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

Chapter 5

There were no reasons for putting off our wedding, and neither he nor I

wished for delay. Katya, it is true, thought we ought to go to Moscow, to

buy and order wedding clothes; and his mother tried to insist that, before

the wedding, he must set up a new carriage, but new furniture, and repaper

the whole house. But we two together carried our point, that all these

things, if they were really indispensable, should be done afterwards, and

that we should be married within a fortnight after my birthday, quietly,

without wedding clothes, with a party, without best men and supper and

champagne, and all the other conventional features of a wedding. He told me

how dissatisfied his mother was that there should be no band, no mountain of

luggage, no renovation of the whole house — so unlike her own marriage which

had cost thirty thousand rubles; and he told of the solemn and secret

confabulations which she held in her store room with her housekeeper,

Maryushka, rummaging the chests and discussing carpets, curtains, and

salvers as indispensable conditions of our happiness. At our house Katya did

just the same with my old nurse, Kuzminichna. It was impossible to treat the

matter lightly with Katya. She was firmly convinced that he and I, when

discussing our future, were merely talking the sentimental nonsense natural

to people in our position; and that our real future happiness depended on

the hemming of table cloths and napkins and the proper cutting out and

stitching of underclothing. Several times a day secret information passed

between the two houses, to communicate what was going forward in each; and

though the external relations between Katya and his mother were most

affectionate, yet a slightly hostile though very subtle diplomacy was

already perceptible in their dealings. I now became more intimate with

Tatyana Semyonovna, the mother of Sergey Mikhaylych, an old-fashioned lady,

strict and formal in the management of her household. Her son loved her, and

not merely because she was his mother: he thought her the best, cleverest,

kindest, and most affectionate woman in the world. She was always kind to us

and to me especially, and was glad that her son should be getting married;

but when I was with her after our engagement, I always felt that she wished

me to understand that, in her opinion, her son might have looked higher, and

that it would be as well for me to keep that in mind. I understood her

meaning perfectly and thought her quite right.

 

During that fortnight he and I met every day. He came to dinner regularly

and stayed on till midnight. But though he said — and I knew he was speaking

the truth — that he had no life apart from me, yet he never spent the whole

day with me, and tried to go on with his ordinary occupations. Our outward

relations remained unchanged to the very day of our marriage: we went on

saying “you” and not “thou” to each other; he did not even kiss my hand; he

did not seek, but even avoided, opportunities of being alone with me. It was

as if he feared to yield to the harmful excess of tenderness he felt. I

don’t know which of us had changed; but I now felt myself entirely his

equal; I no longer found in him the pretence of simplicity which had

displeased me earlier; and I often delighted to see in him, not a grown man

inspiring respect and awe but a loving and wildly happy child. “How mistaken

I was about him!” I often thought; “he is just such another human being as

myself!” It seemed to me now, that his whole character was before me and

that I thoroughly understood it. And how simple was every feature of his

character, and how congenial to my own! Even his plans for our future life

together were just my plans, only more clearly and better expressed in his

words.

 

The weather was bad just then, and we spent most of our time indoors. The

corner between the piano and the window was the scene of our best intimate

talks. The candle light was reflected on the blackness of the window near

us; from time to time drops struck the glistening pane and rolled down. The

rain pattered on the roof; the water splashed in a puddle under the spout;

it felt damp near the window; but our corner seemed all the brighter and

warmer and happier for that.

 

“Do you know, there is something I have long wished to say to you,” he began

one night when we were sitting up late in our corner; “I was thinking of it

all the time you were playing.”

 

“Don’t say it, I know all about it,” I replied.

 

“All right! mum’s the word!”

 

“No! what is it?” I asked.

 

“Well, it is this. You remember the story I told you about A and B?”

 

“I should just think I did! What a stupid story! Lucky that it ended as it

did!”

 

“Yes. I was very near destroying my happiness by my own act. You saved me.

But the main thing is that I was always telling lies then, and I’m ashamed

of it, and I want to have my say out now.”

 

“Please don’t! you really mustn’t!”

 

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, smiling. “I only want to justify myself.

When I began then, I meant to argue.”

 

“It is always a mistake to argue,” I said.

 

“Yes, I argued wrong. After all my disappointments and mistakes in life, I

told myself firmly when I came to the country this year, that love was no

more for me, and that all I had to do was to grow old decently. So for a

long time, I was unable to clear up my feeling towards you, or to make out

where it might lead me. I hoped, and I didn’t hope: at one time I thought

you were trifling with me; at another I felt sure of you but could not

decide what to do. But after that evening, you remember when we walked in

the garden at night, I got alarmed: the present happiness seemed too great

to be real. What if I allowed myself to hope and then failed? But of course

I was thinking only of myself, for I am disgustingly selfish.”

 

He stopped and looked at me.

 

“But it was not all nonsense that I said then. It was possible and right for

me to have fears. I take so much from you and can give so little. You are

still a child, a bud that has yet to open; you have never been in love

before, and I …”

 

“Yes, do tell me the truth… .” I began, and then stopped, afraid of his

answer. “No, never mind,” I added.

 

“Have I been in love before? is that it?” he said, guessing my thoughts at

once. “That I can tell you. No, never before — nothing a t all like what I

feel now.” But a sudden painful recollection seemed to flash across his

mind. “No,” he said sadly; “in this too I need your compassion, in order to

have the right to love you. Well, was I not bound to think twice before

saying that I loved you? What do I give you? love, no doubt.”

 

“And is that little?” I asked, looking him in the face.

 

“Yes, my dear, it is little to give you,” he continued; “you have youth and

beauty. I often lie awake at night from happiness, and all the time I think

of our future life together. I have lived through much, and now I think I

have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the

country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy

to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work

which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love

for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of

all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps — what more can the hear of

man desire?”

 

“It should be enough,” I said.

 

“Enough for me whose youth is over,” he went on, “but not for you. Life is

still before you, and you will perhaps seek happiness, and perhaps find it,

in something different. You think now that this is happiness, because you

love me.”

 

“You are wrong,” I said; “I have always desired just that quiet domestic

life and prized it. And you only say just what I have thought.”

 

He smiled.

 

“So you think, my dear; but that is not enough for you. You have youth and

beauty,” he repeated thoughtfully.

 

But I was angry because he disbelieved me and seemed to cast my youth and

beauty in my teeth.

 

“Why do you love me then?” I asked angrily; “for my youth or for myself?”

 

“I don’t know, but I love you,” he answered, looking at me with his

attentive and attractive gaze.

 

I did not reply and involuntarily looked into his eyes. Suddenly a strange

thing happened to me: first I ceased to see what was around me; then his

face seemed to vanish till only the eyes were left, shining over against