The Darling

Anton Chekhov

OLENKA, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor, Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her

back porch, lost in thought. It was hot, the flies were persistent and teasing, and it was

pleasant to reflect that it would soon be evening. Dark rainclouds were gathering from the

east, and bringing from time to time a breath of moisture in the air.

Kukin, who was the manager of an open-air theatre called the Tivoli, and who lived in the

lodge, was standing in the middle of the garden looking at the sky.

"Again!" he observed despairingly. "It's going to rain again! Rain every day, as though to

spite me. I might as well hang myself! It's ruin! Fearful losses every day."

sort. They want a clown; what they ask for is vulgarity. And then look at the weather!

Almost every evening it rains. It started on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up all May and

June. It's simply awful! The public doesn't come, but I've to pay the rent just the same, and

pay the artists."

The next evening the clouds would gather again, and Kukin would say with an hysterical

laugh:

"Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden, drown me! Damn my luck in this world and the

next! Let the artists have me up! Send me to prison! -- to Siberia! -- the scaffold! Ha, ha,

ha!"

And next day the same thing.

darkened room, breathing with difficulty; she had loved her aunt who used to come every

other year from Bryansk; and before that, when she was at school, she had loved her French

master. She was a gentle, soft-hearted, compassionate girl, with mild, tender eyes and very

good health. At the sight of her full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a little dark mole

on it, and the kind, naïve smile, which came into her face when she listened to anything

pleasant, men thought, "Yes, not half bad," and smiled too, while lady visitors could not

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refrain from seizing her hand in the middle of a conversation, exclaiming in a gush of

delight, "You darling!"

The house in which she had lived from her birth upwards, and which was left her in her

father's will, was at the extreme end of the town, not far from the Tivoli. In the evenings

and at night she could head the band playing, and the crackling and banging of fireworks,

and it seemed to her that it was Kukin struggling with his destiny, storming the

entrenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; there was a sweet thrill at her heart,

she had no desire to sleep, and when he returned home at day-break, she tapped softly at her

expression of despair.

They got on very well together. She used to sit in his office, to look after things in the

Tivoli, to put down the accounts and pay the wages. And her rosy cheeks, her sweet, naïve,

radiant smile, were to be seen now at the office window, now in the refreshment bar or

behind the scenes of the theatre. And already she used to say to her acquaintances that the

theatre was the chief and most important thing in life and that it was only through the drama

that one could derive true enjoyment and become cultivated and humane.

"But do you suppose the public understands that?" she used to say. "What they want is a

clown. Yesterday we gave 'Faust Inside Out,' and almost all the boxes were empty; but if

Vanitchka and I had been producing some vulgar thing, I assure you the theatre would have

The actors were fond of her and used to call her "Vanitchka and I," and "the darling"; she

was sorry for them and used to lend them small sums of money, and if they deceived her,

she used to shed a few tears in private, but did not complain to her husband.

They got on well in the winter too. They took the theatre in the town for the whole winter,

and let it for short terms to a Little Russian company, or to a conjurer, or to a local dramatic

society. Olenka grew stouter, and was always beaming with satisfaction, while Kukin grew

thinner and yellower, and continually complained of their terrible losses, although he had

not done badly all the winter. He used to cough at night, and she used to give him hot

raspberry tea or lime-flower water, to rub him with eau-de-Cologne and to wrap him in her

warm shawls.

"You're such a sweet pet!" she used to say with perfect sincerity, stroking his hair. "You're

Towards Lent he went to Moscow to collect a new troupe, and without him she could not

sleep, but sat all night at her window, looking at the stars, and she compared herself with

the hens, who are awake all night and uneasy when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kukin

was detained in Moscow, and wrote that he would be back at Easter, adding some

instructions about the Tivoli. But on the Sunday before Easter, late in the evening, came a

"IVAN PETROVITCH DIED SUDDENLY TO-DAY. AWAITING IMMATE

That was how it was written in the telegram -- "fufuneral," and the utterly incomprehensible

word "immate." It was signed by the stage manager of the operatic company.

"My darling!" sobbed Olenka. "Vanka, my precious, my darling! Why did I ever meet you!

Why did I know you and love you! Your poor heart-broken Olenka is alone without you!"

Kukin's funeral took place on Tuesday in Moscow, Olenka returned home on Wednesday,

and as soon as she got indoors, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed so loudly that it

could be heard next door, and in the street.

more a country gentleman than a man in trade.

"Everything happens as it is ordained, Olga Semyonovna," he said gravely, with a

sympathetic note in his voice; "and if any of our dear ones die, it must be because it is the

will of God, so we ought have fortitude and bear it submissively."

After seeing Olenka to her gate, he said good-bye and went on. All day afterwards she heard

his sedately dignified voice, and whenever she shut her eyes she saw his dark beard. She

liked him very much. And apparently she had made an impression on him too, for not long

afterwards an elderly lady, with whom she was only slightly acquainted, came to drink

coffee with her, and as soon as she was seated at table began to talk about Pustovalov,

saying that he was an excellent man whom one could thoroughly depend upon, and that any

girl would be glad to marry him. Three days later Pustovalov came himself. He did not stay

-- loved him so much that she lay awake all night in a perfect fever, and in the morning she

sent for the elderly lady. The match was quickly arranged, and then came the wedding.

Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together when they were married.

Usually he sat in the office till dinner-time, then he went out on business, while Olenka

cheeks with her hands in horror. "The freight!"

touching to her in the very sound of words such as "baulk," "post," "beam," "pole,"

At night when she was asleep she dreamed of perfect mountains of planks and boards, and

long strings of wagons, carting timber somewhere far away. She dreamed that a whole

regiment of six-inch beams forty feet high, standing on end, was marching upon the timber-

yard; that logs, beams, and boards knocked together with the resounding crash of dry wood,

kept falling and getting up again, piling themselves on each other. Olenka cried out in her

sleep, and Pustovalov said to her tenderly: "Olenka, what's the matter, darling? Cross

yourself!"

Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot, or that business was

On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go to the evening service; on holidays to early

mass, and they walked side by side with softened faces as they came home from church.

There was a pleasant fragrance about them both, and her silk dress rustled agreeably. At

home they drank tea, with fancy bread and jams of various kinds, and afterwards they ate

pie. Every day at twelve o'clock there was a savoury smell of beet-root soup and of mutton

or duck in their yard, and on fast-days of fish, and no one could pass the gate without

feeling hungry. In the office the samovar was always boiling, and customers were regaled

with tea and cracknels. Once a week the couple went to the baths and returned side by side,

both red in the face.

"Yes, we have nothing to complain of, thank God," Olenka used to say to her

acquaintances. "I wish every one were as well off as Vassitchka and I."

When Pustovalov went away to buy wood in the Mogilev district, she missed him

dreadfully, lay awake and cried. A young veterinary surgeon in the army, called Smirnin, to

whom they had let their lodge, used sometimes to come in in the evening. He used to talk to

her and play cards with her, and this entertained her in her husband's absence. She was

particularly interested in what he told her of his home life. He was married and had a little

boy, but was separated from his wife because she had been unfaithful to him, and now he

health."

behind the door below, she would say:

"You know, Vladimir Platonitch, you'd better make it up with your wife. You should

forgive her for the sake of your son. You may be sure the little fellow understands."

And when Pustovalov came back, she told him in a low voice about the veterinary surgeon

and his unhappy home life, and both sighed and shook their heads and talked about the boy,

who, no doubt, missed his father, and by some strange connection of ideas, they went up to

the holy ikons, bowed to the ground before them and prayed that God would give them

children.

And so the Pustovalovs lived for six years quietly and peaceably in love and complete

"How can I live without you, in wretchedness and misery! Pity me, good people, all alone in

the world!"

She went about dressed in black with long "weepers," and gave up wearing hat and gloves

for good. She hardly ever went out, except to church, or to her husband's grave, and led the

life of a nun. It was not till six months later that she took off the weepers and opened the

shutters of the windows. She was sometimes seen in the mornings, going with her cook to

market for provisions, but what went on in her house and how she lived now could only be

surmised. People guessed, from seeing her drinking tea in her garden with the veterinary

surgeon, who read the newspaper aloud to her, and from the fact that, meeting a lady she

knew at the post-office, she said to her:

"There is no proper veterinary inspection in our town, and that's the cause of all sorts of

catching diseases from horses and cows. The health of domestic animals ought to be as well

cared for as the health of human beings."

She repeated the veterinary surgeon's words, and was of the same opinion as he about

everything. It was evident that she could not live a year without some attachment, and had

found new happiness in the lodge. In any one else this would have been censured, but no

municipal slaughterhouses. He was dreadfully embarrassed, and when the guests had gone,

surgeons are talking among ourselves, please don't put your word in. It's really annoying."

And she would look at him with astonishment and dismay, and ask him in alarm: "But,

Voloditchka, what am I to talk about?"

And with tears in her eyes she would embrace him, begging him not to be angry, and they

were both happy.

But this happiness did not last long. The veterinary surgeon departed, departed for ever with

his regiment, when it was transferred to a distant place -- to Siberia, it may be. And Olenka

was left alone.

ate and drank as it were unwillingly.

And what was worst of all, she had no opinions of any sort. She saw the objects about her

and understood what she saw, but could not form any opinion about them, and did not

know what to talk about. And how awful it is not to have any opinions! One sees a bottle,

for instance, or the rain, or a peasant driving in his cart, but what the bottle is for, or the

rain, or the peasant, and what is the meaning of it, one can't say, and could not even for a

thousand roubles. When she had Kukin, or Pustovalov, or the veterinary surgeon, Olenka

could explain everything, and give her opinion about anything you like, but now there was

the same emptiness in her brain and in her heart as there was in her yard outside. And it was

as harsh and as bitter as wormwood in the mouth.

Little by little the town grew in all directions. The road became a street, and where the

passes! Olenka's house grew dingy, the roof got rusty, the shed sank on one side, and the

whole yard was overgrown with docks and stinging-nettles. Olenka herself had grown plain

and elderly; in summer she sat in the porch, and her soul, as before, was empty and dreary

and full of bitterness. In winter she sat at her window and looked at the snow. When she

caught the scent of spring, or heard the chime of the church bells, a sudden rush of

memories from the past came over her, there was a tender ache in her heart, and her eyes

shake the kitten off her skirt and say with vexation:

And so it was, day after day and year after year, and no joy, and no opinions. Whatever

One hot July day, towards evening, just as the cattle were being driven away, and the whole

yard was full of dust, some one suddenly knocked at the gate. Olenka went to open it

herself and was dumbfounded when she looked out: she saw Smirnin, the veterinary

surgeon, grey-headed, and dressed as a civilian. She suddenly remembered everything. She

could not help crying and letting her head fall on his breast without uttering a word, and in

the violence of her feeling she did not notice how they both walked into the house and sat

down to tea.

"My dear Vladimir Platonitch! What fate has brought you?" she muttered, trembling with

"She's at the hotel with the boy, and I'm looking for lodgings."

"Good gracious, my dear soul! Lodgings? Why not have my house? Why shouldn't that suit

you? Why, my goodness, I wouldn't take any rent!" cried Olenka in a flutter, beginning to

cry again. "You live here, and the lodge will do nicely for me. Oh dear! how glad I am!"

Next day the roof was painted and the walls were whitewashed, and Olenka, with her arms

akimbo walked about the yard giving directions. Her face was beaming with her old smile,

and she was brisk and alert as though she had waked from a long sleep. The veterinary's

wife arrived -- a thin, plain lady, with short hair and a peevish expression. With her was her

little Sasha, a boy of ten, small for his age, blue-eyed, chubby, with dimples in his cheeks.

And scarcely had the boy walked into the yard when he ran after the cat, and at once there

was the sound of his gay, joyous laugh.

"Is that your puss, auntie?" he asked Olenka. "When she has little ones, do give us a kitten.

Mamma is awfully afraid of mice."

Olenka talked to him, and gave him tea. Her heart warmed and there was a sweet ache in

her bosom, as though the boy had been her own child. And when he sat at the table in the

evening, going over his lessons, she looked at him with deep tenderness and pity as she

Now she had opinions of her own, and at supper she talked to Sasha's parents, saying how

commercial one, since with a high-school education all careers were open to one, such as

being a doctor or an engineer.

Sasha began going to the high school. His mother departed to Harkov to her sister's and did

not return; his father used to go off every day to inspect cattle, and would often be away

from home for three days together, and it seemed to Olenka as though Sasha was entirely

abandoned, that he was not wanted at home, that he was being starved, and she carried him

off to her lodge and gave him a little room there.

And for six months Sasha had lived in the lodge with her. Every morning Olenka came into

"You don't quite know your fable, Sashenka," Olenka would say, looking at him as though

he were about to set off on a long journey. "What a lot of trouble I have with you! You must

work and do your best, darling, and obey your teachers."

"Oh, do leave me alone!" Sasha would say.

Then he would go down the street to school, a little figure, wearing a big cap and carrying a

satchel on his shoulder. Olenka would follow him noiselessly.

"Sashenka!" she would call after him, and she would pop into his hand a date or a caramel.