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

In November, 1833, Albína bade farewell to the household (who saw her start for barbarous Russia as though she were going to her death), seated herself with her old and devoted nurse Ludwíka, whom she took with her, in her father’s old carriage⁠—newly repaired for the great journey⁠—and started on her long road.

Migoúrski did not live in barracks, but had a lodging of his own. Nicholas I decreed that the exiled Polish officers should not only bear all the hardships of rough army life, but should be made to suffer all the degradations to which common soldiers at that time were subjected. But the majority of the plain men with whom it lay to execute these orders, disobeyed them as far as they could. The half-educated commander of the battalion in which Migoúrski was placed (a man who had risen from the ranks) understood the position of the educated, formerly wealthy, young man who had lost everything; and, pitying and respecting him, made all sorts of concessions in his favour. Migoúrski could not help appreciating the good-nature of this Lieutenant-Colonel, with white whiskers on his puffy, military face; and to repay him, he agreed to teach mathematics and French to his sons, who were preparing to enter a military college.

Migoúrski’s life in Urálsk, which had now lasted nearly seven months, was not only monotonous, dull and wearisome, but was also hard. Except the commander of the battalion, from whom as much as possible he tried to keep at a distance, his only acquaintance was an exiled Pole, a sly, unpleasant man of little education, who traded in fish. But the chief hardship of Migoúrski’s life lay in the fact that he found it difficult to accustom himself to privation. After the confiscation of his property he had no means whatever left, and struggled on by selling what jewellery he still possessed.

The great and only joy of his life, after his deportation, was his correspondence with Albína. A sweet, poetic image of her had remained in his mind since his visit to Rozánka, and now, in his exile, grew more and more beautiful. In one of her first letters to him she asked, among other things, what he had meant in his former letter by the words, “Whatever plans and dreams I may have had.” He replied that he could now tell her that his dream had been to call her his wife. She wrote back saying that she loved him. He answered that she should not have written that, because it was terrible to think of what might have been, but was now impossible. She replied that it was not only possible, but would surely be! He wrote that he could not accept such a sacrifice, and that in his present circumstances it was impossible. Soon after this letter he received a money-order for 2,000 zloty.315 By the postmark on the envelope and by the writing he knew that it came from Albína, and he remembered how in one of his first letters he had jokingly described to her the pleasure he now experienced in earning all he required by giving lessons: money to buy tobacco, tea, and even books. Putting the money-order into a fresh envelope, he returned it with a letter in which he begged her not to spoil their sacred friendship with money. He wrote that he had all he required, and was perfectly happy in the knowledge that he had such a friend⁠—and so their correspondence ended.

In November, Migoúrski was sitting at the Lieutenant-Colonel’s teaching the latter’s two boys, when he heard the approaching sound of the post-bell, and the snow creaked under the runners of a sledge, which stopped at the front-door. The children jumped up to see who had come. Migoúrski remained in the room, looking at the door, and expecting the children to return, when the Lieutenant-Colonel’s wife herself entered.

“Oh, Pan! Here are some ladies asking for you,” she said. “They must be from your parts⁠ ⁠… they seem to be Poles.”

Had anyone asked Migoúrski if he thought it possible that Albína might come to him, he would have said that it was quite out of the question; yet at the bottom of his heart he expected her. The blood rushed to his heart now, and he ran breathless into the hall. There a fat, pockmarked woman was unwrapping a shawl from her head. Another woman was entering the door of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s rooms. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned round. From under the hood, eyes, set far apart and full of the joy of life, beamed beneath their frozen lashes⁠—the eyes of Albína.

He was stupefied, and did not know how to welcome her, or how to greet her.

“Josy!” she cried, giving him the name her father called him by, and by which she thought of him herself⁠—and she threw her arms round his neck, pressing her cold, reddened face to his, and began to laugh and cry.

Having heard who Albína was, and why she had come, the Lieutenant-Colonel’s kindhearted wife received her into her house, and kept her there till the wedding.

The good-natured Lieutenant-Colonel obtained the necessary permission from the authorities. A Polish priest was procured from Órenburg. The battalion-commander’s wife took the place of the bride’s mother, one of Migoúrski’s pupils carried the icon, and Brzozówski, the exiled Pole, acted as best man.

Strange as it may seem, Albína loved her husband passionately, but did not know him at all. She only now began to make his acquaintance. Of course, she found in the living man of flesh and blood much that was ordinary and prosaic, and had not existed in the image she had borne and nurtured in her mind. But, on the other hand, just because he was a man of flesh and blood, she found in him much that was simple and good, and had not existed in the abstract image. She