The Tales of Chekhov, vol 9 | Page 7

as well. It's not deep enough to matter."
"Mind you don't drown the horse."
"What?"
"Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge," said Marya Vassilyevna, seeing
the four horses far away to the right. "It is he, I think."
"It is. So he didn't find Bakvist at home. What a pig-headed fellow he is.
Lord have mercy upon us! He's driven over there, and what for? It's
fully two miles nearer this way."
They reached the river. In the summer it was a little stream easily
crossed by wading. It usually dried up in August, but now, after the
spring floods, it was a river forty feet in breadth, rapid, muddy, and
cold; on the bank and right up to the water there were fresh tracks of
wheels, so it had been crossed here.
"Go on!" shouted Semyon angrily and anxiously, tugging violently at
the reins and jerking his elbows as a bird does its wings. "Go on!"
The horse went on into the water up to his belly and stopped, but at
once went on again with an effort, and Marya Vassilyevna was aware
of a keen chilliness in her feet.
"Go on!" she, too, shouted, getting up. "Go on!"
They got out on the bank.
"Nice mess it is, Lord have mercy upon us!" muttered Semyon, setting
straight the harness. "It's a perfect plague with this Zemstvo. . . ."
Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the lower part of her dress
and of her coat and one sleeve were wet and dripping: the sugar and
flour had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya Vassilyevna
could only clasp her hands in despair and say:
Oh, Semyon, Semyon! How tiresome you are really! . . ."
The barrier was down at the railway crossing. A train was coming out
of the station. Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing waiting till it
should pass, and shivering all over with cold. Vyazovye was in sight
now, and the school with the green roof, and the church with its crosses
flashing in the evening sun: and the station windows flashed too, and a

pink smoke rose from the engine . . . and it seemed to her that
everything was trembling with cold.
Here was the train; the windows reflected the gleaming light like the
crosses on the church: it made her eyes ache to look at them. On the
little platform between two first-class carriages a lady was standing,
and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her as she passed. Her mother! What
a resemblance! Her mother had had just such luxuriant hair, just such a
brow and bend of the head. And with amazing distinctness, for the first
time in those thirteen years, there rose before her mind a vivid picture
of her mother, her father, her brother, their flat in Moscow, the
aquarium with little fish, everything to the tiniest detail; she heard the
sound of the piano, her father's voice; she felt as she had been then,
young, good-looking, well-dressed, in a bright warm room among her
own people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly came over her,
she pressed her hands to her temples in an ecstacy, and called softly,
beseechingly:
"Mother!"
And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant Hanov
drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she imagined
happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and nodded to him as
an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her that her happiness, her
triumph, was glowing in the sky and on all sides, in the windows and
on the trees. Her father and mother had never died, she had never been
a schoolmistress, it was a long, tedious, strange dream, and now she
had awakened. . . .
"Vassilyevna, get in!"
And at once it all vanished. The barrier was slowly raised. Marya
Vassilyevna, shivering and numb with cold, got into the cart. The
carriage with the four horses crossed the railway line; Semyon followed
it. The signalman took off his cap.
"And here is Vyazovye. Here we are."
A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
A MEDICAL student called Mayer, and a pupil of the Moscow School
of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture called Rybnikov, went one
evening to see their friend Vassilyev, a law student, and suggested that
he should go with them to S. Street. For a long time Vassilyev would
not consent to go, but in the end he put on his greatcoat and went with

them.
He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from books,
and he had never in his life been in the houses in which they live. He
knew that there are immoral women who, under the pressure of fatal
circumstances -- environment, bad