felt that love and
happiness had taken her unawares, though she had, since she was
fourteen, for some reason been convinced that Kovrin would marry
her and no one else. She was bewildered, could not grasp it,
could not believe herself. . . . At one minute such joy would
swoop down upon her that she longed to fly away to the clouds
and there pray to God, at another moment she would remember that
in August she would have to part from her home and leave her
father; or, goodness knows why, the idea would occur to her that
she was worthless -- insignificant and unworthy of a great man
like Kovrin -- and she would go to her room, lock herself in,
and cry bitterly for several hours. When there were visitors,
she would suddenly fancy that Kovrin looked extraordinarily
handsome, and that all the women were in love with him and
envying her, and her soul was filled with pride and rapture, as
though she had vanquished the whole world; but he had only to
smile politely at any young lady for her to be trembling with
jealousy, to retreat to her room -- and tears again. These new
sensations mastered her completely; she helped her father
mechanically, without noticing peaches, caterpillars or
labourers, or how rapidly the time was passing.
It was almost the same with Yegor Semyonitch. He worked from
morning till night, was always in a hurry, was irritable, and
flew into rages, but all of this was in a sort of spellbound
dream. It seemed as though there were two men in him: one was
the real Yegor Semyonitch, who was moved to indignation, and
clutched his head in despair when he heard of some irregularity
from Ivan Karlovitch the gardener; and another -- not the real
one -- who seemed as though he were half drunk, would interrupt
a business conversation at half a word, touch the gardener on
the shoulder, and begin muttering:
"Say what you like, there is a great deal in blood. His mother
was a wonderful woman, most high-minded and intelligent. It was
a pleasure to look at her good, candid, pure face; it was like
the face of an angel. She drew splendidly, wrote verses, spoke
five foreign languages, sang. . . . Poor thing! she died of
consumption. The Kingdom of Heaven be hers."
The unreal Yegor Semyonitch sighed, and after a pause went on:
"When he was a boy and growing up in my house, he had the same
angelic face, good and candid. The way he looks and talks and
moves is as soft and elegant as his mother's. And his intellect!
We were always struck with his intelligence. To be sure, it's
not for nothing he's a Master of Arts! It's not for nothing! And
wait a bit, Ivan Karlovitch, what will he be in ten years' time?
He will be far above us!"
But at this point the real Yegor Semyonitch, suddenly coming to
himself, would make a terrible face, would clutch his head and
cry:
"The devils! They have spoilt everything! They have ruined
everything! They have spoilt everything! The garden's done for,
the garden's ruined!"
Kovrin, meanwhile, worked with the same ardour as before, and
did not notice the general commotion. Love only added fuel to
the flames. After every talk with Tanya he went to his room,
happy and triumphant, took up his book or his manuscript with
the same passion with which he had just kissed Tanya and told
her of his love. What the black monk had told him of the chosen
of God, of eternal truth, of the brilliant future of mankind and
so on, gave peculiar and extraordinary significance to his work,
and filled his soul with pride and the consciousness of his own
exalted consequence. Once or twice a week, in the park or in the
house, he met the black monk and had long conversations with
him, but this did not alarm him, but, on the contrary, delighted
him, as he was now firmly persuaded that such apparitions only
visited the elect few who rise up above their fellows and devote
themselves to the service of the idea.
One day the monk appeared at dinner-time and sat in the
dining-room window. Kovrin was delighted, and very adroitly
began a conversation with Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya of what
might be of interest to the monk; the black-robed visitor
listened and nodded his head graciously, and Yegor Semyonitch
and Tanya listened, too, and smiled gaily without suspecting
that Kovrin was not talking to them but to his hallucination.
Imperceptibly the fast of the Assumption was approaching, and
soon after came the wedding, which, at Yegor Semyonitch's urgent
desire, was celebrated with "a flourish" -- that is, with
senseless festivities that lasted for two whole days and nights.
Three thousand roubles' worth of food and drink was consumed,
but the music of the wretched hired band, the noisy toasts, the
scurrying to and fro of the footmen, the uproar and crowding,
prevented them from appreciating the taste of the expensive
wines and wonderful delicacies ordered from Moscow.
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