Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [28]
CHAPTER 2
This medieval castle was very nearly the scene of the most absurd medieval drama.
It happened that seven years before, when Prince Mikshadze was still living, his boon companion Prince Chaikhidzev came to stay at Green Scythe. He was a landowner from Ekaterinovslav, and very rich. His whole life had been spent in dissipations of the most abominable kind, but he had somehow retained his fortune, and indeed he retained it to the end of his life. Prince Mikshadze was his drinking companion. Together they had once abducted a girl from her home, and the girl later became Chaikhidzev’s wife. For this reason the princes found themselves bound together with indissoluble ties of friendship. Chaikhidzev visited Green Scythe with his son, a bug-eyed, dark-haired boy still at school. For old times’ sake the princes set about drinking, while the boy flirted with Olya, who was then thirteen. The flirtation did not pass unnoticed. The parents winked at it and concluded that Olya and the boy were not unsuitably matched. The princes, quite drunk, ordered the children to kiss each other, and then the princes themselves shook hands and kissed each other. Mikshadze wept with emotion. “It’s God’s will,” said Chaikhidzev. “You have a daughter, I have a son! It’s God’s will!”
The children were each given rings and were photographed together. The photograph hung in the salon, and was long a source of particular irritation to Yegorov, who made it the target for countless barbed remarks. Princess Maria Yegorovna herself had solemnly blessed the betrothed. Their fathers’ idea pleased her, but only because she was bored. A month after the departure of the Chaikhidzevs, Olya received a most impressive present through the mail, while equally impressive presents arrived each year thereafter. The young Chaikhidzev treated the matter more seriously than anyone expected. He was a rather shallow-brained young man. He used to come to Green Scythe every year, staying for a whole week, during which time he never uttered a word, but remained in his room writing love letters to Olya, who read these letters with a feeling of embarrassment. She was intelligent, and it puzzled her that a big boy should write such stupidities, for in fact he wrote nothing but stupidities. Then two years ago Prince Mikshadze died. As he lay on his deathbed, he told Olya: “Be careful! I don’t want you marrying some fool! Marry Chaikhidzev—he’s an intelligent fellow, and worthy of you!” Olya knew all about Chaikhidzev’s intelligence, but she did not contradict her father. She gave her word that she would marry Chaikhidzev.
“It’s what Papa wanted,” she would tell us, saying this with a certain pride, as though performing a heroic act. She was pleased that her vow had accompanied her father to the grave. It was such an unusual, romantic vow.
But nature and good judgment claimed their own. The retired Lieutenant Yegorov was constantly before her eyes, while with each passing year Chaikhidzev became, in her eyes, sillier and sillier.
Once when the lieutenant boldly hinted of his love, she begged him never to speak about it again, reminded him of the promise given to her father, and she spent the whole night weeping.
Every week the Princess wrote a letter to Chaikhidzev in Moscow, where he was studying at the university. She commanded him to complete his studies as quickly as possible. “Some of my guests,” she wrote, “have not such thick beards as you have, but they earned their diplomas long ago.” Chaikhidzev replied most respectfully on rose-tinted note paper, explaining the impossibility of acquiring a diploma without studying for the required length of time. Olya, too, wrote to him. Her letters to me were far more interesting than the ones she wrote to her fianc