Читать книгу THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ANTON CHEKHOV - Anton Chekhov - Страница 18

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When I left Tenevo I took the same road by which I had come.

The sun showed it was already midday. As in the morning, peasants’ carts and landowners’ britzkas beguiled my ears with their squeaking and the metallic rumble of their bells. Again, the gardener, Franz, drove past me with his vodka barrel, but this time it was probably full. Again his eyes gave me a sour look, and he touched his cap. His nasty face jarred on me, but this time again the disagreeable impression that the meeting with him had made on me was entirely wiped away by the forester’s daughter, Olenka, whose heavy wagonette caught me up.

‘Give me a lift!’ I called to her.

She nodded gaily to me and stopped her vehicle. I sat down beside her, and the wagonette rattled on along the road, which cut like a light stripe through the three versts of the Tenevo forest. For about two minutes we looked at each other in silence.

‘What a pretty girl she really is!’ I thought as I looked at her throat and chubby chin. ‘If I were told to choose between Nadenka and her, I would choose her… She’s more natural, fresher, her nature is more generous, bolder… If she fell into good hands, much could be made of her! The other is morose, visionary… clever.’

Lying at Olenka’s feet there were two pieces of linen and several parcels.

‘What a number of purchases you have made!’ I said. ‘What will you do with so much linen?’

‘That’s not all I need!’ Olenka replied. ‘I’ve bought other things too. Today I was a whole hour buying things in the market; tomorrow I must go to make purchases in the town… And then all this has to be made up… I say, don’t you know any woman who would go out to sew?’

‘No, I think not… But why have you to buy so many things? Why have they to be sewn? God knows your family is not large… One, two… there I’ve counted you all…’

‘How queer all you men are! You don’t understand anything! Wait till you get married, you yourself will be angry then if after the wedding your wife comes to you all slovenly. I know Pëtr Egorych is not in want of anything. Still, it seems a bit awkward not to appear as a good housewife from the first…’

‘What has Pëtr Egorych to do with it?’

‘Hm! You are laughing at me, as if you don’t know!’ Olenka said and blushed slightly.

‘Young lady, you are talking in riddles.’

‘Have you really not heard? Why, I am going to marry Pëtr Egorych!’

‘Marry?’ I said in astonishment, my eyes growing large. ‘What Pëtr Egorych?’

‘Oh, good Lord! Urbenin, of course!’

I stared at her blushing and smiling face.

‘You? Going to marry… Urbenin? What a joke!’

‘It’s not a joke at all…I really can’t understand where you see the joke…’

‘You to marry… Urbenin…’ I repeated, turning pale, I really don’t know why. if this is not a joke, what is it?’

‘What joke! I can’t understand what is so extraordinary — what is so strange in it?’ Olenka said, pouting.

A minute passed in silence… I gazed at the pretty girl, at her young, almost childish face, and was astonished that she could make such terrible jokes! I instantly pictured to myself Urbenin, elderly, fat, red-faced with his protruding ears and hard hands, whose very touch could only scratch that young female body which had scarcely begun to live… Surely the thought of such a picture must frighten this pretty wood fay, who could see the poetry in the sky when it is reft by lightning and thunder growls angrily! I, even I, was frightened!

‘It’s true he’s a little old,’ Olenka sighed, ‘but he loves me… His love is trustworthy.’

‘It’s not a matter of trustworthy love, but of happiness…’

‘I shall be happy with him… He has means, thank God, and he’s no pauper, no beggar, but a nobleman. Of course, I’m not in love with him, but are only those who marry for love happy? Oh, I know those marriages for love!’

‘My child, when have you had time to stuff your brain with this terrible worldly wisdom?’ I asked. ‘Admitted that you are joking with me, but where have you learned to joke in such a vulgar, adult way?… Where? When?’

Olenka looked at me with astonishment and shrugged her shoulders.

‘I don’t understand what you are saying,’ she said. ‘You don’t like to see a young girl marry an old man? Is that so?’

Olenka suddenly blushed all over, her chin moved nervously, and without waiting for my answer she rattled on rapidly.

‘This does not please you? Then perhaps you’d like to try living in the wood — with nothing to amuse you but a few sparrow-hawks and a mad father — and waiting until a young suitor comes along! You liked it the other evening, but if you saw it in winter, when one only wishes… that death might come—’

‘Oh, all this is absurd, Olenka, it is childish, silly! If you are not joking… Truly I don’t know what to say! You had better be silent and not offend the air with your tongue. I, in your place, would have hanged myself on the nearest tree, and you buy linen… and smile. Ach!’

‘In any case, with his means he will be able to have father cured,’ she whispered.

‘How much do you need for your father’s cure?’ I cried. ‘Take it from me — a hundred? Two hundred?… A thousand? Olenka, it’s not your father’s cure that you want!’

The news Olenka had communicated to me had excited me so much that I had not even noticed that the wagonette had driven past my village, or how it had turned into the Count’s yard and stopped at the bailiff’s porch. When I saw the children run out, and the smile on Urbenin’s face, who also had rushed out to help Olenka down, I jumped out of the wagonette and ran into the Count’s house without even taking leave. Here further news awaited me.