Free Forty Stories by ANTON CHEKHOV Page A

wife, and started to search the house. He searched every storeroom, cupboard, closet, and wardrobe: he never found the doctor. But he did find the choirmaster Fortunov hiding under his wife’s bed.
    It was already dark when the doctor awoke. For a while he wandered about the forest, and then, remembering that he had been out hunting, he cursed and began shouting for help. Of course, his cries remained unanswered, and he decided to make the journey back on foot. It was a good road, safe, and quite visible. He covered the sixteen miles in under four hours, and by morning he reached the district hospital. He gave a tongue-lashing to the orderlies, the patients, and the midwife, and then he began to compose an immensely long letter to Yegor Yegorich. In this letter he demanded “explanations for your unseemly conduct,” said some injurious things about jealous husbands, and swore on oath that he would never go hunting again—not even on the twenty-ninth of June.
    June 1881
    1 The name means “not-screaming-tail.”

G
reen
S
cythe
A SHORT NOVEL

CHAPTER 1
    ON the shores of the Black Sea, in a small village which my diary and the diaries of my heroes and heroines call Green Scythe, there is a most charming villa. Architects and those who have a fondness for fashionable and rigorous styles would perhaps derive little pleasure from it, but your poet or artist would find it delightful. For myself, I particularly admire its unobtrusive beauty, which never overwhelms the pleasant surroundings, and I like, too, the absence of cold, intimidating marble and pretentious columns. It has warmth, intimacy, a romantic charm. With its towers, spires, battlements, and flagpoles, it can be seen looming behind a curtain of graceful silver poplars, and somehow it suggests the Middle Ages. When I gaze upon it, I am reminded of sentimental German novels full of knights and castles and doctors of philosophy and mysterious countesses. This villa is on a mountain; around the villa are rich gardens, pathways, little fountains, greenhouses. At the foot of the mountain lies the austere blue sea. Moist coquettish winds hover in the air, every conceivable bird utters its songs, the sky is eternally clear, and the sea translucent—a ravishing place!
    The owner of the villa, Maria Yegorovna Mikshadze, the widow of a Georgian or perhaps Circassian princeling, was about fifty. She was tall and well fleshed, and no doubt had once been abeauty. She was well-disposed, good-tempered, and hospitable, but altogether too strict. Perhaps “strict” is not the word; let us say she was capricious. She always gave us the best food and fine wines, she lent us money with openhanded generosity, and she was a dreadful torment to us. She had two hobbyhorses: one was etiquette, the other was being the wife of a prince. Driven by these hobbyhorses, she had a mania for carrying things too far. For example, she never permitted herself to smile, perhaps thinking a smile would be out of place on her face, or on the face of any
grande dame
. Anyone younger than she, even if he was only younger by a single year, was regarded as a whippersnapper. She held that nobility was a virtue in comparison with which everything else was sheer poppycock. She hated frivolity and lightheadedness, she honored those who kept their mouths shut, and so on. Sometimes, indeed, she could be quite insupportable. Had it not been for her daughter, probably none of us would be cherishing our memories of Green Scythe. The old lady was well-disposed to us, but she threw a dark shadow over our lives. Her daughter Olya was the pride and joy of Green Scythe. She was small and well formed, a pretty nineteen-year-old blonde, quite lively and not at all stupid. She knew how to draw, she was a student of botany, spoke excellent French and poor German, read a great deal, and danced like Terpsichore herself. She had studied music at the conservatory, and played the piano passably well. We men loved the little