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

Akoulína’s tones of despair could be heard far off in the direction of the big forest. Ólga was about to give up the search, when, in one of the sappy bushes beside the stump of a lime-tree overgrown with young shoots, she heard the continuous angry, desperate chirping of some bird which probably had nestlings nearby, and was displeased about something. The bird was evidently frightened and angry. Ólga looked round the bush, which was surrounded by a mass of tall grass with white blossoms, and there she saw something blue⁠—unlike any kind of forest plant. She stopped and gazed at it. It was Míshka⁠—whom the bird feared and was angry with.

Míshka lay on his fat stomach, sleeping sweetly, his head on his arms, his plump, crooked little legs stretched out.

Ólga called his mother, woke the boy, and gave him some of her strawberries. And for a long time after that, Ólga used to tell her father, mother, neighbours and everybody she met, how she had looked for and found Akoulína’s boy.

The sun stood high above the forest, scorching the earth and everything on it.

“Ólga, come and bathe!” said some other girls she met. And the whole crowd of them went down, singing, to the river. Splashing, shrieking, and kicking about, the girls did not notice how a dark, lowering cloud arose, now hiding, now revealing the sun, nor how strong the flowers and birch-leaves began to smell, nor the low rumbling of thunder. They had hardly time to get dressed before the rain drenched them to the skin. With their garments dark with wet and clinging to them, the girls ran home, had something to eat, and then took their father his dinner in the field where he was earthing up potatoes with the plough.

By the time they got home again and had finished their dinner, their clothes were already dry. Then they picked over their strawberries, put them into bowls, and took them to Nicholas Semyónovitch’s house, where they were generally well paid; but this time the strawberries were refused.

Marie, who exhausted by the heat sat in a large easy-chair, holding an open sunshade, waved her fan at the girls when she saw them, and said:

“No, no! We don’t want any!”

But Vólya, her eldest, twelve-year-old son, who was resting after his fatiguing work at the Classical Gymnasium and playing croquet with some neighbours, saw the strawberries and ran up to Ólga.

“How much are they?”

“Thirty kopecks,” said she.

“That’s too much,” he replied, because the grown-up people spoke like that. “Wait a bit⁠—just step round the corner,” he added, and ran to the nurse.

Ólga and Groúsha admired the large globe mirror-ornament which stood in the garden, in which one could see tiny little houses, woods and gardens. This globe, as well as many other things, did not surprise them, because they expected to see the most wonderful things in this mysterious, and to them incomprehensible, gentlefolks’ world.

Vólya came to his nurse and asked her to give him thirty kopecks. Nurse said it was too much, but produced twenty from her box. Then, going round out of his way to avoid his father (who had only just got up after his weary night, and who sat smoking and reading his paper), he gave twenty kopecks to the girls, and emptied the strawberries onto a plate.

When they got home, Ólga untied with her teeth the knot in her handkerchief where she had tied the twenty kopecks, and gave them to her mother; who, after putting them away, went to the river to rinse her washing.

Taráska, who had been helping his father earth up the potatoes, lay fast asleep in the shade of a dark oak. His father sat by him, keeping an eye on the horse⁠—which he had taken out of the plough, and which was now grazing near the border of his neighbour’s land⁠—for fear it might stray among the oats or into the neighbour’s meadow.

In Nicholas Semyónovitch’s family everything was pursuing its usual course. All was well. The three-course lunch was ready, and the flies were eating it because nobody felt inclined for food.

Nicholas Semyónovitch was pleased with the justice of his arguments, proved by what the papers said that morning. Marie was quiet because Gógo’s digestion was all right again. The doctor was satisfied because his medicine had been successful; and Vólya was contented because he had eaten a whole plateful of strawberries.

1905.

In the spring of 1830 Pan Jaczéwski, at his family estate of Rozánka, received a visit from Joseph Migoúrski, the only son of a deceased friend.

Jaczéwski, a patriot of the days of the second partition of Poland, was a broad-browed, broad-shouldered, broad-chested man of sixty-five, with a long white moustache on his brick-red face. As a youth he had served with Migoúrski’s father under the banner of Kosciúszko; and with all the strength of his patriotic soul he hated the “Apocalyptic Adulteress” (as he called Catherine II) and her abominable paramour, the traitor Poniatówski; and he believed in the reestablishment of the Polish State as firmly as he believed that tomorrow’s sun would rise. In 1812 he had commanded a regiment in the army of Napoleon, whom he adored. Napoleon’s fall distressed him, but he did not despair of the reestablishment of the Polish kingdom, even though in a mutilated form. His hopes were reawakened when Alexander I opened the Diet in Warsaw; but the Holy Alliance, the general reaction in Europe, and the obstinacy of Constantine,312 deferred the realization of this cherished hope.

Since 1825 Jaczéwski had settled in the country and lived there, never leaving Rozánka, spending his time in farming, hunting, and reading the papers and letters, by means of which he still eagerly followed the political events of his native land. His second marriage, to a pretty but poor gentlewoman, was not happy. He did not love or respect her, considered her a burden, and treated her harshly