The Schoolmistress, and Other Stories

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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. The Schoolmistress, and Other Stories

THE SCHOOLMISTRESS

A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

MISERY

CHAMPAGNE

AFTER THE THEATRE

A LADY’S STORY

IN EXILE

THE CATTLE-DEALERS

SORROW

ON OFFICIAL DUTY

THE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGER

A TRAGIC ACTOR

A TRANSGRESSION

SMALL FRY

THE REQUIEM

IN THE COACH-HOUSE

PANIC FEARS

THE BET

THE HEAD-GARDENER’S STORY

THE BEAUTIES

THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVIL

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A MEDICAL student called Mayer, and a pupil of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture called Rybnikov, went one evening to see their friend Vassilyev, a law student, and suggested that he should go with them to S. Street. For a long time Vassilyev would not consent to go, but in the end he put on his greatcoat and went with them.

He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from books, and he had never in his life been in the houses in which they live. He knew that there are immoral women who, under the pressure of fatal circumstances – environment, bad education, poverty, and so on – are forced to sell their honor for money. They know nothing of pure love, have no children, have no civil rights; their mothers and sisters weep over them as though they were dead, science treats of them as an evil, men address them with contemptuous familiarity. But in spite of all that, they do not lose the semblance and image of God. They all acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. Of the means that lead to salvation they can avail themselves to the fullest extent. Society, it is true, will not forgive people their past, but in the sight of God St. Mary of Egypt is no lower than the other saints. When it had happened to Vassilyev in the street to recognize a fallen woman as such, by her dress or her manners, or to see a picture of one in a comic paper, he always remembered a story he had once read: a young man, pure and self-sacrificing, loves a fallen woman and urges her to become his wife; she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.

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“What province do you come from?”

“I? From a distance… From Tchernigov.”

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