Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

by Leo Tolstoy

  ‘What wonderful weather!’ the count said as he approached Lisa and sat down on the low window-sill. ‘I suppose you walk a good deal?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lisa, not feeling the least shyness in speaking with the count. ‘In the morning about seven o’clock I look after what has to be attended to on the estate and take my mother’s ward, Pímochka, with me for a walk.’

  ‘It is pleasant to live in the country!’ said the count, putting his eye-glass to his eye and looking now at the garden now at Lisa. ‘And don’t you ever go out at night, by moonlight?’

  ‘No. But two years ago uncle and I used to walk every moonlight night. He was troubled with a strange complaint – insomnia. When there was a full moon he could not fall asleep. His little room – that one – looks straight out into the garden, the window is low but the moon shines straight into it.’

  ‘That’s strange: I thought that was your room,’ said the count.

  ‘No, I only sleep there to-night. You have my room.’

  ‘Is it possible? Dear me, I shall never forgive myself for having disturbed you in such a way!’ said the count letting the monocle fall from his eye in proof of the sincerity of his feelings. ‘If I had known that I was troubling you …’

  ‘It’s no trouble! On the contrary I am very glad: uncle’s is such a charming room, so bright, and the window is so low. I shall sit there till I fall asleep, or else I shall climb out into the garden and walk about a bit before going to bed.’

  ‘What a splendid girl!’ thought the count, replacing his eyeglass and looking at her and trying to touch her foot with his own while pretending to seat himself more comfortably on the window-sill. ‘And how cleverly she has let me know that I may see her in the garden at the window if I like!’ Lisa even lost much of her charm in his eyes – the conquest seemed so easy.

  ‘And how delightful it must be,’ he said, looking thoughtfully at the dark avenue of trees, ‘to spend a night like this in the garden with a beloved one.’

  Lisa was embarrassed by these words and by the repeated, seemingly accidental, touch of his foot. Anxious to hide her confusion she said without thinking: ‘Yes, it is nice to walk in the moonlight.’ She was beginning to feel rather uncomfortable. She had tied up the jar out of which she had taken the mushrooms, and was going away from the window, when the cornet joined them and she felt a wish to see what kind of man he was.

  ‘What a lovely night!’ he said.

  ‘Why, they talk of nothing but the weather,’ thought Lisa.

  ‘What a wonderful view!’ continued the cornet. ‘But I suppose you are tired of it,’ he added, having a curious propensity to say rather unpleasant things to people he liked very much.

  ‘Why do you think so? The same kind of food or the same dress one may get tired of, but not of a beautiful garden if one is fond of walking – especially when the moon is still higher. From uncle’s window the whole pond can be seen. I shall look at it to-night.’

  ‘But I don’t think you have any nightingales?’ said the count, much dissatisfied that the cornet had come and prevented his ascertaining more definitely the terms of the rendezvous.

  ‘No, but there always were until last year when some sportsman caught one, and this year one began to sing beautifully only last week but the police-officer came here and his carriage-bells frightened it away. Two years ago uncle and I used to sit in the covered alley and listen to them for two hours or more at a time.’

  ‘What is this chatterbox telling you?’ said her uncle coming up to them. ‘Won’t you come and have something to eat?’

  After supper, during which the count by praising the food and by his appetite had somewhat dispelled the hostess’s ill humour, the officers said good-night and went into their room. The count shook hands with the uncle and to Anna Fëdorovna’s surprise shook her hand also without kissing it, and even shook Lisa’s looking straight into her eyes the while and slightly smiling his pleasant smile. This look again abashed the girl.

  ‘He is very good-looking,’ she thought, ‘but he thinks too much of himself.’

  XIV

  ‘I SAY, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ said Pólozov when they were in their room. ‘I purposely tried to lose, and kept touching you under the table. Aren’t you ashamed? The old lady was quite upset, you know.’

  The count laughed very heartily.

  ‘She was awfully funny, that old lady.… How offended she was!…’

  And he again began laughing so merrily that even Johann, who stood in front of him, cast down his eyes and turned away with a slight smile.

  ‘And with the son of a friend of the family! Ha-ha-ha!…’ the count continued to laugh.

  ‘No, really it was too bad. I was quite sorry for her,’ said the cornet.

  ‘What nonsense! How young you still are! Why, did you wish me to lose? Why should one lose? I used to lose before I knew how to play! Ten rubles may come in useful, my dear fellow. You must look at life practically or you’ll always be left in the lurch.’

  Pólozov was silenced; besides, he wished to be quiet and to think about Lisa who seemed to him an unusually pure and beautiful creature. He undressed and lay down in the soft clean bed prepared for him.

  ‘What nonsense all this military honour and glory is!’ he thought, looking at the window curtained by the shawl through which the white moonbeams stole in. ‘It would be happiness to live in a quiet nook with a dear, wise, simple-hearted wife – yes, that is true and lasting happiness!’

  But for some reason he did not communicate these reflections to his friend and did not even refer to the country lass, though he was convinced that the count too was thinking of her.

  ‘Why don’t you undress?’ he asked the count who was walking up and down the room.

  ‘I don’t feel sleepy yet, somehow. You can put out the candle if you like. I shall lie down as I am.’

  And he continued to pace up and down.

  ‘Don’t feel sleepy yet somehow,’ repeated Pólozov, who after this last evening felt more dissatisfied than ever with the count’s influence over him and was inclined to rebel against it. ‘I can imagine,’ he thought, addressing himself mentally to Túrbin, ‘what is now passing through that well-brushed head of yours! I saw how you admired her. But you are not capable of understanding such a simple honest creature: you want a Mina and a colonel’s epaulettes … I really must ask him how he liked her.’

  And Pólozov turned towards him – but changed his mind. He felt he would not be able to hold his own with the count, if the latter’s opinion of Lisa were what he supposed it to be, and that he would even be unable to avoid agreeing with him so accustomed was he to bow to the count’s influence, which he felt more and more every day to be oppressive and unjust.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked, when the count put on his cap and went to the door.

  ‘I’m going to see if things are all right in the stables.’

  ‘Strange!’ thought the cornet, but put out the candle and turned over on his other side, trying to drive away the absurdly jealous and hostile thoughts that crowded into his head concerning his former friend.

  Anna Fëdorovna meanwhile, having as usual kissed her brother, daughter, and ward, and made the sign of the cross over each of them, had also retired to her room. It was long since the old lady had experienced so many strong impressions in one day and she could not even pray quietly: she could not rid herself of the sad and vivid memories of the deceased count and of the young dandy who had plundered her so unmercifully. However she undressed as usual, drank half a tumbler of kvas24 that stood ready for her on a little table by her bed, and lay down. Her favourite cat crept softly into the room. Anna Fëdorovna called her up and began to stroke her and listened to her purring, but could not fall asleep.

  ‘It’s the cat that keeps me awake,’ she thought and drove her away. The cat fell softly on the floor and gently moving her bushy tail leapt onto the stove. And now the maid, who always slept in Anna Fëdorovna’s
room, came and spread the piece of felt that served her for a mattress, put out the candle, and lit the lamp before the icon. At last the maid began to snore, but still sleep would not come to soothe Anna Fëdorovna’s excited imagination. When she closed her eyes the hussar’s face appeared to her, and she seemed to see it in the room in various guises when she opened her eyes and by the dim light of the lamp looked at the chest of drawers, the table, or a white dress that was hanging up. Now she felt very hot on the feather bed, now her watch ticked unbearably on the little table, and the maid snored unendurably through her nose. She woke her up and told her not to snore. Again thoughts of her daughter, of the old count and the young one, and of the préférence, became curiously mixed in her head. Now she saw herself waltzing with the old count, saw her own round white shoulders, felt someone’s kisses on them, and then saw her daughter in the arms of the young count. Ustyúshka again began to snore.

  ‘No, people are not the same nowadays. The other one was ready to leap into the fire for me – and not without cause. But this one is sleeping like a fool, no fear, glad to have won – no love-making about him.… How the other one said on his knees, “What do you wish me to do? I’ll kill myself on the spot, or do anything you like!” And he would have killed himself had I told him to.’

  Suddenly she heard a patter of bare feet in the passage and Lisa, with a shawl thrown over her, ran in pale and trembling and almost fell onto her mother’s bed.

  After saying good-night to her mother that evening Lisa had gone alone to the room her uncle generally slept in. She put on a white dressing-jacket and covering her long thick plait with a kerchief, extinguished the candle, opened the window, and sat down on a chair, drawing her feet up and fixing her pensive eyes on the pond now all glittering in the silvery light.

  All her accustomed occupations and interests suddenly appeared to her in a new light: her capricious old mother, uncritical love for whom had become part of her soul; her decrepit but amiable old uncle; the domestic and village serfs who worshipped their young mistress; the milch cows and the calves, and all this Nature which had died and been renewed so many times and amid which she had grown up loving and beloved – all this that had given such light and pleasant tranquillity to her soul suddenly seemed unsatisfactory; it seemed dull and unnecessary. It was as if someone had said to her: ‘Little fool, little fool, for twenty years you have been trifling, serving someone without knowing why, and without knowing what life and happiness are!’ As she gazed into the depths of the moonlit, motionless garden she thought this more intensely, far more intensely, than ever before. And what caused these thoughts? Not any sudden love for the count as one might have supposed. On the contrary she did not like him. She could have been interested in the cornet more easily, but he was plain, poor fellow, and silent. She kept involuntarily forgetting him and recalling the image of the count with anger and annoyance. ‘No, that’s not it,’ she said to herself. Her ideal had been so beautiful. It was an ideal that could have been loved on such a night amid this Nature without impairing its beauty – an ideal never abridged to fit it to some coarse reality.

  Formerly, solitude and the absence of anyone who might have attracted her attention had caused the power of love, which Providence has given impartially to each of us, to rest intact and tranquil in her bosom, and now she had lived too long in the melancholy happiness of feeling within her the presence of this something, and of now and again opening the secret chalice of her heart to contemplate its riches, to be able to lavish its contents thoughtlessly on anyone. God grant she may enjoy to her grave this chary bliss! Who knows whether it be not the best and strongest, and whether it is not the only true and possible happiness?

  ‘O Lord my God,’ she thought, ‘can it be that I have lost my youth and happiness in vain and that it will never be … never be? Can that be true?’ And she looked into the depths of the sky lit up by the moon and covered by light fleecy clouds that, veiling the stars, crept nearer to the moon. ‘If that highest white cloudlet touches the moon it will be a sign that it is true,’ thought she. The mist-like smoky strip ran across the bottom half of the bright disk and little by little the light on the grass, on the tops of the limes, and on the pond, grew dimmer and the black shadows of the trees grew less distinct. As if to harmonize with the gloomy shadows that spread over the world outside, a light wind ran through the leaves and brought to the window the odour of dewy leaves, of moist earth, and of blooming lilacs.

  ‘But it is not true,’ she consoled herself. ‘There now, if the nightingale sings to-night it will be a sign that what I’m thinking is all nonsense, and that I need not despair,’ thought she. And she sat a long while in silence waiting for something, while again all became bright and full of life and again and again the cloudlets ran across the moon making everything dim. She was beginning to fall asleep as she sat by the window, when the quivering trills of a nightingale came ringing from below across the pond and awoke her. The country maiden opened her eyes. And once more her soul was renewed with fresh joy by its mysterious union with Nature which spread out so calmly and brightly before her. She leant on both arms. A sweet, languid sensation of sadness oppressed her heart, and tears of pure wide-spreading love, thirsting to be satisfied – good comforting tears – filled her eyes. She folded her arms on the window-sill and laid her head on them. Her favourite prayer rose to her mind and she fell asleep with her eyes still moist.

  The touch of someone’s hand aroused her. She awoke. But the touch was light and pleasant. The hand pressed hers more closely. Suddenly she became alive to reality, screamed, jumped up, and trying to persuade herself that she had not recognized the count who was standing under the window bathed in the moonlight, she ran out of the room.…

  XV

  AND it really was the count. When he heard the girl’s cry and a husky sound from the watchman behind the fence, who had been roused by that cry, he rushed headlong across the wet dewy grass into the depths of the garden feeling like a detected thief. ‘Fool that I am!’ he repeated unconsciously, ‘I frightened her. I ought to have roused her gently by speaking to her. Awkward brute that I am!’ He stopped and listened: the watchman came into the garden through the gateway, dragging his stick along the sandy path. It was necessary to hide and the count went down by the pond. The frogs made him start as they plumped from beneath his feet into the water. Though his boots were wet through, he squatted down and began to recall all he had done: how he had climbed the fence, looked for her window, and at last espied a white shadow; how, listening to the faintest rustle, he had several times approached the window and gone back again: how at one moment he felt sure she was waiting, vexed at his tardiness, and the next, that it was impossible she should so readily have agreed to a rendezvous: how at last, persuading himself that it was only the bashfulness of a country-bred girl that made her pretend to be asleep, he went up resolutely and distinctly saw how she sat, but then for some reason ran away again and only after severely taunting himself for cowardice boldly drew near to her and touched her hand.

  The watchman again made a husky sound and the gate creaked as he left the garden. The girl’s window was slammed to and a shutter fastened from inside. This was very provoking. The count would have given a good deal for a chance to begin all over again; he would not have acted so stupidly now.… ‘And she is a wonderful girl – so fresh – quite charming! And I have let her slip through my fingers.… Awkward fool that I am!’ He did not want to sleep now and went at random, with the firm tread of one who has been crossed, along the covered lime-tree avenue.

  And here the night brought to him also its peaceful gifts of soothing sadness and the need of love. The straight pale beams of the moon threw spots of light through the thick foliage of the limes onto the clay path, where a few blades of grass grew, or a dead branch lay here and there. The light falling on one side of a bent bough made it seem as if covered with white moss. The silvered leaves whispered now and then. There were no lights in the house and all wa
s silent; the voice of the nightingale alone seemed to fill the bright, still, limitless space. ‘O God, what a night! What a wonderful night!’ thought the count, inhaling the fragrant freshness of the garden. ‘Yet I feel a kind of regret – as if I were discontented with myself and with others, discontented with life generally. A splendid, sweet girl! Perhaps she was really hurt.…’ Here his dreams became mixed: he imagined himself in this garden with the country-bred girl in various extraordinary situations. Then the role of the girl was taken by his beloved Mina. ‘Eh, what a fool I was! I ought simply to have caught her round the waist and kissed her.’ And regretting that he had not done so, the count returned to his room.

  The cornet was still awake. He at once turned in his bed and faced the count.

  ‘Not asleep yet?’ asked the count.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shall I tell you what has happened?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘No, I’d better not, or … all right, I’ll tell you – draw in your legs.’

  And the count having mentally abandoned the intrigue that had miscarried, sat down on his comrade’s bed with an animated smile.

  ‘Would you believe it, that young lady gave me a rendezvous!’

  ‘What are you saying?’ cried Pólozov, jumping out of bed.

  ‘No, but listen.’

  ‘But how? When? It’s impossible!’

  ‘Why, while you were adding up after we had played préférence, she told me she would sit at the window in the night and that one could get in at the window. There, you see what it is to be practical! While you were calculating with the old woman, I arranged that little matter. Why, you heard her say in your presence that she would sit by the window tonight and look at the pond.’