VOYNITSKY. [Agitated] Perhaps you don't need me -- may I be excused?
SEREBRYAKOV. No, you are needed now more than any one.
VOYNITSKY. What is it you want of me?
SEREBRYAKOV. 'Want of you'? -- but what are you angry about? [A pause] If it is anything I have done, I ask you to forgive me.
VOYNITSKY. Oh, drop that tone and come to business; what do you want?
MME. VOYNITSKAYA comes in.
SEREBRYAKOV. Here is mother. Ladies and gentlemen, I shall begin. [A pause] Ladies and gentlemen, I have invited you here to announce that an inspector general is coming to visit us -- Joking aside, I do have something serious to say. I want to ask you for your assistance and advice, and knowing your unfailing amiability I think I can count on both. I am a book-worm and a scholar, and am unfamiliar with practical affairs. I cannot, I find, dispense with the help of well-informed people such as you, Ivan, and you, Telegin, and you, mother. The truth is, manet omnes una nox, that is to say, our lives are in the hands of God, and as I am old and ill, I realise that the time has come for me to dispose of my property in regard to the interests of my family. My life is nearly over, and I am not thinking of myself, but I have a young wife and unmarried daughter. [A pause] I cannot continue to live in the country; we were not made for country life, and yet we cannot afford to live in town on the income derived from this estate. We might sell the woods, but that would be an expedient we could not resort to every year. We must find some means of guaranteeing to ourselves a certain more or less fixed yearly income. With this object in view, a plan has occurred to me which I now have the honour of presenting to you for your consideration. I shall only give you a rough outline, avoiding all details. Our estate does not pay on an average more than two per cent on the money invested in it. I propose to sell it. If we then invest our capital in bonds, it will earn us four to five per cent, and we should probably have a surplus of several thousand roubles, with which we could buy a summer cottage in Finland --
VOYNITSKY. Hold on! Repeat what you just said; I don't think I heard you quite right.
SEREBRYAKOV. I said we would invest the money in bonds and buy a cottage in Finland with the surplus.
VOYNITSKY. No, not Finland -- you said something else.
SEREBRYAKOV. I propose to sell this place.
VOYNITSKY. Aha! That was it! So you're going to sell the place? Wonderful. That's a brilliant idea. And what do you propose to do with my old mother and me and with Sonya here?
SEREBRYAKOV. That will be decided in due time. We can't do everything at once.
VOYNITSKY. Wait! It's clear that until this moment I have never had a grain of sense in my head. I've always been stupid enough to think that the estate belonged to Sonya. My father bought it as a wedding present for my sister, and I foolishly imagined that as our laws were made for Russians and not Turks, my sister's estate would come down to her child.
SEREBRYAKOV. Of course the estate is Sonya's. Has any one denied it? I don't want to sell it without Sonya's consent; on the contrary, what I am doing is for Sonya's good.
VOYNITSKY. This is absolutely incomprehensible. Either I have gone mad or -- or --
