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A. Chekhov
- Three Years
I
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III IV
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VIII
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XVII
III The proposal Laptev had made so suddenly threw Yulia Sergeyevna
into despair.
She knew Laptev very little, had made his acquaintance by
chance; he was a rich man, a partner in the well-known Moscow
firm of "Fyodor Laptev and Sons"; always serious, apparently
clever, and anxious about his sister s illness. It had seemed to
her that he took no notice of her whatever, and she did not care
about him in the least -- and then all of a sudden that
declaration on the stairs, that pitiful, ecstatic face. . . .
The offer had overwhelmed her by its suddenness and by the fact
that the word wife had been uttered, and by the necessity of
rejecting it. She could not remember what she had said to Laptev,
but she still felt traces of the sudden, unpleasant feeling with
which she had rejected him. He did not attract her; he looked
like a shopman; he was not interesting; she could not have
answered him except with a refusal, and yet she felt
uncomfortable, as though she had done wrong.
"My God! without waiting to get into the room, on the stairs,"
she said to herself in despair, addressing the ikon which hung
over her pillow; "and no courting beforehand, but so strangely,
so oddly. . . ."
In her solitude her agitation grew more intense every hour, and
it was beyond her strength to master this oppressive feeling
alone. She needed some one to listen to her story and to tell
her that she had done right. But she had no one to talk to. She
had lost her mother long before; she thought her father a queer
man, and could not talk to him seriously. He worried her with
his whims, his extreme readiness to take offence, and his
meaningless gestures; and as soon as one began to talk to him,
he promptly turned the conversation on himself. And in her
prayer she was not perfectly open, because she did not know for
certain what she ought to pray for.
The samovar was brought in. Yulia Sergeyevna, very pale and
tired, looking dejected, came into the dining-room to make tea
-- it was one of her duties -- and poured out a glass for her
father. Sergey Borisovitch, in his long coat that reached below
his knees, with his red face and unkempt hair, walked up and
down the room with his hands in his pockets, pacing, not from
corner to corner, but backwards and forwards at random, like a
wild beast in its cage. He would stand still by the table, sip
his glass of tea with relish, and pace about again, lost in
thought.
"Laptev made me an offer to-day," said Yulia Sergeyevna, and she
flushed crimson.
The doctor looked at her and did not seem to understand.
"Laptev?" he queried. "Panaurov's brother-in-law?"
He was fond of his daughter; it was most likely that she would
sooner or later be married, and leave him, but he tried not to
think about that. He was afraid of being alone, and for some
reason fancied, that if he were left alone in that great house,
he would have an apoplectic stroke, but he did not like to speak
of this directly.
"Well, I'm delighted to hear it," he said, shrugging his
shoulders. "I congratulate you with all my heart. It offers you
a splendid opportunity for leaving me, to your great
satisfaction. And I quite understand your feelings. To live with
an old father, an invalid, half crazy, must be very irksome at
your age. I quite understand you. And the sooner I'm laid out
and in the devil's clutches, the better every one will be
pleased. I congratulate you with all my heart."
"I refused him."
The doctor felt relieved, but he was unable to stop himself and
went on:
"I wonder, I've long wondered, why I've not yet been put into a
madhouse -- why I'm still wearing this coat instead of a
strait-waistcoat? I still have faith in justice, in goodness. I
am a fool, an idealist, and nowadays that's insanity, isn't it?
And how do they repay me for my honesty? They almost throw
stones at me and ride rough-shod over me. And even my nearest
kith and kin do nothing but try to get the better of me. It's
high time the devil fetched an old fool like me. . . ."
"There's no talking to you like a rational being!" said Yulia.
She got up from the table impulsively, and went to her room in
great wrath, remembering how often her father had been unjust to
her. But a little while afterwards she felt sorry for her
father, too, and when he was going to the club she went
downstairs with him, and shut the door after him. It was a rough
and stormy night; the door shook with the violence of the wind,
and there were draughts in all directions in the passage, so
that the candle was almost blown out. In her own domain upstairs
Yulia Sergeyevna went the round of all the rooms, making the
sign of the cross over every door and window; the wind howled,
and it sounded as though some one were walking on the roof.
Never had it been so dreary, never had she felt so lonely.
She asked herself whether she had done right in rejecting a man,
simply because his appearance did not attract her. It was true
he was a man she did not love, and to marry him would mean
renouncing forever her dreams, her conceptions of happiness in
married life, but would she ever meet the man of whom she
dreamed, and would he love her? She was twenty-one already.
There were no eligible young men in the town. She pictured all
the men she knew -- government clerks, schoolmasters, officers,
and some of them were married already, and their domestic life
was conspicuous for its dreariness and triviality; others were
uninteresting, colourless, unintelligent, immoral. Laptev was,
anyway, a Moscow man, had taken his degree at the university,
spoke French. He lived in the capital, where there were lots of
clever, noble, remarkable people; where there was noise and
bustle, splendid theatres, musical evenings, first-rate
dressmakers, confectioners. . . . In the Bible it was written
that a wife must love her husband, and great importance was
given to love in novels, but wasn't there exaggeration in it?
Was it out of the question to enter upon married life without
love? It was said, of course, that love soon passed away, and
that nothing was left but habit, and that the object of married
life was not to be found in love, nor in happiness, but in
duties, such as the bringing up of one's children, the care of
one's household, and so on. And perhaps what was meant in the
Bible was love for one's husband as one's neighbour, respect for
him, charity.
At night Yulia Sergeyevna read the evening prayers attentively,
then knelt down, and pressing her hands to her bosom, gazing at
the flame of the lamp before the ikon, said with feeling:
"Give me understanding, Holy Mother, our Defender! Give me
understanding, O Lord!"
She had in the course of her life come across elderly maiden
ladies, poor and of no consequence in the world, who bitterly
repented and openly confessed their regret that they had refused
suitors in the past. Would not the same thing happen to her? Had
not she better go into a convent or become a Sister of Mercy?
She undressed and got into bed, crossing herself and crossing
the air around her. Suddenly the bell rang sharply and
plaintively in the corridor.
"Oh, my God!" she said, feeling a nervous irritation all over
her at the sound. She lay still and kept thinking how poor this
provincial life was in events, monotonous and yet not peaceful.
One was constantly having to tremble, to feel apprehensive,
angry or guilty, and in the end one's nerves were so strained,
that one was afraid to peep out of the bedclothes.
A little while afterwards the bell rang just as sharply again.
The servant must have been asleep and had not heard. Yulia
Sergeyevna lighted a candle, and feeling vexed with the servant,
began with a shiver to dress, and when she went out into the
corridor, the maid was already closing the door downstairs.
"I thought it was the master, but it's some one from a patient,"
she said.
Yulia Sergeyevna went back to her room. She took a pack of cards
out of the chest of drawers, and decided that if after shuffling
the cards well and cutting, the bottom card turned out to be a
red one, it would mean yes -- that is, she would accept Laptev's
offer; and that if it was a black, it would mean no. The card
turned out to be the ten of spades.
That relieved her mind -- she fell asleep; but in the morning,
she was wavering again between yes and no, and she was dwelling
on the thought that she could, if she chose, change her life.
The thought harassed her, she felt exhausted and unwell; but
yet, soon after eleven, she dressed and went to see Nina
Fyodorovna. She wanted to see Laptev: perhaps now he would seem
more attractive to her; perhaps she had been wrong about him
hitherto. . . .
She found it hard to walk against the wind. She struggled along,
holding her hat on with both hands, and could see nothing for
the dust.
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