Family Happiness by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (books to read this summer .TXT) 📖

not be a better instance.”

 

I laughed; but I could not understand why he was glad, or what it was that

had turned up.

 

“Just tell me honestly, with your hand on your heart,” he said, turning as

if playfully to me, “would it not be a misfortune for you to unite your life

with that of an old worn-out man who only wants to sit still, whereas Heaven

knows what wishes are fermenting in that heart of yours?”

 

I felt uncomfortable and was silent, not knowing how to answer him.

 

“I am not making you a proposal, you know,” he said, laughing; “but am I

really the kind of husband you dream of when walking alone in the avenue at

twilight? It would be a misfortune, would it not?”

 

“No, not a misfortune,” I began.

 

“But a bad thing,” he ended my sentence.

 

“Perhaps; but I may be mistaken …” He interrupted me again.

 

“There, you see! She is quite right, and I am grateful to her for her

frankness, and very glad to have had this conversation. And there is

something else to be said” — he added: “for me too it would be a very great

misfortune.”

 

“How odd you are! You have not changed in the least,” said Katya, and then

left the veranda, to order supper to be served.

 

When she had gone, we were both silent and all was still around us, but for

one exception. A nightingale, which had sung last night by fitful snatches,

now flooded the garden with a steady stream of song, and was soon answered

by another from the dell below, which had not sung till that evening. The

nearer bird stopped and seemed to listen for a moment, and then broke out

again still louder than before, pouring out his song in piercing long drawn

cadences. There was a regal calm in the birds’ voices, as they floated

through the realm of night which belongs to those birds and not to man. The

gardener walked past to his sleeping-quarters in the greenhouse, and the

noise of his heavy boots grew fainter and fainter along the path. Someone

whistled twice sharply at the foot of the hill; and then all was still

again. The rustling of leaves could just be heard; the veranda awning

flapped; a faint perfume, floating in the air, came down on the veranda and

filled it. I felt silence awkward after what had been said, but what to say

I did not know. I looked at him. His eyes, bright in the half-darkness,

turned towards me.

 

“How good life is!” he said.

 

I sighed, I don’t know why.

 

“Well?” he asked.

 

“Life is good,” I repeated after him.

 

Again we were silent, and again I felt uncomfortable. I could not help

fancying that I had wounded him by agreeing that he was old; and I wished to

comfort him but did not know how.

 

“Well, I must be saying good-bye,” he said, rising; “my mother expects me

for supper; I have hardly seen her all day.”

 

“I meant to play you the new sonata,” I said.

 

“That must wait,” he replied; and I thought that he spoke coldly.

 

“Good-bye.”

 

I felt still more certain that I had wounded him, and I was sorry. Katya and

I went to the steps to see him off and stood for a while in the open,

looking along the road where he had disappeared from view. When we ceased to

hear the sound of his horse’s hoofs, I walked round the house to the

veranda, and again sat looking into the garden; and all I wished to see and

hear, I still saw and heard for a long time in the dewy mist filled with the

sounds of night.

 

He came a second time, and a third; and the awkwardness arising from that

strange conversation passed away entirely, never to return. During that

whole summer he came two or three times a week; and I grew so accustomed to

his presence, that, when he failed to come for some time, Ii missed him and

felt angry with him, and thought he was behaving badly in deserting me. He

treated me like a boy whose company he liked, asked me questions, invited

the most cordial frankness on my part, gave me advice and encouragement, or

sometimes scolded and checked me. But in spite of his constant effort to

keep on my level, I was aware that behind the part of him which I could

understand there remained an entire region of mystery, into which he did not

consider it necessary to admit me; and this fact did much to preserve my

respect for him and his attraction for me. I knew from Katya and from our

neighbors that he had not only to care for his old mother with whom he

lived, and to manage his own estate and our affairs, but was also

responsible for some public business which was the source of serious

worries; but what view he took of all this, what were his convictions,

plans, and hopes, I could not in the least find out from him. Whenever I

turned the conversation to his affairs, he frowned in a way peculiar to

himself and seemed to imply, “Please stop! That is no business of yours;”

and then he changed the subject. This hurt me at first; but I soon grew

accustomed to confining our talk to my affairs, and felt this to be quite

natural.

 

There was another thing which displeased me at first and then became

pleasant to me. This was his complete indifference and even contempt for my

personal appearance. Never by word or look did he imply that I was pretty;

on the contrary, he frowned and laughed, whenever the word was applied to me

in his presence. He even liked to find fault with my looks and tease me

about them. On special days Katya liked to dress me out in fine clothes and

to arrange my hair effectively; but my finery met only with mockery from

him, which pained kind-hearted Katya and at first disconcerted me. She had

made up her mind that he admired me; and she could not understand how a man

could help wishing a woman whom he admired to appear to the utmost

advantage. But I soon understood what he wanted. He wished to make sure that

I had not a trace of affectation. And when I understood this I was really

quite free from affectation in the clothes I wore, or the arrangement of my

hair, or my movements; but a very obvious form of affectation took its place

— an affectation of simplicity, at a time when I could not yet be really

simple. That he loved me, I knew; but I did not yet ask myself whether he

loved me as a child or as a woman. I valued his love; I felt that he thought

me better than all other young women in the world, and I could not help

wishing him to go on being deceived about me. Without wishing to deceive

him, I did deceive him, and I became better myself while deceiving him. I

felt it a better and worthier course to show him to good points of my heart

and mind than of my body. My hair, hands, face, ways — all these, whether

good or bad, he had appraised at once and knew so well, that I could add

nothing to my external appearance except the wish to deceive him. But my

mind and heart he did not know, because he loved them, and because they were

in the very process of growth and development; and on this point I could and

did deceive him. And how easy I felt in his company, once I understood this

clearly! My causeless bashfulness and awkward movements completely

disappeared. Whether he saw me from in front, or in profile, sitting or

standing, with my hair up or my hair down, I felt that he knew me from head

to foot, and I fancied, was satisfied with me as I was. If, contrary to his

habit, he had suddenly said to me as other people did, that I had a pretty

face, I believe that I should not have liked it at all. But, on the other

hand, how light and happy my heart was when, after I had said something, he

looked hard at me and said, hiding emotion under a mask of raillery:

 

“Yes, there is something in you! you are a fine girl — that I must tell

you.”

 

And for what did I receive such rewards, which filled my heart with pride

and joy? Merely for saying that I felt for old Grigori in his love for his

little granddaughter; or because the reading of some poem or novel moved me

to tears; or because I liked Mozart better than Schulhof. And I was

surprised at my own quickness in guessing what was good and worthy of love,

when I certainly did not know then what was good and worthy to be loved.

Most of my former tastes and habits did not please him; and a mere look of

his, or a twitch of his eyebrow was enough to show that he did not like what

I was trying to say; and I felt at once that my own standard was changed.

Sometimes, when he was about to give me a piece of advice, I seemed to know

before hand what he would say. When he looked in my face and asked me a

question, his very look would draw out of me the answer he wanted. All my

thoughts and feelings of that time were not really mine: they were his

thoughts and feelings, which had suddenly become mine and passed into my

life and lighted it up. Quite unconsciously I began to look at everything

with different eyes — at Katya and the servants and Sonya and myself and my

occupations. Books, which I used to read merely to escape boredom, now

became one of the chief pleasures of my life, merely because he brought me

the books and we read and discussed them together. The lessons I gave to

Sonya had been a burdensome obligation which I forced myself to go through

from a sense of duty; but, after he was present at a lesson, it became a joy

to me to watch Sonya’s progress. It used to seem to me an impossibility to

learn a whole piece of music by heart; but now, when I knew that he would

hear it and might praise it, I would play a single movement forty times over

without stopping, till poor Katya stuffed her ears with cottonwool, while I

was still not weary of it. The same old sonatas seemed quite different in

the expression, and came out quite changed and much improved. Even Katya,

whom I knew and loved like a second self, became different in my eyes. I now

understood for the first time that she was not in the least bound to be the

mother, friend, and slave that she was to us. Now I appreciated all the

self-sacrifice and devotion of this affectionate creature, and all my

obligations to her; and I began to love her even better. It was he too who

taught me to take quite a new view of our serfs and servants and maids. It

is an absurd confession to make — but I had spent seventeen years among

these people and yet knew less about than about strangers whom I had never

seen; it had never once occurred to me that they had their affections and

wishes and sorrows, just as I had. Our garden and woods and fields which I

had known so