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

charming nonsense which I admired in you. So I let you go through it alone, feeling that I had no right to put pressure on you, though my own time for that sort of thing was long past.”

“If you loved me,” I said, “how could you stand beside me and suffer me to go through it?”

“Because it was impossible for you to take my word for it, though you would have tried to. Personal experience was necessary, and now you have had it.”

“There was much calculation in all that,” I said, “but little love.”

And again we were silent.

“What you said just now is severe, but it is true,” he began, rising suddenly and beginning to walk about the veranda. “Yes, it is true. I was to blame,” he added, stopping opposite me; “I ought either to have kept myself from loving you at all, or to have loved you in a simpler way.”

“Let us forget it all,” I said timidly.

“No,” he said; “the past can never come back, never;” and his voice softened as he spoke.

“It is restored already,” I said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

He took my hand away and pressed it.

“I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for that past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its place remains, but it all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections are still left, and gratitude; but⁠ ⁠…”

“Do not say that!” I broke in. “Let all be as it was before! Surely that is possible?” I asked, looking into his eyes; but their gaze was clear and calm, and did not look deeply into mine.

Even while I spoke, I knew that my wishes and my petition were impossible. He smiled calmly and gently; and I thought it the smile of an old man.

“How young you are still!” he said, “and I am so old. What you seek in me is no longer there. Why deceive ourselves?” he added, still smiling.

I stood silent opposite to him, and my heart grew calmer.

“Don’t let us try to repeat life,” he went on. “Don’t let us make pretences to ourselves. Let us be thankful that there is an end of the old emotions and excitements. The excitement of searching is over for us; our quest is done, and happiness enough has fallen to our lot. Now we must stand aside and make room⁠—for him, if you like,” he said, pointing to the nurse who was carrying Ványa out and had stopped at the veranda door. “that’s the truth, my dear one,” he said, drawing down my head and kissing it, not a lover any longer but an old friend.

The fragrant freshness of the night rose ever stronger and sweeter from the garden; the sounds and the silence grew more solemn; star after star began to twinkle overhead. I looked at him, and suddenly my heart grew light; it seemed that the cause of my suffering had been removed like an aching nerve. Suddenly I realized clearly and calmly that the past feeling, like the past time itself, was gone beyond recall, and that it would be not only impossible but painful and uncomfortable to bring it back. And after all, was that time so good which seemed to me so happy? and it was all so long, long ago!

“Time for tea!” he said, and we went together to the parlour. At the door we met the nurse with the baby. I took him in my arms, covered his bare little red legs, pressed him to me, and kissed him with the lightest touch of my lips. Half asleep, he moved the parted fingers of one creased little hand and opened dim little eyes, as if he was looking for something or recalling something. All at once his eyes rested on me, a spark of consciousness shone in them, the little pouting lips, parted before, now met and opened in a smile. “Mine, mine, mine!” I thought, pressing him to my breast with such an impulse of joy in every limb that I found it hard to restrain myself from hurting him. I fell to kissing the cold little feet, his stomach and hand and head with its thin covering of down. My husband came up to me, and I quickly covered the child’s face and uncovered it again.

“Iván Sergéich!” said my husband, tickling him under the chin. But I made haste to cover Iván Sergéich up again. None but I had any business to look long at him. I glanced at my husband. His eyes smiled as he looked at me; and I looked into them with an ease and happiness which I had not felt for a long time.

That day ended the romance of our marriage; the old feeling became a precious irrecoverable remembrance; but a new feeling of love for my children and the father of my children laid the foundation of a new life and a quite different happiness; and that life and happiness have lasted to the present time.

Polikoúshka Or, In the Days of Serfdom I

“Just as you please to order, madam! Only it would be a pity if it’s the Doútlofs. They’re all good fellows, and one of them must go if we don’t send at least one of the domestic serfs,” said the steward. “As it is, everyone is hinting at them.⁠ ⁠… But it’s just as you please, madam!”

And he placed his right hand over his left in front of him, inclined his head towards the other shoulder, drew in⁠—almost with a smack⁠—his thin lips, rolled up his eyes, and said no more, evidently intending to keep silent for a long time, and to listen without reply to all the absurdities his mistress was sure to utter.

The steward⁠—clean-shaven, and dressed in a long coat of a peculiar steward-like cut⁠—who had come