Page:Plays by Anton Tchekoff (1916).djvu/145



A sitting-room in ''house. In the middle of the wall at the back of the room is an arch dividing the sitting-room from the ball-room. To the right and left are doors. Some old bronzes are placed about the room; family portraits are hanging on the walls. Everything is arranged as if for some festivity. On the piano lies a violin; near it stands a violon-cello. During the entire act guests, dressed as for a ball, are seen walking about in the ball-room''.

Enter, looking at his watch.

. It is five o’clock. The ceremony must have begun. First the priest will bless them, and then they will be led to the church to be married. Is this how virtue and justice triumph? Not being able to rob Sarah, he has tortured her to death; and now he has found another victim whom he will deceive until he has robbed her, and then he will get rid of her as he got rid of poor Sarah. It is the same old sordid story. [A pause] He will live to a fine old age in the seventh heaven of happiness, and will die with a clear conscience. No, Ivanoff, it shall not be! I shall drag your villainy to light! And when I tear off that accursed mask of yours and show you to the world as the blackguard you are, you shall come plunging down headfirst from your seventh heaven, into a pit so deep that the devil himself will not be able to drag you out of it! I am a man of honour; it is my duty to interfere in such cases as yours, and to ‘open the eyes of the blind. I shall fulfil my mission, and to-morrow will find me far away from