Two gray cranes with clipped wings had made their home in the garden. They would follow Chekhov as he pruned his rosebushes, but never allowed themselves to be touched. The cranes were particularly devoted to the servant Arseny, the indispensable jack-of-all-trades. When Arseny returned from a trip to town all were amused by the raucous shrieks of greeting from the birds and by the odd antic dance these long-legged creatures would perform around him. Chekhov had also taken in two stray mongrel dogs, Little Ace and Chestnut — his Melikhovo dachshunds had died. The fat, clumsy, submissive Chestnut would follow the more aggressive Little Ace all day, barking whenever Little Ace barked at anything that moved. But Chekhov had only to beckon to Chestnut and the dog would run to him and roll over on its back while he stroked it lightly with his cane, watching the play of insects on its belly. "Get on with you, get on with you, fool," he would say with mock severity. Then, turning to a guest, he would add with pretended exasperation: "Don't you want this dog as a present? You won't believe how stupid it is." With the exception of cats, for which he had a repulsion, Chekhov loved animals. As at Melikhovo, he continued to cateh miee alive and take them through the garden to the Tatar eeme- tery, where he released them.
Firmness in matters of principle, fits of temper which he usually controlled, and oeeasional eapriciousness born of his illness contrasted with the invariable kindness and even tenderness of Chekhov to all who were weak, lowly, or unprotected — to animals, ehildren, old people, servants. This delicacy and refinement, so apparent in his fiction and plays, became more noticeable in his own human relations as he grew older, and was largely the source of the widespread affection in whieh he was held by those who knew him and even by those who only read him. Kuprin relates an incident, told to him by an eyewitness, that took place once when Chekhov was disembarking from the Sevastopol steamer at Yalta. A Tatar, who usually served him, dashed on the deck ahead of the other porters to earry his luggage. An officious subordinate of the ship's captain struck the Tatar in the face for getting out of line. "What?" the enraged porter shouted, beating his chest. "You hit me? Do you think it is me you hit? There's the man you've hit," and he pointed at Chekhov. Chekhov, his face white and his lips trembling, went up to the subordinate and said quietly: "Are you not ashamed?"
Before he had time to get used to the pleasures of a well-run household oncc again, Chekhov gave in to the urge to buy the piece of beaeh property which he had had his eye on. It was on the shore of an inlet, hard by the pier at Gurzuf, about twelve miles from Yalta, and it consisted of a three-room hut and a bathhouse, one tree, and a fine view. His intention was to use the plaec for vacations in the summer with his mother and sister. He wrote to Masha about the purchase, carefully adding that he was now willing to sell his enchanting Kuehu- koi, which none of the family seemed too enthusiastic about anyway because of the difficulty of reaching it and its distance from the water. This time Masha approved and slyly inserted in her reply that so did Olga Knipper.
For the time being he had little worry about finances. In January, Marx had paid another installment and the income from his plays was steadily rising. He felt far enough ahead to place five thousand roubles in the bank for Masha, to fulfill the promise he had made her of a part of the money from the sale of Melikhovo, although the delinquent purchaser had not yet paid in that mueh.
The influx of consumptives that winter gave Chekhov little rest. Contributions to the Board of Guardians for Visiting the Sick which he had organized to promote the building of a sanatorium were lagging, and he fulminated against owners of lodgings and hotels who refused to accept seriously ill patients and against doctors who sent hopeless cases to Yalta. They were dying from exhaustion and neglect, he complained, and in some despair he wrote Masha of the incessant stream of callers, ". . . doctors keep sending people from Moscow and the provinces with letters asking me to find lodgings, to 'make arrangements,' as though I were a renting agent!" (March 26, 1900.)
In a sense nothing could have been so tragically ironic as this man, wasting away from tuberculosis, expending his last meager strength to save others afflicted with the disease. In fact, he suffered a severe relapse himself in January. Dr. Altschuler examined him and found that his right lung had improved somewhat but that the left one had grown worse. Whatever may have been the doctor's orders, Chekhov could hardly have followed them very faithfully, for his mother fell ill at this time and he gives a picture in one of his letters of tending her through the night while he coughed up blood.
When his spirits were lowest that winter Chekhov declared that it seemed as though he had lived in Yalta a million years. He was as sick of this charming town, he said, as he would be of a disagreeable wife. The word "wife," indeed, was very much on his mind, for tongues were wagging again in Petersburg and Moscow. Brother Alexander had jokingly written that he had heard he was going to marry two actresses. Gorky wrote at the beginning of January: "They say you are getting married to an actrcss with a foreign name. I don't believe it. But if it is true, then I'm glad." And Gorky's other letters at this time contain pointed praise of Olga Knipper, "a divine actrcss and a charming and highly intelligent woman" whom he had been seeing at the Moscow Art Theater. Even the cautious Masha, on her birthday congratulations, added "and I wish you'd marry soon; take an intelligent, reasonable girl, even though she lacks a dowry." Whether she intended the implication, Chekhov could hardly fail to jump to the conclusion that Olga Knipper was the "intelligent and reasonable girl" in his sister's mind. For now nearly every letter of Masha to her brother was full of Olga: Olga took care of her when she was ill; sat beside her when she wrote to Chekhov and added her greetings; they were constantly going to each other's houses and to parties and social events together. In the summer, wrote Masha, the family ought to remain quietly at Gurzuf and refuse to see any visitors, exccpt Olga. When living at Yalta seemed to Chekhov as drawn out as the siege of Sevastopol and he threatened to sell his new house and go off to Europe for the summer, Masha pleaded with him not to do this, and added, in a broad hint, "some people are distressed that you wish to go away." To Masha, however, this was only another of his passing infatuations. Iler own starved emotions were nourished in playing the part of surrogate in a promising romance. But she was sure of her famous brother — he would now never marry.
If the promised spring visit of Olga and the Moscow Art llieater was the only ray of hope in Chekhov's deep discontent, there were times that winter when he doubted its realization. Though he grew querulous to Masha over the few letters from Moscow, meaning from Olga, he himself wrote her quite infrequently, which was perhaps some measure of his low spirits. But rarely did he omit mentioning that he was looking forward to the visit. "I still dream that you will all come to Yalta," he interpolated in a letter on January 2, which was concerned with his conviction that suffering on the stage ought to be expressed as it is expressed in life, not by gesticulation, but by grace. And in his next, almost three weeks later, he interlarded among chatty comments: "I'm told that in May you'll be in Yalta."