Page:Plays by Anton Tchekoff (1916).djvu/196

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188
THE SEA-GULL
ACT II

my duty to speak of their sorrows, of their future, also of science, of the rights of man, and so forth. So I write on every subject, and the public hounds me on all sides, sometimes in anger, and I race and dodge like a fox with a pack of hounds on his trail. I see life and knowledge flitting away before me. I am left behind them like a peasant who has missed his train at a station, and finally I come back to the conclusion that all I am fit for is to describe landscapes, and that whatever else I attempt rings abominably false.

Nina. You work too hard to realise the importance of your writings. What if you are discontented with yourself? To others you appear a great and splendid man. If I were a writer like you I should devote my whole life to the service of the Russian people, knowing at the same time that their welfare depended on their power to rise to the heights I had attained, and the people should send me before them in a chariot of triumph.

Trigorin. In a chariot? Do you think I am Agamemnon?

[They both smile.

Nina. For the bliss of being a writer or an actress I could endure want, and disillusionment, and the hatred of my friends, and the pangs of my own dissatisfaction with myself; but I should demand in return fame, real, resounding fame! [She covers her face with her hands] Whew! My head reels!

The Voice of Arkadina. [From inside the house] Boris! Boris!

Trigorin. She is calling me, probably to come and pack, but I don’t want to leave this place. [His eyes rest on the lake] What a blessing such beauty is!

Nina. Do you see that house there, on the far shore?

Trigorin. Yes.

Nina. That was my dead mother’s home. I was born