Family Happiness by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (ereader with android txt) 📕

engaged. The sun had set, it was growing dark, and a little spring rain

cloud hung over the house and garden, and only behind the trees the horizon

was clear, with the fading glow of twilight, in which one star had just

begun to twinkle. The landscape, covered by the shadow of the cloud, seemed

waiting for the light spring shower. There was not a breath of wind; not a

single leaf or blade of grass stirred; the scent of lilac and bird cherry

was so strong in the garden and veranda that it seemed as if all the air was

in flower; it came in wafts, now stronger and now weaker, till one longed to

shut both eyes and hears and drink in that fragrance only. The dahlias and

rose bushes, not yet in flower, stood motionless on the black mould of the

border, looking as if they were growing slowly upwards on their white-shaved

props; beyond the dell, the frogs were making the most of their time before

the rain drove them to the pond, croaking busily and loudly. Only the high

continuous note of water falling at some distance rose above their croaking.

From time to time the nightingales called to one another, and I could hear

them flitting restlessly from bush to bush. Again this spring a nightingale

had tried to build in a bush under the window, and I heard her fly off

across the avenue when I went into the veranda. From there she whistled once

and then stopped; she, too, was expecting the rain.

I tried in vain to calm my feelings: I had a sense of anticipation and

regret.

He came downstairs again and sat down beside me.

“I am afraid they will get wet,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered; and we sat for long without speaking.

The cloud came down lower and lower with no wind. The air grew stiller and

more fragrant. Suddenly a drop fell on the canvas awning and seemed to

rebound from it; then another broke on the gravel path; soon there was a

splash on the burdock leaves, and a fresh shower of big drops came down

faster and faster. Nightingales and frogs were both dumb; only the high note

of the falling water, though the rain made it seem more distant, still went

on; and a bird, which must have sheltered among the dry leaves near the

veranda, steadily repeated its two unvarying notes. My husband got up to go

in.

“Where are you going?” I asked, trying to keep him; “it is so pleasant

here.”

“We must send them an umbrella and galoshes,” he replied.

“Don’t trouble — it will soon be over.”

He thought I was right, and we remained together in the veranda. I rested

one hand upon the wet slippery rail and put my head out. The fresh rain

wetted my hair and neck in places. The cloud, growing lighter and thinner,

was passing overhead; the steady patter of the rain gave place to occasional

drops that fell from the sky or dripped from the trees. The frogs began to

croak again in the dell; the nightingales woke up and began to call from the

dripping bushes from one side and then from another. The whole prospect

before us grew clear.

“How delightful!” he said, seating himself on the veranda rail and passing a

hand over my wet hair.

This simple caress had on me the effect of a reproach: I felt inclined to

cry.

“What more can a man need?” he said; “I am so content now that I want

nothing; I am perfectly happy!”

He told me a different story once, I thought. He had said that, however

great his happiness might be, he always wanted more and more. Now he is calm

and contented; while my heart is full of unspoken repentance and unshed

tears.

“I think it delightful too,” I said; “but I am sad just because of the

beauty of it all. All is so fair and lovely outside me, while my own heart

is confused and baffled and full of vague unsatisfied longing. Is it

possible that there is no element of pain, no yearning for the past, in your

enjoyment of nature?”

He took his hand off my head and was silent for a little.

“I used to feel that too,” he said, as though recalling it, “especially in

spring. I used to sit up all night too, with my hopes and fears for company,

and good company they were! But life was all before me then. Now it is all

behind me, and I am content with what I have. I find life capital,” he added

with such careless confidence, that I believed, whatever pain it gave me to

hear it, that it was the truth.

“But is there nothing you wish for?” I asked.

“I don’t ask for impossibilities,” he said, guessing my thoughts. “You go

and get your head wet,” he added, stroking my head like a child’s and again

passing his hand over the wet hair; “you envy the leaves and the grass their

wetting from the rain, and you would like yourself to be the grass and the

leaves and the rain. But I am contented to enjoy them and everything else

that is good and young and happy.”

“And do you regret nothing of the past?” I asked, while my heart grew

heavier and heavier.

Again he thought for a time before replying. I saw that he wished to reply

with perfect frankness.

“Nothing,” he said shortly.

“Not true! not true!” I said, turning towards him and looking into his eyes.

“Do you really not regret the past?”

“No!” he repeated; “I am grateful for it, but I don’t regret it.”

“But would you not like to have it back?” I asked.

“No; I might as well wish to have wings. It is impossible.”

“And would you not alter the past? do you not reproach yourself or me?”

“No, never! It was all for the best.”

“Listen to me!” I said touching his arm to make him look round. “Why did you

never tell me that you wished me to live as you really wished me to? Why did

you give me a freedom for which I was unfit? Why did you stop teaching me?

If you had wished it, if you had guided me differently, none of all this

would have happened!” said I in a voice that increasingly expressed cold

displeasure and reproach in place of the love of former days.

“What would not have happened?” he asked, turning to me in surprise. “As it

is, there is nothing wrong. things are all right, quite all right,” he added

with a smile.

“does he really not understand?” I thought; “or still worse, does he not

wish to understand?”

Then I suddenly broke out. “Had you acted differently, I should not now be

punished, for no fault at all, by your indifference and even contempt, and

you would not have taken from me unjustly all that I valued in life!”

“What do you mean, my dear one?” he asked — he seemed not to understand me.

“No! don’t interrupt me! You have taken from me your confidence, your love,

even your respect; for I cannot believe, when I think of the past, that you

still love me. No! don’t speak! I must once for all say out what has long

been torturing me. Is it my fault that I knew nothing of life, and that you

left me to learn experience for myself? Is it my fault that now, when I have

gained the knowledge and have been struggling for nearly a year to come back

to you, you push me away and pretend not to understand what I want? And you

always do it so that it is impossible to reproach you, while I am guilty and

unhappy. Yes, you wish to drive me out again to that life which might rob us

both of happiness.”

“How did I show that!” he asked in evident alarm and surprise.

“No later than yesterday you said, and you constantly say, that I can never

settle down here, and that we must spend this winter too at Petersburg; and

I hate Petersburg!” I went on, “Instead of supporting me, you avoid all

plain speaking, you never say a single frank affectionate word to me. And

then, when I fall utterly, you will reproach me and rejoice in my fall.”

“Stop!” he said with cold severity. “You have no right to say that. It only

proves that you are ill-disposed towards me, that you don’t …”

“That I don’t love you? Don’t hesitate to say it!” I cried, and the tears

began to flow. I sat down on the bench and covered my face with my

handkerchief.

“So that is how he understood me!” I thought, trying to restrain the sobs

which choked me. “gone, gone is our former love!” said a voice at my heart.

He did not come close or try to comfort me. He was hurt by what I had said.

When he spoke, his tone was cool and dry.

“I don’t know what you reproach me with,” he began. “If you mean that I

don’t love you as I once did …”

“Did love!” I said, with my face buried in the handkerchief, while the

bitter tears fell still more abundantly.

“If so, time is to blame for that, and we ourselves. Each time of life has

its own kind of love.” He was silent for a moment. “Shall I tell you the

whole truth, if you really wish for frankness? In that summer when I first

knew you, I used to lie awake all night, thinking about you, and I made that

love myself, and it grew and grew in my heart. So again, in Petersburg and

abroad, in the course of horrible sleepless nights, I strove to shatter and

destroy that love, which had come to torture me. I did not destroy it, but I

destroyed that part of it which gave me pain. Then I grew calm; and I feel

love still, but it is a different kind of love.”

“You call it love, but I call it torture!” I said. “Why did you allow me to

go into society, if you thought so badly of it that you ceased to love me on

that account?”

“No, it was not society, my dear,” he said.

“Why did you not exercise your authority?” I went on: “why did you not lock

me up or kill me? That would have been better than the loss of all that

formed my happiness. I should have been happy, instead of being ashamed.”

I began to sob again and hid my face.

Just then Katya and Sonya, wet and cheerful, came out to the veranda,

laughing and talking loudly. They were silent as soon as they saw us, and

went in again immediately.

We remained silent for a long time. I had had my cry out and felt relieved.

I glanced at him. He was sitting with his head resting on his hand; he

intended to make some reply to my glance, but only sighed deeply and resumed

his former position.

I went up to him and removed his hand. His eyes turned thoughtfully to my

face.

“Yes,” he began, as if continuing his thoughts aloud, “all of us, and

especially you women, must have personal experience of all the nonsense of

life, in order to get back to life itself; the evidence of other people