After long deliberations I made up my mind to go to Melikhovo. I remember a cold autumn evening when Maria Pavlovna and I bought third-class tickets to Lopasnya station of the Kursk railroad. It was the beginning of November. After a two-hour journey, we walked through the tobacco-smelling station room to the porch, where Roman the coachman was waiting for us; he was standing near the one-horse wicker carriage in a dark peasant’s coat.

It was 16 versts to Melikhovo. The road was bad, the wheels got stuck in deep ruts every now and then. Finally, we arrived at the manor house. A young and friendly girl, Masha, the housekeeper, ran out on the porch, followed by the old cook Maryushka. Anton Pavlovich greeted me in the front room with an affectionate reproof, “We have been waiting for you for a long time, and you have been deceiving us for a whole year!”

When I saw Anton Pavlovich, all my fear vanished — so sweet and tender was the expression of his attentive eyes. His tall, slender, lean figure had such a familiar and unbelievably simple Chekhov vibe. He was dressed in a casual gray jacket with a black velvet vest, his black tie was tied loosely, but everything looked elegant and simple.

Nothing prevented us from going to Melikhovo: neither the mud, nor the slush, nor the cold, nor the shaky carriage and the shabby harness, which made the coachman get off the bench several times on the way from the station in order to tighten it up. When you go to Melikhovo you don’t care about anything, the flame of your dear home burns so brightly in your soul.

The first years in Moscow I was so lonely without my family and without the comforts of home, but here, in Melikhovo, everything reminded me of home.