The Schoolmistress

Anton Chekhov

AT half-past eight they drove out of the town.

The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but the snow was still lying in the

ditches and in the woods. Winter, dark, long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of a

sudden. But neither the warmth nor the languid transparent woods, warmed by the breath of spring, nor

the black flocks of birds flying over the huge puddles that were like lakes, nor the marvelous

fathomless sky, into which it seemed one would have gone away so joyfully, presented anything new or

interesting to Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For thirteen years she had been

schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning how many times during all those years she had been to the

the town and back again, and again the school and again the road. . . .

She had got out of the habit of thinking of her past before she became a schoolmistress, and had almost

forgotten it. She had once had a father and mother; they had lived in Moscow in a big flat near the Red

Gate, but of all that life there was left in her memory only something vague and fluid like a dream. Her

father had died when she was ten years old, and her mother had died soon after. . . . She had a brother,

an officer; at first they used to write to each other, then her brother had given up answering her letters,

he had got out of the way of writing. Of her old belongings, all that was left was a photograph of her

mother, but it had grown dim from the dampness of the school, and now nothing could be seen but the

hair and the eyebrows.

When they had driven a couple of miles, old Semyon, who was driving, turned round and said:

she was thinking about the examination, she was overtaken by a neighboring landowner called Hanov

in a carriage with four horses, the very man who had been examiner in her school the year before.

When he came up to her he recognized her and bowed.

"Good-morning," he said to her. "You are driving home, I suppose."

This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face that showed signs of wear, was

beginning to look old, but was still handsome and admired by women. He lived in his big homestead

alone, and was not in the service; and people used to say of him that he did nothing at home but walk

up and down the room whistling, or play chess with his old footman. People said, too, that he drank

heavily. And indeed at the examination the year before the very papers he brought with him smelt of

wine and scent. He had been dressed all in new clothes on that occasion, and Marya Vassilyevna

thought him very attractive, and all the while she sat beside him she had felt embarrassed. She was

accustomed to see frigid and sensible examiners at the school, while this one did not remember a single

prayer, or know what to ask questions about, and was exceedingly courteous and delicate, giving

nothing but the highest marks.

Vassilyevna was still thinking about the school, wondering whether the arithmetic questions at the

examination would be difficult or easy. And she felt annoyed with the Zemstvo board at which she had

found no one the day before. How unbusiness-like! Here she had been asking them for the last two

years to dismiss the watchman, who did nothing, was rude to her, and hit the schoolboys; but no one

paid any attention. It was hard to find the president at the office, and when one did find him he would

say with tears in his eyes that he hadn't a moment to spare; the inspector visited the school at most once

in three years, and knew nothing whatever about his work, as he had been in the Excise Duties

Department, and had received the post of school inspector through influence. The School Council met

very rarely, and there was no knowing where it met; the school guardian was an almost illiterate

peasant, the head of a tanning business, unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the watchman's -- and

The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why this queer man lived here. What could

his money, his interesting appearance, his refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in this God-

forsaken, dreary place? He got no special advantages out of life, and here, like Semyon, was driving at

a jog-trot on an appalling road and enduring the same discomforts. Why live here if one could live in

Petersburg or abroad? And one would have thought it would be nothing for a rich man like him to make

a good road instead of this bad one, to avoid enduring this misery and seeing the despair on the faces of

his coachman and Semyon; but he only laughed, and apparently did not mind, and wanted no better life.

He was kind, soft, naïve, and he did not understand this coarse life, just as at the examination he did not

know the prayers. He subscribed nothing to the schools but globes, and genuinely regarded himself as a

useful person and a prominent worker in the cause of popular education. And what use were his globes

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!" said Semyon.

The cart lurched violently and was on the point of upsetting; something heavy rolled on to Marya

Vassilyevna's feet -- it was her parcel of purchases. There was a steep ascent uphill through the clay;

here in the winding ditches rivulets were gurgling. The water seemed to have gnawed away the road;

and how could one get along here! The horses breathed hard. Hanov got out of his carriage and walked

at the side of the road in his long overcoat. He was hot.

"What a road!" he said, and laughed again. "It would soon smash up one's carriage."

for this man going to his ruin for no visible cause or reason, and it came into her mind that if she had

been his wife or sister she would have devoted her whole life to saving him from ruin. His wife! Life

was so ordered that here he was living in his great house alone, and she was living in a God-forsaken

village alone, and yet for some reason the mere thought that he and she might be close to one another

and equals seemed impossible and absurd. In reality, life was arranged and human relations were

complicated so utterly beyond all understanding that when one thought about it one felt uncanny and

one's heart sank.

"And it is beyond all understanding," she thought, "why God gives beauty, this graciousness, and sad,

sweet eyes to weak, unlucky, useless people -- why they are so charming."

inconvenient, so comfortless. Her abode consisted of one little room and the kitchen close by. Her head

ached every day after her work, and after dinner she had heart-burn. She had to collect money from the

school-children for wood and for the watchman, and to give it to the school guardian, and then to

entreat him -- that overfed, insolent peasant -- for God's sake to send her wood. And at night she

dreamed of examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. And this life was making her grow old and coarse,

making her ugly, angular, and awkward, as though she were made of lead. She was always afraid, and

she would get up from her seat and not venture to sit down in the presence of a member of the Zemstvo

or the school guardian. And she used formal, deferential expressions when she spoke of any one of

them. And no one thought her attractive, and life was passing drearily, without affection, without

friendly sympathy, without interesting acquaintances. How awful it would have been in her position if

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!"

Again a sharp ascent uphill. . . .

She had become a schoolmistress from necessity, without feeling any vocation for it; and she had never

thought of a vocation, of serving the cause of enlightenment; and it always seemed to her that what was

most important in her work was not the children, nor enlightenment, but the examinations. And what

time had she for thinking of vocation, of serving the cause of enlightenment? Teachers, badly paid

doctors, and their assistants, with their terribly hard work, have not even the comfort of thinking that

could not cross it, in another Ivan Ionov had bought a plot from the landowner and had dug a ditch

round it. They kept having to turn back.

They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche. Near the tavern on the dung-strewn earth, where the snow was

still lying, there stood wagons that had brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid. There were a great

many people in the tavern, all drivers, and there was a smell of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins. There

was a loud noise of conversation and the banging of the swing-door. Through the wall, without ceasing

for a moment, came the sound of a concertina being played in the shop. Marya Vassilyevna sat down

and drank some tea, while at the next table peasants were drinking vodka and beer, perspiring from the

tea they had just swallowed and the stifling fumes of the tavern.

"The young lady!" someone mimicked in another corner.

"Swinish crow!"

"We meant nothing . . ." said the little man in confusion. "I beg your pardon. We pay with our money

and the young lady with hers. Good-morning!"

"Good-morning," answered the schoolmistress.

"And we thank you most feelingly."

Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too, began turning red like the peasants,

and fell to thinking again about firewood, about the watchman. . . .

"Stay, old man," she heard from the next table, "it's the schoolmistress from Vyazovye. . . . We know

her; she's a good young lady."

"She's all right!"

The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others going out. Marya Vassilyevna sat on,

thinking all the time of the same things, while the concertina went on playing and playing. The patches

They set off. And again they went at a walking pace.

"A little while back they were building a school here in their Nizhneye Gorodistche," said Semyon,

turning round. "It was a wicked thing that was done!"

"Why, what?"

"They say the president put a thousand in his pocket, and the school guardian another thousand in his,

and the teacher five hundred."

The forest, thank God! was behind them, and now it would be flat, open ground all the way to

Vyazovye, and there was not far to go now. They had to cross the river and then the railway line, and

then Vyazovye was in sight.

"Where are you driving?" Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. "Take the road to the right to the bridge."

"Why, we can go this way as well. It's not deep enough to matter."

"Mind you don't drown the horse."

"What?"

"Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge," said Marya Vassilyevna, seeing the four horses far away to the

right. "It is he, I think."

"It is. So he didn't find Bakvist at home. What a pig-headed fellow he is. Lord have mercy upon us!

He's driven over there, and what for? It's fully two miles nearer this way."

They reached the river. In the summer it was a little stream easily crossed by wading. It usually dried up

in August, but now, after the spring floods, it was a river forty feet in breadth, rapid, muddy, and cold;

"Go on!" she, too, shouted, getting up. "Go on!"

They got out on the bank.

"Nice mess it is, Lord have mercy upon us!" muttered Semyon, setting straight the harness. "It's a

perfect plague with this Zemstvo. . . ."

Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the lower part of her dress and of her coat and one sleeve

were wet and dripping: the sugar and flour had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya

Vassilyevna could only clasp her hands In despair and say:

The barrier was down at the railway crossing. A train was coming out of the station. Marya Vassilyevna

eyes ache to look at them. On the little platform between two first-class carriages a lady was standing,

and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her as she passed. Her mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had

had just such luxuriant hair, just such a brow and bend of the head. And with amazing distinctness, for

the first time in those thirteen years, there rose before her mind a vivid picture of her mother, her father,

her brother, their flat in Moscow, the aquarium with little fish, everything to the tiniest detail; she heard

the sound of the piano, her father's voice; she felt as she had been then, young, good-looking, well-

dressed, in a bright warm room among her own people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly came

over her, she pressed her hands to her temples in an ecstacy, and called softly, beseechingly:

"Mother!"

And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant Hanov drove up with his team of four

horses, and seeing him she imagined happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and nodded to

him as an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her that her happiness, her triumph, was glowing in the

sky and on all sides, in the windows and on the trees. Her father and mother had never died, she had

never been a schoolmistress, it was a long, tedious, strange dream, and now she had awakened. . . .

"Vassilyevna, get in!"

And at once it all vanished. The barrier was slowly raised. Marya Vassilyevna, shivering and numb

with cold, got into the cart. The carriage with the four horses crossed the railway line; Semyon followed

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