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from: THE TALES OF CHEKHOV, VOLUME 9
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
MISERY
CHAMPAGNE
AFTER THE THEATRE
A LADY'S STORY
IN EXILE
THE CATTLE-DEALERS
SORROW
ON OFFICIAL DUTY
THE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGER
A TRAGIC ACTOR
A TRANSGRESSION
SMALL FRY
THE REQUIEM
IN THE COACH-HOUSE
PANIC FEARS
THE BET
THE HEAD-GARDENER'S STORY
THE BEAUTIES
THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVIL
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 town for her salary; and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or winter, it was all the same to her, and she always -- invariably -- longed for one thing only, to get to the end of her journey as quickly as could be.
She felt as though she had been living in that part of the country for ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew every stone, every tree on the road from the town to her school. Her past was here, her present was here, and
