The Schoolmaster and Other Stories Part 12

"Very good, . . . leave it, . . . I'll read it."

"Pavel Va.s.silyevitch," the lady said languishingly, clasping her hands and raising them in supplication, "I know you're busy. . . .

Your every minute is precious, and I know you're inwardly cursing me at this moment, but . . . Be kind, allow me to read you my play . . . . Do be so very sweet!"

"I should be delighted . . ." faltered Pavel Va.s.silyevitch; "but, Madam, I'm . . . I'm very busy . . . . I'm . . . I'm obliged to set off this minute."

"Pavel Va.s.silyevitch," moaned the lady and her eyes filled with tears, "I'm asking a sacrifice! I am insolent, I am intrusive, but be magnanimous. To-morrow I'm leaving for Kazan and I should like to know your opinion to-day. Grant me half an hour of your attention . . . only one half-hour . . . I implore you!"

Pavel Va.s.silyevitch was cotton-wool at core, and could not refuse.

When it seemed to him that the lady was about to burst into sobs and fall on her knees, he was overcome with confusion and muttered helplessly.

"Very well; certainly . . . I will listen . . . I will give you half an hour."

The lady uttered a shriek of joy, took off her hat and settling herself, began to read. At first she read a scene in which a footman and a house maid, tidying up a sumptuous drawing-room, talked at length about their young lady, Anna Sergyevna, who was building a school and a hospital in the village. When the footman had left the room, the maidservant p.r.o.nounced a monologue to the effect that education is light and ignorance is darkness; then Mme. Murashkin brought the footman back into the drawing-room and set him uttering a long monologue concerning his master, the General, who disliked his daughter's views, intended to marry her to a rich _kammer junker_, and held that the salvation of the people lay in unadulterated ignorance. Then, when the servants had left the stage, the young lady herself appeared and informed the audience that she had not slept all night, but had been thinking of Valentin Ivanovitch, who was the son of a poor teacher and a.s.sisted his sick father gratuitously.

Valentin had studied all the sciences, but had no faith in friendship nor in love; he had no object in life and longed for death, and therefore she, the young lady, must save him.

Pavel Va.s.silyevitch listened, and thought with yearning anguish of his sofa. He scanned the lady viciously, felt her masculine tenor thumping on his eardrums, understood nothing, and thought:

"The devil sent you . . . as though I wanted to listen to your tosh!

It's not my fault you've written a play, is it? My G.o.d! what a thick ma.n.u.script! What an infliction!"

Pavel Va.s.silyevitch glanced at the wall where the portrait of his wife was hanging and remembered that his wife had asked him to buy and bring to their summer cottage five yards of tape, a pound of cheese, and some tooth-powder.

"I hope I've not lost the pattern of that tape," he thought, "where did I put it? I believe it's in my blue reefer jacket. . . . Those wretched flies have covered her portrait with spots already, I must tell Olga to wash the gla.s.s. . . . She's reading the twelfth scene, so we must soon be at the end of the first act. As though inspiration were possible in this heat and with such a mountain of flesh, too!

Instead of writing plays she'd much better eat cold vinegar hash and sleep in a cellar. . . ."

"You don't think that monologue's a little too long?" the lady asked suddenly, raising her eyes.

Pavel Va.s.silyevitch had not heard the monologue, and said in a voice as guilty as though not the lady but he had written that monologue:

"No, no, not at all. It's very nice. . . ."

The lady beamed with happiness and continued reading:

ANNA: You are consumed by a.n.a.lysis. Too early you have ceased to live in the heart and have put your faith in the intellect.

VALENTIN: What do you mean by the heart? That is a concept of anatomy. As a conventional term for what are called the feelings, I do not admit it.

ANNA _(confused)_: And love? Surely that is not merely a product of the a.s.sociation of ideas? Tell me frankly, have you ever loved?

VALENTIN _(bitterly)_: Let us not touch on old wounds not yet healed.

_(A pause.)_ What are you thinking of?

ANNA: I believe you are unhappy.

During the sixteenth scene Pavel Va.s.silyevitch yawned, and accidently made with his teeth the sound dogs make when they catch a fly. He was dismayed at this unseemly sound, and to cover it a.s.sumed an expression of rapt attention.

"Scene seventeen! When will it end?" he thought. "Oh, my G.o.d! If this torture is prolonged another ten minutes I shall shout for the police. It's insufferable."

But at last the lady began reading more loudly and more rapidly, and finally raising her voice she read _"Curtain."_

Pavel Va.s.silyevitch uttered a faint sigh and was about to get up, but the lady promptly turned the page and went on reading.

ACT II.--_Scene, a village street. On right, School. On left, Hospital._ Villagers, _male and female, sitting on the hospital steps._

"Excuse me," Pavel Va.s.silyevitch broke in, "how many acts are there?"

"Five," answered the lady, and at once, as though fearing her audience might escape her, she went on rapidly.

VALENTIN _is looking out of the schoolhouse window. In the background_ Villagers _can be seen taking their goods to the Inn._

Like a man condemned to be executed and convinced of the impossibility of a reprieve, Pavel Va.s.silyevitch gave up expecting the end, abandoned all hope, and simply tried to prevent his eyes from closing, and to retain an expression of attention on his face. . . .

The future when the lady would finish her play and depart seemed to him so remote that he did not even think of it.

"Trooo--too--too--too . . ." the lady's voice sounded in his ears.

"Troo--too--too . . . sh--sh--sh--sh . . ."

"I forgot to take my soda," he thought. "What am I thinking about?

Oh--my soda. . . . Most likely I shall have a bilious attack. . . .

It's extraordinary, Smirnovsky swills vodka all day long and yet he never has a bilious attack. . . . There's a bird settled on the window . . . a sparrow. . . ."

Pavel Va.s.silyevitch made an effort to unglue his strained and closing eyelids, yawned without opening his mouth, and stared at Mme.

Murashkin. She grew misty and swayed before his eyes, turned into a triangle and her head pressed against the ceiling. . . .

VALENTIN No, let me depart.

ANNA _(in dismay)_: Why?

VALENTIN _(aside)_: She has turned pale! _(To her)_ Do not force me to explain. Sooner would I die than you should know the reason.

ANNA _(after a pause)_: You cannot go away. . . .

The lady began to swell, swelled to an immense size, and melted into the dingy atmosphere of the study--only her moving mouth was visible; then she suddenly dwindled to the size of a bottle, swayed from side to side, and with the table retreated to the further end of the room . . .

VALENTIN _(holding ANNA in his arms)_: You have given me new life!

You have shown me an object to live for! You have renewed me as the Spring rain renews the awakened earth! But . . . it is too late, too late! The ill that gnaws at my heart is beyond cure. . . .

Pavel Va.s.silyevitch started and with dim and smarting eyes stared at the reading lady; for a minute he gazed fixedly as though understanding nothing. . . .

SCENE XI.--_The same. The_ BARON _and the_ POLICE INSPECTOR _with a.s.sistants._

VALENTIN: Take me!

ANNA: I am his! Take me too! Yes, take me too! I love him, I love him more than life!

BARON: Anna Sergyevna, you forget that you are ruining your father . . . .

The lady began swelling again. . . . Looking round him wildly Pavel Va.s.silyevitch got up, yelled in a deep, unnatural voice, s.n.a.t.c.hed from the table a heavy paper-weight, and beside himself, brought it down with all his force on the auth.o.r.ess's head. . . .