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

One day when the corn was being carried, I went with Katya and Sonya to our

favorite seat in the garden, in the shade of the lime trees and above the

dell, beyond which the fields and woods lay open before us. It was three

days since Sergey Mikhaylych had been to see us; we were expecting him, all

the more because our bailiff reported that he had promised to visit the

harvest field. At two o’clock we saw him ride on to the rye field. with a

smile and a glance at me, Katya ordered peaches and cherries, of which he

was very fond, to be brought; then she lay down on the bench and began to

doze. I tore off a crooked flat lime tree branch, which made my hand wet

with its juicy leaves and juicy bark. then I fanned Katya with it and went

on with my book, breaking off from time to time, to look at the field path

along which he must come. Sonya was making a dolls’ house at the root of an

old lime tree. The day was sultry, windless, and steaming; the clouds were

packing and growing blacker; all morning a thunderstorm had been gathering,

and I felt restless, as I always did before thunder. But by afternoon the

clouds began to part, the sun sailed out into a clear sky, and only in one

quarter was there a faint fumbling. A single heavy cloud, lowering above the

horizon and mingling with the dust from the fields, was rent from time to

time by pale zigzags of lightning which ran down to the ground. It was clear

that for today the storm would pass off, with us at all events. The road

beyond the garden was visible in places, and we could see a procession of

high creaking carts slowly moving along it with their load of sheaves, while

the empty carts rattled at a faster pace to meet them, with swaying legs and

shirts fluttering in them. The thick dust neither blew away nor settled down

— it stood still beyond the fence, and we could see it through the

transparent foliage of the garden trees. A little farther off, in the

stackyard, the same voices and the same creaking of wheels were audible; and

the same yellow sheaves that had moves slowly past the fence were now flying

aloft, and I could see the oval stacks gradually rising higher, and their

conspicuous pointed tops, and the laborers swarming upon them. On the dusty

field in front more carts were moving and more yellow sheaves were visible;

and the noise of the carts, with the sound of talking and singing, came to

us from a distance. At one side the bare stubble, with strips of fallow

covered with wormwood, came more and more into view. Lower down, to the

right, the gay dresses of the women were visible, as they bent down and

swung their arms to bind the sheaves. Here the bare stubble looked untidy;

but the disorder was cleared by degrees, as the pretty sheaves were ranged

at close intervals. It seemed as if summer had suddenly turned to autumn

before my eyes. The dust and heat were everywhere, except in our favorite

nook in the garden; and everywhere, in this heat and dust and under the

burning sun, the laborers carried on their heavy task with talk and noise.

Meanwhile Katya slept so sweetly on our shady bench, beneath her white

cambric handkerchief, the black juicy cherries glistened so temptingly on

the plate, our dresses were so clean and fresh, the water in the jug was so

bright with rainbow colors in the sun, and I felt so happy. “How can I help

it?” I thought; “am I to blame for being happy? And how can I share my

happiness? How and to whom can I surrender all myself and all my

happiness?”

By this time the sun had sunk behind the tops of the birch avenue, the dust

was settling on the fields, the distance became clearer and brighter in the

slanting light. The clouds had dispersed altogether; I could see through the

trees the thatch of three new corn stacks. The laborers came down off the

stacks; the carts hurried past, evidently for the last time, with a loud

noise of shouting; the women, with rakes over their shoulders and straw

bands in their belts, walked home past us, singing loudly; and still there

was no sign of Sergey Mikhaylych, though I had seen him ride down the hill

long ago. Suddenly he appeared upon the avenue, coming from a quarter where

I was not looking for him. He had walked round by the dell. He came quickly

towards me, with his hat off and radiant with high spirits. Seeing that

Katya was asleep, he bit his lip, closed his eyes, and advanced on tiptoe; I

saw at once that he was in that peculiar mood of causeless merriment which I

always delighted to see in him, and which we called “wild ecstasy”. He was

just like a schoolboy playing truant; his whole figure, from head to foot,

breathed content, happiness, and boyish frolic.

“Well, young violet, how are you? All right?” he said in a whisper, coming

up to me and taking my hand. Then, in answer to my question, “Oh, I’m

splendid today, I feel like a boy of thirteen — I want to play at horses and

climb trees.”

“Is it wild ecstasy?” I asked, looking into his laughing eyes, and feeling

that the “wild ecstasy” was infecting me.

“Yes,” he answered, winking and checking a smile. “But I don’t see why you

need hit Katerina Karlovna on the nose.”

With my eyes on him I had gone on waving the branch, without noticing that I

had knocked the handkerchief off Katya’s face and was now brushing her with

the leaves. I laughed.

“She will say she was awake all the time,” I whispered, as if not to awake

Katya; but that was not my real reason — it was only that I liked to whisper

to him.

He moved his lips in imitation of me, pretending that my voice was too low

for him to hear. Catching sight of the dish of cherries, he pretended to

steal it, and carried it off to Sonya under the lime tree, where he sat down

on her dolls. Sonya was angry at first, but he soon made his peace with her

by starting a game, to see which of them could eat cherries faster.

“If you like, I will send for more cherries,” I said; “or let us go

ourselves.”

He took the dish and set the dolls on it, and we all three started for the

orchard. Sonya ran behind us, laughing and pulling at his coat, to make him

surrender the dolls. He gave them up and then turned to me, speaking more

seriously.

“You really are a violet,” he said, still speaking low, though there was no

longer any fear of waking anybody; “when I came to you out of all that dust

and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet

violet — you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and

spring grass.”

“Is harvest going on well?” I asked, in order to hide the happy agitation

which his words produced in me.

“First rate! Our people are always splendid. The more you know them, the

better you like them.”

“Yes,” I said; “before you came I was watching them from the garden, and

suddenly I felt ashamed to be so comfortable myself while they were hard at

work, and so …”

He interrupted me, with a kind but grave look: “Don’t talk like that, my

dear; it is too sacred a matter to talk of lightly. God forbid that you

should use fine phrases about that!”

“But it is only to you I say this.”

“All right, I understand. But what about those cherries?”

The orchard was locked, and no gardener to be seen: he had sent them all off

to help with the harvest. Sonya ran to fetch the key. But he would not wait

for her: climbing up a corner of the wall, he raised the net and jumped down

on the other side.

His voice came over the wall — “If you want some, give me the dish.”

“No,” I said; “I want to pick for myself. I shall fetch the key; Sonya

won’t find it.”

But suddenly I felt that I must see what he was doing there and what he

looked like — that I must watch his movements while he supposed that no one

saw him. Besides I was simply unwilling just then to lose sight of him for a

single minute. running on tiptoe through the nettles to the other side of

the orchard where the wall was lower, I mounted on an empty cask, till the

top of the wall was on a level with my waist, and then leaned over into the

orchard. I looked