Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904 -- Translations into English; Russia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"So that's what you are like, is it?" he shrieked in a high tenor.
"So that's it! Very much obliged to you! It's revolting, madam!
Immoral, in fact! Let me tell you that!"
Liza turned pale, and of course burst into tears. When women feel
that they are in the right, they scold and shed tears; when they
are conscious of being in fault, they shed tears only.
"On a level with those depraved creatures! It's . . . it's . . .
it's . . . lower than any impropriety! Why, do you know what they
are? They are kept women! Cocottes! And you a respectable woman go
rushing off where they are. . . And he . . . He! What does he want?
What more does he want of me? I don't understand it! I have given
him half of my property--I have given him more! You know it
yourself! I have given him what I have not myself. . . . I have
given him almost all. . . . And he! I've put up with your calling
him Vanya, though he has no right whatever to such intimacy. I have
put up with your walks, kisses after dinner. . . . I have put up
with everything, but this I will not put up with. . . . Either he
or I! Let him go away, or I go away! I'm not equal to living like
this any longer, no! You can see that for yourself! . . . Either
he or I. . . . Enough! The cup is brimming over. . . . I have
suffered a great deal as it is. . . . I am going to talk to him at
once--this minute! What is he, after all? What has he to be proud
of? No, indeed. . . . He has no reason to think so much of himself
. . . ."
Groholsky said a great many more valiant and stinging things, but
did not "go at once"; he felt timid and abashed. . . . He went to
Ivan Petrovitch three days later.
When he went into his apartment, he gaped with astonishment. He was
amazed at the wealth and luxury with which Bugrov had surrounded
himself. Velvet hangings, fearfully expensive chairs. . . . One was
positively ashamed to step on the carpet. Groholsky had seen many
rich men in his day, but he had never seen such frenzied luxury. . . .
And the higgledy-piggledy muddle he saw when, with an inexplicable
tremor, he walked into the drawing-room--plates with bits of bread
on them were lying about on the grand piano, a glass was standing
on a chair, under the table there was a basket with a filthy rag
in it. . . . Nut shells were strewn about in the windows. Bugrov
himself was not quite in his usual trim when Groholsky walked in
. . . . With a red face and uncombed locks he was pacing about the
room in deshabille, talking to himself, apparently much agitated.
Mishutka was sitting on the sofa there in the drawing-room, and was
making the air vibrate with a piercing scream.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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