The Schoolmistress, and Other Stories. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

blue stripes, and the blank indifferent faces, he had seen before and more than once. Of the darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the guilty smile, of all that he had expected to meet here and had dreaded, he saw no trace.

      Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one thing faintly stirred his curiosity—the terrible, as it were intentionally designed, bad taste which was visible in the cornices, in the absurd pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch of ribbons. There was something characteristic and peculiar in this bad taste.

      “How poor and stupid it all is!” thought Vassilyev. “What is there in all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man and excite him to commit the horrible sin of buying a human being for a rouble? I understand any sin for the sake of splendor, beauty, grace, passion, taste; but what is there here? What is there here worth sinning for? But … one mustn’t think!”

      “Beardy, treat me to some porter!” said the fair girl, addressing him.

      Vassilyev was at once overcome with confusion.

      “With pleasure,” he said, bowing politely. “Only excuse me, madam, I. … I won’t drink with you. I don’t drink.”

      Five minutes later the friends went off into another house.

      “Why did you ask for porter?” said the medical student angrily. “What a millionaire! You have thrown away six roubles for no reason whatever—simply waste!”

      “If she wants it, why not let her have the pleasure?” said Vassilyev, justifying himself.

      “You did not give pleasure to her, but to the ‘Madam.’ They are told to ask the visitors to stand them treat because it is a profit to the keeper.”

      “Behold the mill …” hummed the artist, “in ruins now. …”

      Going into the next house, the friends stopped in the hall and did not go into the drawing-room. Here, as in the first house, a figure in a black coat, with a sleepy face like a flunkey’s, got up from a sofa in the hall. Looking at this flunkey, at his face and his shabby black coat, Vassilyev thought: “What must an ordinary simple Russian have gone through before fate flung him down as a flunkey here? Where had he been before and what had he done? What was awaiting him? Was he married? Where was his mother, and did she know that he was a servant here?” And Vassilyev could not help particularly noticing the flunkey in each house. In one of the houses—he thought it was the fourth—there was a little spare, frail-looking flunkey with a watch-chain on his waistcoat. He was reading a newspaper, and took no notice of them when they went in. Looking at his face Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such a face might steal, might murder, might bear false witness. But the face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier overtaking a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this man’s hair, to see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be coarse like a dog’s.

      III

      Having drunk two glasses of porter, the artist became suddenly tipsy and grew unnaturally lively.

      “Let’s go to another!” he said peremptorily, waving his hands. “I will take you to the best one.”

      When he had brought his friends to the house which in his opinion was the best, he declared his firm intention of dancing a quadrille. The medical student grumbled something about their having to pay the musicians a rouble, but agreed to be his vis-a-vis. They began dancing.

      It was just as nasty in the best house as in the worst. Here there were just the same looking-glasses and pictures, the same styles of coiffure and dress. Looking round at the furnishing of the rooms and the costumes, Vassilyev realized that this was not lack of taste, but something that might be called the taste, and even the style, of S. Street, which could not be found elsewhere—something intentional in its ugliness, not accidental, but elaborated in the course of years. After he had been in eight houses he was no longer surprised at the color of the dresses, at the long trains, the gaudy ribbons, the sailor dresses, and the thick purplish rouge on the cheeks; he saw that it all had to be like this, that if a single one of the women had been dressed like a human being, or if there had been one decent engraving on the wall, the general tone of the whole street would have suffered.

      “How unskillfully they sell themselves!” he thought. “How can they fail to understand that vice is only alluring when it is beautiful and hidden, when it wears the mask of virtue? Modest black dresses, pale faces, mournful smiles, and darkness would be far more effective than this clumsy tawdriness. Stupid things! If they don’t understand it of themselves, their visitors might surely have taught them. …”

      A young lady in a Polish dress edged with white fur came up to him and sat down beside him.

      “You nice dark man, why aren’t you dancing?” she asked. “Why are you so dull?”

      “Because it is dull.”

      “Treat me to some Lafitte. Then it won’t be dull.”

      Vassilyev made no answer. He was silent for a little, and then asked:

      “What time do you get to sleep?”

      “At six o’clock.”

      “And what time do you get up?”

      “Sometimes at two and sometimes at three.”

      “And what do you do when you get up?”

      “We have coffee, and at six o’clock we have dinner.”

      “And what do you have for dinner?”

      “Usually soup, beefsteak, and dessert. Our madam keeps the girls well. But why do you ask all this?”

      “Oh, just to talk. …”

      Vassilyev longed to talk to the young lady about many things. He felt an intense desire to find out where she came from, whether her parents were living, and whether they knew that she was here; how she had come into this house; whether she were cheerful and satisfied, or sad and oppressed by gloomy thoughts; whether she hoped some day to get out of her present position. … But he could not think how to begin or in what shape to put his questions so as not to seem impertinent. He thought for a long time, and asked:

      “How old are you?”

      “Eighty,” the young lady jested, looking with a laugh at the antics of the artist as he danced.

      All at once she burst out laughing at something, and uttered a long cynical sentence loud enough to be heard by everyone. Vassilyev was aghast, and not knowing how to look, gave a constrained smile. He was the only one who smiled; all the others, his friends, the musicians, the women, did not even glance towards his neighbor, but seemed not to have heard her.

      “Stand me some Lafitte,” his neighbor said again.

      Vassilyev felt a repulsion for her white fur and for her voice, and walked away from her. It seemed to him hot and stifling, and his heart began throbbing slowly but violently, like a hammer—one! two! three!

      “Let us go away!” he said, pulling the artist by his sleeve.

      “Wait a little; let me finish.”

      While the artist and the medical student were finishing the quadrille, to avoid looking at the women, Vassilyev scrutinized the musicians. A respectable-looking old man in spectacles, rather like Marshal Bazaine, was playing the piano; a young man with a fair beard, dressed in the latest fashion, was playing the violin. The young man had a face that did not look stupid nor exhausted, but intelligent, youthful, and fresh. He was dressed fancifully and with taste; he played with feeling. It was a mystery how he and the respectable-looking old man had come here. How was it they were not ashamed to sit here? What were they thinking about when they looked at the women?

      If the violin and the piano had been played by men in rags, looking hungry, gloomy, drunken, with dissipated or stupid