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This collection first published 1960

Copyright © Rosemary Edmonds, 1960

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-0-141-91245-5

INTRODUCTION

‘I AM unendurably vile in my craving for depravity,’ Tolstoy confessed to himself at the age of twenty-seven. ‘Actual depravity would be better.’ He had long been dissatisfied with the life he was leading; but was it not too late for the remedy of marriage? ‘People have given up thinking of me as a marrying man. And I’ve given up the idea myself this many a day,’ declares his prototype in Happy Ever After.^* But through the autumn and winter of 1856 Tolstoy did his best to fall in love with a girl who lived on a neighbouring estate – although his first visit of inspection was not too auspicious: ‘It is unfortunate that she is spineless and lacks animation – like vermicelli – though she is kind. And she has a smile which is painfully submissive. Came home and sent for the soldier’s wife’ (a peasant woman with whom Tolstoy had illicit relations), he wrote in his diary, which over the next four months registers the progress of the affair. Valeria is ‘impossibly futile’ and he is not at all in love. One day she is ‘charming’, the next ‘downright stupid’. Eventually Tolstoy suddenly departed to Moscow to give the situation a chance to clarify. From Moscow he wrote ‘I already love in you your beauty, but I am only just beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious – your heart, your soul …’ But the letter ends on an infuriating admonitory note: ‘Please go out for a walk every day, no matter the weather. This is an excellent thing, as any doctor will tell you; and wear stays and put on your stockings yourself, and generally make various such-like improvements in yourself. Do not despair of becoming perfect.’

From Moscow Tolstoy went to Petersburg and then, via Warsaw, to Paris, and correspondence with Valeria dwindled and ceased. (The romance finally foundered on Tolstoy’s demand for ‘twenty years’ quiet seclusion in the country’ as a condition of marriage.) Tolstoy felt that he had behaved badly, and sought catharsis in writing Happy Every After, the story of a girl of seventeen who marries her guardian, who is twice her age. At first Tolstoy was well pleased with it, describing it as a ‘poem’, but before the novel was finished he was so uncertain of its success that he contemplated publishing it under a pseudonym. Happy Ever After belongs to the last phase of the ‘Supremacy of the Artistic Influence’ period (to quote the title of a public address Tolstoy gave). Written in the first person – by the young girl – it is a veritable tour de force on Tolstoy’s part. The psychology is brilliant. For instance, annoyed because her husband will treat her as a child, but frightened by her own anger, Masha decides to go and explain to him, and put things right between them. Hearing her step, he looks up but continues to write. She stands beside his writing table, turning over the pages of a book. ‘He shook his head, with a sweet, affectionate smile; but for the first time I had no answering smile for him.’ The scene is set for their first quarrel. Masha heaps reproaches on him for ‘always being in the right’, until a look of pain and increasing attention comes into his face – she was ‘finding it very pleasant to disturb his equanimity’. And so on, until she gains what has become her object and his serenity disappears.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a sombre, powerful record of the insidious progress of a fatal disease, is essentially a study in religious philosophy, written at a time when Tolstoy was concerned with the meaning and importance of life and death and human conduct. After his conversion Tolstoy condemned all his previous imaginative writings but the artist in him revolted and sometimes succeeded in persuading the moralist that art often preaches the more effective sermon.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich gives what Tolstoy required art to give: it is kinetic, moving the reader to intense pity and awareness of the spiritually therapeutic properties of prolonged physical suffering finally resolved in death. As soon as Ivan Ilyich could admit to himself that his life had been wrong, he was able to die. Until then ‘what hindered him was his claim that his life had been good. That very justification of his life held him fast and prevented him from advancing, and caused him more agony than everything else.’ But once he recognizes that ‘his life had not been what it ought to have been but that it was still possible to put it right’ all his pain is as nothing and his fear of death disappears. ‘There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.’ Within an hour Ivan Ilyich is dead. It was the end, and the beginning.

Turgenev regarded The Cossacks as the ‘finest and most perfect production of Russian literature’, Fet was wildly enthusiastic, and Tatyana Bers, Tolstoy’s sister-in-law, reported that everyone was in raptures over it, though according to her fianc readers in Petersburg ‘found the novel indecent and impossible to give to young girls’. In this tale Tolstoy, influenced by the work of Rousseau, describes the attempt of a restless, self-inquisitorial young Russian disenchanted with civilization to ‘return to Nature’ amid the grandeur of the Caucasian mountains and the primitive Cossacks of the Terek. Although the experiment fails Olenin finds a certain peace with himself and acquires a firmer grasp on reality. ‘Again, as on the night of his departure from Moscow, a three-horsed post-chaise stood waiting at the door. But this time Olenin was not settling accounts with himself; nor was he saying to himself that all he had thought and done here was “not it”. He did not promise himself a new life.’

The history of the creation of The Cossacks is complex and not easy to unravel. Tolstoy thought for some time of handling the theme in verse but soon went back to the prose form, and wrote at intervals over a period of ten years, from 1852 to 1862. The entry in his diary for 3 December 1853 reads ‘I both like and dislike the Cossack story”. By 1854 the author seems to have fallen out of love with his novel and set it aside until 1856. Marriage and a pressing need for money brought about its conclusion in 1862, leaving Tolstoy’s creative spirit free to conceive and eventually bring forth War and Peace.

Happy Ever Alter has its origins in Tolstoy’s own experience. The Cossacks is largely autobiographical – like Pierre in War and Peace, and Levin in Anna Karenina, Olenin is very much of a self-portrait. And in The Death of Ivan Ilyich Tolstoy’s understanding of Ivan Ilyich’s moral life is so acute that he does not have to Contrive. He has only to describe, for the reader’s pulse to beat in unison.

He touched mine eyes with fingers light
As sleep that cometh in the night,
And like a frightened eagle’s eyes
They opened wide with prophecies.^*

Tolstoy was a prophet.

R.E.

HAPPY EVER AFTER

‘Family Happiness’

A NOVEL

PART ONE

1

WE were in mourning for my mother, who had died in the autumn, and I spent all that winter alone in the country with Katya and Sonya.

Katya was an old friend of the family, our governess who had brought us all up and whom I had known and loved ever since I could remember. Sonya was my younger sister. We spent a dull, melancholy winter in our old house at Pokrovskoe. The weather was cold and windy so that the snow-drifts swept up higher than the windows, which were nearly always frozen over and dark with frost, and we hardly went out of doors the whole winter. Our visitors were few and those that came brought no increase of gaiety or happiness to the household. They all wore sad faces and spoke in low tones, as though afraid of waking someone; they never laughed, but would sigh and often – when they looked at me, and especially at little Sonya in her black dress – shed tears. Death still seemed to ding to the house: the grief and horror of death were in the air. Mamma’s room was shut up, and whenever I passed it on my way to bed I felt terrified and something pulled at me to peep into that cold empty room.

I was then seventeen; and in the very year of her death mamma had intended moving to town to bring me out. The loss of my mother was a great grief to me; but I must confess that this grief was partly caused by the feeling that here was I, young and pretty (so everybody told me), wasting a second winter in the solitude of the country. Before the winter ended this sense of depression and loneliness and sheer boredom increased to such an extent that I refused to leave my room or open the piano or take up a book. When Katya urged me to find some occupation I answered, ‘I don’t feel like it; I can’t,’ while in my heart I asked: ‘What is the use? What is the use of doing anything when the best years of my life are being wasted like this? What is the use’ And to that What is the use? the only answer was tears.

They told me I was growing thin and losing my looks but even this did not rouse me. What did it matter? To whom did it matter? It seemed to me that my whole life was destined to be spent in that lonely backwater, in that helpless dreariness, from which by myself I had neither the strength nor even the will to escape. Towards the close of the winter Katya became anxious about me and made up her mind to take me abroad whatever happened. But to do this we needed money, and we scarcely knew how my mother’s death had left us. Daily we expected our guardian who was to come and settle our affairs.

In March he arrived.

‘Thank goodness!’ Katya said to me one day when I was wandering aimlessly about like a shadow, with nothing to do, no thought, no wish in my mind. ‘Sergei Mihailych has arrived. He sent to inquire after us and would like to come to dinner. You must pull yourself together, my little Masha,’ she went on, ‘or what will he think of you? He was always so fond of you all.’

Sergei Mihailovich was a near neighbour of ours and although much younger than my father had been a friend of his. Apart from the fact that his arrival was likely to affect our plans and make it possible to get away from the country, since my childhood I had loved and respected him; and so when Katya told me to pull myself together she knew very well it would mortify me more to appear in an unfavourable light to him than to any other of our friends. Besides, although like everyone in the house, from Katya and his god-daughter Sonya down to the humblest stableboy, I loved him from habit, for me he had a special interest because of something mamma had once said in my presence. She had said that he was the sort of husband she would like for me. At the time the idea had seemed to me extraordinary and positively disagreeable: the hero of my dreams was quite different. My hero was slight, lean, pale and melancholy, whereas Sergei Mihailovich was no longer in his first youth, was tall and thickset and, it seemed to me, always cheerful. But in spite of that, mamma’s words stuck in my imagination , and even six years before, when I was only eleven and he used to say tu to me, and play with me and call me his little violet I sometimes wondered, not without alarm, ‘What shall I do if he suddenly wants to marry me?’

Sergei Mihailovich arrived before dinner, for which Katya made a cream tart and a special spinach sauce. From the window I watched him drive up to the house in a little sledge, but as soon as he turned the corner I hurried to the drawing-room, meaning to pretend that I was not waiting for him at all. But when I heard the stamping of feet in the hall, his ringing voice and Katya’s step, I could not restrain myself and went out to meet him. He was talking loudly, holding Katya’s hand and smiling. Catching sight of me, he stopped short and gazed for some little while without any greeting. I felt awkward, and was conscious of blushing.

‘Ah, is it really you?’ he said in his unhesitating direct manner, holding out his hands and coming towards me. ‘Can such a change be possible? How you have grown up! Where’s the violet now? It’s a rose in full bloom you’ve turned into!’

He took my hand in his own large one and squeezed it so warmly, so heartily, that it almost hurt. I expected that he would kiss my hand, and was ready to incline towards him, but he only pressed it again and looked straight into my eyes with his frank, merry glance.

It was six years since I had seen him. He was much changed: he looked older and swarthier, and had grown side-whiskers which were very unbecoming; but he had the same simple way with him, the same strong-featured, open, honest face, the same shrewd, bright eyes and friendly, almost boyish smile.

In five minutes he had ceased to be a guest and to all of us had become one of the family, even to the servants whose obvious eagerness to serve him showed their delight at his arrival.

His behaviour was quite unlike that of the neighbours who had called after mamma’s death and thought it necessary to sit in silence and shed tears while they were with us. He, on the contrary, was talkative and cheerful, and did not mention mamma at all, so that at first his apparent indifference struck me as strange, and even unseemly on the part of such a close friend. But afterwards I understood that it was not indifference but sincerity, and felt grateful for it. In the evening Katya sat down in her old place in the drawing-room and poured out tea, as she had done in mamma’s time. Sonya and I sat near her; old Grigori found a pipe of papa’s and brought it to Sergei Mihailovich, who fell to pacing up and down the room just as in the old days.

‘What a lot of terrible changes this house has lived through, when one thinks of it!’ he said, stopping short.

‘Yes,’ said Katya with a sigh, and then she put the lid on the samovar and looked at him, on the verge of tears.

‘You remember your father, don’t you?’ he said, turning to me.

‘Only very slightly,’ I replied.

‘What a help he would have been to you now,’ he went on in a low voice, looking at me thoughtfully just above my eyes. ‘I was very fond of your father,’ he added still more quietly, and it seemed to me that his eyes glistened brighter than usual.

‘And now God has taken her too!’ exclaimed Katya, and immediately she laid her napkin on the teapot, brought out her handkerchief and began to cry.

‘Yes, this house has seen terrible changes,’ he repeated, turning away. ‘Sonya, show me your toys,’ he added after a moment or two, and went off to the parlour. When he had gone I looked at Katya with eyes full of tears.

‘What a fine friend he is!’ she said.

And indeed I somehow felt warmed and comforted by the sympathy of this good man who was not a member of the family.

In the parlour we could hear squeals from Sonya and Sergei Mihailovich romping about with her. I sent tea into him and friendly manner with me, and the tone of command. I heard him sit down to the piano and start striking the keys with Sonya’s little hands.

‘Marya Alexandrovna!’ he called. ‘Come here and play something.’

I liked his easy got up and went to him.

‘Here, play this,’ he said, opening the Beethoven album at the adagio of the Moonlight Sonata. ‘Let me hear how you play’ he added, taking his glass of tea away into a corner of the room.

I felt for some reason that I could neither refuse him nor make excuses and say that I played badly; I sat down obediently at the piano and began to play to the best of my ability, although I was afraid of his criticism, knowing that he understood and loved music. The adagio was in harmony with the reminiscent mood evoked by our conversation at tea, and I think I played it quite well. But the scherzo he would not let me play. ‘No,’ he said, coming up to me, ‘that you don’t play well. Let it be. But the first movement wasn’t bad. You’re musical, I think.’ This moderate praise delighted me so much that I positively blushed. It was so novel and agreeable that he, a friend and contemporary of my father, should no longer treat me as a child but speak to me seriously, as one grown-up to another. Katya went upstairs to put Sonya to bed, and the two of us were left alone in the parlour.

He talked to me about my father, how they had become friends and of the good times they had had together while I was still in the schoolroom and playing with toys; and his stories made me see my father for the first time as a simple, lovable person, whom I had never known till then. He asked me too about my tastes, what I read and what I planned to do, and gave me advice. The high-spirited friend, full of jokes, who used to tease me and make me toys had disappeared: here was someone serious, open-hearted and affectionate, for whom I felt an instinctive respect and liking. Talking to him, I was happy and at ease, although I was conscious of a certain involuntary tension. I weighed every word I spoke: I was so anxious to deserve on my own account the affection he already bestowed on me merely because of my father.

When she had put Sonya to bed Katya joined us and complained to him about my listlessness, which I had not mentioned.

‘So the most important thing of all she never told me!’ and he smiled and shook his head at me reproachfully.

‘What was there to tell?’ I said. ‘It’s very boring, and besides it will pass.’ (I actually felt now not only that my depression would go but that it had already gone and indeed had never existed.)

‘It’s a bad thing not to be able to stand solitude; he said. ‘Are you really a grown-up young lady?’

‘Of course I am,’ I replied, laughing.

‘Well, it’s a poor sort of young lady who’s only alive when people are admiring her but as soon as she’s alone lets herself go and takes no interest in anything: all for show and nothing for its own sake.’

‘A fine opinion of me you’ve got’ I riposted, for the sake of saying something.

‘No,’ he continued after a brief pause, ‘it’s not for nothing you’re so like your father. There’s something in you … ’ and his kind, attentive way of looking at me flattered me and covered me with happy confusion.

It was only now I noticed that although his face at first gave one the impression of being gay his eyes had a special way of looking at one, direct to begin with and then more and more intent and rather sad.

‘You ought not to be bored, and you cannot be’ he said. ‘You have your music, which you appreciate, your books, study; your whole life lies before you, and now or never is the time to prepare for it and save yourself regrets later on. Another year and it will be too late.’

He talked to me like a father or an uncle, and I felt him all the time making an effort to keep on my level. Though I was hurt that he should consider me his inferior, I was pleased he thought it necessary to adapt himself just for me.

For the rest of the evening he talked about business with Katya.

‘Well, good-bye, my dear friends’ he said, getting up; and coming towards me he took my hand.

‘When shall we see you again?’ asked Katya.

‘In the spring,’ he answered, still holding my hand. ‘Now I am going to Danilovko’ (this was another property of ours). ‘I’ll look into things there and make what arrangements I can. After that I go to Moscow on business of my own, and then in the summer we shall see something of each other.’

‘Must you really be away so long?’ I asked, feeling terribly sad. And indeed I had already begun hoping to see him every day, and I felt suddenly so miserable, and afraid that my depression would return. My face and the tone of my voice must have betrayed this.

‘Try and work at your books more, and don’t mope,’ he said in a way which seemed to me too cold and detached. ‘And in the spring I shall put you through an examination,’ he added, letting go my hand and not looking at me.

In the hall where we stood seeing him off he made haste to put on his fur coat, and again his eyes looked past me. ‘He needn’t bother himself!’ I thought. ‘Does he really think I’m so anxious for him to look at me? He is a nice man, a very nice man … but that’s all.’

That evening, however, Katya and I sat up very late, talking, not of him, but of plans for the summer, and where we should spend the winter. The dreadful question ‘What’s the good of it all?’ did not occur to me. Now it all seemed quite plain and simple that the aim of life was to be happy, and I could see a great deal of happiness ahead. It was as if our gloomy old Pokrovskoe house were suddenly flooded with life and light.

2

IN due course spring arrived. My former depression was gone, and had given place to the unrest which spring brings with it, the dreams, the vague hopes and longings. Although I no longer spent my time as I had done at the beginning of the winter, but now gave lessons to Sonya, and played the piano and read, I would often go into the park and wander on my own for hours along its avenues, or sit on a bench and give myself up to heaven knows what thoughts and wishings and hopes. Sometimes, too, I would sit up all night by my bedroom window, especially if there was a moon; or just in my night-clothes steal out into the garden without Katya knowing, and run through the dew as far as the pond, and once I went all the way to the open fields, and another night I walked right round the garden all by myself.

Looking back, I find it hard to remember and understand the dreams which then filled my imagination. Even when I can recall them, I can hardly believe that I could have had such dreams – they were so strange and so far removed from reality.

At the end of May Sergei Mihailovich returned from his travels, as he had promised.

The first time he came to see us was in the evening and we were not expecting him at all. We were sitting on the veranda, about to have tea. The garden was all green and the nightingales had settled themselves for the month of June in the leafy shrubs. The tips of the bushy lilac trees had a sprinkling of white and purple, where the flowers were ready to open. The foliage of the birch avenue was translucent in the light of the setting sun. It was cool and shady on the veranda. There must have been a heavy evening dew on the grass. From away beyond the garden came the last sounds of the day – the herd being driven home. Nikon, the half-witted boy, crossed in front of the veranda, going along the little path with his water-cart, the cool stream of water from the sprinkler making dark circles on the freshly-dug earth round the dahlias and the sticks that held them up. On the veranda the polished samovar shone and hissed on the white table-cloth before us, and there were cracknel biscuits, cream and cakes. Katya with her plump hands was busily rinsing out the cups. I was too hungry after bathing to wait for the tea to be made, and was eating bread heaped with thick fresh cream. I had on a wide-sleeved linen blouse, and my wet hair was tied up in a kerchief. Katya was the first to catch sight of him from the window.

‘Ah, Sergei Mihailych!’ she cried. ‘Why, we were just talking about you!’

I jumped up, meaning to go away and change my dress, but he caught me just as I was at the door.

‘Come, no need to stand on ceremony in the country,’ he said, looking at the kerchief round my head and smiling. ‘You don’t mind Grigori seeing you like that, and I’m really only another Grigori to you.’ But it seemed to me even as he was speaking that he was looking at me in a way that Grigori could never have done, and I felt embarrassed.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ I said, as I left him.

‘But what’s wrong with you as you are?’ he called after me. You look exactly like a peasant-girl.’

‘How strangely he gazed at me,’ I thought, as I hurriedly changed upstairs. ‘But anyway, thank goodness he’s come: things will be jollier now!’ A brief inspection in the glass and I ran gaily down on to the veranda, not concealing my haste and arriving out of breath. He was sitting at the table, telling Katya about our affairs. Glancing up at me, he smiled and went on talking. From what he said it appeared that our finances were in excellent shape: now we need only spend the summer in the country and then we could either go to Petersburg for Sonya’s education, or else abroad.

‘If only you could come abroad with us,’ said Katya. ‘We shall be quite lost by ourselves.’

‘Ah, I should like to go round the world with you!’ he said, half jestingly.

‘Well, do then’ I said. ‘Let’s go round the world.’

He smiled and shook his head.

‘What about my mother ? And my business ? Anyway, that’s beside the point. I want to know what you have been doing all this time. Not moping again, I hope?’

When he heard that I had been busy during his absence, and not bored, which Katya confirmed, he was full of praise, and in word and look caressed me as though I were a child and he had a right to do so. Somehow I felt bound to tell him very frankly and in detail all the good things I had done and make a clean breast of everything he might disapprove of, as though I were at confession. It was such a lovely evening that after the tea-things had been taken away We stayed out on the veranda; and I was too absorbed by what we were saying to notice that gradually all human sounds had ceased. All round us the scent of flowers grew stronger, heavy dew drenched the grass, a nightingale trilled in a nearby lilac bush and then, hearing our voices, hushed her song. The starry sky seemed to drop down over our heads.

I only became aware that it was getting dark when a bat suddenly flew noiselessly under the awning of the veranda and began to flutter round my white shawl. I shrank back against the wall and opened my mouth to scream but the bat darted out under the awning as silently and swiftly as it had come, to disappear in the dusk of the garden.

‘How fond I am of this place of yours’ he said suddenly. ‘I could spend my whole life sitting here on the veranda.’

‘Why not?’ said Katya. ‘Just you go on sitting.’

‘That’s all very well’ he said, ‘but life won’t just stay still.’

‘Why don’t you get married?’ said Katya. “You would make a fine husband.’

‘Because I like sitting quiet perhaps?’ And he laughed. ‘No, Katerina Karlovna, too late for you or me to marry. People have long given up thinking of me as a marrying man. And I’ve given up the idea myself this many a day; and I can assure you I have been perfectly happy ever since.’

It seemed to me that he said this with a sort of unnatural emphasis, hoping that we would disagree.

‘What nonsense ! Thirty-six and to have done with life!’ said Katya.

‘I should think I have done with life’ he went on, “when all I want is to sit quiet. But something else is needed for marriage. Just ask her’ he added, nodding at me. ‘It’s for young people of her age to think of marrying, while you and I look on and rejoice in their happiness.’

There was an undertone of sadness and constraint in his voice which did not escape me. He was silent for a moment or two; neither Katya nor I spoke.

‘Just imagine,’ he continued, turning in his chair. ‘Supposing I were all of a sudden by some unfortunate chance to marry a girl of seventeen like Mash – like Marya Alexandrovna here. That’s an excellent illustration, I am very glad it came into my mind… there couldn’t be a better instance.’

I laughed, and could not see any reason at all why he should be so glad, 6r what it was that had come into his mind …

‘Now, tell me the truth, honestly, with your hand on your heart’ he said, addressing me jocularly. ‘Wouldn’t you consider it a misfortune to tie yourself to an old man who has lived his life and only wants to sit quiet, whereas you have goodness knows what wishes and desires fermenting in your heart?’

I felt uncomfortable, and was silent, not knowing what to answer.

‘Remember, I’m not making you a proposal, you know’ he said, laughing. ‘But tell me truly, am I really the kind of husband you dream about when you wander alone along the avenue in the park at twilight? You would be wretched, wouldn’t you?’

‘Not wretched…’ I began.

‘But not happy though,’ he finished for me.

‘No, but perhaps I may be mistaken…’

But again he broke in.

‘There, you see, she’s absolutely right and I am grateful for her frankness, and very glad we have had this conversation. And what’s more, it would be the greatest calamity for me too,’ he added.

‘What a queer fellow you are, you’ve not changed a bit!’ said Katya, and she went indoors from the veranda to see about supper.

We were both silent after Katya had gone, and around us all was still save for the nightingale trilling now, not as she had done earlier, hesitantly and in fits and starts, but flooding the garden with her serene, unhurried song of night, with another down below in the hollow answering her for the first time that evening. The bird nearest to us stopped and seemed to listen for a moment before pouring out again still more shrilly her piercing long-drawn cadences. There was a regal calm in the birds’ notes as they rang out in the night, in a world which belonged to them and not to man. The gardener walked past on his way to his pallet in the greenhouse, the tread of his heavy boots growing fainter and fainter down the path. At the foot of the hill someone whistled twice sharply, and then again all was still. A leaf stirred almost with a sigh, the veranda awning flapped gently, and a sweet fragrance hovering in the air wafted into the veranda, filling it. After what had been said the silence made me feel awkward, but what to say now I did not know. I looked at him. In the dusk his shining eyes looked back into mine.

‘It’s fine to be alive in the world!’ he pronounced.

I sighed, I don’t know why.

‘Well?’

‘It’s fine to be alive!’ I echoed.

And again we were silent, and again I felt ill at ease. I kept thinking that I had hurt his feelings by agreeing that he was old, and I wanted to console him but did not know how.

‘Well, I must say good-bye,’ he said, rising. ‘My mother expects me for supper. I’ve hardly seen her all day.’

‘But I wanted to play you a new sonata,’ I protested.

‘Some other time.’ He spoke coldly, it seemed to me.

‘Good-bye.’

I felt more than ever certain that I had wounded him, and I was sorry. Katya and I went as far as the porch to see him off, and stood for a while in the open, looking at the road where he had vanished from sight. When the sound of his horse’s hoofs had died away I walked round the house to the veranda and again sat gazing into the garden; and in the dewy mist full of the sounds of night for a long time still I saw and heard all that I longed to see and hear.

He came a second and a third time, and the constraint which had arisen because of that strange conversation completely disappeared, never to return. All through the summer he rode over to see us two or three times a week; and I grew so accustomed to his company that if ever he failed to visit us for long I felt lonely by myself and was angry with him, thinking he behaved badly in deserting me. He treated me like a boy whose companionship he liked, asked me questions, drew me out into the frankest of discussions, gave me advice and encouragement, and sometimes scolded me or pulled me up. But in spite of his constant effort to play down to me I was conscious that behind the part of him which I could understand there remained a whole other world into which he considered my inclusion unnecessary, and this did more than anything to foster my respect and attract me to him. I knew from Katya and the neighbours that besides caring for his old mother with whom he lived, and managing our affairs as well as his own estate, he had a great deal to do with local government matters, which were a source of much worry. But what his attitude was to all this, what were his convictions, plans and hopes, I could never find out. As soon as I brought the conversation round to his affairs he would wrinkle his brows in a way peculiar to himself, as much as to say, ‘Don’t, please. Why bother yourself about that?’ and change the subject. At first this hurt but later on I got so used to having our talk confined to what concerned me that I came to regard it as quite natural.

Another thing that used to rile me but which I afterwards enjoyed was his complete indifference and, almost, disdain for my appearance. Never, either by word or look, was there a hint that he thought me pretty: on the contrary, he would make a wry face and laugh when people complimented me on my looks in front of him. He took a positive pleasure in picking out my defects and teasing me about them. The fashionable clothes in which Katya liked to dress me up and the way she did my hair for festive occasions only provoked his mockery, mortifying the kind-hearted Katya and at first disconcerting me. Katya, having made up her mind that he admired me, was quite unable to understand his not liking to see the woman he admired shown off to the best advantage. But I quickly came to see what was behind it. He wanted to be sure that I was devoid of vanity. And so soon as I realized this, I actually was quite free from any trace of affectation in the clothes I wore, or the way I did my hair, or how I moved; but a very obvious form of affectation took its place – an affectation of simplicity, at a time when I could not yet be really simple. I knew that he loved me; but whether as a child or as a woman I had not then asked myself; I prized his love and, feeling that he considered me better than all the other young women in the world, I could not help wishing him to continue in the illusion. And involuntarily I deceived him. But in deceiving him I became a better person myself. I felt how much better and more worthy it was for me to show him the finer side of my nature than any of my physical attractions. My hair, my hands, my face, my ways – whether good or bad, it seemed to me he had appraised them all at a glance and knew them so well that I could add nothing to them except the wish to deceive him. But my inner self he did not know, because he loved it and because it was in the very midst of growth and development; and there I could – and did – deceive him. And how easy my relations with him became once I understood this clearly! My groundless confusion and awkwardness of movement completely disappeared. I felt that from whatever angle he saw me, whether sitting or standing, with my hair up or down, all of me was known to him and, I fancied, satisfied him. If, contrary to his practice, he had suddenly told me, as other people did, that I was beautiful, I believe I should have been anything but pleased. But, on the other hand, how happy and light-hearted I would feel when, after something I had said, he would gaze at me intently and say in a voice charged with emotion which he would try to hide with a humorous note:

‘Yes, oh yes, there is something about you. You’re a fine girl, that I must admit.’

What was it gamed me such rewards, which filled me with pride and joy? I would perhaps simply remark how my heart warmed to see old Grigori’s love for his little grand-daughter; or I would be moved to tears by some poem or story I read; or it might be because I preferred Mozart to Schulhoff. And, when I came to think of it, I was amazed at my extraordinary instinct for guessing what was good and what one should like, when at the time I certainly had not the slightest notion of what was good and worthy of liking. Most of my former tastes and habits did not please him; and it was enough for him to show me by the lifting of an eyebrow or a glance that he did not approve what I was trying to say; he had only to put on his very faintly scornful, woe-begone expression for me instantly to feel that I no longer cared for what until then I had held dear. Sometimes it happened that he had hardly begun to give me some piece of advice before it seemed to me that I already knew what he was going to say. When he looked into my eyes and asked a question his very look would draw out of me the answer he wanted. All my ideas at that time, all my feelings were not really mine: they were his ideas and feelings which had suddenly become mine, being assimilated into my life and illuminating it. Quite unconsciously I was beginning to look at everything with different eyes – at Katya and the servants and Sonya and myself and my pursuits. Books which I had read merely for the sake of killing time were suddenly transformed into one of my chief pleasures hi life, just because he brought the books and we read and discussed them together. Before, the lessons I gave to Sonya had been a burdensome task which I forced myself to go through with from a sense of duty; he came to one of the lessons – and immediately it was a joy to me to watch Sonya’s progress. To learn a whole piece of music by heart had seemed an impossibility; but now when I knew that he would hear and perhaps praise it I would practise the same passage forty times over, until poor Katya stuffed her ears with cotton-wool – while I was still ready to go on. The same old sonatas I somehow played quite differently now, and they sounded entirely different and vastly better. Even Katya, whom I loved and knew as well as I knew myself – even she was transformed in my eyes. Only now did I understand for the first time that she was under no obligation to be the mother, friend and slave to us that she was. I realized now all the self-sacrifice and devotion of this affectionate creature, appreciated all that I owed to her, and learned to love her more than ever. It was he, too, who taught me to take an entirely new view of the people who worked for us, our serfs and servants and maids. It sounds an absurd confession to make – but I had lived among these people for seventeen years and yet knew less about them than about strangers whom I had never seen: it had never once occurred to me that they had their affections, longings and sorrows just as I had. Our garden, our woods and fields, familiar for so long, suddenly acquired a new beauty in my eyes. He was right when he said that there is only one certain happiness in life – to live for others. At the time this idea of his had seemed strange, I did not understand it; but by degrees, without any conscious reasoning, it had become a conviction with me. He opened up a whole world of delight in the present, without altering anything in my daily life and adding nothing to it – except himself to every impression of mind or heart. All that had surrounded me from childhood without saying anything to me suddenly came to life. It needed only his presence for everything to begin to speak and press for admittance to my heart, filling it with happiness.

Often during that summer I would go upstairs to my room and lie on my bed, and instead of the old melancholy of spring, the longings and hopes for the future, a passionate happiness in the present would envelop me. Unable to sleep, I would get up and sit on Katya’s bed and tell her how utterly happy I was, which, when I look back on it now, I can see was quite unnecessary: she had the evidence of her own eyes. But she always told me that she, too, wished for nothing and was very happy, and she kissed me. I believed her – it seemed so right and inevitable that everyone should be happy. But Katya could also think of sleep, and sometimes even pretend to be angry, and drive me off her bed and fall asleep, while I lay awake for hours going over in my mind all the reasons that made me so happy. Some nights I would get out of bed and say my prayers again, praying in my own words and thanking God for all the happiness He had given me.

And all was quiet in the room: the only sounds were Katya’s even breathing as she slept and the ticking of the clock by her bedside, while I twisted and turned and whispered words of prayer or made the sign of the cross over myself and kissed the cross round my neck. The doors were shut and the windows shuttered; perhaps a fly or a mosquito hung buzzing and quivering in the air. And I felt that I never wanted to leave that room, I did not want dawn to come, I did not want the atmosphere that enfolded me to be dissolved. I felt that my dreams and thoughts and prayers were living things, living there in the darkness with me, hovering about my bed and standing over me. And every thought I had was his thought, and every feeling his feeling. I did not know then that this was love – I thought that it was something that often happened, a feeling to be enjoyed and taken for granted.

3

ONE day at harvest-time I went into the garden after dinner with Katya and Sonya to our favourite seat in the shade of the lime-trees overlooking the ravine, with forest and field stretching away into the distance. It was three days since Sergei Mihailovich had been to see us, and we were expecting him that day, all the more so because our bailiff had said that he had promised to come to the harvest-field. Round about two o’clock we saw him riding towards the rye-field. With a smile and a glance at me Katya ordered peaches and cherries, of which he was very fond, leaned back on the bench and soon slipped into a doze. I broke off a crooked flat branch of lime which made my hand wet with its sappy leaves and bark, and fanned Katya with it while I went on with my book, stopping every moment or so to glance at the path through the field by which he must come. Sonya was making a summer-house for her dolls at the foot of the old lime-tree. The day was hot and steamy, there was no wind. Dark clouds were gathering and growing blacker, and ever since the morning a storm had been brewing. I felt restless, as I always did before thunder. But after midday the clouds began to lighten at the edges, and the sun sailed out into a clear sky; only in one quarter of the heavens was there a faint rumbling, and a single heavy cloud louring over the horizon and merging with the dust from the fields was rent from time to time by pale zigzags of lightning darting down to earth. It was clear that for today the storm would pass, with us at all events. Along the road, parts of which were visible beyond the garden, an endless procession of carts creaked forward, piled high with sheaves, while those that were empty rattled quickly past them on their way back, shaking the legs of the occupants and making their shirts flap. The thick dust neither blew away nor settled but hung in the air beyond the fence, and we could see it through the transparent foliage of the trees in the garden. From a little farther off, in the yard where the threshing was done, the same sound of voices and the same creaking of wheels; and the same golden sheaves that had slowly made their way past the fence were now flying aloft, until the stacks grew before my eyes into oval houses with sharp pointed tops, with the figures of peasants swarming about them. In the dusty field in front more carts were moving and more yellow sheaves were to be seen; and from far away came the noise of carts and of talking and singing again. At one end of the field the expanse of stubble gradually spread, leaving strips of ridge-land overgrown with wormwood. Lower down to the right, dotted about the unsightly, untidy mown field, I could see the brightly-coloured dresses of the women as they bent down and swung their arms to bind the sheaves; and order was gradually restored to the untidy field, as the pretty sheaves were ranged at close intervals. It seemed as if summer suddenly turned to autumn before my eyes. The dust and the sultry heat were everywhere, except in our favourite nook in the garden; and from all sides, in the dust and heat of the burning sun, rose the clamour of the labouring peasants as they walked and moved about.

But Katya snored away peacefully on our shady bench beneath her white cambric handkerchief, the cherries shone so juicily and black on the plate, our dresses looked so fresh and clean, the water in the pitcher sparkled rainbow-bright in the sun, and I felt so happy. ‘How can I help it?’ I thought. ‘Am I to blame for being happy? But how can I share my happiness? How and to whom can I give up my whole self with all my happiness ?’

The sun had already set behind the tops of the trees in the birch avenue, the dust was settling in the fields, the distant horizon showed clearer and more luminous in the slanting rays; the clouds had quite dispersed; I could see the thatched roofs of three new corn-stacks at the threshing-floor behind the trees, with the peasants climbing down from them; carts bumped along, obviously making their last journey; peasant-women with rakes over their shoulders and binding-twine stuck in their sashes were strolling homewards, singing lustily; but still Sergei Mihailovich did not come, although I had seen him ride down the hill long ago. Suddenly he appeared in the avenue, coming from the direction from which I was least expecting him (he had skirted the ravine). He walked quickly towards me, with his hat off and his face radiant. Seeing Katya asleep, he bit his lip, shut his eyes and advanced on tiptoe: I saw at once that he was in that special mood of inexplicable high spirits which I adored in him and which we called ‘wild delight’. He was just like a schoolboy playing truant; his whole being, from top to toe, breathed content, happiness and boyish exuberance.

‘Well, hullo my young violet, how are you? All right?’ he said in a whisper, coming up to me and taking my hand. Then, in answer to my question, ‘Oh, I’m in great form. I feel like a boy of thirteen today – I want to play at horses and climb trees.’

‘Is it “wild delight”?’ I asked, looking into his laughing eyes and feeling that this ‘wild delight’ was infecting me also.

‘Yes,’ he answered, winking one eye and suppressing a smile. ‘Only why keep hitting Katerina Karlovna on the nose?’

I had not noticed as I looked at him and went on waving the branch that I had twitched the handkerchief off Katya and was brushing her face with the leaves. I laughed.

‘And she’ll tell us she wasn’t asleep,’ I whispered, as though to avoid waking Katya; but that was not my real reason – it was simply that I enjoyed talking to him in a whisper.