The Party

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The Party

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Party and Other Stories,
by Anton Chekhov This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
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Title: The Party and Other Stories
Author: Anton Chekhov
Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13413]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
PARTY ***

Produced by James Rusk

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV
VOLUME 4

THE PARTY AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ANTON TCHEKHOV
Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

CONTENTS
THE PARTY TERROR A WOMAN'S KINGDOM A PROBLEM
THE KISS 'ANNA ON THE NECK' THE TEACHER OF
LITERATURE NOT WANTED TYPHUS A MISFORTUNE A
TRIFLE FROM LIFE

THE PARTY
I
AFTER the festive dinner with its eight courses and its endless
conversation, Olga Mihalovna, whose husband's name-day was being
celebrated, went out into the garden. The duty of smiling and talking
incessantly, the clatter of the crockery, the stupidity of the servants, the
long intervals between the courses, and the stays she had put on to
conceal her condition from the visitors, wearied her to exhaustion. She
longed to get away from the house, to sit in the shade and rest her heart
with thoughts of the baby which was to be born to her in another two
months. She was used to these thoughts coming to her as she turned to
the left out of the big avenue into the narrow path. Here in the thick
shade of the plums and cherry-trees the dry branches used to scratch
her neck and shoulders; a spider's web would settle on her face, and
there would rise up in her mind the image of a little creature of
undetermined sex and undefined features, and it began to seem as
though it were not the spider's web that tickled her face and neck
caressingly, but that little creature. When, at the end of the path, a thin

wicker hurdle came into sight, and behind it podgy beehives with tiled
roofs; when in the motionless, stagnant air there came a smell of hay
and honey, and a soft buzzing of bees was audible, then the little
creature would take complete possession of Olga Mihalovna. She used
to sit down on a bench near the shanty woven of branches, and fall to
thinking.
This time, too, she went on as far as the seat, sat down, and began
thinking; but instead of the little creature there rose up in her
imagination the figures of the grown-up people whom she had just left.
She felt dreadfully uneasy that she, the hostess, had deserted her guests,
and she remembered how her husband, Pyotr Dmitritch, and her uncle,
Nikolay Nikolaitch, had argued at dinner about trial by jury, about the
press, and about the higher education of women. Her husband, as usual,
argued in order to show off his Conservative ideas before his
visitors--and still more in order to disagree with her uncle, whom he
disliked. Her uncle contradicted him and wrangled over every word he
uttered, so as to show the company that he, Uncle Nikolay Nikolaitch,
still retained his youthful freshness of spirit and free-thinking in spite
of his fifty-nine years. And towards the end of dinner even Olga
Mihalovna herself could not resist taking part and unskilfully
attempting to defend university education for women--not that that
education stood in need of her defence, but simply because she wanted
to annoy her husband, who to her mind was unfair. The guests were
wearied by this discussion, but they all thought it necessary to take part
in it, and talked a great deal, although none of them took any interest in
trial by jury or the higher education of women. . . .
Olga Mihalovna was sitting on the nearest side of the hurdle near the
shanty. The sun was hidden behind the clouds. The trees and the air
were overcast as before rain, but in spite of that it was hot and stifling.
The hay cut under the trees on the previous day was lying ungathered,
looking melancholy, with here and there a patch of colour from the
faded flowers, and from it came a heavy, sickly scent. It was still. The
other side of the hurdle there was a monotonous hum of bees. . . .
Suddenly she heard footsteps and voices; some one was coming along

the path towards the beehouse.
"How stifling it is!" said a feminine voice. "What do you think-- is it
going to rain, or not?"
"It is going to rain,