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

corner, and she went past him swinging her arms and swaying her body. She not only went past him, but on passing him ran, as if playfully, to overtake her fellow-servant.

Again the bright midday, the nettles, the back of Daniel’s hut, and in the shade of the plane-trees her smiling face biting some leaves, rose in his imagination.

“No, it is impossible to let matters continue so,” he said to himself, and waiting till the women had passed out of sight he went to the office.

It was just the dinner-hour and he hoped to find the steward still there, and so it happened. The steward was just waking up from his after-dinner nap, and stretching himself and yawning was standing in the office, looking at the herdsman who was telling him something.

“Vasíli Nikoláich!” said Eugène to the steward.

“What is your pleasure?”

“I want to speak to you.”

“What is your pleasure?”

“Just finish what you are saying.”

“Aren’t you going to bring it in?” said Vasíli Nikoláich to the herdsman.

“It’s heavy, Vasíli Nikoláich.”

“What is it?” asked Eugène.

“Why, a cow has calved in the meadow. Well, all right, I’ll order them to harness a horse at once. Tell Nicholas Lysúkh to get out the dray cart.”

The herdsman went out.

“Do you know,” began Eugène, flushing and conscious that he was doing so, “do you know, Vasíli Nikoláich, while I was a bachelor I went off the track a bit.⁠ ⁠… You may have heard⁠ ⁠…”

Vasíli Nikoláich, evidently sorry for his master, said with smiling eyes: “Is it about Stepanída?”

“Why, yes. Look here. Please, please do not engage her to help in the house. You understand, it is very awkward for me⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, it must have been Ványa the clerk who arranged it.”

“Yes, please⁠ ⁠… and hadn’t the rest of the phosphate better be strewn?” said Eugène, to hide his confusion.

“Yes, I am just going to see to it.”

So the matter ended, and Eugène calmed down, hoping that as he had lived for a year without seeing her, so things would go on now. “Besides, Vasíli Nikoláich will speak to Iván the clerk; Iván will speak to her, and she will understand that I don’t want it,” said Eugène to himself, and he was glad he had forced himself to speak to Vasíli Nikoláich, hard as it had been to do so.

“Yes, it is better, much better, than that feeling of doubt, that feeling of shame.” He shuddered at the mere remembrance of his sin in thought.

XII

The moral effort he had made to overcome his shame and speak to Vasíli Nikoláich tranquillized Eugène. It seemed to him that the matter was all over now. Liza at once noticed that he was quite calm, and even happier than usual. “No doubt he was upset by our mothers pinpricking one another. It really is disagreeable, especially for him who is so sensitive and noble, always to hear such unfriendly and ill-mannered insinuations,” thought she.

The next day was Trinity Sunday. It was a beautiful day, and the peasant-women, on their way into the woods to plait wreaths, came, according to custom, to the landowner’s home and began to sing and dance. Mary Pávlovna and Varvára Alexéevna came out onto the porch in smart clothes, carrying sunshades, and went up to the ring of singers. With them, in a jacket of Chinese silk, came out the uncle, a flabby libertine and drunkard, who was living that summer with Eugène.

As usual there was a bright, many-coloured ring of young women and girls, the centre of everything, and around these from different sides like attendant planets that had detached themselves and were circling round, went girls hand in hand, rustling in their new print gowns; young lads giggling and running backwards and forwards after one another; full-grown lads in dark blue or black coats and caps and with red shirts, who unceasingly spat out sunflower-seed shells; and the domestic servants or other outsiders watching the dance-circle from aside. Both the old ladies went close up to the ring, and Liza accompanied them in a light blue dress, with light blue ribbons on her head, and with wide sleeves under which her long white arms and angular elbows were visible.

Eugène did not wish to come out, but it was ridiculous to hide, and he too came out onto the porch smoking a cigarette, bowed to the men and lads, and talked with one of them. The women meanwhile shouted a dance-song with all their might, snapping their fingers, clapping their hands, and dancing.

“They are calling for the master,” said a youngster coming up to Eugène’s wife, who had not noticed the call. Liza called Eugène to look at the dance and at one of the women dancers who particularly pleased her. This was Stepanída. She wore a yellow skirt, a velveteen sleeveless jacket and a silk kerchief, and was broad, energetic, ruddy, and merry. No doubt she danced well. He saw nothing.

“Yes, yes,” he said, removing and replacing his pince-nez. “Yes, yes,” he repeated. “So it seems I cannot be rid of her,” he thought.

He did not look at her, fearing her attraction, and just on that account what his passing glance caught of her seemed to him especially attractive. Besides this he saw by her sparkling look that she saw him and saw that he admired her. He stood there as long as propriety demanded, and seeing that Varvára Alexéevna had called her “my dear” senselessly and insincerely and was talking to her, he turned aside and went away.

He went into the house in order not to see her, but on reaching the upper story he approached the window, without knowing how or why, and as long as the women remained at the porch he stood there and looked and looked at her, feasting his eyes on her.

He ran, while there was no one to see him, and then went with quiet steps onto the veranda and from there, smoking a cigarette, he passed through the garden as if going for a stroll, and