ANDREY. Good evening, my good man. What is it?
FERAPONT. The Chairman has sent a book and a paper of some sort here . . . [gives the book and an packet].
ANDREY. Thanks. Very good. But why have you come so late? It's past eight.
FERAPONT. Eh?
ANDREY [louder]. I say, you have come late. It's past eight o'clock.
FERAPONT. Just so. I came before it was dark, but they wouldn't let me see you. The master is busy, they told me. Well, of course, if you are busy, I'm in no hurry [thinking that ANDREY has asked him a question]. Eh?
ANDREY. Nothing [examines the book]. Tomorrow is Friday. We don't have a meeting, but I'll come all the same . . . and do my work. It's boring at home . . . [a pause]. Dear old man, how strangely life changes and deceives you! Today I was so bored and had nothing to do, so I picked up this book -- old university lectures -- and I laughed. . . . Good heavens! I'm the secretary of the District Council of which Protopopov is the chairman. I am the secretary, and the most I can hope for is to become a member of the Board! Me, a member of the local District Council, while I dream every night I'm professor at the University of Moscow -- a distinguished man, of whom all Russia is proud!
FERAPONT. I can't say, sir. . . . I don't hear well. . . .
ANDREY. If you did hear well, perhaps I shouldn't talk to you. I must talk to somebody, and my wife doesn't understand me. My sisters I'm somehow afraid of -- I'm afraid they will laugh at me and make me ashamed. . . . I don't drink, I'm not fond of restaurants, but how I'd enjoy sitting at Tyestov's or the Bolshoy Moskovsky at this moment, dear old man!
FERAPONT. A contractor was saying at the Board the other day that there were some merchants in Moscow eating pancakes; one who ate forty, it seems, died. It was either forty or fifty, I don't remember.
ANDREY. In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant; you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. . . . But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger -- a stranger. . . . A stranger, and lonely, . . .
FERAPONT. Eh? [a pause] And the same contractor says -- maybe it's not true -- that there's a rope stretched right across Moscow.
ANDREY. What for?
FERAPONT. I can't say, sir. The contractor said so.
ANDREY. Nonsense [reads]. Have you ever been to Moscow?
FERAPONT [after a pause]. No, never. It wasn't God's will I should [a pause]. Mind if I go?
ANDREY. You can go. Take care of yourself. [FERAPONT goes out.] Take care [reading]. Come tomorrow morning and pick up some papers here. . . . Go. . . . [a pause]. He's gone [a ring]. Yes, it's work . . . [stretches and goes slowly into his own room].
[Behind the scenes a nanny is singing, rocking a baby to sleep. Enter MASHA and VERSHININ. While they are talking a maidservant is lighting a lamp and candles in the dining-room.]
MASHA. I don't know [a pause]. I don't know. Of course habit means a great deal. After father's death, for instance, it was a long time before we could get used to having no orderlies in the house. But apart from habit, I think it's a feeling of justice makes me say so. Perhaps it's not so in other places, but in our town the most decent, honourable, and well-bred people are all in the army.
VERSHININ. I'm thirsty. I'd like some tea.
MASHA [glancing at the clock]. They'll soon be bringing it. I was married when I was eighteen, and I was afraid of my husband because he was a teacher, and I had only just left school. In those days I thought him an awfully scholarly, clever, and important person. And now it's not the same, unfortunately. . . .
VERSHININ. Yes. . . . I see. . . .
MASHA. I'm not speaking of my husband -- I'm used to him; but among civilians generally there are so many rude, ill-mannered, badly-brought-up people. Rudeness upsets and distresses me: I'm unhappy when I see that a man is not refined, not gentle, not polite enough. When I have to be among the teachers, my husband's colleagues, it makes me quite miserable.
VERSHININ. Yes. . . . But, to my mind, it makes no difference whether they are civilians or military men -- they are equally uninteresting, in this town anyway. It's all the same! If one listens to a man of the educated class here, civilian or military, he's worried to death by his wife, worried to death by his house, worried to death by his estate, worried to death by his horses. . . . A Russian is peculiarly given to exalted ideas, but why is it he always falls so short in life? Why?
MASHA. Why?
VERSHININ. Why is he worried to death by his children and by his wife? And why are his wife and children worried to death by him?
MASHA. You are rather depressed this evening.
VERSHININ. Perhaps. . . . I've had no dinner today, and had nothing to eat since the morning. My daughter is not quite well, and when my little girls are ill I am consumed by anxiety; my conscience reproaches me for having given them such a mother. Oh, if you had seen her today! What a fool she is! We began quarrelling at seven o'clock in the morning, and at nine I slammed the door and went away [a pause]. I never talk about it. Strange, it's only to you I complain [kisses her hand]. Don't be angry with me. . . . Except for you I have no one -- no one . . . [a pause].
MASHA. What a noise in the stove! Before father died there was howling in the chimney. There, just like that.
VERSHININ. Are you superstitious?
MASHA. Yes.
VERSHININ. That's strange [kisses her hand]. You're a splendid, wonderful woman. Splendid! Wonderful! It's dark, but I see the light in your eyes.
MASHA [moves to another chair]. It's lighter here.
VERSHININ. I love you -- love you, love you, . . . I love your eyes, your movements, I see them in my dreams. . . . Splendid, wonderful woman!
MASHA [laughing softly]. When you talk to me like that, for some reason I laugh, though I am frightened. . . . Please don't do it again . . . [In an undertone] You may say it, though; I don't mind . . . [covers her face with her hands]. I don't mind, . . . Someone is coming. Talk of something else.
[IRINA and TUZENBAKH come in through the dining-room.]
TUZENBAKH. I've got a three-barrelled name. My name is Baron Tusenbach-Krone-Altschauer, but I belong to the Orthodox Church and am just as Russian as you. There is very little of the German left in me -- nothing, perhaps, but the patience and obstinacy with which I bore you. I walk you home every evening.
IRINA. How tired I am!
TUZENBAKH. And every day I'll come to the telegraph office and walk you home. I'll do it for ten years, for twenty years, till you drive me away . . . [Seeing MASHA and VERSHININ, delightedly] Oh, it's you! How are you?
IRINA. Well, I'm home at last. [To MASHA] A lady came just now to telegraph to her brother in Saratov that her son died today, and she couldn't think of the address. So she sent it without an address -- simply to Saratov. She was crying. And I was rude to her for no reason. Told her I had no time to waste. It was so stupid. Are the Carnival people coming to-night?
MASHA. Yes.