Short Fiction by Anton Chekhov (libby ebook reader .txt) 📕

The silhouette was that of a man.⁠ ⁠… Looking more closely, Pavel Ivanitch recognised his wife’s brother, Mitya, a student, who was staying with them at the villa.

“Oh, it’s you⁠ ⁠…” he growled discontentedly, as he took off his hat and sat down.

“Yes, it’s I⁠ ⁠…” answered Mitya.

Two minutes passed in silence.

“Excuse me, Pavel Ivanitch,” began Mitya: “but might I ask you to leave me alone?⁠ ⁠… I am thinking over the dissertation for my degree and⁠ ⁠… and the presence of anybody else prevents my thinking.”

“You had better go somewhere in a dark avenue⁠ ⁠…” Pavel Ivanitch observed mildly. “It’s easier to think in the open air, and, besides,⁠ ⁠… er⁠ ⁠… I should like to have a little sleep here on this seat⁠ ⁠… It’s not so hot here.⁠ ⁠…”

“You want to sleep, but it’s a question of my dissertation⁠ ⁠…” Mitya grumbled. “The dissertation is more important.”

Again there was a silence. Pavel Ivanitch, who had given the rein to his imagination and was continually hearing footsteps, suddenly leaped up and said in a plaintive voice:

“Come, I beg you, Mitya! You are younger and ought to consider me.⁠ ⁠… I am unwell and⁠ ⁠… I need sleep.⁠ ⁠… Go away!”

“That’s egoism.⁠ ⁠… Why must you be here and not I? I won’t go as a matter of principle.”

“Come, I ask you to! Suppose I am an egoist, a despot and a fool⁠ ⁠… but I ask you to go! For once in my life I ask you a favour! Show some consideration!”

Mitya shook his head.

“What a beast!⁠ ⁠…” thought Pavel Ivanitch. “That can’t be a rendezvous with him here! It’s impossible with him here!”

“I say, Mitya,” he said, “I ask you for the last time.⁠ ⁠… Show that you are a sensible, humane, and cultivated man!”

“I don’t know why you keep on so!”⁠ ⁠… said Mitya, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve said I won’t go, and I won’t. I shall stay here as a matter of principle.⁠ ⁠…”

At that moment a woman’s face with a turn-up nose peeped into the arbour.⁠ ⁠…

Seeing Mitya and Pavel Ivanitch, it frowned and vanished.

“She is gone!” thought Pavel Ivanitch, looking angrily at Mitya. “She saw that blackguard and fled! It’s all spoilt!”

After waiting a little longer, he got up, put on his hat and said:

“You’re a beast, a low brute and a blackguard! Yes! A beast! It’s mean⁠ ⁠… and silly! Everything is at an end between us!”

“Delighted to hear it!” muttered Mitya, also getting up and putting on his hat. “Let me tell you that by being here just now you’ve played me such a dirty trick that I’ll never forgive you as long as I live.”

Pavel Ivanitch went out of the arbour, and beside himself with rage, strode rapidly to his villa. Even the sight of the table laid for supper did not soothe him.

“Once in a lifetime such a chance has turned up,” he thought in agitation; “and then it’s been prevented! Now she is offended⁠ ⁠… crushed!”

At supper Pavel Ivanitch and Mitya kept their eyes on their plates and maintained a sullen silence.⁠ ⁠… They were hating each other from the bottom of their hearts.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Pavel Ivanitch, pouncing on his wife. “It’s only silly fools who laugh for nothing!”

His wife looked at her husband’s angry face, and went off into a peal of laughter.

“What was that letter you got this morning?” she asked.

“I?⁠ ⁠… I didn’t get one.⁠ ⁠…” Pavel Ivanitch was overcome with confusion. “You are inventing⁠ ⁠… imagination.”

“Oh, come, tell us! Own up, you did! Why, it was I sent you that letter! Honour bright, I did! Ha ha!”

Pavel Ivanitch turned crimson and bent over his plate. “Silly jokes,” he growled.

“But what could I do? Tell me that.⁠ ⁠… We had to scrub the rooms out this evening, and how could we get you out of the house? There was no other way of getting you out.⁠ ⁠… But don’t be angry, stupid.⁠ ⁠… I didn’t want you to be dull in the arbour, so I sent the same letter to Mitya too! Mitya, have you been to the arbour?”

Mitya grinned and left off glaring with hatred at his rival.

During all the years I have been living in this world I have only three times been terrified.

The first real terror, which made my hair stand on end and made shivers run all over me, was caused by a trivial but strange phenomenon. It happened that, having nothing to do one July evening, I drove to the station for the newspapers. It was a still, warm, almost sultry evening, like all those monotonous evenings in July which, when once they have set in, go on for a week, a fortnight, or sometimes longer, in regular unbroken succession, and are suddenly cut short by a violent thunderstorm and a lavish downpour of rain that refreshes everything for a long time.

The sun had set some time before, and an unbroken gray dusk lay all over the land. The mawkishly sweet scents of the grass and flowers were heavy in the motionless, stagnant air.

I was driving in a rough trolley. Behind my back the gardener’s son Pashka, a boy of eight years old, whom I had taken with me to look after the horse in case of necessity, was gently snoring, with his head on a sack of oats. Our way lay along a narrow byroad, straight as a ruler, which lay hid like a great snake in the tall thick rye. There was a pale light from the afterglow of sunset; a streak of light cut its way through a narrow, uncouth-looking cloud, which seemed sometimes like a boat and sometimes like a man wrapped in a quilt.⁠ ⁠…

I had driven a mile and a half, or two miles, when against the pale background of the evening glow there came into sight one after another some graceful tall poplars; a river glimmered beyond them, and a gorgeous picture suddenly, as though by magic, lay stretched before me. I had to stop the horse, for our straight road broke off abruptly and