The Chorus Girl Page #23

"The Chorus Girl" is a poignant short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores themes of love, ambition, and the complexities of human relationships. The narrative follows a young chorus girl who hopes for a better life and dreams of love, but finds herself confronting the harsh realities of her circumstances. Chekhov's insightful character portrayals and subtle social commentary reveal the emotional struggles and unfulfilled desires of the protagonist, ultimately offering a nuanced reflection on the fleeting nature of happiness and the often disillusioning pursuit of dreams.

								

could, by heavy and unpleasant work. Struggling up to my knees in the
cold mud, straining my chest, I tried to stifle my memories, and, as it
were, to punish myself for the cheeses and preserves with which I had
been regaled at the engineer's. But all the same, as soon as I lay in
bed, wet and hungry, my sinful imagination immediately began to paint
exquisite, seductive pictures, and with amazement I acknowledged to
myself that I was in love, passionately in love, and I fell into a
sound, heavy sleep, feeling that hard labour only made my body stronger
and younger.

One evening snow began falling most inappropriately, and the wind blew
from the north as though winter had come back again. When I returned
from work that evening I found Mariya Viktorovna in my room. She was
sitting in her fur coat, and had both hands in her muff.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she asked, raising her clear, clever
eyes, and I was utterly confused with delight and stood stiffly upright
before her, as I used to stand facing my father when he was going to
beat me; she looked into my face and I could see from her eyes that she
understood why I was confused.

"Why don't you come to see me?" she repeated. "If you don't want to
come, you see, I have come to you."

She got up and came close to me.

"Don't desert me," she said, and her eyes filled with tears. "I am
alone, utterly alone."

She began crying; and, hiding her face in her muff, articulated:

"Alone! My life is hard, very hard, and in all the world I have no one
but you. Don't desert me!"

Looking for a handkerchief to wipe her tears she smiled; we were silent
for some time, then I put my arms round her and kissed her, scratching
my cheek till it bled with her hatpin as I did it.

And we began talking to each other as though we had been on the closest
terms for ages and ages. X

Two days later she sent me to Dubetchnya and I was unutterably delighted
to go. As I walked towards the station and afterwards, as I was sitting
in the train, I kept laughing from no apparent cause, and people looked
at me as though I were drunk. Snow was falling, and there were still
frosts in the mornings, but the roads were already dark-coloured and
rooks hovered over them, cawing.

At first I had intended to fit up an abode for us two, Masha and me, in
the lodge at the side opposite Madame Tcheprakov's lodge, but it
appeared that the doves and the ducks had been living there for a long
time, and it was impossible to clean it without destroying a great
number of nests. There was nothing for it but to live in the comfortless
rooms of the big house with the sunblinds. The peasants called the house
the palace; there were more than twenty rooms in it, and the only
furniture was a piano and a child's arm-chair lying in the attic. And if
Masha had brought all her furniture from the town we should even then
have been unable to get rid of the impression of immense emptiness and
cold. I picked out three small rooms with windows looking into the
garden, and worked from early morning till night, setting them to
rights, putting in new panes, papering the walls, filling up the holes
and chinks in the floors. It was easy, pleasant work. I was continually
running to the river to see whether the ice were not going; I kept
fancying that starlings were flying. And at night, thinking of Masha, I
listened with an unutterably sweet feeling, with clutching delight to
the noise of the rats and the wind droning and knocking above the
ceiling. It seemed as though some old house spirit were coughing in the
attic.

The snow was deep; a great deal had fallen even at the end of March, but
it melted quickly, as though by magic, and the spring floods passed in a
tumultuous rush, so that by the beginning of April the starlings were
already noisy, and yellow butterflies were flying in the garden. It was
exquisite weather. Every day, towards evening, I used to walk to the
town to meet Masha, and what a delight it was to walk with bare feet
along the gradually drying, still soft road. Half-way I used to sit down
and look towards the town, not venturing to go near it. The sight of it
troubled me. I kept wondering how the people I knew would behave to me
when they heard of my love. What would my father say? What troubled me
particularly was the thought that my life was more complicated, and that
I had completely lost all power to set it right, and that, like a
balloon, it was bearing me away, God knows whither. I no longer
considered the problem how to earn my daily bread, how to live, but
thought about-I really don't know what.

Masha used to come in a carriage; I used to get in with her, and we
drove to Dubetchnya, feeling light-hearted and free. Or, after waiting
till the sun had set, I would go back dissatisfied and dreary, wondering
why Masha had not come; at the gate or in the garden I would be met by a
sweet, unexpected apparition-it was she! It would turn out that she had
come by rail, and had walked from the station. What a festival it was!
In a simple woollen dress with a kerchief on her head, with a modest
sunshade, but laced in, slender, in expensive foreign boots-it was a
talented actress playing the part of a little workgirl. We looked round
our domain and decided which should be her room, and which mine, where
we would have our avenue, our kitchen garden, our beehives.

We already had hens, ducks, and geese, which we loved because they were
ours. We had, all ready for sowing, oats, clover, timothy grass,
buckwheat, and vegetable seeds, and we always looked at all these stores
and discussed at length the crop we might get; and everything Masha said
to me seemed extraordinarily clever, and fine. This was the happiest
time of my life.

Soon after St. Thomas's week we were married at our parish church in the
village of Kurilovka, two miles from Dubetchnya. Masha wanted everything
to be done quietly; at her wish our "best men" were peasant lads, the
sacristan sang alone, and we came back from the church in a small,
jolting chaise which she drove herself. Our only guest from the town was
my sister Kleopatra, to whom Masha sent a note three days before the
wedding. My sister came in a white dress and wore gloves. During the
wedding she cried quietly from joy and tenderness. Her expression was
motherly and infinitely kind. She was intoxicated with our happiness,
and smiled as though she were absorbing a sweet delirium, and looking at
her during our wedding, I realized that for her there was nothing in the
world higher than love, earthly love, and that she was dreaming of it
secretly, timidly, but continually and passionately. She embraced and
kissed Masha, and, not knowing how to express her rapture, said to her
of me: "He is good! He is very good!"

Before she went away she changed into her ordinary dress, and drew me
into the garden to talk to me alone.
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