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A.P. Chekhov
- At Home
I II
III
I
THE Don railway. A quiet, cheerless station,
white and solitary in the steppe, with its walls baking in the
sun, without a speck of shade, and, it seems, without a human
being. The train goes on after leaving one here; the sound of it
is scarcely audible and dies away at last. Outside the station
it is a desert, and there are no horses but one's own. One gets
into the carriage -- which is so pleasant after the train -- and
is borne along the road through the steppe, and by degrees there
are unfolded before one views such as one does not see near
Moscow -- immense, endless, fascinating in their monotony. The
steppe, the steppe, and nothing more; in the distance an ancient
barrow or a windmill; ox-waggons laden with coal trail by. . . .
Solitary birds fly low over the plain, and a drowsy feeling
comes with the monotonous beat of their wings. It is hot.
Another hour or so passes, and still the steppe, the steppe, and
still in the distance the barrow. The driver tells you
something, some long unnecessary tale, pointing into the
distance with his whip. And tranquillity takes possession of the
soul; one is loth to think of the past. . . .
A carriage with three horses had been sent to fetch Vera
Ivanovna Kardin. The driver put in her luggage and set the
harness to rights.
"Everything just as it always has been," said Vera, looking
about her. "I was a little girl when I was here last, ten years
ago. I remember old Boris came to fetch me then. Is he still
living, I wonder?"
The driver made no reply, but, like a Little Russian, looked at
her angrily and clambered on to the box.
It was a twenty-mile drive from the station, and Vera, too,
abandoned herself to the charm of the steppe, forgot the past,
and thought only of the wide expanse, of the freedom. Healthy,
clever, beautiful, and young -- she was only three-and-twenty --
she had hitherto lacked nothing in her life but just this space
and freedom.
The steppe, the steppe. . . . The horses trotted, the sun rose
higher and higher; and it seemed to Vera that never in her
childhood had the steppe been so rich, so luxuriant in June; the
wild flowers were green, yellow, lilac, white, and a fragrance
rose from them and from the warmed earth; and there were strange
blue birds along the roadside. . . . Vera had long got out of
the habit of praying, but now, struggling with drowsiness, she
murmured:
"Lord, grant that I may be happy here."
And there was peace and sweetness in her soul, and she felt as
though she would have been glad to drive like that all her life,
looking at the steppe.
Suddenly there was a deep ravine overgrown with oak saplings and
alder-trees; there was a moist feeling in the air -- there must
have been a spring at the bottom. On the near side, on the very
edge of the ravine, a covey of partridges rose noisily. Vera
remembered that in old days they used to go for evening walks to
this ravine; so it must be near home! And now she could actually
see the poplars, the barn, black smoke rising on one side --
they were burning old straw. And there was Auntie Dasha coming
to meet her and waving her handkerchief; grandfather was on the
terrace. Oh dear, how happy she was!
"My darling, my darling!" cried her aunt, shrieking as though
she were in hysterics. "Our real mistress has come! You must
understand you are our mistress, you are our queen! Here
everything is yours! My darling, my beauty, I am not your aunt,
but your willing slave!"
Vera had no relations but her aunt and her grandfather; her
mother had long been dead; her father, an engineer, had died
three months before at Kazan, on his way from Siberia. Her
grandfather had a big grey beard. He was stout, red-faced, and
asthmatic, and walked leaning on a cane and sticking his stomach
out. Her aunt, a lady of forty-two, drawn in tightly at the
waist and fashionably dressed with sleeves high on the shoulder,
evidently tried to look young and was still anxious to be
charming; she walked with tiny steps with a wriggle of her
spine.
"Will you love us?" she said, embracing Vera, "You are not
proud?"
At her grandfather's wish there was a thanksgiving service, then
they spent a long while over dinner -- and Vera's new life
began. She was given the best room. All the rugs in the house
had been put in it, and a great many flowers; and when at night
she lay down in her snug, wide, very soft bed and covered
herself with a silk quilt that smelt of old clothes long stored
away, she laughed with pleasure. Auntie Dasha came in for a
minute to wish her good-night.
"Here you are home again, thank God," she said, sitting down on
the bed. "As you see, we get along very well and have everything
we want. There's only one thing: your grandfather is in a poor
way! A terribly poor way! He is short of breath and he has begun
to lose his memory. And you remember how strong, how vigorous,
he used to be! There was no doing anything with him. . . . In
old days, if the servants didn't please him or anything else
went wrong, he would jump up at once and shout: 'Twenty-five
strokes! The birch!' But now he has grown milder and you never
hear him. And besides, times are changed, my precious; one
mayn't beat them nowadays. Of course, they oughtn't to be
beaten, but they need looking after."
"And are they beaten now, auntie?" asked Vera.
"The steward beats them sometimes, but I never do, bless their
hearts! And your grandfather sometimes lifts his stick from old
habit, but he never beats them."
Auntie Dasha yawned and crossed herself over her mouth and her
right ear.
"It's not dull here?" Vera inquired.
"What shall I say? There are no landowners living here now, but
there have been works built near, darling, and there are lots of
engineers, doctors, and mine managers. Of course, we have
theatricals and concerts, but we play cards more than anything.
They come to us, too. Dr. Neshtchapov from the works comes to
see us -- such a handsome, interesting man! He fell in love with
your photograph. I made up my mind: he is Verotchka's destiny, I
thought. He's young, handsome, he has means -- a good match, in
fact. And of course you're a match for any one. You're of good
family. The place is mortgaged, it's true, but it's in good
order and not neglected; there is my share in it, but it will
all come to you; I am your willing slave. And my brother, your
father, left you fifteen thousand roubles. . . . But I see you
can't keep your eyes open. Sleep, my child."
Next day Vera spent a long time walking round the house. The
garden, which was old and unattractive, lying inconveniently
upon the slope, had no paths, and was utterly neglected;
probably the care of it was regarded as an unnecessary item in
the management. There were numbers of grass-snakes. Hoopoes flew
about under the trees calling "Oo-too-toot!" as though they were
trying to remind her of something. At the bottom of the hill
there was a river overgrown with tall reeds, and half a mile
beyond the river was the village. From the garden Vera went out
into the fields; looking into the distance, thinking of her new
life in her own home, she kept trying to grasp what was in store
for her. The space, the lovely peace of the steppe, told her
that happiness was near at hand, and perhaps was here already;
thousands of people, in fact, would have said: "What happiness
to be young, healthy, well-educated, to be living on one's own
estate!" And at the same time the endless plain, all alike,
without one living soul, frightened her, and at moments it was
clear to her that its peaceful green vastness would swallow up
her life and reduce it to nothingness. She was very young,
elegant, fond of life; she had finished her studies at an
aristocratic boarding-school, had learnt three languages, had
read a great deal, had travelled with her father -- and could
all this have been meant to lead to nothing but settling down in
a remote country-house in the steppe, and wandering day after
day from the garden into the fields and from the fields into the
garden to while away the time, and then sitting at home
listening to her grandfather's breathing? But what could she do?
Where could she go? She could find no answer, and as she was
returning home she doubted whether she would be happy here, and
thought that driving from the station was far more interesting
than living here.
Dr. Neshtchapov drove over from the works. He was a doctor, but
three years previously he had taken a share in the works, and
had become one of the partners; and now he no longer looked upon
medicine as his chief vocation, though he still practised. In
appearance he was a pale, dark man in a white waistcoat, with a
good figure; but to guess what there was in his heart and his
brain was difficult. He kissed Auntie Dasha's hand on greeting
her, and was continually leaping up to set a chair or give his
seat to some one. He was very silent and grave all the while,
and, when he did speak, it was for some reason impossible to
hear and understand his first sentence, though he spoke
correctly and not in a low voice.
"You play the piano?" he asked Vera, and immediately leapt up,
as she had dropped her handkerchief.
He stayed from midday to midnight without speaking, and Vera
found him very unattractive. She thought that a white waistcoat
in the country was bad form, and his elaborate politeness, his
manners, and his pale, serious face with dark eyebrows, were
mawkish; and it seemed to her that he was perpetually silent,
probably because he was stupid. When he had gone her aunt said
enthusiastically:
"Well? Isn't he charming?"
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