Oscar Wilde - Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

PROLOGUE .

Scene. A Russian Inn.

Large door opening on snowy landscape at back of stage.

Peter Sabouroff and Michael .

Peter ( warming his hands at a stove ). Has Vera not come back yet, Michael?

Mich. No, Father Peter, not yet; tis a good three miles to the post office, and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is a rare plaguey creature for a wench to handle.

Peter. Why didnt you go with her, you young fool? shell never love you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered.

Mich. She says I bother her too much already, Father Peter, and I fear shell never love me after all.

Peter. Tut, tut, boy, why shouldnt she? youre young and wouldnt be ill-favoured either, had God or thy mother given thee another face. Arent you one of Prince Maraloffskis gamekeepers; and havent you got a good grass farm, and the best cow in the village? What more does a girl want?

Mich. But Vera, Father Peter

Peter. Vera, my lad, has got too many ideas; I dont think much of ideas myself; Ive got on well enough in life without em; why shouldnt my children? Theres Dmitri! could have stayed here and kept the inn; many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow to study the law! What does he want knowing about the law! let a man do his duty, say I, and no one will trouble him.

Mich. Ay! but Father Peter, they say a good lawyer can break the law as often as he likes, and no one can say him nay.

Peter. That is about all they are good for; and there he stays, and has not written a line to us for four months now a good son that, eh?

Mich. Come, come, Father Peter, Dmitris letters must have gone astray perhaps the new postman cant read; he looks stupid enough, and Dmitri, why, he was the best fellow in the village. Do you remember how he shot the bear at the barn in the great winter?

Peter. Ay, it was a good shot; I never did a better myself.

Mich. And as for dancing, he tired out three fiddlers Christmas come two years.

Peter. Ay, ay, he was a merry lad. It is the girl that has the seriousness she goes about as solemn as a priest for days at a time.

Mich. Vera is always thinking of others.

Peter. There is her mistake, boy. Let God and our Little Father look to the world. It is none of my work to mend my neighbours thatch. Why, last winter old Michael was frozen to death in his sleigh in the snowstorm, and his wife and children starved afterwards when the hard times came; but what business was it of mine? I didnt make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. And then the blight came, and the black plague with it, and the priests couldnt bury the people fast enough, and they lay dead on the roads men and women both. But what business was it of mine? I didnt make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. Or two autumns ago, when the river overflowed on a sudden, and the childrens school was carried away and drowned every girl and boy in it. I didnt make the world let God and the Czar look to it.

Mich. But, Father Peter

Peter. No, no, boy; no man could live if he took his neighbours pack on his shoulders. ( Enter Vera in peasants dress. ) Well, my girl, youve been long enough away where is the letter?

Vera. There is none to-day, Father.