THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVIL





THE SCHOOLMISTRESS

AT half-past eight they drove out of the town.

The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but the
snow was still lying in the ditches and in the woods. Winter, dark,
long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of a sudden.
But neither the warmth nor the languid transparent woods, warmed by the
breath of spring, nor the black flocks of birds flying over the huge
puddles that were like lakes, nor the marvelous fathomless sky, into
which it seemed one would have gone away so joyfully, presented anything
new or interesting to Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For
thirteen years she had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning
how many times during all those years she had been to the town for her
salary; and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn evening, or
winter, it was all the same to her, and she always--invariably--longed
for one thing only, to get to the end of her journey as quickly as could
be.

She felt as though she had been living in that part of the country for
ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to her that she knew
every stone, every tree on the road from the town to her school. Her
past was here, her present was here, and she could imagine no other
future than the school, the road to the town and back again, and again