The Faraway Bride by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Manchuria (China), Bible. Apocrypha
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2026-01-01T16:00:42+00:00

The lover and his bride

Burn in a narrow flame.

We who have died

Keep no such tryst with worms.

Our sleep is wide,

Being in no man’s arms.

One of the women of the house touched Anna’s arm and gave her a letter. Anna’s name was written on a rather bulging envelope.

The letter said, in rather a stilted manner,

Esteemed Anna Semionovna, I have decided to finish a life which is no more interesting to me. I am twenty-four years old and I am convinced that life has nothing more to offer me. I have always held the philosophical opinion that a man of experience has a perfect right to take his own life when, in his mature opinion, he has had his fill of experience. I don’t know whether I may have mentioned to you that I have been very badly treated by a woman (if woman she can be called), by name Tatiana Pavlovna Ostapenko, and you may perhaps think that I have been weak enough to let her heartless behavior prey upon my mind, and that this is the cause of my death. It is not so, I assure you. Her repudiation of my honorable affection, though unreasonable, could not, of course, affect very seriously a man of my philosophical temperament. On the contrary I am glad to think that my death will relieve her of remorse for her conduct⁠—for she has a tender conscience, though she has no heart. She will think, “Well, poor Sasha is safely dead, now. I need worry about his sorrows no more.” For she did worry⁠—with a cold uneasiness. Perhaps when she is a lonely old woman she will worry again, but for the present she is welcome to get what satisfaction she can out of my death. In reality, my life and my death are my own affair, and women have had no influence on either. I should like to leave her my little gold compass which I have wrapped in a sealed packet in my pack, though it may seem ironical that I should leave her the thing I valued most in life, since she valued me not at all. Nor I her very much, really. I leave to my mother Maria Nicholaievna Weber, my money, seventeen yen fifty, and the rest of my possessions. Except my watch, which I leave to my younger brother, Konstantin Petrovitch Weber, with the advice that when he grows up he confine his love affairs to the caresses of Korean singing girls⁠—they are safer than the kindness of virtuous women.

I should be grateful, Anna Semionovna, if you would kindly send the enclosed letter to my mother, as above, at 2 Takezoecho Ichome, Seoul, and apportion the belongings found on my person and in my pack as above directed. I hope you realize that I did appreciate your kindness to me, though I may have seemed at the time rather absentminded, owing to some business affairs that were engrossing me. In reality I enjoyed the various amusing and interesting chats we had together.

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