The Chorus Girl Page #4

"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.

								

one could see the sky and the distance. As though covered with a veil
all nature was hidden in a transparent, colourless haze through which
her beauty peeped gaily; where the mist was thicker and whiter it lay
heaped unevenly about the stones, stalks, and bushes or drifted in coils
over the road, clung close to the earth and seemed trying not to conceal
the view. Through the haze they could see all the road as far as the
wood, with dark ditches at the sides and tiny bushes which grew in the
ditches and caught the straying wisps of mist. Half a mile from the gate
they saw the dark patch of Kuznetsov's wood.

"Why has she come with me? I shall have to see her back," thought Ognev,
but looking at her profile he gave a friendly smile and said: "One
doesn't want to go away in such lovely weather. It's quite a romantic
evening, with the moon, the stillness, and all the etceteras. Do you
know, Vera Gavrilovna, here I have lived twenty-nine years in the world
and never had a romance. No romantic episode in my whole life, so that I
only know by hearsay of rendezvous, 'avenues of sighs,' and kisses. It's
not normal! In town, when one sits in one's lodgings, one does not
notice the blank, but here in the fresh air one feels it. . . . One
resents it!"

"Why is it?"

"I don't know. I suppose I've never had time, or perhaps it was I have
never met women who. . . . In fact, I have very few acquaintances and
never go anywhere."

For some three hundred paces the young people walked on in silence.
Ognev kept glancing at Verotchka's bare head and shawl, and days of
spring and summer rose to his mind one after another. It had been a
period when far from his grey Petersburg lodgings, enjoying the friendly
warmth of kind people, nature, and the work he loved, he had not had
time to notice how the sunsets followed the glow of dawn, and how, one
after another foretelling the end of summer, first the nightingale
ceased singing, then the quail, then a little later the landrail. The
days slipped by unnoticed, so that life must have been happy and easy.
He began calling aloud how reluctantly he, poor and unaccustomed to
change of scene and society, had come at the end of April to the N--
District, where he had expected dreariness, loneliness, and indifference
to statistics, which he considered was now the foremost among the
sciences. When he arrived on an April morning at the little town of N--
he had put up at the inn kept by Ryabuhin, the Old Believer, where for
twenty kopecks a day they had given him a light, clean room on condition
that he should not smoke indoors. After resting and finding who was the
president of the District Zemstvo, he had set off at once on foot to
Kuznetsov. He had to walk three miles through lush meadows and young
copses. Larks were hovering in the clouds, filling the air with silvery
notes, and rooks flapping their wings with sedate dignity floated over
the green cornland.

"Good heavens!" Ognev had thought in wonder; "can it be that there's
always air like this to breathe here, or is this scent only to-day, in
honour of my coming?"

Expecting a cold business-like reception, he went in to Kuznetsov's
diffidently, looking up from under his eyebrows and shyly pulling his
beard. At first Kuznetsov wrinkled up his brows and could not understand
what use the Zemstvo could be to the young man and his statistics; but
when the latter explained at length what was material for statistics and
how such material was collected, Kuznetsov brightened, smiled, and with
childish curiosity began looking at his notebooks. On the evening of the
same day Ivan Alexeyitch was already sitting at supper with the
Kuznetsovs, was rapidly becoming exhilarated by their strong home-made
wine, and looking at the calm faces and lazy movements of his new
acquaintances, felt all over that sweet, drowsy indolence which makes
one want to sleep and stretch and smile; while his new acquaintances
looked at him good-naturedly and asked him whether his father and mother
were living, how much he earned a month, how often he went to the
theatre. . . .

Ognev recalled his expeditions about the neighbourhood, the picnics, the
fishing parties, the visit of the whole party to the convent to see the
Mother Superior Marfa, who had given each of the visitors a bead purse;
he recalled the hot, endless typically Russian arguments in which the
opponents, spluttering and banging the table with their fists,
misunderstand and interrupt one another, unconsciously contradict
themselves at every phrase, continually change the subject, and after
arguing for two or three hours, laugh and say: "Goodness knows what we
have been arguing about! Beginning with one thing and going on to
another!"

"And do you remember how the doctor and you and I rode to Shestovo?"
said Ivan Alexeyitch to Vera as they reached the copse. "It was there
that the crazy saint met us: I gave him a five-kopeck piece, and he
crossed himself three times and flung it into the rye. Good heavens! I
am carrying away such a mass of memories that if I could gather them
together into a whole it would make a good nugget of gold! I don't
understand why clever, perceptive people crowd into Petersburg and
Moscow and don't come here. Is there more truth and freedom in the
Nevsky and in the big damp houses than here? Really, the idea of
artists, scientific men, and journalists all living crowded together in
furnished rooms has always seemed to me a mistake."

Twenty paces from the copse the road was crossed by a small narrow
bridge with posts at the corners, which had always served as a resting-
place for the Kuznetsovs and their guests on their evening walks. From
there those who liked could mimic the forest echo, and one could see the
road vanish in the dark woodland track.

"Well, here is the bridge!" said Ognev. "Here you must turn back."

Vera stopped and drew a breath.

"Let us sit down," she said, sitting down on one of the posts. "People
generally sit down when they say good-bye before starting on a journey."

Ognev settled himself beside her on his bundle of books and went on
talking. She was breathless from the walk, and was looking, not at Ivan
Alexeyitch, but away into the distance so that he could not see her
face.

"And what if we meet in ten years' time?" he said. "What shall we be
like then? You will be by then the respectable mother of a family, and I
shall be the author of some weighty statistical work of no use to
anyone, as thick as forty thousand such works. We shall meet and think
of old days. . . . Now we are conscious of the present; it absorbs and
excites us, but when we meet we shall not remember the day, nor the
month, nor even the year in which we saw each other for the last time on
this bridge. You will be changed, perhaps . . . . Tell me, will you be
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes