The Darling

The Darling and Other Stories

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Title: The Darling and Other Stories
Author: Anton Chekhov
Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13416]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DARLING AND OTHER STORIES ***

Produced by James Rusk

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
VOLUME 1
THE DARLING AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ANTON TCHEKHOV
Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

CONTENTS
THE DARLING ARIADNE POLINKA ANYUTA THE TWO
VOLODYAS THE TROUSSEAU THE HELPMATE TALENT AN
ARTIST'S STORY THREE YEARS

THE DARLING
OLENKA, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor,
Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her back porch, lost in thought. It was
hot, the flies were persistent and teasing, and it was pleasant to reflect
that it would soon be evening. Dark rainclouds were gathering from the
east, and bringing from time to time a breath of moisture in the air.
Kukin, who was the manager of an open-air theatre called the Tivoli,
and who lived in the lodge, was standing in the middle of the garden
looking at the sky.
"Again!" he observed despairingly. "It's going to rain again! Rain every
day, as though to spite me. I might as well hang myself! It's ruin!
Fearful losses every day."
He flung up his hands, and went on, addressing Olenka:
"There! that's the life we lead, Olga Semyonovna. It's enough to make
one cry. One works and does one's utmost, one wears oneself out,
getting no sleep at night, and racks one's brain what to do for the best.
And then what happens? To begin with, one's public is ignorant,
boorish. I give them the very best operetta, a dainty masque, first rate
music-hall artists. But do you suppose that's what they want! They
don't understand anything of that sort. They want a clown; what they
ask for is vulgarity. And then look at the weather! Almost every
evening it rains. It started on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up all
May and June. It's simply awful! The public doesn't come, but I've to
pay the rent just the same, and pay the artists."
The next evening the clouds would gather again, and Kukin would say
with an hysterical laugh:
"Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden, drown me! Damn my luck in
this world and the next! Let the artists have me up! Send me to
prison!--to Siberia!--the scaffold! Ha, ha, ha!"
And next day the same thing.
Olenka listened to Kukin with silent gravity, and sometimes tears came
into her eyes. In the end his misfortunes touched her; she grew to love
him. He was a small thin man, with a yellow face, and curls combed
forward on his forehead. He spoke in a thin tenor; as he talked his
mouth worked on one side, and there was always an expression of
despair on his face; yet he aroused a deep and genuine affection in her.

She was always fond of some one, and could not exist without loving.
In earlier days she had loved her papa, who now sat in a darkened room,
breathing with difficulty; she had loved her aunt who used to come
every other year from Bryansk; and before that, when she was at school,
she had loved her French master. She was a gentle, soft-hearted,
compassionate girl, with mild, tender eyes and very good health. At the
sight of her full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a little dark mole
on it, and the kind, naïve smile, which came into her face when she
listened to anything pleasant, men thought, "Yes, not half bad," and
smiled too, while lady visitors could not refrain from seizing her hand
in the middle of a conversation, exclaiming in a gush of delight, "You
darling!"
The house in which she had lived from her birth upwards, and which
was left her in her father's will, was at the extreme end of the town, not
far from the Tivoli. In the evenings and at night she could head the
band playing, and the crackling and banging of fireworks, and it
seemed to her that it was Kukin struggling with his destiny, storming
the entrenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; there was a
sweet thrill at her heart, she had no desire to sleep, and when he
returned home at day-break, she tapped softly at her bedroom window,
and showing him only her face and one shoulder through the curtain,
she gave him a friendly