Family Happiness, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [best books for students to read TXT] 📗

Chapter 4

The house at Nikolskoye, so long unheated and uninhabited, came to life

again; but much of the past was dead beyond recall. Tatyana Semyonovna was

no more, and we were now alone together. But far from desiring such close

companionship, we even found it irksome. To me that winter was the more

trying because I was in bad health, from which In only recovered after the

birth of my second son. My husband and I were still on the same terms as

during our life in Petersburg: we were coldly friendly to each other; but in

the country each room and wall and sofa recalled what he had once been to

me, and what I had lost. It was if some unforgiven grievance held us apart,

as if he were punishing me and pretending not to be aware of it. But there

was nothing to ask pardon for, no penalty to deprecate; my punishment was

merely this, that he did not give his whole heart and mind to me as he used

to do; but he did not give it to anyone or to anything; as though he had no

longer a heart to give. Sometimes it occurred to me that he was only

pretending to be like that, in order to hurt me, and that the old feeling

was still alive in his breast; and I tried to call it forth. But I always

failed: he always seemed to avoid frankness, evidently suspecting me of

insincerity, and dreading the folly of any emotional display. I could read

in his face and the tone of his voice, “What is the good of talking? I know

all the facts already, and I know what is on the tip of your tongue, and I

know that you will say one thing and do another.” At first I was mortified

by his dread of frankness, but I came later to think that it was rather the

absence, on his part, of any need of frankness. It would never have occurred

to me now, to tell him of a sudden that I loved him, or to ask him to repeat

the prayers with me or listen while Ii played the piano. Our intercourse

came to be regulated by a fixed code of good manners. We lived our separate

lives: he had his own occupations in which I was not needed, and which I no

longer wished to share, while I continued my idle life which no longer vexed

or grieved him. The children were still too young to form a bond between us.

 

But spring came round and brought Katya and Sonya to spend the summer with

us in the country. as the house at Nikolskoye was under repair, we went to

live at my old home at Pokrovskoye. The old house was unchanged— the

veranda, the folding table and the piano in the sunny drawing room, and my

old bedroom with its white curtains and the dreams of my girlhood which I

seemed to have left behind me there. In that room there were two beds: one

had been mine, and in it now my plump little Kokosha lay sprawling, when I

went at night to sign him with the cross; the other was a crib, in which the

little face of my baby, Vanya, peeped out from his swaddling clothes. Often

when I had made the sign over them and remained standing in the middle of

the quiet room, suddenly there rose up from all the corners, from the walls

and curtains, old forgotten visions of youth. Old voices began to sing the

songs of my girlhood. Where were those visions now? where were those dear

old sweet songs? All that I had hardly dared to hope for had come to pass.

My vague confused dreams had become a reality, and the reality had become an

oppressive, difficult, and joyless life. All remained the same — the garden

visible through the window, the grass, the path, the very same bench over

there above the dell, the same song of the nightingale by the pond, the same

lilacs in full bloom, the same moon shining above the house; and yet, in

everything such a terrible inconceivable change! Such coldness in all that

might have been near and dear! Just as in old times Katya and I sit quietly

alone together in the parlour and talk, and talk of him. But Katya has grown

wrinkled and pale; and her eyes no longer shine with joy and hope, but

express only sympathy, sorrow, and regret. We do not go into raptures as we

used to, we judge him coolly; we do not wonder what we have done to deserve

such happiness, or long to proclaim our thoughts to all the world. No! we

whisper together like conspirators and ask each other for the hundredth time

why all has changed so sadly. Yet he was still the same man, save for the

deeper furrow between his eyebrows and the whiter hair on his temples; but

his serious attentive look was constantly veiled from me by a cloud. And I

am the same woman, but without love or desire for love, with no longing for

work and not content with myself. My religious ecstasies, my love for my

husband, the fullness of my former life — all these now seem utterly remote

and visionary. Once it seemed so plain and right that to live for others was

happiness; but now it has become unintelligible. Why live for others, when

life had no attraction even for oneself?

 

I had given up my music altogether since the time of our first visit to

Petersburg; but now the old piano and the old music tempted me to begin

again.

 

One day i was not well and stayed indoors alone. My husband had taken Katya

and Sonya to see the new buildings at Nikolskoye. Tea was laid; I went

downstairs and while waiting for them sat down at the piano. I opened the

“Moonlight sonata” and began to play. There was no one within sight or

sound, the windows were open over the garden, and the familiar sounds

floated through the room with a solemn sadness. At the end of the first

movement I looked round instinctively to the corner where he used once to

sit and listen to my playing. He was not there; his chair, long unmoved, was

still in its place; through the window I could see a lilac bush against the

light of the setting sun; the freshness of evening streamed in through the

open windows. I rested my elbows on the piano and covered my face with both

hands; and so I sat for a long time, thinking. I recalled with pain the

irrevocable past, and timidly imagined the future. But for me there seemed

to be no future, no desires at all and no hopes. “Can life be over for

me?” I thought with horror; then I looked up, and, trying to forget and not

to think, I began playing the same movement over again. “Oh, God!” I prayed,

“forgive me if I have sinned, or restore to me all that once blossomed in my

heart, or teach me what to do and how to live now.” There was a sound of

wheels on the grass and before the steps of the house; then I heard cautious

and familiar footsteps pass along the veranda and cease; but my heart no

longer replied to the sound. When I stopped playing the footsteps were

behind me and a hand was laid on my shoulder.

 

“How clever of you to think of playing that!” he said.

 

I said nothing.

 

“Have you had tea?” he asked.

 

I shook my head without looking at him — I was unwilling to let him see the

signs of emotion on my face.

 

“They’ll be here immediately,” he said; “the horse gave trouble, and they

got out on the high road to walk home.”

 

“Let us wait for them,” I said, and went out to the veranda, hoping that he

would follow; but he asked about the children and went upstairs to see them.

Once more his presence and simple kindly voice made me doubt if I had really

lost anything. What more could I wish? “He is kind and gentle, a good

husband, a good father; I don’t know myself what more I want.” I sat down

under the veranda