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

I must go in to get some other boots.” And he turned back to go into his own room, but had not gone five steps before he again glanced round to have another look at her without knowing why or wherefore. She was just going round the corner and also glanced at him.

“Ah, what am I doing!” said he to himself. “She may think⁠ ⁠… It is even certain that she already does think⁠ ⁠…”

He entered his damp room. Another woman, an old and skinny one, was there, and was still washing it. Eugène passed on tiptoe across the floor, wet with dirty water, to the wall where his boots stood, and he was about to leave the room when the woman herself went out.

“This one has gone and the other, Stepanída, will come here alone,” someone within him began to reflect.

“My God, what am I thinking of and what am I doing!” He seized his boots and ran out with them into the hall, put them on there, brushed himself, and went out onto the veranda where both the mammas were already drinking coffee. Liza had evidently been expecting him and came onto the veranda through another door at the same time.

“My God! If she, who considers me so honourable, pure, and innocent⁠—if she only knew!”⁠—thought he.

Liza as usual met him with shining face. But today somehow she seemed to him particularly pale, yellow, long, and weak.

X

During coffee, as often happened, a peculiarly feminine kind of conversation went on which had no logical sequence but which evidently was connected in some way for it went on uninterruptedly.

The two old ladies were pinpricking one another, and Liza was skillfully manoeuvring between them.

“I am so vexed that we had not finished washing your room before you got back,” she said to her husband. “But I do so want to get everything arranged.”

“Well, did you sleep well after I got up?”

“Yes, I slept well and I fell well.”

“How can a woman be well in her condition during this intolerable heat, when her windows face the sun,” said Varvára Alexéevna, her mother. “And they have no venetian-blinds or awnings. I always had awnings.”

“But you know we are in the shade after ten o’clock,” said Mary Pávlovna.

“That’s what causes fever; it comes of dampness,” said Varvára Alexéevna, not noticing that what she was saying did not agree with what she had just said. “My doctor always says that it is impossible to diagnose an illness unless one knows the patient. And he certainly knows, for he is the leading physician and we pay him a hundred rubles a visit. My late husband did not believe in doctors, but he did not grudge me anything.”

“How can a man grudge anything to a woman when perhaps her life and the child’s depend⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, when she has means a wife need not depend on her husband. A good wife submits to her husband,” said Varvára Alexéevna⁠—“only Liza is too weak after her illness.”

“Oh no, mamma, I feel quite well. But why have they not brought you any boiled cream?”

“I don’t want any. I can do with raw cream.”

“I offered some to Varvára Alexéevna, but she declined,” said Mary Pávlovna, as if justifying herself.

“No, I don’t want any today.” and as if to terminate an unpleasant conversation and yield magnanimously, Varvára Alexéevna turned to Eugène and said: “Well, and have you sprinkled the phosphates?”

Liza ran to fetch the cream.

“But I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

“Liza, Liza, go gently,” said Mary Pávlovna. “Such rapid movements do her harm.”

“Nothing does harm if one’s mind is at peace,” said Varvára Alexéevna as if referring to something, though she knew that there was nothing her words could refer to.

Liza returned with the cream and Eugène drank his coffee and listened morosely. He was accustomed to these conversations, but today he was particularly annoyed by its lack of sense. He wanted to think over what had happened to him but this chatter disturbed him. Having finished her coffee Varvára Alexéevna went away in a bad humour. Liza, Eugène, and Mary Pávlovna stayed behind, and their conversation was simple and pleasant. But Liza, being sensitive, at once noticed that something was tormenting Eugène, and she asked him whether anything unpleasant had happened. He was not prepared for this question and hesitated a little before replying that there had been nothing. This reply made Liza think all the more. That something was tormenting him, and greatly tormenting, was as evident to her as that a fly had fallen into the milk, yet he would not speak of it. What could it be?

XI

After breakfast they all dispersed. Eugène as usual went to his study, but instead of beginning to read or write his letters, he sat smoking one cigarette after another and thinking. He was terribly surprised and disturbed by the unexpected recrudescence within him of the bad feeling from which he had thought himself free since his marriage. Since then he had not once experienced that feeling, either for her⁠—the woman he had known⁠—or for any other woman except his wife. He had often felt glad of this emancipation, and now suddenly a chance meeting, seemingly so unimportant, revealed to him the fact that he was not free. What now tormented him was not that he was yielding to that feeling and desired her⁠—he did not dream of so doing⁠—but that the feeling was awake within him and he had to be on his guard against it. He had not doubt but that he would suppress it.

He had a letter to answer and a paper to write, and sat down at his writing table and began to work. Having finished it and quite forgotten what had disturbed him, he went out to go to the stables. And again as ill-luck would have it, either by unfortunate chance or intentionally, as soon as he stepped from the porch a red skirt and a red kerchief appeared from round the