Short Fiction by Leo Tolstoy (book reader for pc TXT) 📕

the lamp, looked at the chest of drawers, the table, or a white dress that was hanging up. Now it seemed very hot on the feather bed, now her watch ticked unbearably on the little table and the maid snored unendurably through her nose. She woke her and ordered her not to snore. Again thoughts about her daughter, about the old and young Counts, and about the game of Préférence got curiously mixed in her head. Now she saw herself valse with the old Count, saw her own round, white shoulders, felt someone’s kisses on them, and then saw her daughter in the arms of the young Count. Oustúshka again began to snore.

“No, somehow people nowadays are different. The other one was ready to leap into the fire for me⁠—and not without cause. But this one, never fear, is sleeping like a fool, glad to have won⁠—no lovemaking about him. How he used to say on his knees, ‘What do you wish me to do? I would kill myself on the spot, or do anything you like!’ And he would have killed himself had I told him to.”

Suddenly she heard a patter of bare feet in the passage, and Lisa, with a shawl thrown over her, ran in, pale and trembling, and almost fell onto her mother’s bed.

After saying good night to her mother that evening Lisa had gone alone to the room her uncle generally slept in. She put on a white dressing-jacket, and covering her long, thick, plaited hair with a shawl, she extinguished the candle, opened the window, and sat down, feet and all, on a chair, fixing her pensive eyes on the pond, now all glittering in the silvery light.

All her accustomed occupations and interests suddenly appeared to her in a new light: her capricious old mother, non-judging love for whom had become part of her soul; the decrepit but amiable old uncle; the domestic serfs and village serfs, who adored their young mistress; the milch cows and the calves, and all this nature, which had died and been renewed so many times, amid which she had grown up loving and beloved⁠—all this that had given such easy and pleasant rest to her spirit, suddenly seemed unsatisfactory; it seemed dull and unnecessary. It was as if someone had said to her, “Little fool, little fool, for twenty years you have been trifling, serving someone without knowing why, and without knowing what life and happiness are!” This is what she was thinking, as she gazed into the depths of the moonlit, motionless garden, more intensely, far more intensely, than she had ever thought it before. And what had caused these thoughts? Not any sudden love for the Count, as one might have supposed. On the contrary, she did not like him. She could have been interested in the Cornet more easily, but he was plain, poor fellow, and silent. She kept involuntarily forgetting him, and recalling the image of the Count with anger and annoyance.

“No, that’s not it,” she said to herself. Her ideal had been so beautiful. It was an ideal that could have been loved on such a night, amid this nature, without infringing its beauty⁠—an ideal never abridged to make it fit some coarse reality.

In days gone by, solitude and the absence of any who might have attracted her attention, had caused the power of love which Providence has given impartially to each of us, to rest intact and tranquil in her bosom; and now she had lived too long in the sad happiness of feeling the presence of this something in herself, and of now and again opening the secret chalice of her heart to contemplate its riches, to be able thoughtlessly to lavish its contents on anyone. God grant she may enjoy this chary bliss to the grave! Who knows whether it is not the best and strongest? and whether it is not the only true and possible happiness?

“O Lord, my God,” she thought, “can it be that I have lost happiness and youth in vain, and that it will never be⁠ ⁠… never be? Can it be true?”

And she looked into the depths of the sky, lit up by the moon and covered by light fleecy clouds that, veiling the stars, crept nearer to the moon, “If that highest white cloudlet touches the moon it will be a sign that it is true,” thought she. The misty, smoke-coloured strip ran across the bottom half of the bright disc, and, little by little, the light on the grass, on the tops of the limes, and on the pond, grew dimmer, and the black shadows of the trees less distinct. As if to harmonise with the gloomy shadows that spread over the world outside, a light wind ran through the leaves and brought to the window the scent of dewy leaves, of moist earth, and of blooming lilacs.

“But it is not true,” she consoled herself. “There now, if the nightingale sings tonight, it will be a sign that what I’m thinking is all nonsense, and I need not despair,” thought she. And she long sat in silence waiting for something, while again all became bright and full of life, and then again and again the cloudlets ran across the moon, making everything dim. She was beginning to fall asleep as she sat by the window, when the quivering trills of a nightingale came ringing from below, across the pond, and woke her. The country maiden opened her eyes. And once more her soul was renewed with fresh joy by this mysterious union with this nature which spread out so calmly and so brightly before her. She leant on both elbows. A sweet, languid feeling of sadness pressed her heart, and tears of pure, broad love, thirsting to be satisfied⁠—good, comforting tears⁠—filled her eyes. She folded her arms on the windowsill and laid her head on them. Her favourite prayer rose to her mind, and so she fell asleep with her eyes still moist.

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