Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [33]
“How dare you young whippersnappers teach an old woman like me! I know exactly what I am doing! Finish your tea, and then get out of here, and turn someone else’s head for a change! You are not the proper people to live with an old woman! You’re all so clever, and I’m only a fool! So good day, my dears! I’ll be grateful to you to the end of my days!”
The Princess threw us out of the house. We all wrote her a bread-and-butter letter, kissed her hand, and that same day we regretfully moved on to Yegorov’s estate. Chaikhidzev left the castle at the same time. At Yegorov’s we embarked on a course of dissipation; we missed Olya, and we consoled Yegorov. In this way two weeks passed. Then, during the third week, our baronial lawyer received a letter from the Princess asking him to come to Green Scythe to draw up some legal documents. The baron left us, and two or three days later we followed, pretending to come and fetch him. We arrived just before dinner. We did not go into the house, but wandered around the garden, gazing up at the windows. The Princess saw us from a window.
“So you’re here?” she shouted at us.
“Yes, we’re here!”
“What brought you here?”
“We’ve come for the baron.”
“The baron hasn’t any time to fool around with gallows birds like you! He’s writing!”
We removed our hats and approached the window.
“How do you do, Princess,” I said.
“Well, what are you gadding about for?” the Princess replied. “Go back to your rooms!”
So we went to our rooms and sat down humbly in our chairs. Our humble airs must have gratified the Princess, who had grown terribly bored without us. She made us stay for lunch. There, at lunch, when one of us dropped a spoon, she castigated him for being a clumsy fool, and she excoriated us all for our lack of table manners. We went for a walk with Olya and stayed the night there. The following night we were still at Green Scythe, and indeed we remained there until September. Peace had been declared.
Yesterday I received a letter from Yegorov. The lieutenant wrote that he had spent the winter “buttering up” the Princess, and he had finally succeeded in taming her anger and resentment. She has promised to let them marry in the summer.
Soon I shall receive two letters—one will be stern and official, from the Princess; the other will be a long one from Olya, full of gaiety and madcap schemes. In May I shall be going back to Green Scythe again.
1882
Joy
IT WAS twelve o’clock at night when a young man called Mitya Kuldarov, disheveled and blazing with excitement, burst into his parents’ apartment and ran wildly through all the rooms. His mother and father were already in bed. His sister, too, was in bed, finishing the last pages of a novel. His younger brothers, the schoolboys, were fast asleep.
“What happened?” his parents asked, surprised out of their wits. “What on earth is the matter?”
“Oh, don’t ask me! I never thought it would happen! Never expected it! It’s … it’s absolutely beyond belief!”
Mitya exploded with laughter and fell into a chair, because so much joy had weakened his legs.
“It’s beyond belief!” he went on. “You simply couldn’t imagine it! Just look!”
His sister jumped out of bed and, pulling a blanket round her shoulders, went in to see her brother. The schoolboy brothers also woke up.
“What on earth is the matter with you? You look as though you had gone completely out of your mind!”
“It’s because I am so happy, Mama. Today, all over Russia, people