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

and rudely, as if to revenge himself for the mistake he had made in remarrying. He had no children by this second wife. By his first wife he had two daughters: Wánda, the eldest, a stately beauty who knew the value of her good looks, and found country life tiresome; and a younger one, Albína, her father’s pet, a lively, bonny little girl, with fair curly hair, and large sparkling grey eyes set far apart like her father’s.

Albína was fifteen when Joseph Migoúrski came to stay with them. As a student he used to visit the Jaczéwskis in Vilna, where they wintered, and paid attentions to Wánda; but this was the first time that he, now a full-grown and independent man, had come to see them in the country. Everyone at Rozánka was pleased when young Migoúrski came. Jaczéwski was pleased because Josy reminded him of the companion of his youth, Migoúrski’s father, and because he spoke warmly and with the rosiest hopes of the revolutionary movement⁠—not in Poland alone, but also abroad, whence he had just returned. Pani Jaczéwski, the lady of the house, was pleased because old Jaczéwski restrained himself in the presence of visitors, and did not scold her for everything as he usually did. Wánda was pleased, because she felt sure Migoúrski had come for her sake, and intended to propose to her. She was preparing to accept him, but (as she expressed it to herself) meant lui tenir la dragée haute!313 and Albína was pleased because everybody else was pleased. Wánda was not alone in thinking that Migoúrski had come intending to propose to her. All the household⁠—from old Jaczéwski to Ludwíka, the old nurse⁠—thought the same, although no one spoke of it.

And it was quite true. Migoúrski came with that intention; but after a week’s stay, confused and upset by something, he left without having proposed. Everyone was surprised by his strange and unexpected departure, and no one but Albína understood its cause. Albína knew that she herself was the cause.

During the whole of Migoúrski’s stay in Rozánka, she had noticed that he was especially animated and bright only when with her. He treated her as a child, joked with her and teased her; but her feminine instinct told her that his relation to her was not that of a grown-up person to a child, but that of a man to a woman. She could see this in the look of love and the tender smile with which he greeted her when she entered the room, and followed her when she went out. She did not clearly explain to herself what this meant; but these relations between them gladdened her, and she involuntarily tried to do what pleased him. And as everything she did pleased him, all her actions in his presence were done with especial elation. It pleased him to see her running races with a beautiful wolfhound that jumped up and licked her flushed and radiant face; it pleased him when, on the smallest provocation, she burst into infectiously ringing peals of laughter; it pleased him when, with her eyes still laughing, she assumed a serious expression during the priest’s dull sermons. It pleased him when, with extraordinary exactitude and drollery, she imitated⁠—now her old nurse, now a tipsy neighbour, and now Migoúrski himself⁠—passing instantaneously from one character to another. But what pleased him most of all was her happiness, her rapturous joy of life. It was as if she had only now fully discovered the delight of living, and hastened to make the most of it. This peculiar joy of life pleased him, and it was evoked and intensified by the very fact that she knew that her joy of life delighted him. So Albína alone knew why Migoúrski, having come to propose to Wánda, left without having done so. Though she would never have ventured to tell this to anyone, and did not even acknowledge it to herself, yet in the depth of her soul she knew that he had wished to fall in love with her sister, but had fallen in love with her⁠—Albína. She was very much surprised at this, regarding herself as quite insignificant beside the clever, well-educated, beautiful Wánda; but she could not help knowing that it was true, and could not help being glad of it, for she herself loved Migoúrski with her whole soul: loved him as one can only love for the first time, and only once in a lifetime.

II

Towards the end of the summer the papers brought the news of the revolution in Paris. This was followed by news of preparations for an insurrection in Warsaw. Jaczéwski, with hope and fear, was expecting by every post news of the assassination of Constantine and of the commencement of a revolution. At last, in November, tidings came of the attack on the Belvedere and the flight of Constantine; and, later, news that the Diet had declared the Románof dynasty deposed from the throne of Poland; that Chlopícki had been proclaimed Dictator, and that Poland once more was free! The rebellion had not yet reached Rozánka, but all its inmates followed its progress, expecting it to come and preparing for it. Old Jaczéwski corresponded with a former acquaintance, one of the leaders of the rebellion; received mysterious Jewish agents on business relating, not to farming, but to the revolution; and was ready to join the rising when the time should come. Pani Jaczéwski concerned herself more than ever about her husband’s physical comforts, and thereby, as usual, irritated him more and more. Wánda sent her diamonds to a friend in Warsaw, that the money they fetched might go to the Revolutionary Committee. Albína was only interested in what Migoúrski was doing. She knew, through her father, that he had joined Dwerníczki’s forces. Migoúrski wrote twice: first, to say that he had joined the army; and later, in the middle of February, he sent an enthusiastic letter