Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

sat in the little drawing-room of the old house, with an open door leading out onto the verandah and open windows overlooking the ancient star-shaped garden with its lime trees. Grey-haired Anna Fyódorovna sat in a lilac jacket on the sofa, before which stood a round mahogany table on which she was laying out cards. Her old brother, in his clean white trousers and blue coat, had settled himself by the window, and was plaiting a cord out of white cotton with the aid of a wooden fork⁠—an occupation his niece had taught him, and which he liked very much, as he could no longer do anything, and his eyes were too weak for his favourite occupation, newspaper reading. Pímotchka, Anna Fyódorovna’s ward, sat by him learning a lesson⁠—Lisa helping her and at the same time, with wooden knitting needles, making a goat’s-wool stocking for her uncle. The last rays of the setting sun shone, as usual at that hour, through the lime-tree avenue, and threw slanting gleams onto the farthest window and the whatnot standing near it. It was so quiet in the garden and the room, that one could hear the swift flutter of a swallow’s wings outside the window, and in the room Anna Fyódorovna’s soft sigh, or the slight groan of the old man as he crossed his legs.

“How do they go?⁠—Lisa, show me! I always forget,” said Anna Fyódorovna, at a standstill in laying out her cards at “patience.”

Lisa, without stopping her work, went to her mother and, glancing at the cards:

“Ah, you’ve muddled them all, mama dear!” she said, rearranging the cards; “that’s the way they should go. And what you are trying your fortune about will still come true,” she added, withdrawing one card so that it was not noticed.

“Ah yes, you always deceive me and say it has come out.”

“No really, it means⁠ ⁠… you’ll succeed. It has come out.”

“All right, all right, you sly puss! But is it not time we had tea?”

“I have already ordered the samovar to be lit. I’ll see to it at once. Do you want it brought here?⁠ ⁠… Be quick and finish your lesson, Pímotchka, and let’s have a run.”

And Lisa went to the door.

“Lisa, Lizzie!” said her uncle, looking intently at his fork, “I think I’ve again dropped a stitch⁠—pick it up, ducky.”

“Directly, directly! I’ll only give a loaf of sugar to be broken up.”

And really, three minutes later, she ran back, went to her uncle and pinched his ear.

“That’s for dropping your stitches!” she said, laughing, “and you have not done your task!”

“Now then, never mind, never mind. Put it right⁠—there’s a little knot of some kind.”

Lisa took the fork, drew a pin out of her tippet⁠—which thereupon, a breeze coming in at the door, blew slightly open⁠—and managing somehow to pick the stitch up with the pin, pulled two loops through and returned the fork to her uncle.

“Now give me a kiss for it,” she said, holding her rosy cheek to him and pinning up her tippet. “You shall have rum with your tea today. It’s Friday, you know.”

And she went again into the tearoom.

“Come here and look, uncle, the hussars are coming!” rang her clear voice from the tearoom.

Anna Fyódorovna came with her brother into the tearoom, the windows of which overlooked the village, to see the hussars. Very little was visible from the windows⁠—only a crowd moving in a cloud of dust.

“It’s a pity, sister, that we have so little room,” the uncle said to Anna Fyódorovna, “and that the wing is not yet finished; we might have invited the officers. Hussar officers, you know, are such splendid, gay, young fellows. One would have liked to see something of them.”

“Why, of course I should have been only too glad; but you know yourself, brother, we have no room. There’s my bedroom, and Lisa’s room, the drawing-room, this, and your room, and that’s all. Where is one to put them?⁠—really now. The village elder’s cottage has been cleaned out for them: Michael Matvéef says it’s quite clean.”

“And we could have chosen a bridegroom for you, Lizzie, from among them⁠—a fine hussar.”

“No, I don’t want an hussar; I’d rather have an Uhlan. Weren’t you in the Uhlans, uncle?⁠ ⁠… I don’t want to have anything to do with these. They are said all to be desperate fellows.” And Lisa blushed a little, but again laughed her musical laugh.

“Here comes Oustúshka running; we must ask her what she has seen,” said she.

Anna Fyódorovna told her to call Oustúshka.

“It’s not in you to keep at your work; you must needs run off to see the soldiers,” said Anna Fyódorovna. “Well, where have the officers been put up?”

“In Erómkin’s house, mistress. There are two of them, such handsome ones. One’s a Count, they say!”

“And what’s his name?”

“Kazárof or Tourbínof. I beg your pardon⁠—I forget.”

“There’s a fool; can’t even tell us anything. You might at least have found out the name.”

“Well, I’ll run back.”

“Yes, I know, you’re first-rate at that sort of thing.⁠ ⁠… No, let Daniel go. Tell him, brother, to go and to ask whether the officers want anything. One ought, after all, to show them some politeness; say the mistress sent to inquire.”

The old people returned to the tearoom, and Lisa went into the servants’ room to put away into a box the sugar they had broken up. Oustúshka was there telling about the hussars.

“Darling miss, what a beauty that Count is!” she said; “a regular cherubim with black eyebrows. There now, if you had a bridegroom like that, you would be a couple of the right sort.”

The other maids smiled approvingly; the old nurse, who sat knitting at a window, sighed, and even whispered a prayer, drawing in her breath.

“So you liked the hussars very much?” said Lisa. “And you’re a good one at telling what you’ve seen. Please, Oustúshka, go and bring some of the cranberry juice, to give the hussars something sour to drink.”

And Lisa, laughing, went out with the sugar basin.

“I should really