The Chorus Girl Page #27

"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.

								

though I were doing wrong."

At haymaking I ached all over from the unaccustomed labour; in the
evening, sitting on the verandah and talking with the others, I suddenly
dropped asleep, and they laughed aloud at me. They waked me up and made
me sit down to supper; I was overpowered with drowsiness and I saw the
lights, the faces, and the plates as it were in a dream, heard the
voices, but did not understand them. And getting up early in the
morning, I took up the scythe at once, or went to the building and
worked hard all day.

When I remained at home on holidays I noticed that my sister and Masha
were concealing something from me, and even seemed to be avoiding me. My
wife was tender to me as before, but she had thoughts of her own apart,
which she did not share with me. There was no doubt that her
exasperation with the peasants was growing, the life was becoming more
and more distasteful to her, and yet she did not complain to me. She
talked to the doctor now more readily than she did to me, and I did not
understand why it was so.

It was the custom in our province at haymaking and harvest time for the
labourers to come to the manor house in the evening and be regaled with
vodka; even young girls drank a glass. We did not keep up this practice;
the mowers and the peasant women stood about in our yard till late in
the evening expecting vodka, and then departed abusing us. And all the
time Masha frowned grimly and said nothing, or murmured to the doctor
with exasperation: "Savages! Petchenyegs!"

In the country newcomers are met ungraciously, almost with hostility, as
they are at school. And we were received in this way. At first we were
looked upon as stupid, silly people, who had bought an estate simply
because we did not know what to do with our money. We were laughed at.
The peasants grazed their cattle in our wood and even in our garden;
they drove away our cows and horses to the village, and then demanded
money for the damage done by them. They came in whole companies into our
yard, and loudly clamoured that at the mowing we had cut some piece of
land that did not belong to us; and as we did not yet know the
boundaries of our estate very accurately, we took their word for it and
paid damages. Afterwards it turned out that there had been no mistake at
the mowing. They barked the lime-trees in our wood. One of the
Dubetchnya peasants, a regular shark, who did a trade in vodka without a
licence, bribed our labourers, and in collaboration with them cheated us
in a most treacherous way. They took the new wheels off our carts and
replaced them with old ones, stole our ploughing harness and actually
sold them to us, and so on. But what was most mortifying of all was what
happened at the building; the peasant women stole by night boards,
bricks, tiles, pieces of iron. The village elder with witnesses made a
search in their huts; the village meeting fined them two roubles each,
and afterwards this money was spent on drink by the whole commune.

When Masha heard about this, she would say to the doctor or my sister
indignantly:

"What beasts! It's awful! awful!"

And I heard her more than once express regret that she had ever taken it
into her head to build the school.

"You must understand," the doctor tried to persuade her, "that if you
build this school and do good in general, it's not for the sake of the
peasants, but in the name of culture, in the name of the future; and the
worse the peasants are the more reason for building the school.
Understand that!"

But there was a lack of conviction in his voice, and it seemed to me
that both he and Masha hated the peasants.

Masha often went to the mill, taking my sister with her, and they both
said, laughing, that they went to have a look at Stepan, he was so
handsome. Stepan, it appeared, was torpid and taciturn only with men; in
feminine society his manners were free and easy, and he talked
incessantly. One day, going down to the river to bathe, I accidentally
overheard a conversation. Masha and Kleopatra, both in white dresses,
were sitting on the bank in the spreading shade of a willow, and Stepan
was standing by them with his hands behind his back, and was saying:

"Are peasants men? They are not men, but, asking your pardon, wild
beasts, impostors. What life has a peasant? Nothing but eating and
drinking; all he cares for is victuals to be cheaper and swilling liquor
at the tavern like a fool; and there's no conversation, no manners, no
formality, nothing but ignorance! He lives in filth, his wife lives in
filth, and his children live in filth. What he stands up in, he lies
down to sleep in; he picks the potatoes out of the soup with his
fingers; he drinks kvass with a cockroach in it, and doesn't bother to
blow it away!"

"It's their poverty, of course," my sister put in.

"Poverty? There is want to be sure, there's different sorts of want,
Madam. If a man is in prison, or let us say blind or crippled, that
really is trouble I wouldn't wish anyone, but if a man's free and has
all his senses, if he has his eyes and his hands and his strength and
God, what more does he want? It's cockering themselves, and it's
ignorance, Madam, it's not poverty. If you, let us suppose, good
gentlefolk, by your education, wish out of kindness to help him he will
drink away your money in his low way; or, what's worse, he will open a
drinkshop, and with your money start robbing the people. You say
poverty, but does the rich peasant live better? He, too, asking your
pardon, lives like a swine: coarse, loud-mouthed, cudgel-headed, broader
than he is long, fat, red-faced mug, I'd like to swing my fist and send
him flying, the scoundrel. There's Larion, another rich one at
Dubetchnya, and I bet he strips the bark off your trees as much as any
poor one; and he is a foul-mouthed fellow; his children are the same,
and when he has had a drop too much he'll topple with his nose in a
puddle and sleep there. They are all a worthless lot, Madam. If you live
in a village with them it is like hell. It has stuck in my teeth, that
village has, and thank the Lord, the King of Heaven, I've plenty to eat
and clothes to wear, I served out my time in the dragoons, I was village
elder for three years, and now I am a free Cossack, I live where I like.
I don't want to live in the village, and no one has the right to force
me. They say-my wife. They say you are bound to live in your cottage
with your wife. But why so? I am not her hired man."

"Tell me, Stepan, did you marry for love?" asked Masha.

"Love among us in the village!" answered Stepan, and he gave a laugh.
"Properly speaking, Madam, if you care to know, this is my second
marriage. I am not a Kurilovka man, I am from Zalegoshtcho, but
afterwards I was taken into Kurilovka when I married. You see my father
did not want to divide the land among us. There were five of us
brothers. I took my leave and went to another village to live with my
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