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

>mine; next the eyes seemed to be in my own head, and then all became

confused — I could see nothing and was forced to shut my eyes, in order to

break loose from the feeling of pleasure and fear which his gaze was

producing in me …

 

The day before our wedding day, the weather cleared up towards evening. The

rains which had begun in summer gave place to clear weather, and we had our

first autumn evening, bright and cold. It was a wet, cold, shining world,

and the garden showed for the first time the spaciousness and color and

bareness of autumn. the sky was clear, cold, and pale. I went to bed happy

in the thought that tomorrow, our wedding day, would be fine. I awoke with

the sun, and the thought that this very day … seemed alarming and

surprising. I went out into the garden. the sun had just risen and shone

fitfully through the meager yellow leaves of the lime avenue. The path was

strewn with rustling leaves, clusters of mountain ash berries hung red and

wrinkled on the boughs, with a sprinkling of frost-bitten crumpled leaves;

the dahlias were black and wrinkled. the first rime lay like silver on the

pale green of the grass and on the broken burdock plants round the house. In

the clear cold sky there was not, and could not be, a single cloud.

 

“Can it possibly be today?” I asked myself, incredulous of my own happiness.

“Is it possible that I shall wake tomorrow, not here but in that strange

house with the pillars? Is it possible that I shall never again wait for his

coming and meet him, and sit up late with Katya to talk about him? Shall I

never sit with him beside the piano in our drawing room? never see him off

and feel uneasy about him on dark nights?” But I remembered that he promised

yesterday to pay a last visit, and that Katya had insisted on my trying on

my wedding dress, and had said “For tomorrow”. I believed for a moment that

it was all real, and then doubted again. “Can it be that after today I shall

be living there with a mother-in-law, without Nadezhda or Grigori or Katya?

Shall I go to bed without kissing my old nurse good night and hearing her

say, while she signs me with the cross from old custom, “Good night, Miss”?

Shall I never again teach Sonya and play with her and knock through the wall

to her in the morning and hear her hearty laugh? Shall I become from today

someone that I myself do not know? and is a new world, that will realize my

hopes and desires, opening before me? and will that new world last for

ever?” alone with these thoughts I was depressed and impatient for his

arrival. He cam early, and it required his presence to convince me that I

should really be his wife that very day, and the prospect ceased to frighten

me.

 

Before dinner we walked to our church, to attend a memorial service for my

father.

 

“If only he were living now!” I thought as we were returning and I leant

silently on the arm of him who had been the dearest friend of the object of

my thoughts. During the service, while I pressed my forehead against the

cold stone of the chapel floor, I called up my father so vividly; I was so

convinced that he understood me and approved my choice, that I felt as if

his spirit were still hovering over us and blessing me. And my recollections

and hopes, my joy and sadness, made up one solemn and satisfied feeling

which was in harmony with the fresh still air, the silence, the bare fields

and pale sky, from which the bright but powerless rays, trying in vain to

burn my cheek, fell over all the landscape. My companion seemed to

understand and share my feeling. He walked slowly and silently; and his

face, at which I glanced from time to time, expressed the same serious mood

between joy and sorrow which I shared with nature.

 

Suddenly he turned to me, and I saw that he intended to speak. “Suppose he

starts some other subject than that which is in my mind?” I thought. But he

began to speak of my father and did not even name him.

 

“He once said to me in just, “you should marry my Masha”,” he began.

 

“He would have been happy now,” I answered, pressing closer the arm which

held mine.

 

“You were a child then,” he went on, looking into my eyes; “I loved those

eyes and used to kiss them only because they were like his, never thinking

they would be so dear to me for their own sake. I used to call you Masha

then.”

 

“I want you to say ‘thou’ to me,” I said.

 

“I was just going to,” he answered; “I feel for the first time that thou art

entirely mine;” and his calm happy gaze that drew me to him rested on me.

 

We went on along the foot path over the beaten and trampled stubble; our

voices and footsteps were the only sounds. On one side the brownish stubble

stretched over a hollow to a distant leafless wood; across it at some

distance a peasant was noiselessly ploughing a black strip which grew wider

and wider. A drove of horses scattered under the hill seemed close to us. On

the other side, as far as the garden and our house peeping through the

trees, a field of winter corn, thawed by the sun, showed black with

occasional patches of green. The winter sun shone over everything, and

everything was covered with long gossamer spider’s webs, which floated in

the air round us, lay on the frost-dried stubble, and got into our eyes and

hair and clothes. When we spoke, the sound of our voices hung in the

motionless air above us, as if we two were alone in the whole world — alone

under that azure vault, in which the beams of the winter sun played and

flashed without scorching.

 

I too wished to say “thou” to him, but I felt ashamed.

 

“Why dost thou walk so fast?” I said quickly and almost in a whisper; I

could not help blushing.

 

He slackened his pace, and the gaze he turned on me was even more

affectionate, gay, and happy.

 

At home we found that his mother and the inevitable guests had arrived

already, and I was never alone with him again till we came out of church to

drive to Nikolskoe.

 

The church was nearly empty: I just caught a glimpse of his mother standing

up straight on a mat by the choir and of Katya wearing a cap with purple

ribbons and with tears on her cheeks, and of two or three of our servants

looking curiously at me. I did not look at him, but felt his presence there

beside me. I attended to the words of the prayers and repeated them, but

they found no echo in my heart. Unable to pray, I looked listlessly at the

icons, the candles, the embroidered cross on the priest’s cope, the screen,

and the window, and took nothing in. I only felt that something strange was

being done to me. At last the priest turned to us with the cross in his

hand, congratulated us, and said, “I christened you and by God’s mercy have

lived to marry you.” Katya and his mother kissed us, and Grigori’s voice was

heard, calling up the carriage. But I was only frightened and disappointed:

all was over, but nothing extraordinary, nothing worthy of the Sacrament I

had just received, had taken place in myself. He and I exchanged kisses, but

the kiss seemed strange and not expressive of our feeling. “Is this all?” I

thought. We went out of church, the sound of wheels reverberated under the

vaulted roof, the fresh air blew on my face, he put on his hat and handed me

into the carriage. Through the window I could see a frosty moon with a halo

round it. He sat down beside me and shut the door after him. I felt a sudden

pang. The assurance of his proceedings seemed to me insulting. Katya called

out that I should put something on my head; the wheels rumbled on the stone

and then moved along the soft road, and we were off. Huddling in a corner, I

looked out at the distant fields and the road flying past in the cold

glitter of the moon. Without looking at him, I felt his presence beside me.

“Is this all I have got from the moment, of which I expected so much?” I

thought; and still it seemed humiliating and insulting to be sitting alone

with him, and so close. I turned to him, intending to speak; but the words

would not come, as if my love had vanished, giving place to a feeling of

mortification and alarm.

 

“Till this moment I did not believe it was possible,” he said in a low voice

in answer to my look.

 

“But I am afraid somehow,” I said.

 

“Afraid of me, my dear?” he said, taking my hand and bending over it.

 

My hand lay lifeless in his, and the cold at my heart was painful.

 

“Yes,” I whispered.

 

But at that moment my heart began to beat faster, my hand trembled and

pressed his, I grew hot, my eyes sought his in the half darkness, and all at

once I felt that I did not fear him, that this fear was love — a new love

still more tender and stronger than the old. I felt that I was wholly his,

and that I was happy in his power over me.