The shooting party

by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

II

I did not ride in a straight line as I had to make a circuit along the road that skirted the round lake. It was only possible to go in a straight line by boat, while those who went by the road had to make a large round and the distance was almost eight versts farther. All the way, when looking at the lake, I could see beyond it the opposite clayey banks, on which the bright strip of a blossoming cherry orchard gleamed white, while farther still I could see the roofs of the Count's barns dotted all over with many coloured pigeons, and rising still higher the small white belfry of the Count's chapel. At the foot of the clayey banks was the bathing house with sailcloth nailed on the sides and sheets hanging to dry on its railings. I saw all this, and it appeared to me as if only a verst separated me from my friend the Count, while in order to reach his estate I had to ride about sixteen versts.

On the way, I thought of my strange relations to the Count. It was interesting for me to give myself an account of how we stood and try to settle it, but, alas! that account was a task beyond my strength. However much I thought, I could come to no satisfactory decision, and at last I arrived at the conclusion that I was but a bad judge of myself and of man in general. The people who knew both the Count and me explained our mutual connexion. The narrow-browed, who see nothing beyond the tip of their nose, were fond of asserting that the illustrious Count found in the “poor and undistinguished” magistrate a congenial hanger-on and boon companion. To their understanding I, the writer of these lines, fawned and cringed before the Count for the sake of the crumbs and scraps that fell from his table. In their opinion the illustrious millionaire, who was both the bugbear and the envy of the whole of the S—— district, was very clever and liberal; otherwise his gracious condescension that went as far as friendship for an indigent magistrate and the genuine liberalism that made the Count tolerate my familiarity in addressing him as “thou,” would be quite incomprehensible. Cleverer people explained our intimacy by our common “spiritual interests.” The Count and I were of the same age. We had finished our studies in the same university, we were both jurists, and we both knew very little: I knew a little, but the Count had forgotten and drowned in alcohol the little he had ever known. We were both proud, and by virtue of some reason which was only known to ourselves, we shunned the world like misanthropes. We were both indifferent to the opinion of the world—that is of the S—— district—we were both immoral, and would certainly both end badly. These were the “spiritual interests” that united us. This was all that the people who knew us could say about our relations.

They would, of course, have spoken differently had they known how weak, soft and yielding was the nature of my friend, the Count, and how strong and hard was mine. They would have had much to say had they known how fond this infirm man was of me, and how I disliked him! He was the first to offer his friendship and I was the first to say “thou” to him, but with what a difference in the tone! In a fit of kindly feeling he embraced me, and asked me timidly to be his friend. I, on the other hand, once seized by a feeling of contempt and aversion, said to him:

“Canst thou not cease jabbering nonsense?”

And he accepted this “thou” as an expression of friendship and submitted to it from that time, repaying me with an honest, brotherly “thou.”

Yes, it would have been better and more honest had I turned my Zorka's head homewards and ridden back to Polycarp and my Ivan Dem'yanych.

Afterwards I often thought: “How much misfortune I would have avoided bearing on my shoulders, how much good I would have brought to my neighbours, if on that night I had had the resolution to turn back, if only my Zorka had gone mad and had carried me far away from that terribly large lake! What numbers of tormenting recollections which now cause my hand to quit the pen and seize my head would not have pressed so heavily on my mind!” But I must not anticipate, all the more as farther on I shall often have to pause on misfortunes. Now for gaiety.…

My Zorka bore me into the gates of the Count's yard. At the very gates she stumbled, and I, losing the stirrup, almost fell to the ground.

“An ill omen, sir!” a muzhik, who was standing at one of the doors of the Count's long line of stables, called to me.