Leo Tolstoy: The Complete Novels and Novellas. Leo Tolstoy

on the white table-cloth; there were cracknels and biscuits and cream on the table. Katya was busy washing the cups with her plump hands. I was too hungry after bathing to wait for tea, and was eating bread with thick fresh cream. I was wearing a gingham blouse with loose sleeves, and my hair, still wet, was covered with a kerchief. Katya saw him first, even before he came in.

      “You, Sergey Mikhaylych!” she cried. “Why, we were just talking about you.”

      I got up, meaning to go and change my dress, but he caught me just by the door.

      “Why stand on such ceremony in the country?” he said, looking with a smile at the kerchief on my head. “You don’t mind the presence of your butler, and I am really the same to you as Grigori is.” But I felt just then that he was looking at me in a way quite unlike Grigori’s way, and I was uncomfortable.

      “I shall come back at once,” I said, as I left them.

      “But what is wrong?” he called out after me; “it’s just the dress of a young peasant woman.”

      “How strangely he looked at me!” I said to myself as I was quickly changing upstairs. “Well, I’m glad he has come; things will be more lively.” After a look in the glass I ran gaily downstairs and into the veranda; I was out of breath and did not disguise my haste. He was sitting at the table, talking to Katya about our affairs. He glanced at me and smiled; then he went on talking. From what he said it appeared that our affairs were in capital shape: it was now possible for us, after spending the summer in the country, to go either to Petersburg for Sonya’s education, or abroad.

      “If only you would go abroad with us —” said Katya; “without you we shall be quite lost there.”

      “Oh, I should like to go round the world with you,” he said, half in jest and half in earnest.

      “All right,” I said; let us start off and go round the world.”

      He smiled and shook his head.

      “What about my mother? What about my business, he said. “But that’s not the question just now: I want to know how you have been spending your time. Not depressed again, I hope?

      When I told him that I had been busy and not bored during his absence, and when Katya confirmed my report, he praised me as if he had a right to do so, and his words and looks were kind, as they might have been to a child. I felt obliged to tell him, in detail and with perfect frankness, all my good actions, and to confess, as if I were in church, all that he might disapprove of. The evening was so fine that we stayed in the veranda after tea was cleared away; and the conversation interested me so much that I did not notice how we ceased by degrees to hear any sound of the servants indoors. The scent of flowers grew stronger and came from all sides; the grass was drenched with dew; a nightingale struck up in a lilac bush close by and then stopped on hearing our voices; the starry sky seemed to come down lower over our heads.

      It was growing dusk, but I did not notice it till a bat suddenly and silently flew in beneath the veranda awning and began to flutter round my white shawl. I shrank back against the wall and nearly cried out; but the bat as silently and swiftly dived out from under the awning and disappeared in the half-darkness of the garden.

      “How fond I am of this place of yours!” he said, changing the conversation; “I wish I could spend all my life here, sitting in this veranda.”

      “Well, do then!” said Katya.

      “That’s all very well,” he said, “but life won’t sit still.”

      “Why don’t you marry?” asked Katya; you would make an excellent husband.

      “Because I like sitting still?” and he laughed. “No, Katerina Karlovna, too late for you and me to marry. People have long ceased to think of me as a marrying man, and I am even surer of it myself; and I declare I have felt quite comfortable since the matter was settled.”

      It seemed to me that he said this in an unnaturally persuasive way.

      “Nonsense!” said Katya; “a man of thirty-six makes out that he is too old!”

      “Too old indeed,” he went on, “when all one wants is to sit still. For a man who is going to marry that’s not enough. Just you ask her,” he added, nodding at me; “people of her age should marry, and you and I can rejoice in their happiness.”

      The sadness and constraint latent in his voice was not lost upon me. He was silent for a little, and neither Katya nor I spoke.

      “Well, just fancy,” he went on, turning a little on his seat; “suppose that by some mischance I married a girl of seventeen, Masha, if you like — I mean, Marya Aleksandrovna. The instance is good; I am glad it turned up; there could not be a better instance.”

      I laughed; but I could not understand why he was glad, or what it was that had turned up.

      “Just tell me honestly, with your hand on your heart,” he said, turning as if playfully to me, “would it not be a misfortune for you to unite your life with that of an old worn-out man who only wants to sit still, whereas Heaven knows what wishes are fermenting in that heart of yours?”

      I felt uncomfortable and was silent, not knowing how to answer him.

      “I am not making you a proposal, you know,” he said, laughing; “but am I really the kind of husband you dream of when walking alone in the avenue at twilight? It would be a misfortune, would it not?”

      “No, not a misfortune,” I began.

      “But a bad thing,” he ended my sentence.

      “Perhaps; but I may be mistaken...” He interrupted me again.

      “There, you see! She is quite right, and I am grateful to her for her frankness, and very glad to have had this conversation. And there is something else to be said” — he added: “for me too it would be a very great misfortune.”

      “How odd you are! You have not changed in the least,” said Katya, and then left the veranda, to order supper to be served.

      When she had gone, we were both silent and all was still around us, but for one exception. A nightingale, which had sung last night by fitful snatches, now flooded the garden with a steady stream of song, and was soon answered by another from the dell below, which had not sung till that evening. The nearer bird stopped and seemed to listen for a moment, and then broke out again still louder than before, pouring out his song in piercing long drawn cadences. There was a regal calm in the birds’ voices, as they floated through the realm of night which belongs to those birds and not to man. The gardener walked past to his sleeping-quarters in the greenhouse, and the noise of his heavy boots grew fainter and fainter along the path. Someone whistled twice sharply at the foot of the hill; and then all was still again. The rustling of leaves could just be heard; the veranda awning flapped; a faint perfume, floating in the air, came down on the veranda and filled it. I felt silence awkward after what had been said, but what to say I did not know. I looked at him. His eyes, bright in the half-darkness, turned towards me.

      “How good life is!” he said.

      I sighed, I don’t know why.

      “Well?” he asked.

      “Life is good,” I repeated after him.

      Again we were silent, and again I felt uncomfortable. I could not help fancying that I had wounded him by agreeing that he was old; and I wished to comfort him but did not know how.

      “Well, I must be saying good-bye,” he said, rising; “my mother expects me for supper; I have hardly seen her all day.”

      “I meant to play you the new sonata,” I said.

      “That must wait,” he replied; and I thought that he spoke coldly.

      “Good-bye.”

      I felt still more certain that I had wounded him, and I was sorry. Katya and I went to the steps