The Tales of Chekhov, vol 9 | Page 6

an idea or the people, as their
heads are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for
the fire, of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting
life, and only silent, patient cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could
put up with it for long; the lively, nervous, impressionable people who
talked about vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it and
gave up the work.
Semyon kept picking out the driest and shortest way, first by a meadow,
then by the backs of the village huts; but in one place the peasants
would not let them pass, in another it was the priest's land and they
could not cross it, in another Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from the
landowner and had dug a ditch round it. They kept having to turn back.
They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche. Near the tavern on the
dung-strewn earth, where the snow was still lying, there stood wagons
that had brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid. There were a
great many people in the tavern, all drivers, and there was a smell of
vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins. There was a loud noise of conversation
and the banging of the swing-door. Through the wall, without ceasing
for a moment, came the sound of a concertina being played in the shop.
Marya Vassilyevna sat down and drank some tea, while at the next
table peasants were drinking vodka and beer, perspiring from the tea
they had just swallowed and the stifling fumes of the tavern.
"I say, Kuzma!" voices kept shouting in confusion. "What there!" "The
Lord bless us!" "Ivan Dementyitch, I can tell you that!" "Look out, old
man!"
A little pock-marked man with a black beard, who was quite drunk,
was suddenly surprised by something and began using bad language.
"What are you swearing at, you there?" Semyon, who was sitting some
way off, responded angrily. "Don't you see the young lady?"
"The young lady!" someone mimicked in another corner.
"Swinish crow!"
"We meant nothing . . ." said the little man in confusion. "I beg your
pardon. We pay with our money and the young lady with hers.
Good-morning!"
"Good-morning," answered the schoolmistress.

"And we thank you most feelingly."
Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too, began
turning red like the peasants, and fell to thinking again about firewood,
about the watchman. . . .
"Stay, old man," she heard from the next table, "it's the schoolmistress
from Vyazovye. . . . We know her; she's a good young lady."
"She's all right!"
The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others going
out. Marya Vassilyevna sat on, thinking all the time of the same things,
while the concertina went on playing and playing. The patches of
sunshine had been on the floor, then they passed to the counter, to the
wall, and disappeared altogether; so by the sun it was past midday. The
peasants at the next table were getting ready to go. The little man,
somewhat unsteadily, went up to Marya Vassilyevna and held out his
hand to her; following his example, the others shook hands, too, at
parting, and went out one after another, and the swing-door squeaked
and slammed nine times.
"Vassilyevna, get ready," Semyon called to her.
They set off. And again they went at a walking pace.
"A little while back they were building a school here in their Nizhneye
Gorodistche," said Semyon, turning round. "It was a wicked thing that
was done!"
"Why, what?"
"They say the president put a thousand in his pocket, and the school
guardian another thousand in his, and the teacher five hundred."
"The whole school only cost a thousand. It's wrong to slander people,
grandfather. That's all nonsense."
"I don't know, . . . I only tell you what folks say."
But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress. The
peasants did not believe her. They always thought she received too
large a salary, twenty-one roubles a month (five would have been
enough), and that of the money that she collected from the children for
the firewood and the watchman the greater part she kept for herself.
The guardian thought the same as the peasants, and he himself made a
profit off the firewood and received payments from the peasants for
being a guardian -- without the knowledge of the authorities.
The forest, thank God! was behind them, and now it would be flat,

open ground all the way to Vyazovye, and there was not far to go now.
They had to cross the river and then the railway line, and then
Vyazovye was in sight.
"Where are you driving?" Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. "Take the
road to the right to the bridge."
"Why, we can go this way