Selected plays

in love with Irina and hates the baron. . . . That's natural. Irina is a very nice girl.

[From the background behind the scenes, 'Aa-oo! Halloo!']

IRINA [shudders]. Everything frightens me somehow today [a pause]. All my things are ready, after dinner I'll send off my luggage. The baron and I are to be married tomorrow, tomorrow we go to the brick factory and the day after that I'll be in the school. A new life is beginning. God will help me! How will it fare with me? When I passed my exam as a teacher I felt so happy, so blissful, that I cried . . . [a pause]. The cart will soon be coming for my things. . . .

KULYGIN. That's all very well, but it does not seem serious. It's all nothing but ideas and very little that is serious. However, I wish you success with all my heart.

CHEBUTYKIN [moved to tenderness]. My good, delightful darling. . . . My heart of gold. . . .

KULYGIN. Well, today the officers will be gone and everything will go on in the old way. Whatever people may say, Masha is a true, good woman. I love her dearly and am thankful for my lot! . . . People have different lots in life, . . . There is a man called Kozyrev serving in the Excise here. He was at school with me, but he was expelled from the fifth form because he could never understand ut consecutivum. Now he's frightfully poor and ill, and when I meet him I say, 'How are you, ut consecutivum?' 'Yes,' he says, 'just so -- consecutivum' . . . and then he coughs. . . . Now I've always been successful, I'm fortunate, I've even got the order of the Stanislav of the second degree and I'm teaching others that ut consecutivum. Of course I'm clever, cleverer than very many people, but happiness doesn't lie in that . . . [a pause].

[In the house the 'Maiden's Prayer' is played on the piano.]

IRINA. Tomorrow evening I'll not be hearing that 'Maiden's Prayer,' I won't be meeting Protopopov . . . [a pause]. Protopopov is sitting there in the drawing-room; he's come again today. . . .

KULYGIN. The headmistress hasn't come yet?

IRINA. No. They've sent for her. If only you knew how hard it is for me to live here alone, without Olya, . . . Now that she is headmistress and lives at the high-school and is busy all day long, I'm alone, I'm bored, I have nothing to do, and I hate the room I live in. . . . I've made up my mind, since I'm not fated to be in Moscow, that so it must be. It must be destiny. There's no help for it, . . . It's all in God's hands, that's the truth. When Nikolay Lvovitch made me an offer again . . . I thought it over and made up my mind, . . . He's a good man, it's wonderful really how good he is. . . . And I suddenly felt as though my soul had grown wings, my heart felt so light and again I longed for work, work. . . . Only something happened yesterday, there's some mystery hanging over me.

CHEBUTYKIN. Nonsense.

NATASHA [at the window]. Our headmistress!

KULYGIN. The headmistress has come. Let's go in [goes into the house with IRINA].

CHEBUTYKIN [reads the newspaper, humming softly]. 'Tarara-boom-dee-ay.'

[MASHA approaches; in the background ANDREY is pushing the baby carriage.]

MASHA. Here he sits, snug and settled.

CHEBUTYKIN. Well, why not?