The Tales of Chekhov, vol 9 | Page 4

grown dim from the dampness of the school, and now nothing could be
seen but the hair and the eyebrows.
When they had driven a couple of miles, old Semyon, who was driving,
turned round and said:
"They have caught a government clerk in the town. They have taken
him away. The story is that with some Germans he killed Alexeyev, the
Mayor, in Moscow."
"Who told you that?"
"They were reading it in the paper, in Ivan Ionov's tavern."
And again they were silent for a long time. Marya Vassilyevna thought
of her school, of the examination that was coming soon, and of the girl
and four boys she was sending up for it. And just as she was thinking
about the examination, she was overtaken by a neighboring landowner
called Hanov in a carriage with four horses, the very man who had been
examiner in her school the year before. When he came up to her he
recognized her and bowed.
"Good-morning," he said to her. "You are driving home, I suppose."
This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face that
showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was still
handsome and admired by women. He lived in his big homestead alone,
and was not in the service; and people used to say of him that he did
nothing at home but walk up and down the room whistling, or play
chess with his old footman. People said, too, that he drank heavily. And
indeed at the examination the year before the very papers he brought
with him smelt of wine and scent. He had been dressed all in new
clothes on that occasion, and Marya Vassilyevna thought him very
attractive, and all the while she sat beside him she had felt embarrassed.

She was accustomed to see frigid and sensible examiners at the school,
while this one did not remember a single prayer, or know what to ask
questions about, and was exceedingly courteous and delicate, giving
nothing but the highest marks.
"I am going to visit Bakvist," he went on, addressing Marya
Vassilyevna, "but I am told he is not at home."
They turned off the highroad into a by-road to the village, Hanov
leading the way and Semyon following. The four horses moved at a
walking pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage through the mud.
Semyon tacked from side to side, keeping to the edge of the road, at
one time through a snowdrift, at another through a pool, often jumping
out of the cart and helping the horse. Marya Vassilyevna was still
thinking about the school, wondering whether the arithmetic questions
at the examination would be difficult or easy. And she felt annoyed
with the Zemstvo board at which she had found no one the day before.
How unbusiness-like! Here she had been asking them for the last two
years to dismiss the watchman, who did nothing, was rude to her, and
hit the schoolboys; but no one paid any attention. It was hard to find the
president at the office, and when one did find him he would say with
tears in his eyes that he hadn't a moment to spare; the inspector visited
the school at most once in three years, and knew nothing whatever
about his work, as he had been in the Excise Duties Department, and
had received the post of school inspector through influence. The School
Council met very rarely, and there was no knowing where it met; the
school guardian was an almost illiterate peasant, the head of a tanning
business, unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the watchman's --
and goodness knows to whom she could appeal with complaints or
inquiries . . . .
"He really is handsome," she thought, glancing at Hanov.
The road grew worse and worse. . . . They drove into the wood. Here
there was no room to turn round, the wheels sank deeply in, water
splashed and gurgled through them, and sharp twigs struck them in the
face.
"What a road!" said Hanov, and he laughed.
The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why this
queer man lived here. What could his money, his interesting
appearance, his refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in this

God-forsaken, dreary place? He got no special advantages out of life,
and here, like Semyon, was driving at a jog-trot on an appalling road
and enduring the same discomforts. Why live here if one could live in
Petersburg or abroad? And one would have thought it would be nothing
for a rich man like him to make a good road instead of this bad one, to
avoid enduring this misery and seeing the despair on the faces of his
coachman and Semyon;