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A.P. Chekhov
- At a Country House
PAVEL ILYITCH RASHEVITCH walked up and down,
stepping softly on the floor covered with little Russian plaids,
and casting a long shadow on the wall and ceiling while his
guest, Meier, the deputy examining magistrate, sat on the sofa
with one leg drawn up under him smoking and listening. The clock
already pointed to eleven, and there were sounds of the table
being laid in the room next to the study.
"Say what you like," Rashevitch was saying, "from the standpoint
of fraternity, equality, and the rest of it, Mitka, the
swineherd, is perhaps a man the same as Goethe and Frederick the
Great; but take your stand on a scientific basis, have the
courage to look facts in the face, and it will be obvious to you
that blue blood is not a mere prejudice, that it is not a
feminine invention. Blue blood, my dear fellow, has an
historical justification, and to refuse to recognize it is, to
my thinking, as strange as to refuse to recognize the antlers on
a stag. One must reckon with facts! You are a law student and
have confined your attention to the humane studies, and you can
still flatter yourself with illusions of equality, fraternity,
and so on; I am an incorrigible Darwinian, and for me words such
as lineage, aristocracy, noble blood, are not empty sounds."
Rashevitch was roused and spoke with feeling. His eyes sparkled,
his pince-nez would not stay on his nose, he kept nervously
shrugging his shoulders and blinking, and at the word
"Darwinian" he looked jauntily in the looking-glass and combed
his grey beard with both hands. He was wearing a very short and
shabby reefer jacket and narrow trousers; the rapidity of his
movements, his jaunty air, and his abbreviated jacket all seemed
out of keeping with him, and his big comely head, with long hair
suggestive of a bishop or a veteran poet, seemed to have been
fixed on to the body of a tall, lanky, affected youth. When he
stood with his legs wide apart, his long shadow looked like a
pair of scissors.
He was fond of talking, and he always fancied that he was saying
something new and original. In the presence of Meier he was
conscious of an unusual flow of spirits and rush of ideas. He
found the examining magistrate sympathetic, and was stimulated
by his youth, his health, his good manners, his dignity, and,
above all, by his cordial attitude to himself and his family.
Rashevitch was not a favourite with his acquaintances; as a rule
they fought shy of him, and, as he knew, declared that he had
driven his wife into her grave with his talking, and they called
him, behind his back, a spiteful creature and a toad. Meier, a
man new to the district and unprejudiced, visited him often and
readily and had even been known to say that Rashevitch and his
daughters were the only people in the district with whom he felt
as much at home as with his own people. Rashevitch liked him
too, because he was a young man who might be a good match for
his elder daughter, Genya.
And now, enjoying his ideas and the sound of his own voice, and
looking with pleasure at the plump but well-proportioned, neatly
cropped, correct Meier, Rashevitch dreamed of how he would
arrange his daughter's marriage with a good man, and then how
all his worries over the estate would pass to his son-in-law.
Hateful worries! The interest owing to the bank had not been
paid for the last two quarters, and fines and arrears of all
sorts had mounted up to more than two thousand.
"To my mind there can be no doubt," Rashevitch went on, growing
more and more enthusiastic, "that if a Richard Coeur-de-Lion, or
Frederick Barbarossa, for instance, is brave and noble those
qualities will pass by heredity to his son, together with the
convolutions and bumps of the brain, and if that courage and
nobility of soul are preserved in the son by means of education
and exercise, and if he marries a princess who is also noble and
brave, those qualities will be transmitted to his grandson, and
so on, until they become a generic characteristic and pass
organically into the flesh and blood. Thanks to a strict sexual
selection, to the fact that high-born families have
instinctively guarded themselves against marriage with their
inferiors, and young men of high rank have not married just
anybody, lofty, spiritual qualities have been transmitted from
generation to generation in their full purity, have been
preserved, and as time goes on have, through exercise, become
more exalted and lofty. For the fact that there is good in
humanity we are indebted to nature, to the normal, natural,
consistent order of things, which has throughout the ages
scrupulously segregated blue blood from plebeian. Yes, my dear
boy, no low lout, no cook's son has given us literature,
science, art, law, conceptions of honour and duty. . . . For all
these things mankind is indebted exclusively to the aristocracy,
and from that point of view, the point of view of natural
history, an inferior Sobakevitch by the very fact of his blue
blood is superior and more useful than the very best merchant,
even though the latter may have built fifteen museums. Say what
you like! And when I refuse to shake hands with a low lout or a
cook's son, or to let him sit down to table with me, by that
very act I am safeguarding what is the best thing on earth, and
am carrying out one of Mother Nature's finest designs for
leading us up to perfection. . ."
Rashevitch stood still, combing his beard with both hands; his
shadow, too, stood still on the wall, looking like a pair of
scissors.
"Take Mother-Russia now," he went on, thrusting his hands in his
pockets and standing first on his heels and then on his toes.
"Who are her best people? Take our first-rate painters, writers,
composers. . . . Who are they? They were all of aristocratic
origin. Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Gontcharov, Tolstoy, they
were not sexton's children."
"Gontcharov was a merchant," said Meier.
"Well, the exception only proves the rule. Besides, Gontcharov's
genius is quite open to dispute. But let us drop names and turn
to facts. What would you say, my good sir, for instance, to this
eloquent fact: when one of the mob forces his way where he has
not been permitted before, into society, into the world of
learning, of literature, into the Zemstvo or the law courts,
observe, Nature herself, first of all, champions the higher
rights of humanity, and is the first to wage war on the rabble.
As soon as the plebeian forces himself into a place he is not
fit for he begins to ail, to go into consumption, to go out of
his mind, and to degenerate, and nowhere do we find so many
puny, neurotic wrecks, consumptives, and starvelings of all
sorts as among these darlings. They die like flies in autumn. If
it were not for this providential degeneration there would not
have been a stone left standing of our civilization, the rabble
would have demolished everything. Tell me, if you please, what
has the inroad of the barbarians given us so far? What has the
rabble brought with it?" Rashevitch assumed a mysterious,
frightened expression, and went on: "Never has literature and
learning been at such low ebb among us as now. The men of
to-day, my good sir, have neither ideas nor ideals, and all
their sayings and doings are permeated by one spirit--to get all
they can and to strip someone to his last thread. All these men
of to-day who give themselves out as honest and progressive
people can be bought at a rouble a piece, and the distinguishing
mark of the 'intellectual' of to-day is that you have to keep
strict watch over your pocket when you talk to him, or else he
will run off with your purse." Rashevitch winked and burst out
laughing. "Upon my soul, he will! he said, in a thin, gleeful
voice. "And morals! What of their morals?" Rashevitch looked
round towards the door. "No one is surprised nowadays when a
wife robs and leaves her husband. What's that, a trifle!
Nowadays, my dear boy, a chit of a girl of twelve is scheming to
get a lover, and all these amateur theatricals and literary
evenings are only invented to make it easier to get a rich
merchant to take a girl on as his mistress. . . . Mothers sell
their daughters, and people make no bones about asking a husband
at what price he sells his wife, and one can haggle over the
bargain, you know, my dear. . . ."
Meier, who had been sitting motionless and silent all the time,
suddenly got up from the sofa and looked at his watch.
"I beg your pardon, Pavel Ilyitch," he said, "it is time for me
to be going."
But Pavel Ilyitch, who had not finished his remarks, put his arm
round him and, forcibly reseating him on the sofa, vowed that he
would not let him go without supper. And again Meier sat and
listened, but he looked at Rashevitch with perplexity and
uneasiness, as though he were only now beginning to understand
him. Patches of red came into his face. And when at last a
maidservant came in to tell them that the young ladies asked
them to go to supper, he gave a sigh of relief and was the first
to walk out of the study.
At the table in the next room were Rashevitch's daughters, Genya
and Iraida, girls of four-and-twenty and two-and-twenty
respectively, both very pale, with black eyes, and exactly the
same height. Genya had her hair down, and Iraida had hers done
up high on her head. Before eating anything they each drank a
wineglassful of bitter liqueur, with an air as though they had
drunk it by accident for the first time in their lives and both
were overcome with confusion and burst out laughing.
"Don't be naughty, girls," said Rashevitch.
Genya and Iraida talked French with each other, and Russian with
their father and their visitor. Interrupting one another, and
mixing up French words with Russian, they began rapidly
describing how just at this time in August, in previous years,
they had set off to the hoarding school and what fun it had
been. Now there was nowhere to go, and they had to stay at their
home in the country, summer and winter without change. Such
dreariness!
"Don't be naughty, girls," Rashevitch said again.
He wanted to be talking himself. If other people talked in his
presence, he suffered from a feeling like jealousy.
"So that's how it is, my dear boy," he began, looking
affectionately at Meier. "In the simplicity and goodness of our
hearts, and from fear of being suspected of being behind the
times, we fraternize with, excuse me, all sorts of riff-raff, we
preach fraternity and equality with money-lenders and
innkeepers; but if we would only think, we should see how
criminal that good-nature is. We have brought things to such a
pass, that the fate of civilization is hanging on a hair. My
dear fellow, what our forefathers gained in the course of ages
will be to-morrow, if not to-day, outraged and destroyed by
these modern Huns. . . ."
After supper they all went into the drawing-room. Genya and
Iraida lighted the candles on the piano, got out their music. .
. . But their father still went on talking, and there was no
telling when he would leave off. They looked with misery and
vexation at their egoist-father, to whom the pleasure of
chattering and displaying his intelligence was evidently more
precious and important than his daughters' happiness. Meier, the
only young man who ever came to their house, came--they
knew--for the sake of their charming, feminine society, but the
irrepressible old man had taken possession of him, and would not
let him move a step away.
"Just as the knights of the west repelled the invasions of the
Mongols, so we, before it is too late, ought to unite and strike
together against our foe," Rashevitch went on in the tone of a
preacher, holding up his right hand. "May I appear to the
riff-raff not as Pavel Ilyitch, but as a mighty, menacing
Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Let us give up sloppy sentimentality;
enough of it! Let us all make a compact, that as soon as a
plebeian comes near us we fling some careless phrase straight in
his ugly face: 'Paws off! Go back to your kennel, you cur!'
straight in his ugly face," Rashevitch went on gleefully,
flicking his crooked finger in front of him. "In his ugly face!"
"I can't do that," Meier brought out, turning away.
"Why not?" Rashevitch answered briskly, anticipating a prolonged
and interesting argument. "Why not?"
"Because I am of the artisan class myself!"
As he said this Meier turned crimson, and his neck seemed to
swell, and tears actually gleamed in his eyes.
"My father was a simple workman," he said, in a rough, jerky
voice, "but I see no harm in that."
Rashevitch was fearfully confused. Dumbfoundered, as though he
had been caught in the act of a crime, he gazed helplessly at
Meier, and did not know what to say. Genya and Iraida flushed
crimson, and bent over their music; they were ashamed of their
tactless father. A minute passed in silence, and there was a
feeling of unbearable discomfort, when all at once with a sort
of painful stiffness and inappropriateness, there sounded in the
air the words:
"Yes, I am of the artisan class, and I am proud of it!"
Thereupon Meier, stumbling awkwardly among the furniture, took
his leave, and walked rapidly into the hall, though his carriage
was not yet at the door.
"You'll have a dark drive to-night," Rashevitch muttered,
following him. "The moon does not rise till late to-night."
They stood together on the steps in the dark, and waited for the
horses to be brought. It was cool.
"There's a falling star," said Meier, wrapping himself in his
overcoat.
"There are a great many in August."
When the horses were at the door, Rashevitch gazed intently at
the sky, and said with a sigh:
"A phenomenon worthy of the pen of Flammarion. . . ."
After seeing his visitor off, he walked up and down the garden,
gesticulating in the darkness, reluctant to believe that such a
queer, stupid misunderstanding had only just occurred. He was
ashamed and vexed with himself. In the first place it had been
extremely incautious and tactless on his part to raise the
damnable subject of blue blood, without finding out beforehand
what his visitor's position was. Something of the same sort had
happened to him before; he had, on one occasion in a railway
carriage, begun abusing the Germans, and it had afterwards
appeared that all the persons he had been conversing with were
German. In the second place he felt that Meier would never come
and see him again. These intellectuals who have risen from the
people are morbidly sensitive, obstinate and slow to forgive.
"It's bad, it's bad," muttered Rashevitch, spitting; he had a
feeling of discomfort and loathing as though he had eaten soap.
"Ah, it's bad!"
He could see from the garden, through the drawing-room window,
Genya by the piano, very pale, and looking scared, with her hair
down. She was talking very, very rapidly. . . . Iraida was
walking up and down the room, lost in thought; but now she, too,
began talking rapidly with her face full of indignation. They
were both talking at once. Rashevitch could not hear a word, but
he guessed what they were talking about. Genya was probably
complaining that her father drove away every decent person from
the house with his talk, and to-day he had driven away from them
their one acquaintance, perhaps a suitor, and now the poor young
man would not have one place in the whole district where he
could find rest for his soul. And judging by the despairing way
in which she threw up her arms, Iraida was talking probably on
the subject of their dreary existence, their wasted youth. . . .
When he reached his own room, Rashevitch sat down on his bed and
began to undress. He felt oppressed, and he was still haunted by
the same feeling as though he had eaten soap. He was ashamed. As
he undressed he looked at his long, sinewy, elderly legs, and
remembered that in the district they called him the "toad," and
after every long conversation he always felt ashamed. Somehow or
other, by some fatality, it always happened that he began
mildly, amicably, with good intentions, calling himself an old
student, an idealist, a Quixote, but without being himself aware
of it, gradually passed into abuse and slander, and what was
most surprising, with perfect sincerity criticized science, art
and morals, though he had not read a book for the last twenty
years, had been nowhere farther than their provincial town, and
did not really know what was going on in the world. If he sat
down to write anything, if it were only a letter of
congratulation, there would somehow be abuse in the letter. And
all this was strange, because in reality he was a man of
feeling, given to tears, Could he be possessed by some devil
which hated and slandered in him, apart from his own will?
"It's bad," he sighed, as he lay down under the quilt. "It's
bad."
His daughters did not sleep either. There was a sound of
laughter and screaming, as though someone was being pursued; it
was Genya in hysterics. A little later Iraida was sobbing too. A
maidservant ran barefoot up and down the passage several times.
. . .
"What a business! Good Lord! . . ." muttered Rashevitch, sighing
and tossing from side to side. "It's bad."
He had a nightmare. He dreamt he was standing naked, as tall as
a giraffe, in the middle of the room, and saying, as he flicked
his finger before him:
"In his ugly face! his ugly face! his ugly face!"
He woke up in a fright, and first of all remembered that a
misunderstanding had happened in the evening, and that Meier
would certainly not come again. He remembered, too, that he had
to pay the interest at the bank, to find husbands for his
daughters, that one must have food and drink, and close at hand
were illness, old age, unpleasantnesses, that soon it would be
winter, and that there was no wood. . . .
It was past nine o'clock in the morning. Rashevitch slowly
dressed, drank his tea and ate two hunks of bread and butter.
His daughters did not come down to breakfast; they did not want
to meet him, and that wounded him. He lay down on his sofa in
his study, then sat down to his table and began writing a letter
to his daughters. His hand shook and his eyes smarted. He wrote
that he was old, and no use to anyone and that nobody loved him,
and he begged his daughters to forget him, and when he died to
bury him in a plain, deal coffin without ceremony, or to send
his body to Harkov to the dissecting theatre. He felt that every
line he wrote reeked of malice and affectation, but he could not
stop, and went on writing and writing.
"The toad!" he suddenly heard from the next room; it was the
voice of his elder daughter, a voice with a hiss of indignation.
"The toad!"
"The toad!" the younger one repeated like an echo. "The toad!"
NOTES
little Russian plaids: floor covering made in the Ukraine of
thick cloth
Goethe and Frederick the Great: 1749-1832, German author of
Faust; Frederick the Great (1712-1786) was King of Prussia and a
military leader
Richard Coeur-de-Lion, or Frederick Barbarossa: Richard the
Lion-Hearted (1157-1199), king of England who was famous for his
bravery; Frederick Barbarossa (1122-1190) was Holy Roman
Emperor, and a noted warrior
inferior Sobakevitch: Sobakevich was a curmudgeonly landowner
and glutton in Gogol's novel Dead Souls
Gontcharov: I. A. Goncharov (1812-1891) the Russian novelist who
wrote Oblomov
Flammarion: Camille Flammarion (1842-1925) was a French
popularizer of astronomy
Quixote: hero of Cervantes' novel Don Quixote
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