Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [71]
After drinking tea and taking a rest, she went for a walk. The sun was already setting. From the monastery gardens there came to the Princess the moist fragrance of freshly watered mignonettes, and from the church came the soft singing of men’s voices, which seemed very charming and melancholy when heard from a distance. It was the time of vespers. In the dark windows where the flames of the icon lamps shed their gentle glow, in the shadows, and in the figure of the old monk sitting on the church porch with a collection box in his hands, there was such tranquillity and peace that the Princess felt moved to tears.
Outside the gate there were benches set along the avenue which lay between the birch trees and the monastery wall. On these the evening had already descended, and every moment the light was growing darker.… The Princess walked along the avenue, sat down on a bench, and fell to thinking.
She thought how good it would be if she could spend the rest of her days in the monastery, where life was as quiet and tranquil as a summer evening; and how wonderful if she could completely forget her dissolute and ungrateful husband, the Prince, and her vast estates, and the creditors who came to torment her every day, and her misfortunes, and her maid Dasha, who had given her a particularly impertinent look that very morning. How good it would be to sit there on the bench for the remainder of her days, looking past the birch trees to the tufts of evening mist flowing at the foot of the mountains, or watching the rooks flying away to their nests far, far above the forest like a black cloud or a veil set against the sky, and the two lay brothers–one astride a piebald horse, the other on foot—who were driving out the horses for the night, rejoicing in their freedom and frolicking like children, their young voices ringing out clearly and musically in the motionless air, so that she could distinguish every word. How good to be sitting there, listening to the silence, while the wind stirred and stroked the tops of the birch trees, and a frog rustled the leaves of another year, and the clock high on the wall struck the quarter.… One could sit there for hours without moving, thinking, thinking.…
An old woman carrying a sack over her shoulder came along the path. It occurred to the Princess that it would be good to stop her and say something friendly and sincere, to help her on her way.… But the old woman did not once turn her head, and she vanished round the corner.
Not long afterward a tall man with a gray beard and a straw hat came along the avenue. As he passed the Princess, he took off his hat and bowed, and from the large bald spot on his head and the sharp, crooked nose the Princess recognized him as the doctor, Mikhail Ivanovich, who had been in her service five years before on her estate at Dubovki. Someone had told her, she remembered, that the doctor’s wife had died the previous year, and she wanted to tender her sympathy and comfort him.
“I am sure you don’t recognize me, Doctor,” the Princess said with her inviting smile.
“Of course I recognize you, Princess,” the doctor replied, and once again he took off his hat.
“Oh, thank you, I was so afraid you had forgotten your Princess. People only remember their enemies, and forget their friends. Have you come here to pray?”
“I come here every Saturday night, because it is my duty. I’m the doctor here.”
“Well, how are you?” the Princess asked, sighing. “I heard