The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
ceremoniously): Your Excellency! Mesdames! My intrusion on your domains has a double object.
I’ve come, firstly, to pay a visit and to testify to my reverential respect; secondly, to invite you all to take advantage of this beautiful weather to make an expedition to my province. I dwell at the water mill, which I rent from our common friend the Wood Demon. It is a cosy, poetical corner of the earth, where in the night you can hear naiads splashing, and in the daytime… .
VOYNITSKY: Wait a while, Waffle, we are talking business.… Wait awhile! … (To SEREBRYAKOV) NOW ask him… The estate was bought from his uncle.
SEREBRYAKOV: Oh, why should I ask him? What for?
VOYNITSKY: The estate was then bought for ninety-five thousand roubles. My father paid down only seventy thousand, with a debt on the estate of twenty-five thousand. Now listen… The estate could not have been bought had I not renounced my share of the inheritance in favour of my sister, whom I loved. Moreover, I worked for ten years like an ox, and cleared off the whole debt.
SEREBRYAKOV: What do you want then, my dear man?
VOYNITSKY: The estate is clear of debt and is in good order, thanks only to my personal exertions. And now, when I’m getting old, you want to bundle me out neck and crop!
SEREBRYAKOV: I can’t understand what you’re driving at!
VOYNITSKY: For twenty-five years I have managed this estate. I have worked, and have sent you money regularly, like a most conscientious bailiff, and all those years you have never once even thanked me! All those years, when I was young, and even now, I have received from you an annual wage of five hundred roubles — a beggarly wage! — and it has never once occurred to you to increase it even by one rouble!
SEREBRYAKOV: George, how could I know? I’m not a practical man and understand nothing of such matters. You could have increased it as much as you liked!
VOYNITSKY: Why didn’t I steal, is that it? Why don’t you all despise me because I didn’t steal? That would be just, and now I should not be a pauper.
MARIE VASSILIEVNA (STERNLY): GEORGE!
DYADIN (in agitation): George dear, don’t … don’t.… I am trembling… Why spoil friendly relations?
(Embracing liim.) Please don’t! …
VOYNITSKY: For twenty-five years, like a mole, I have sat with her, with mother here, within these four walls… All our thoughts and feelings have belonged to you alone. By day we spoke of you, of your works, and w ere proud of your fame, uttered your name with reverence; and the evenings we wasted reading reviews and books, which I now profoundly despise!
DYADIN: Don’t, Georgie dear, don’t! … Please! …
SEREBRYAKOV: I don’t understand what you want!
VOYNITSKY: You were to us a being of a higher order, and your articles we knew by heart… But now my eyes are opened. I see everything! You write on art, but understand nothing about art! All your works, which I loved, aren’i worth a brass farthing!
SEREBRYAKOV: Gentlemen! Why don’t you restrain him? Ishall leave the room!
ELENA ANDREYEVNA: George, I demand that you keep silent! Do you hear?
VOYNITSKY: I shall not keep silent! (Barring SEREBRYAKOV’S way) Wait, I’ve not finished yet! You have ruined my life! I have not lived! I have not lived! Thanks to you, I wasted, ruined the best years of my life! You’re my worst enemy!
DYADIN: I can’t bear it! … I can’t! … I’ll go into another room! …
[Goes out in violent agitation by the door on the right.
SEREBRYAKOV: What do you want from me? And what right have you to talk to me in this tone? You nonentity! If the estate is yours, take it. I don’t want it!
ZHELTOUKHIN (aside): Now the fat’s in the fire! … I’ll go! [Goes out.
ELENA ANDREYEVNA: If you say any more, I shall leave this hell this very minute! (Crying out) I can’t bear it any longer!
VOYNITSKY: A life wasted! I have talent, I’m intelligent, courageous. … If I had lived normally I might have been a Schopenhauer, a Dostoevsky… My mind’s wandering! Iam going mad! … Mother, I am in despair! Mother!
MARIE VASSILIEVNA: Obey the professor!
VOYNITSKY: Mother! What shall I do? Oh, don’t say a word! I know myself what I must do! (To SEREBRYAKOV) You shall remember me!
[Goes out by the middle door; MARIE VASSILIEVNA follows after him.
SEREBRYAKOV: Gentlemen! What does all this signify? Rid me of that lunatic!
ORLOVSKY: He’ll be all right, all right, Alexander; let him calm down. Don’t upset yourself so much.
SEREBRYAKOV: I won’t live under the same roof with him! He lives here (pointing to the middle door). Almost beside me… Let him go and live in the village, or in one of the wings; otherwise I shall go away from here. Remain with him I will not… .
ELENA ANDREYEVNA (to her husband): If anything like this happens again, I shall leave the house!
SEREBRYAKOV: Oh, don’t frighten me, please!
ELENA ANDREYEVNA: I’m not frightening you, but all of you seem to have agreed to turn my life into a hell… I’ll leave the house! …
SEREBRYAKOV: Everyone knows quite well that you are young, and I am old, and that you’re conferring a great favour by living here… .
ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Go on! … Go on! …
ORLOVSKY: Why, why, why! … My dear friends! …
Enter KHROUSCHOV hurriedly.
SCENE XII
THE SAME AND KHROUSCHOV
KHROUSCHOV (in agitation): I’m very glad to find you in, Alexander Vladimirovich… Excuse me for coming unseasonably and for being in your way… But this isn’t the point. How do you do?
SEREBRYAKOV: What is it you want?
KHROUSCHOV: Excuse me, I’m agitated … it’s because I rode so quickly… Alexander Vladimirovich, I hear that you have just sold your wood to Kouznezov for timber. If it is true, not mere gossip, then I beg you, don’t do it.
ELENA ANDREYEVNA: Mikhail Lvovich, my husband isn’t in the mood now to talk business. Won’t you come with me into the garden?
KHROUSCHOV: But I must speak at once!
ELENA ANDREYEVNA: As you please. … I can do no more… . [Goes out.
KHROUSCHOV: Permit me to drive over to Kouznezov and tell him that you’ve changed your mind… Yes? Will you allow me? To fell a thousand trees, to destroy them the sake of two or three thousand roubles, for women’s rags, whims, luxury. … To destroy them so that posterity should curse our savagery! If you, a scholar, a famous man, dare perpetrate such a cruelty, what may not others do who stand so much below you! How very terrible!
ORLOVSKY: Misha, talk about it later!
SEREBRYAKOV: Come, let’s go, Ivan Ivanych; this will never end.
KHROUSCHOV (barring SEREBRYAKOV’S way): In that case, look here, professor. … In three months’ time I shall have the money and buy it myself.
ORLOVSKY: Excuse me, Misha, this is rather strange… . Why, you, let us say, are a man of ideas … we thank you most humbly for it, we bow to the ground before you.
(Bowing.) But why such a rumpus?
KHROUSCHOV