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

of someone’s hand roused her. She awoke. But the touch was light and pleasant. The hand pressed hers more closely. Suddenly she became alive to reality, screamed, jumped up, and trying to persuade herself that she had not recognised the Count, who was standing under the window bathed in the moonlight, she ran out of the room.⁠ ⁠… XV

And it really was the Count. When he heard the girl’s cry, and, behind the fence, a husky sound from the watchman who had been roused by that cry, he rushed headlong across the wet, dewy grass into the depths of the park, feeling like a detected thief.

“Fool that I am!” he repeated unconsciously, “I have frightened her. I ought to have roused her gently by speaking to her. Awkward brute that I am!” He stopped and listened: the watchman came into the garden through the gateway, dragging his stick along the sandy path. It was necessary to hide, and he went down by the pond. The frogs made him start as they plumped from beneath his feet into the water. Though his feet were wet through, he squatted down and began to recall all he had done. How he had climbed the fence, looked for her window, and at last caught sight of a white shadow; how, listening to the faintest rustle, he several times drew near to the window and went back again. How one moment, he felt sure that she was waiting, vexed at his tardiness, and the next that it was impossible she could have agreed so readily to a rendezvous. How, at last, persuading himself that it was only the bashfulness of a country-bred girl that made her pretend to be asleep, he went up resolutely and saw distinctly how she sat, but then for some reason ran away again, and only after severely taunting himself with his cowardice, boldly drew near to her and touched her hand.

The watchman again made a husky sound, and the gate creaked as he left the garden. The girl’s window slammed to, and a shutter was fastened from inside. This was very provoking. The Count would have given a good deal for a chance to begin all over again; he would not have acted so stupidly now.⁠ ⁠… “And she is a wonderful girl! so fresh! quite charming! and I have let her slip through my fingers.⁠ ⁠… Stupid beast that I am!” He did not want to sleep now, and went at random, with the firm tread of one who has been crossed, along the covered, lime-tree avenue.

And here the night brought for him also its peaceful gifts of soothing sadness and the need of loving. The straight, pale beams of the moon threw spots of light through the thick foliage of the limes onto the clayey path, on which a few blades of grass grew or a dead branch lay here and there. The light falling on one side of a bent bough made it look as if it were covered with white moss. The silvered leaves whispered every now and then. All the lights were out in the house, and all was silent; the voice of the nightingale alone seemed to fill the bright, still, limitless space. “O God, what a night! What a wonderful night,” thought the Count, inhaling the fragrant freshness of the garden. “There is something regrettable. It feels as if I were discontented with myself and with others, discontented with the whole of life. A splendid, sweet girl! Perhaps she was really hurt.⁠ ⁠…” Here his dreams became mixed: he imagined himself in this garden with the country-bred girl in various most extraordinary situations. Then the role of the girl was taken by his beloved Mína. “Eh, what a fool I was! I ought simply to have caught her round the waist and kissed her.” And feeling this remorse, the Count returned to his room.

The Cornet was still not asleep. He turned at once in his bed and faced the Count.

“Not asleep yet?” asked the Count.

“No.”

“Shall I tell you what has happened?”

“Well?”

“No, I’d better not⁠ ⁠… or, all right, I’ll tell you: draw in your legs.”

And the Count, having mentally abandoned the intrigue that had miscarried, sat down on his comrade’s bed with an animated smile.

“Would you believe it, that young lady gave me a rendezvous!”

“What are you saying?” cried Pólozof, jumping out of bed.

“No, but listen.”

“But how? When? It’s impossible!”

“Why, while you were adding up after we played Préférence, she told me she would sit by the window in the night, and that one could get in at the window. There, you see what it is to be practical! While you were calculating with the old woman, I arranged that little matter. Why, you heard, she even said in your presence that she would sit by the window tonight and look at the pond.”

“Yes, but she did not mean that.”

“There now, that’s just what I can’t make out: did she say it intentionally or not? Maybe really she did not wish to agree so suddenly, but it looked very like it. It turned out horribly. I quite played the fool,” he added, smiling contemptuously at himself.

“What do you mean? Where have you been?”

The Count, omitting his manifold irresolute approaches, related all as it had happened. “I spoilt it all myself: I ought to have been bolder. She screamed and ran from the window.”

“So she screamed and ran away,” said the Cornet, smiling uneasily in answer to the Count’s smile, which for such a long time had had so strong an influence over him.

“Yes, but it’s time to go to sleep.”

The Cornet again turned his back to the door and lay silent for about ten minutes. Heaven knows what went on in his soul, but when he turned again, his face bore an expression of suffering and resolve.

“Count Toúrbin!” he said abruptly.

“Are you talking in your sleep?” quietly replied the Count; “… yes, Cornet Pólozof?”

“Count Toúrbin, you are a scoundrel!” cried Pólozof, and again jumped out of