Selected early short stories 1882-1885

store-room. There I was shown five large trunks, and a number of smaller trunks and boxes.

'This is her trousseau,' her mother whispered; 'we made it all ourselves.'

After looking at these forbidding trunks I took leave of my hospitable hostesses. They made me promise to come and see them again some day.

It happened that I was able to keep this promise. Seven years after my first visit, I was sent down to the little town to give expert evidence in a case that was being tried there.

As I entered the little house I heard the same 'Ach!' echo through it. They recognised me at once. . . . Well they might! My first visit had been an event in their lives, and when events are few they are long remembered.

I walked into the drawing-room: the mother, who had grown stouter and was already getting grey, was creeping about on the floor, cutting out some blue material. The daughter was sitting on the sofa, embroidering.

There was the same smell of moth powder; there were the same patterns, the same portrait with the broken glass. But yet there was a change. Beside the portrait of the bishop hung a portrait of the Colonel, and the ladies were in mourning. The Colonel's death had occurred a week after his promotion to be a general.

Reminiscences began. . . . The widow shed tears.

'We have had a terrible loss,' she said. 'My husband, you know, is dead. We are alone in the world now, and have no one but ourselves to look to. Yegor Semyonitch is alive, but I have no good news to tell of him. They would not have him in the monastery on account of -- of intoxicating beverages. And now in his disappointment he drinks more than ever. I am thinking of going to the Marshal of Nobility to lodge a complaint. Would you believe it, he has more than once broken open the trunks and . . . taken Manetchka's trousseau and given it to beggars. He has taken everything out of two of the trunks! If he goes on like this, my Manetchka will be left without a trousseau at all.'

'What are you saying, mamam?' said Manetchka, embarrassed. 'Our visitor might suppose . . . there's no knowing what he might suppose. . . . I shall never -- never marry.'

Manetchka cast her eyes up to the ceiling with a look of hope and aspiration, evidently not for a moment believing what she said.

A little bald-headed masculine figure in a brown coat and goloshes instead of boots darted like a mouse across the passage and disappeared. 'Yegor Semyonitch, I suppose,' I thought.

I looked at the mother and daughter together. They both looked much older and terribly changed. The mother's hair was silvered, but the daughter was so faded and withered that her mother might have been taken for her elder sister, not more than five years her senior.

'I have made up my mind to go to the Marshal,' the mother said to me, forgetting she had told me this already. 'I mean to make a complaint. Yegor Semyonitch lays his hands on everything we make, and offers it up for the sake of his soul. My Manetchka is left without a trousseau.'

Manetchka flushed again, but this time she said nothing.

'We have to make them all over again. And God knows we are not so well off. We are all alone in the world now.'

'We are alone in the world,' repeated Manetchka.

A year ago fate brought me once more to the little house.

Walking into the drawing-room, I saw the old lady. Dressed all in black with heavy crape pleureuses, she was sitting on the sofa sewing. Beside her sat the little old man in the brown coat and the goloshes instead of boots. On seeing me, he jumped up and ran out of the room.

In response to my greeting, the old lady smiled and said:

'Je suis charmee de vous revoir, monsieur.'

'What are you making?' I asked, a little later.

'It's a blouse. When it's finished I shall take it to the priest's to be put away, or else Yegor Semyonitch would carry it off. I store everything at the priest's now,' she added in a whisper.

And looking at the portrait of her daughter which stood before her on the table, she sighed and said:

'We are all alone in the world.'

And where was the daughter? Where was Manetchka? I did not ask. I did not dare to ask the old mother dressed in her new deep mourning. And while I was in the room, and when I got up to go, no Manetchka came out to greet me. I did not hear her voice, nor her soft, timid footstep. . . .

I understood, and my heart was heavy.

NOTES

Ou est mon cravatte lequel mon pere m'avait envoye de Koursk? : Where is my tie, the one my father sent me from Koursk?

Ah, est-ce que, Marie . . . que: Oh, is it that, Marie . . . that

Nous avons donc chez nous un homme peu connu de nous: Because we have with us a man not well known to us

we speak French: French was the primary language of Russian aristocrats; however, by Chekhov's time speaking French was considered an affectation

Dressed all in black with heavy crape pleureuses: mourning clothes

'Je suis charmee de vous revoir, monsieur: I'm charmed to see you again, sir

* * *

A DAUGHTER OF ALBION

by Anton Chekhov

A FINE carriage with rubber tyres, a fat coachman, and velvet on the seats, rolled up to the house of a landowner called Gryabov. Fyodor Andreitch Otsov, the district Marshal of Nobility, jumped out of the carriage. A drowsy footman met him in the hall.

'Are the family at home?' asked the Marshal.

'No, sir. The mistress and the children are gone out paying visits, while the master and mademoiselle are catching fish. Fishing all the morning, sir.

Otsov stood a little, thought a little, and then went to the river to look for Gryabov. Going down to the river he found him a mile and a half from the house. Looking down from the steep bank and catching sight of Gryabov, Otsov gushed with laughter. . . . Gryabov, a large stout man, with a very big head, was sitting on the sand, angling, with his legs tucked under him like a Turk. His hat was on the back of his head and his cravat had slipped on one side. Beside him stood a tall thin Englishwoman, with prominent eyes like a crab's, and a big bird-like nose more like a hook than a nose. She was dressed in a white muslin gown through which her scraggy yellow shoulders were very distinctly apparent. On her gold belt hung a little gold watch. She too was angling. The stillness of the grave reigned about them both. Both were motionless, as the river upon which their floats were swimming.

'A desperate passion, but deadly dull!' laughed Otsov. 'Good-day, Ivan Kuzmitch.'

'Ah . . . is that you ?' asked Gryabov, not taking his eyes off the water. 'Have you come?'

'As you see . . . . And you are still taken up with your crazy nonsense! Not given it up yet?'

'The devil's in it. . . . I begin in the morning and fish all day. . . . The fishing is not up to much to-day. I've caught nothing and this dummy hasn't either. We sit on and on and not a devil of a fish! I could scream!'

'Well, chuck it up then. Let's go and have some vodka!'

'Wait a little, maybe we shall catch something. Towards evening the fish bite better . . . . I've been sitting here, my boy, ever since the morning! I can't tell you how fearfully boring it is. It was the devil drove me to take to this fishing! I know that it is rotten idiocy for me to sit here. I sit here like some scoundrel, like a convict, and I stare at the water like a fool. I ought to go to the haymaking, but here I sit catching fish. Yesterday His Holiness held a service at Haponyevo, but I didn't go. I spent the day here with this . . . with this she-devil.'

'But . . . have you taken leave of your senses?' asked Otsov, glancing in embarrassment at the Englishwoman. 'Using such language before a lady and she . . . .'

'Oh, confound her, it doesn't matter, she doesn't understand a syllable of Russian, whether you praise her or