Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (73 page)

A TRIVIAL INCIDENT

Translated by Constance Garnett 1886

IT was a sunny August midday as, in company with a Russian prince who had come down in the world, I drove into the immense so-called Shabelsky pine-forest where we were intending to look for woodcocks. In virtue of the part he plays in this story my poor prince deserves a detailed description. He was a tall, dark man, still youngish, though already somewhat battered by life; with long moustaches like a police captain’s; with prominent black eyes, and with the manners of a retired army man. He was a man of Oriental type, not very intelligent, but straightforward and honest, not a bully, not a fop, and not a rake -- virtues which, in the eyes of the general public, are equivalent to a certificate of being a nonentity and a poor creature. People generally did not like him (he was never spoken of in the district, except as “the illustrious duffer”). I personally found the poor prince extremely nice with his misfortunes and failures, which made up indeed his whole life. First of all he was poor. He did not play cards, did not drink, had no occupation, did not poke his nose into anything, and maintained a perpetual silence but yet he had somehow succeeded in getting through thirty to forty thousand roubles left him at his father’s death. God only knows what had become of the money. All that I can say is that owing to lack of supervision a great deal was stolen by stewards, bailiffs, and even footmen; a great deal went on lending money, giving bail, and standing security. There were few landowners in the district who did not owe him money. He gave to all who asked, and not so much from good nature or confidence in people as from exaggerated gentlemanliness as though he would say: “Take it and feel how
comme il faut
I am!” By the time I made his acquaintance he had got into debt himself, had learned what it was like to have a second mortgage on his land, and had sunk so deeply into difficulties that there was no chance of his ever getting out of them again. There were days when he had no dinner, and went about with an empty cigar-holder, but he was always seen clean and fashionably dressed, and always smelt strongly of ylang-ylang.

The prince’s second misfortune was his absolute solitariness. He was not married, he had no friends nor relations. His silent and reserved character and his
comme il faut
deportment, which became the more conspicuous the more anxious he was to conceal his poverty, prevented him from becoming intimate with people. For love affairs he was too heavy, spiritless, and cold, and so rarely got on with women....

When we reached the forest this prince and I got out of the chaise and walked along a narrow woodland path which was hidden among huge ferns. But before we had gone a hundred paces a tall, lank figure with a long oval face, wearing a shabby reefer jacket, a straw hat, and patent leather boots, rose up from behind a young fir-tree some three feet high, as though he had sprung out of the ground. The stranger held in one hand a basket of mushrooms, with the other he playfully fingered a cheap watch-chain on his waistcoat. On seeing us he was taken aback, smoothed his waistcoat, coughed politely, and gave an agreeable smile, as though he were delighted to see such nice people as us. Then, to our complete surprise, he came up to us, scraping with his long feet on the grass, bending his whole person, and, still smiling agreeably, lifted his hat and pronounced in a sugary voice with the intonations of a whining dog:

“Aie, aie... gentlemen, painful as it is, it is my duty to warn you that shooting is forbidden in this wood. Pardon me for venturing to disturb you, though unacquainted, but... allow me to present myself. I am Grontovsky, the head clerk on Madame Kandurin’s estate.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, but why can’t we shoot?”

“Such is the wish of the owner of this forest!”

The prince and I exchanged glances. A moment passed in silence. The prince stood looking pensively at a big fly agaric at his feet, which he had crushed with his stick. Grontovsky went on smiling agreeably. His whole face was twitching, exuding honey, and even the watch-chain on his waistcoat seemed to be smiling and trying to impress us all with its refinement. A shade of embarrassment passed over us like an angel passing; all three of us felt awkward.

“Nonsense!” I said. “Only last week I was shooting here!”

“Very possible!” Grontovsky sniggered through his teeth. “As a matter of fact everyone shoots here regardless of the prohibition. But once I have met you, it is my duty... my sacred duty to warn you. I am a man in a dependent position. If the forest were mine, on the word of honour of a Grontovsky, I should not oppose your agreeable pleasure. But whose fault is it that I am in a dependent position?”

The lanky individual sighed and shrugged his shoulders. I began arguing, getting hot and protesting, but the more loudly and impressively I spoke the more mawkish and sugary Grontovsky’s face became. Evidently the consciousness of a certain power over us afforded him the greatest gratification. He was enjoying his condescending tone, his politeness, his manners, and with peculiar relish pronounced his sonorous surname, of which he was probably very fond. Standing before us he felt more than at ease, but judging from the confused sideway glances he cast from time to time at his basket, only one thing was spoiling his satisfaction -- the mushrooms, womanish, peasantish, prose, derogatory to his dignity.

“We can’t go back!” I said. “We have come over ten miles!”

“What’s to be done?” sighed Grontovsky. “If you had come not ten but a hundred thousand miles, if the king even had come from America or from some other distant land, even then I should think it my duty... sacred, so to say, obligation . . .”

“Does the forest belong to Nadyezhda Lvovna?” asked the prince.

“Yes, Nadyezhda Lvovna . . .”

“Is she at home now?”

“Yes... I tell you what, you go to her, it is not more than half a mile from here; if she gives you a note, then I.... I needn’t say! Ha -- ha... he -- he -- !”

“By all means,” I agreed. “It’s much nearer than to go back.... You go to her, Sergey Ivanitch,” I said, addressing the prince. “You know her.”

The prince, who had been gazing the whole time at the crushed agaric, raised his eyes to me, thought a minute, and said:

“I used to know her at one time, but... it’s rather awkward for me to go to her. Besides, I am in shabby clothes.... You go, you don’t know her.... It’s more suitable for you to go.”

I agreed. We got into our chaise and, followed by Grontovsky’s smiles, drove along the edge of the forest to the manor house. I was not acquainted with Nadyezhda Lvovna Kandurin, née Shabelsky. I had never seen her at close quarters, and knew her only by hearsay. I knew that she was incredibly wealthy, richer than anyone else in the province. After the death of her father, Shabelsky, who was a landowner with no other children, she was left with several estates, a stud farm, and a lot of money. I had heard that, though she was only twenty-five or twenty-six, she was ugly, uninteresting, and as insignificant as anybody, and was only distinguished from the ordinary ladies of the district by her immense wealth.

It has always seemed to me that wealth is felt, and that the rich must have special feelings unknown to the poor. Often as I passed by Nadyezhda Lvovna’s big fruit garden, in which stood the large, heavy house with its windows always curtained, I thought: “What is she thinking at this moment? Is there happiness behind those blinds?” and so on. Once I saw her from a distance in a fine light cabriolet, driving a handsome white horse, and, sinful man that I am, I not only envied her, but even thought that in her poses, in her movements, there was something special, not to be found in people who are not rich, just as persons of a servile nature succeed in discovering “good family” at the first glance in people of the most ordinary exterior, if they are a little more distinguished than themselves. Nadyezhda Lvovna’s inner life was only known to me by scandal. It was said in the district that five or six years ago, before she was married, during her father’s lifetime, she had been passionately in love with Prince Sergey Ivanitch, who was now beside me in the chaise. The prince had been fond of visiting her father, and used to spend whole days in his billiard room, where he played pyramids indefatigably till his arms and legs ached. Six months before the old man’s death he had suddenly given up visiting the Shabelskys. The gossip of the district having no positive facts to go upon explained this abrupt change in their relations in various ways. Some said that the prince, having observed the plain daughter’s feeling for him and being unable to reciprocate it, considered it the duty of a gentleman to cut short his visits. Others maintained that old Shabelsky had discovered why his daughter was pining away, and had proposed to the poverty-stricken prince that he should marry her; the prince, imagining in his narrow-minded way that they were trying to buy him together with his title, was indignant, said foolish things, and quarrelled with them. What was true and what was false in this nonsense was difficult to say. But that there was a portion of truth in it was evident, from the fact that the prince always avoided conversation about Nadyezhda Lvovna.

I knew that soon after her father’s death Nadyezhda Lvovna had married one Kandurin, a bachelor of law, not wealthy, but adroit, who had come on a visit to the neighbourhood. She married him not from love, but because she was touched by the love of the legal gentleman who, so it was said, had cleverly played the love-sick swain. At the time I am describing, Kandurin was for some reason living in Cairo, and writing thence to his friend, the marshal of the district, “Notes of Travel,” while she sat languishing behind lowered blinds, surrounded by idle parasites, and whiled away her dreary days in petty philanthropy.

On the way to the house the prince fell to talking.

“It’s three days since I have been at home,” he said in a half whisper, with a sidelong glance at the driver. “I am not a child, nor a silly woman, and I have no prejudices, but I can’t stand the bailiffs. When I see a bailiff in my house I turn pale and tremble, and even have a twitching in the calves of my legs. Do you know Rogozhin refused to honour my note?”

The prince did not, as a rule, like to complain of his straitened circumstances; where poverty was concerned he was reserved and exceedingly proud and sensitive, and so this announcement surprised me. He stared a long time at the yellow clearing, warmed by the sun, watched a long string of cranes float in the azure sky, and turned facing me.

“And by the sixth of September I must have the money ready for the bank... the interest for my estate,” he said aloud, by now regardless of the coachman. “And where am I to get it? Altogether, old man, I am in a tight fix! An awfully tight fix!”

The prince examined the cock of his gun, blew on it for some reason, and began looking for the cranes which by now were out of sight.

“Sergey Ivanitch,” I asked, after a minute’s silence, “imagine if they sell your Shatilovka, what will you do?”

“I? I don’t know! Shatilovka can’t be saved, that’s clear as daylight, but I cannot imagine such a calamity. I can’t imagine myself without my daily bread secure. What can I do? I have had hardly any education; I have not tried working yet; for government service it is late to begin,... Besides, where could I serve? Where could I be of use? Admitting that no great cleverness is needed for serving in our Zemstvo, for example, yet I suffer from... the devil knows what, a sort of faintheartedness, I haven’t a ha’p’orth of pluck. If I went into the Service I should always feel I was not in my right place. I am not an idealist; I am not a Utopian; I haven’t any special principles; but am simply, I suppose, stupid and thoroughly incompetent, a neurotic and a coward. Altogether not like other people. All other people are like other people, only I seem to be something... a poor thing.... I met Naryagin last Wednesday -- you know him? -- drunken, slovenly... doesn’t pay his debts, stupid” (the prince frowned and tossed his head)... “a horrible person! He said to me, staggering: ‘I’m being balloted for as a justice of the peace!’ Of course, they won’t elect him, but, you see, he believes he is fit to be a justice of the peace and considers that position within his capacity. He has boldness and self-confidence. I went to see our investigating magistrate too. The man gets two hundred and fifty roubles a month, and does scarcely anything. All he can do is to stride backwards and forwards for days together in nothing but his underclothes, but, ask him, he is convinced he is doing his work and honourably performing his duty. I couldn’t go on like that! I should be ashamed to look the clerk in the face.”

At that moment Grontovsky, on a chestnut horse, galloped by us with a flourish. On his left arm the basket bobbed up and down with the mushrooms dancing in it. As he passed us he grinned and waved his hand, as though we were old friends.