Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Family happiness

Part one

Part two

Days, weeks, two months of secluded village life passed unnoticed, as it seemed then; and meanwhile, for a whole life, the feelings, excitements and happiness of these two months would have sufficed. My and his dreams of how our village life would be arranged did not come true at all in the way we expected. But our life was not worse than our dreams. There was no such strict labor, fulfillment of the duty of self-sacrifice and life for another, which I imagined to myself when I was a bride; there was, on the contrary, one selfish feeling of love for each other, a desire to be loved, causeless, constant joy and forgetfulness of everything in the world. True, he sometimes went out to do something in his office, sometimes he went to the city on business and went around the house; but I saw how hard it was for him to tear himself away from me. And he himself later admitted that everything in the world, where I was not, seemed to him such nonsense that he could not understand how to deal with it. For me it was the same. I read, studied music, and mother, and school; but all this only because each of these activities was connected with him and deserved his approval; but as soon as the thought of him was not mixed up with any business, my hands dropped, and it seemed so amusing to me to think that there was anything in the world besides him. Maybe it was not a good selfish feeling; but this feeling gave me happiness and lifted me high above the whole world. He alone existed for me in the world, and I considered him the most beautiful, infallible person in the world; therefore I could not live for anything else than for him, as for being in his eyes what he considered me to be. And he considered me the first and the most beautiful woman in a world endowed with all possible virtues; and I tried to be that woman in the eyes of the first and best man in the whole world. Once he entered my room while I was praying to God. I looked back at him and continued to pray. He sat down at the table so as not to disturb me and opened the book. But it seemed to me that he was looking at me, and I looked back. He smiled, I laughed and could not pray. - Have you prayed yet? I asked. -- Yes. Yes, you go on, I'm leaving. - Yes, you pray, I hope? He wanted to leave without answering, but I stopped him. - My soul, please, for me, read prayers with me. He stood next to me and, awkwardly lowering his hands, with a serious face, stammering, began to read. Occasionally he turned to me, looking for approval and help on my face. When he finished, I laughed and hugged him. - All you, all you! It’s as if I’m turning ten years old again,” he said, blushing and kissing my hands. Our house was one of the old village houses in which, respecting and loving one another, several related generations lived. Everything smelled of good honest family memories, which suddenly, as soon as I entered this house, seemed to become my memories as well. The decoration and order of the house were kept by Tatyana Semyonovna in the old fashioned way. It cannot be said that everything was elegant and beautiful; but from servants to furniture and food, there was a lot of everything, everything was neat, solid, tidy and inspired respect. The living room was furnished symmetrically, portraits hung, and homemade carpets and stripes were spread on the floor. In the sofa room there was an old piano, chiffonieres of two different styles, sofas and tables with brass and inlays. In my study, which Tatyana Semyonovna had tidied up, stood the finest furniture of various ages and styles, and, among other things, an old dressing table, which at first I could not look at without shyness, but which later, as old friend became dear to me. Tatyana Semyonovna could not be heard, but everything in the house went on like clockwork, although there were many extra people. But all these people, who wore soft boots without heels (Tatyana Semyonovna considered the creaking of soles and the clatter of heels to be the most unpleasant thing in the world), all these people seemed proud of their rank, trembled before the old lady, looked at my husband and me with patronizing caress and, it seemed , did their job with great pleasure. Every Saturday, the floors were regularly washed in the house and carpets were beaten out, prayer services with water blessing were served every first day, every namesake of Tatyana Semyonovna, her son (and mine - for the first time this autumn) feasts were given for the entire neighborhood. And all this had been done invariably ever since Tatyana Semyonovna could remember herself. The husband did not interfere in housekeeping and only took care of the field and the peasants, and did a lot. Even in winter he got up very early, so that when I woke up, I no longer found him. He usually returned to tea, which we drank alone, and almost always at this time, after troubles and troubles with the household, he was in that special cheerful frame of mind, which we called wild delight. Often I demanded that he tell me what he did in the morning, and he told me such nonsense that we died with laughter; sometimes I demanded a serious story, and he, holding back a smile, told. I looked at his eyes, at his moving lips, and did not understand anything, I was only glad that I saw him and heard his voice. "Well, what did I say? repeat," he asked. But I couldn't repeat anything. It was so funny that he told me not about himself and about me, but about something else. It really doesn't matter what happens there. Only much later did I begin to understand and take an interest in his concerns. Tatyana Semyonovna did not go out until dinner, she drank tea alone and greeted us only through ambassadors. In our special, extravagantly happy world, the voice from her other, sedate, decent corner sounded so strange that I often could not stand it and only laughed in response to the maid, who, folding her hand on her hand, measuredly reported that Tatyana Semyonovna was ordered to find out how they slept after yesterday's festivities, and they ordered to report to themselves that their barrel hurt all night, and a stupid dog in the village barked, prevented them from sleeping. "They also ordered me to ask how you liked the current cookies, and asked me to notice that it was not Taras who baked today, but for the first time, Nikolasha, and very well, they say, not bad, especially the pretzels, but overcooked the crackers." Before lunch we were little together. I played, I read alone, he wrote, he left again; but towards dinner, at four o'clock, we met in the living room, mother would swim out of her room, and poor noblewomen, wanderers, of whom there were always two or three people living in the house, appeared. Regularly every day the husband, according to an old habit, gave his mother's hand for dinner; but she demanded that he give me another, and regularly every day we crowded and got confused at the door. Matushka presided over dinner, and the conversation was decently sensible and somewhat solemn. Our simple words with my husband pleasantly ruined the solemnity of these dinner sessions. Disputes and ridicule at each other sometimes ensued between son and mother; I especially loved these disputes and ridicule, because in them the tender and firm love that bound them was expressed most strongly. After dinner, mamma would sit in the drawing room on a large armchair and grind tobacco or cut up sheets of newly received books, while we read aloud or went to the sofa to play the clavichords. We read a lot together during this time, but music was our favorite and best pleasure, each time evoking new strings in our hearts and, as it were, revealing each other to us again. When I played his favorite pieces, he would sit on the far sofa, where I could hardly see him, and, out of modesty of feeling, he tried to hide the impression the music made on him; but often, when he did not expect it, I got up from the piano, went up to him and tried to find traces of excitement on his face, an unnatural gleam and moisture in his eyes, which he tried in vain to hide from me. Mother often wanted to look at us in the sofa room, but, no doubt, she was afraid of embarrassing us, and sometimes, as if not looking at us, she would pass through the sofa room with an imaginary serious and indifferent face; but I knew that she had no reason to go to her room and return so soon. Evening tea was poured out by me in the large living room, and again all the household gathered at the table. This solemn meeting at the mirror of the samovar and the distribution of glasses and cups confused me for a long time. It seemed to me that I was still unworthy of this honor, too young and frivolous to turn the tap of such a large samovar, to put a glass on Nikita’s tray and say: “To Pyotr Ivanovich, Marya Minichna”, to ask: “Is it sweet?” and leave lumps of sugar for the nanny and honored people. “Nice, nice,” my husband often said, “it’s like a big one,” and this confused me even more. After tea, maman would play solitaire or listen to Marya Minichna's divination; then she kissed and baptized us both, and we went to her room. Most of the time, however, we sat together past midnight, and that was the best and most pleasant time. He told me about his past, we made plans, sometimes philosophized and tried to say everything quietly so that they would not hear us upstairs and inform Tatyana Semyonovna, who demanded that we go to bed early. Sometimes, hungry, we slowly went to the buffet, got a cold supper through Nikita's patronage, and ate it with one candle in my office. We lived with him as if we were strangers in this big old house, in which the strict spirit of antiquity and Tatyana Semyonovna stood over everything. Not only she, but people, old girls, furniture, paintings inspired me with respect, a certain fear and the consciousness that we were a little out of place here, and that we had to live here very carefully and attentively. As I recall now, I see that many things - both this binding unchanging order, and this abyss of idle and curious people in our house - were uncomfortable and hard; but then this very constraint enlivened our love even more. Not only me, but he did not show any sign that he did not like anything. On the contrary, he even seemed to be hiding himself from what was bad. Mama's footman Dmitry Sidorov, a great pipe hunter, regularly every day after dinner, when we were in the sofa room, went to my husband's study to take his tobacco from the drawer; and one should have seen with what cheerful fear Sergei Mikhailych approached me on tiptoe and, shaking his finger and winking, pointed at Dmitri Sidorovich, who had no idea that he was being seen. And when Dmitry Sidorov left without noticing us, for joy that everything ended well, as in any other case, my husband said that I was lovely, and kissed me. Sometimes this calmness, forgiveness, and as if indifference to everything did not please me, I did not notice that the same thing was in me, and considered it a weakness. "Just like a child who dares not show his will!" I thought. “Ah, my friend,” he answered me, when I once told him that I was surprised by his weakness, “is it possible to be dissatisfied with anything when you are as happy as I am? It is easier to give in yourself than to bend others, I have long been convinced of this; and there is no situation in which it would be impossible to be happy. And we are so good! I cannot be angry; for me now there is no evil, there is only miserable and amusing. And most importantly, le mieux est lennemi du bien. * [the best is the enemy of the good] Believe me, when I hear the bell, I get a letter, just when I wake up, I get scared. It's terrible that you have to live, that something will change; and it couldn't be better than now. I believed, but did not understand him. I felt good, but it seemed that all this is so, and it should not be otherwise, and it always happens to everyone, and that there, somewhere, is another, although not greater, but another happiness. So two months passed, winter came with its colds and snowstorms, and despite the fact that he was with me, I began to feel lonely, I began to feel that life was repeating itself, and there was nothing new in me or in him, but that, on the contrary, we seem to be returning to the old. He began to do things without me more than before, and again it began to seem to me that he had some special world in his soul into which he did not want to let me in. His constant calmness annoyed me. I loved him no less than before, and no less than before, I was happy with his love; but my love stopped and grew no more, and besides love, some new restless feeling began to creep into my soul. It was not enough for me to love after I experienced the happiness of loving him. I wanted movement, not the calm flow of life. I wanted excitement, danger and self-sacrifice for feeling. There was an excess of strength in me that found no place in our quiet life. Outbursts of melancholy came over me, which, like something bad, I tried to hide from him, and outbursts of violent tenderness and gaiety, which frightened him. He noticed my condition even before me and offered to go to the city; but I asked him not to travel and not to change our way of life, not to disturb our happiness. And sure enough, I was happy; but I was tormented by the fact that this happiness did not cost me any labor, no sacrifice, when the forces of labor and sacrifice tormented me. I loved him and saw that I was everything to him; but I wanted everyone to see our love, to prevent me from loving, and I would still love him. My mind and even my feelings were busy, but there was another feeling of youth, a need for movement, which did not find satisfaction in our quiet life. Why did he tell me that we can go to the city whenever I want to? If he had not told me this, perhaps I would have realized that the feeling that tormented me was harmful nonsense, my fault that the victim I was looking for was right there in front of me, in the suppression of this feeling. The thought that I could be saved from melancholy only by moving to the city involuntarily crossed my mind; and at the same time to tear him away from everything that he loved, for myself I was ashamed and sorry. And time was running out, snow was falling more and more wall at home, and we were all alone and alone, and we were still the same in front of each other; and there, somewhere in the splendor, in the noise, crowds of people were worried, suffering and rejoicing, not thinking about us and our passing existence. The worst thing for me was that I felt how every day the habits of life chained our life into one definite form, how our feeling became not free, but obeyed the even, impassive flow of time. In the morning we were cheerful, at lunch we were respectful, in the evening we were gentle. "Good! .. - I said to myself, - it's good to do good and live honestly, as he says; but we still have time for this, but there is something for which I only now have the strength." I didn't need that, I needed a fight; I needed feeling to guide us in life, and not life to guide feeling. I wanted to go with him to the abyss and say: here's a step, I'll throw myself there, here's a movement, and I perished - and so that, turning pale at the edge of the abyss, he would take me in his strong hands, hold me over her, so that my heart would go cold, and I would take it wherever it wants. This condition even affected my health, and my nerves began to get upset. One morning I felt worse than usual; he returned from the office in a bad mood, which rarely happened to him. I immediately noticed this and asked what was the matter with him? but he didn't want to tell me, saying it wasn't worth it. As I found out later, the police officer called our peasants and, out of dislike for her husband, demanded illegal things from them and threatened them. My husband could not yet digest all this in such a way that everything was only ridiculous and pitiful, he was irritated and therefore did not want to talk to me. But it seemed to me that he did not want to talk to me because he considered me a child who cannot understand what interests him. I turned away from him, fell silent and ordered to ask Marya Minichna, who was visiting us, for tea. After tea, which I finished especially quickly, I took Marya Minichna into the sofa room and began to talk loudly with her about some kind of nonsense, which was not at all interesting for me. He paced the room, occasionally looking at us. For some reason these glances now had such an effect on me that I felt more and more like talking and even laughing; everything that I myself said, and everything that Marya Minichna said, seemed ridiculous to me. Without saying anything to me, he went completely into his study and closed the door behind him. As soon as he was no longer heard, all my gaiety suddenly disappeared, so that Marya Minichna was surprised and began to ask what was the matter with me. I, without answering her, sat down on the sofa, and I felt like crying. “And why is he rethinking this?” I thought. “Some nonsense that seems important to him, but try to tell me, I will show him that everything is nothing. No, he needs to think that I won’t understand, he needs to humiliate me with my majestic calmness and always be right with me.But I am also right when I am bored, empty, when I want to live, move, - I thought, - and not stand in one place and feel how time goes through me "I want to go forward and every day, every hour I want something new, but he wants to stop and stop me with him. And how easy it would be for him! For this he does not need to take me to the city, for this you only need to like me, do not break yourself, do not hold back, but live simply. This is what he advises me, but he himself is not simple. That's it! I felt that tears were coming to my heart, and that I was annoyed with him. I was afraid of this irritation and went to him. He sat in his office and wrote. Hearing my footsteps, he looked back for a moment indifferently, calmly, and continued to write. I didn't like this look; instead of going up to him, I stood at the table where he was writing, and, opening the book, began to look into it. He pulled away again and looked at me. - Masha! are you out of sorts? -- he said. I replied with a cold look that said: "No need to ask! What kind of courtesy?" He shook his head and smiled timidly, tenderly, but for the first time my smile did not answer his smile. - What did you have today? I asked, "why didn't you tell me?" -- Rubbish! a little nuisance, he replied. “But now I can tell you. Two men went to the city... But I didn't let him finish. “Why didn’t you tell me then, when I asked at tea?” “I would have told you something stupid, I was angry then. “Then I needed it. -- Why? "Why do you think I can never help you with anything?" - What do you think? he said, throwing down his pen. “I think I can't live without you. In everything, in everything, not only you help me, but you do everything. That's enough! he laughed. - I live only for you. It seems to me that everything is fine only because you are here, that you are needed ... - Yes, I know that, I am a cute child who needs to be reassured, - I said in such a tone that he was surprised, as if for the first time that saw, looked at me. “I don’t want peace, you have enough of it, very enough,” I added. “Well, you see, what’s the matter,” he began hurriedly, interrupting me, apparently afraid to let me utter everything: “how would you judge him? “Now I don’t want to,” I replied. Although I wanted to listen to him, I was so pleased to destroy his calmness. “I don’t want to play life, I want to live,” I said, “just like you. On his face, on which everything was reflected so quickly and vividly, pain and increased attention were expressed. - I want to live with you evenly, with you ... But I could not finish: such sadness, deep sadness was expressed on his face. He paused a little. "But what's wrong with you living with me?" - he said: - by the fact that I, and not you, are busy with the police officer and drunken peasants ... - But not only in this, - I said. “For God's sake, understand me, my friend,” he continued, “I know that worries always hurt us, I lived and learned this. I love you, and therefore I cannot but desire to relieve you of your anxieties. This is my life, in love for you: therefore, do not bother me to live. - You're always right! I said without looking at him. I was annoyed that again everything was clear and calm in his soul, when there was annoyance and a feeling akin to remorse in me. - Masha! What happened to you? -- he said. - It's not about whether I'm right or you're right, but about something else: what do you have against me? Do not suddenly speak, think and tell me everything that you think. You are not happy with me, and you are right, but let me understand what I am guilty of. But how could I tell him my soul? The fact that he understood me so immediately, that again I was a child in front of him, that I could not do anything that he did not understand and did not foresee, agitated me even more. “I have nothing against you,” I said. - I'm just bored and I want it not to be boring. But you say that it is necessary, and again you are right! I said this and looked at him. I reached my goal, his calmness disappeared, fear and pain were on his face. "Masha," he began in a low, excited voice. - It's not a joke what we're doing now. Now our fate is being decided. I ask you not to answer me and listen. Why do you want to torture me? But I interrupted him. “I know you will be right. Don't talk better, you're right, - I said coldly, as if it were not me, but some evil spirit speaking in me. "If you only knew what you're doing!" he said in a trembling voice. I cried and felt better. He sat next to me and was silent. I felt sorry for him, and ashamed of myself, and annoyed at what I had done. I didn't look at him. It seemed to me that he must either look sternly or bewilderedly at me at that moment. I looked around: a meek, tender look, as if asking for forgiveness, was fixed on me. I took his hand and said, “Forgive me! I myself don't know what I was saying. -- Yes; but I know what you said, and you spoke the truth. -- What? I asked. “That we need to go to Petersburg,” he said. “There is nothing for us to do here now. “As you wish,” I said. He hugged me and kissed me. “Forgive me,” he said. - I am guilty before you. That evening I played for him for a long time, and he walked around the room and whispered something. He had a habit of whispering, and I often asked him what he whispered, and he always, after thinking, answered me exactly what he whispered: for the most part poems and sometimes terrible nonsense, but such nonsense by which I knew the mood of his soul. - What are you whispering now? I asked. He stopped, thought, and, smiling, answered two verses of Lermontov: ..... And he, the madman, asks for storms, As if there is peace in storms! "No, he is more than a man; he knows everything!" I thought, "how can one not love him!" I got up, took his hand and began to walk with him, trying to hit the leg in the leg. -- Yes? he asked, smiling, looking at me. “Yes,” I said in a whisper; and a kind of merry disposition of the spirit seized us both, our eyes laughed, and we took more and more steps, and more and more stood on tiptoe. And with the same step, to the great indignation of Gregory and the surprise of mother, who was playing solitaire in the living room, they went through all the rooms to the dining room, and there they stopped, looked at each other and burst out laughing. Two weeks later, before the holiday, we were in St. Petersburg. Our trip to St. Petersburg, a week in Moscow, his, my family, new apartment, the road, new cities, faces - all this passed like a dream. All this was so diverse, new, cheerful, all this was so warmly and brightly illuminated by his presence, his love, that quiet country life seemed to me something ancient and insignificant. To my great surprise, instead of the secular pride and coldness that I expected to find in people, everyone met me so genuinely affectionately and joyfully (not only relatives, but also strangers) that it seemed that they all only thought about me, only I was expected to be well themselves. Also unexpectedly for me and in a secular circle and which seemed to me the best; my husband discovered many acquaintances about whom he never told me; and often it was strange and unpleasant for me to hear from him severe judgments about some of these people, who seemed to me so kind. I could not understand why he treated them so dryly and tried to avoid many acquaintances that seemed flattering to me. I thought the more you know good people so much the better, and everyone was kind. “You see how we will arrange ourselves,” he said before leaving the village: “we are little Croesus here, and there we will be very poor, and therefore we need to live in the city only as far as St. get confused: yes, and for you; I wouldn't want to.... - What is the light for? - I answered: - just let's see the theaters of our relatives, listen to the opera and good music and even earlier the Saint will return to the village. But as soon as we arrived in St. Petersburg, these plans were forgotten. I suddenly found myself in such a new happy world, so many joys seized me, such new interests appeared before me, that I immediately, albeit unconsciously, renounced all my past and all the plans of this past. “It was all like that, jokes; it hadn’t begun yet; but here it is real life! And what else will happen?” I thought. The restlessness and the beginning of melancholy, which disturbed me in the village, suddenly, as if by magic, completely disappeared. Love for my husband became calmer, and the thought never occurred to me here that he loves me less? Yes, I could not doubt his love, my every thought was immediately understood, the feeling was shared, the desire was fulfilled by him. His calmness disappeared here or did not irritate me anymore. Moreover, I felt that, in addition to his former love for me, he was also admiring me here. Often after a visit, a new acquaintance, or an evening with us, where I, inwardly trembling with fear of making a mistake, acted as the mistress of the house, he used to say: "Oh, yes, girl! Nice! Don't be shy. Right, good!" And I was very happy. Soon after our arrival, he wrote a letter to his mother, and when he called me to write on his behalf, he did not want to let me read what was written, as a result of which, of course, I demanded and read it. “You won’t recognize Masha,” he wrote, “and I won’t recognize her myself. Where does this sweet, graceful self-confidence, affability, even a worldly mind and courtesy come from. And all this is simple, sweet, good-natured. Everyone is delighted with her Yes, I myself do not stop admiring her, and if it were possible, I would fall in love even more. "Ah! so that's what I am!" I thought. And I felt so cheerful and good, it even seemed that I loved him even more. My success with all our friends was completely unexpected for me. From all sides they told me that my uncle especially liked me there, here my aunt is crazy about me, he tells me that there are no women like me in Petersburg, she assures me that I should want to be the most refined woman in society. Especially my husband's cousin, Princess D., a middle-aged society woman who suddenly fell in love with me, said flattering things to me more than anyone else, which turned my head. When for the first time my cousin invited me to go to the ball and asked my husband about it, he turned to me and, slightly perceptibly, smiling slyly, asked: do I want to go? I nodded my head in agreement and felt myself blush. “It’s as if a criminal confesses what she wants,” he said, laughing good-naturedly. “Why, you said that we shouldn’t go out into the world, and you don’t like it either,” I answered, smiling and looking at him with an imploring look. “If you really want to, then let’s go,” he said. “Right, better not. -- I want to? very? he asked again. I didn't answer. “The world is still a little grief,” he continued, “but worldly unfulfilled desires are both bad and ugly. We must go, and we will go,” he concluded decisively. To tell you the truth,” I said, “I wanted nothing in the world so much as this ball. We went, and the pleasure I experienced exceeded all my expectations. At the ball, even more than before, it seemed to me that I was the center around which everything was moving, that for me only this large hall was lit up, music was playing, and this crowd of people had gathered admiring me. Everyone from the hairdresser and the maid to the dancers and old people who passed through the hall seemed to tell me or let me feel that they loved me. The general opinion formed about me at this ball and conveyed to me by my cousin was that I was completely unlike other women, that there was something special, rustic, simple and charming in me. I was so flattered by this success that I frankly told my husband how much I would like to go to two or three more balls this year, "and in order to get enough of them well," I added, grimacing. My husband readily agreed, and at first he traveled with me with visible pleasure, rejoicing at my successes and, it seemed, completely forgetting or repudiating what he had said before. Subsequently, he apparently became bored and weary of the life we ​​led. But I was not up to it; if I sometimes noticed his attentively serious look, fixed inquiringly on me, I did not understand its significance. I was so clouded by this, suddenly aroused, as it seemed to me, love for me in all strangers, this air of grace, pleasure and novelty, which I breathed here for the first time, so suddenly his moral influence, which suppressed me, disappeared here, so pleasantly I had in this world not only to equal him, but to become higher than him, and for that I loved him even more and more independently than before, that I could not understand what he could see unpleasant for me in secular life. I experienced a new feeling of pride and self-satisfaction when, entering the ball, all eyes turned on me, and he, as if ashamed to admit to the crowd that he possessed me, hurried to leave me and get lost in the black crowd of tailcoats. “Wait!” I often thought, looking with my eyes at the end of the hall for his unnoticed, sometimes bored figure, “wait!” I thought, “we will come home, and you will understand and see for whom I tried to be good and brilliant, and what I love of all that surrounds me this evening. It seemed to me sincerely that my successes pleased me only for him, only in order to be able to sacrifice them to him. One thing that could be harmful to me in secular life, I thought, was the possibility of being carried away by one of the people I met in the world, and the jealousy of my husband; but he believed in me so much, seemed so calm and indifferent, and all these young people seemed to me so insignificant in comparison with him, that even the only, according to my concepts, danger of the world did not seem terrible to me. But despite the fact that the attention of many people in the world gave me pleasure, flattered my pride, made me think that there was some merit in my love for my husband, and made my treatment of him more self-confident and, as it were, careless. “But I saw how you were talking very animatedly with N.N.,” I said one day, returning from the ball, shaking my finger at him and naming one of the famous ladies of Petersburg, with whom he really spoke that evening. I said this to stir him up; he was especially silent and dull. “Oh, why say that? And you say Masha! he let out through his teeth, wincing as if in physical pain. "How bad it is for you and me!" Leave it to others; these false relationships can ruin our real ones, and I still hope that the real ones will return. I felt ashamed and shut up. - Will they come back, Masha? What do you think? -- he asked. "They never spoiled and never will," I said, and then it seemed to me exactly like that. “God forbid,” he said, “otherwise it would be time for us to go to the village.” But he said this to me only once, the rest of the time it seemed to me that he was just as good as I was, and I was so joyful and cheerful. If he is sometimes bored, I consoled myself, then I also bored him in the country; if our relations have changed somewhat, then all this will return again as soon as we are left alone with Tatyana Semyonovna in our Nikolsky house in the summer. So the winter passed unnoticed by me, and we, against our plans, even spent the Holy Day in St. Petersburg. At Fomina, when we were about to leave, everything was packed, and my husband, who was already shopping for gifts, things, flowers for village life, was in a particularly gentle and cheerful mood, my cousin unexpectedly came to us and began to ask us to stay until Saturday, with in order to go to the reception to Countess R. She said that Countess R. called me very much, that Prince M., who was then in St. Petersburg, wanted to meet me since the last ball, and only for this he went to the party and said that I was the prettiest woman in Russia. The whole city was supposed to be there, and, in a word, it wouldn't look like anything if I didn't go. The husband was at the other end of the living room, talking to someone. “So, are you going, Marie?” said the cousin. “The day after tomorrow we wanted to go to the village,” I answered hesitantly, glancing at my husband. Our eyes met, and he quickly turned away. “I will persuade him to stay,” said the cousin, “and we go on Saturday to turn heads. Yes? “It would upset our plans, but we met,” I answered, starting to give up. “Yes, it would be better for her to go to bow to the prince this evening,” her husband said from the other side of the room in an irritably restrained tone, which I have not yet heard from him. -- Ah! he's jealous, that's the first time I've seen it,' laughed the cousin. “But not for the prince, Sergei Mikhailovich, but for all of us, I persuade her. How Countess R. asked her to come! "It depends on her," the husband said coldly, and went out. I saw that he was more excited than usual; this tormented me, and I promised nothing to my cousin. As soon as she left, I went to my husband. He paced thoughtfully to and fro, and neither saw nor heard me tiptoe into the room. “He already imagines the dear Nikolsky house,” I thought, looking at him, “and the morning coffee in the bright drawing room, and its fields, peasants, and the evenings in the sofa, and the mysterious night suppers. “No!” I decided with myself - I will give all the balls in the world and the flattery of all the princes in the world for his joyful embarrassment, for his quiet caress. I wanted to tell him that I would not go to the reception and did not want to, when he suddenly looked around and, seeing me, frowned and changed the meek, thoughtful expression of his face. Again insight, wisdom and protective calmness were expressed in his look. He didn't want me to see him common man; he needed to be a demigod on a pedestal always standing in front of me. - What are you, my friend? he asked, turning casually and calmly towards me. I didn't answer. I was annoyed that he was hiding from me, did not want to remain the way I loved him. - Do you want to go to the reception on Saturday? -- he asked. “I wanted to,” I answered, “but you don’t like it. Yes, it's all done, I added. He never looked at me so coldly, never spoke to me so coldly. “I won’t leave until Tuesday, and I’ll have my things unpacked,” he said, “so you can go if you want. Do me a favor, go. I won't leave. As always, when he was agitated, he began to pace the room unevenly and did not look at me. “I absolutely do not understand you,” I said, standing still and following him with my eyes, “you say that you are always so calm (he never said this). Why are you talking to me so strangely? I am ready to sacrifice this pleasure for you, and you somehow ironically, as you never spoke to me, demand that I go. -- Well! You donate (he especially stressed this word), and I donate, which is better. Generosity fight. What else family happiness? “This is the first time I have heard such bitterly mocking words from him. And his mockery did not shame me, but offended me, and bitterness did not frighten me, but was communicated to me. Did he, always afraid of a phrase in our relations, always sincere and simple, say this? And for what? For the fact that I really wanted to sacrifice pleasure to him, in which I could not see anything wrong, and for the fact that a minute before that I understood and loved him so much. Our roles have changed, he avoided direct and simple words and I was looking for them. "You've changed a lot," I said with a sigh. What have I done wrong to you? Not a raut, but something else old you have in your heart against me. Why insincerity? Were you not so afraid of her before? Tell me straight, what do you have against me? “He will say something,” I thought, remembering with complacency that he had nothing to reproach me for all this winter. I went to the middle of the room, so he must have passed me close, and looked at him. “He will come, hug me, and everything will be over,” it occurred to me, and it even became a pity that I would not have to prove to him how wrong he was. But he stopped at the end of the room and looked at me. - Don't you understand? -- he said. -- Not. - Well, I'll tell you. I feel disgusting, for the first time disgusting, what I feel and what I can not feel. He stopped, apparently frightened by the rough sound of his voice. - Yes, what? I asked with tears of indignation in my eyes. “It’s disgusting that the prince found you pretty, and that because of this you run to meet him, forgetting both your husband, and yourself, and the dignity of a woman, and do not want to understand what your husband should feel for you, if in you yourself no sense of dignity; on the contrary, you come to tell your husband that you are sacrificing, that is, "it is a great happiness for me to appear to his highness, but I sacrifice to him." The further he spoke, the more he flared up from the sounds own voice, and this voice sounded poisonous, harsh and rude. I never saw or expected to see him like that; blood rushed to my heart, I was afraid, but at the same time a feeling of undeserved shame and offended pride worried me, and I wanted to take revenge on him. “I have been expecting this for a long time,” I said, “speak, speak. “I don’t know what you expected,” he continued, “I could expect the worst, seeing you every day in this filth, idleness, luxury of stupid society; and waited ... Waited for the fact that today I feel ashamed and hurt like never before; it hurts for yourself when your friend with his dirty hands got into my heart and began to talk about jealousy, my jealousy, to whom? to a person neither I nor you know. And you, as if on purpose, do not want to understand me and want to sacrifice me, what is it?.. Shame on you, shame on you for your humiliation!.. Victim! he repeated. "Ah! so this is the power of a husband," I thought. “No, I am not sacrificing anything to you,” I said, feeling my nostrils dilate unnaturally and the blood leave my face. “I will go to the reception on Saturday, and I will certainly go. - And God grant you a lot of pleasure, only it's over between us! he shouted in a fit of already unrestrained fury. “But you won’t torment me any more. I was a fool that—” he began again, but his lips began to tremble, and he restrained himself with a visible effort so as not to finish what he had begun. I feared and hated him at that moment. I wanted to tell him many things and avenge all insults; but if I opened my mouth, I would cry and drop myself before him. I silently left the room. But just as I stopped hearing his footsteps, I was suddenly horrified by what we had done. I was afraid that this bond, which made up all my happiness, would definitely break forever, and I wanted to return. “But has he calmed down enough to understand me when I silently stretch out my hand to him and look at him?” I thought. “Will he understand my generosity? What if he calls my grief a pretense? will he calmly accept my repentance and forgive me? And why, why did he, whom I loved so much, insult me ​​so cruelly? every word of the conversation between us, replacing these words with others, adding others, good words and again, with horror and a sense of insult, remembering what happened. When I went out to tea in the evening and met my husband with S., who was with us, I felt that from that day on a whole abyss opened up between us. S. asked me when we were leaving? I did not have time to respond. - On Tuesday, - answered the husband: - we are still going to the reception to Countess R. Are you going? he turned to me. I was frightened by the sound of this simple voice and timidly looked around at my husband. His eyes looked straight at me, their eyes were angry and mocking, his voice was even and cold. “Yes,” I replied. In the evening, when we were alone, he came up to me and extended his hand. “Please forget what I told you,” he said. I took his hand, a trembling smile was on my face, and tears were about to flow from my eyes, but he took his hand away and, as if afraid of a sensitive scene, sat down on a chair quite far from me. “Does he still consider himself right?” I thought, and the ready explanation and the request not to go to the reception stopped on my tongue. “We must write to mother that we have postponed our departure,” he said, “otherwise she will be worried. "When are you thinking of going?" I asked. “Tuesday, after the reception,” he answered. “I hope it’s not for me,” I said, looking into his eyes, but the eyes only looked, but did not say anything to me, as if they were clouded by something from me. His face suddenly seemed old and unpleasant to me. We went to the reception, and between us, it seemed, good friendly relations were again established: but these relations were completely different than before. At the reception, I was sitting between the ladies when the prince came up to me, so I had to get up to talk to him. Rising, I involuntarily looked for my husband and saw that he was looking at me from the other end of the hall and turned away. I suddenly felt so ashamed and hurt that I was painfully embarrassed and reddened my face and neck under the gaze of the prince. But I had to stand and listen to what he told me, looking down at me. Our conversation was not long, he had nowhere to sit beside me, and he must have felt that I was very uncomfortable with him. The conversation was about the last ball, about where I live in the summer, etc. Moving away from me, he expressed a desire to meet my husband, and I saw how they converged and talked at the other end of the hall. The prince must have said something about me, because in the middle of the conversation he looked in our direction, smiling. The husband suddenly flushed, bowed low, and was the first to step away from the prince. I also blushed, I felt ashamed of the concept that the prince should have received about me and especially about my husband. It seemed to me that everyone noticed my awkward shyness while I was talking to the prince, noticed his strange act; God knows how they could explain it; do they not know our conversation with my husband? My cousin drove me home, and on the way we talked about her husband. I could not resist and told her everything that had happened between us on the occasion of this unfortunate reception. She reassured me, saying that this was an insignificant, very ordinary quarrel that would not leave any traces; she explained to me from her point of view the character of her husband, found that he was very uncommunicative and became proud; I agreed with her, and it seemed to me that I was calmer and better myself now began to understand him. But then, when we were left alone with my husband, this trial of him, like a crime, lay on my conscience, and I felt that the abyss that now separated us from each other had become even larger. Since that day, our lives and our relationships have completely changed. We didn't feel as good alone as we used to. There were questions that we avoided, and in the third person it was easier for us to speak than face to face. As soon as we talked about life in the village or about a ball, it was as if the boys ran in our eyes, and it was embarrassing to look at each other. As if we both felt where the abyss was that separated us, and were afraid to approach it. I was convinced that he was proud and quick-tempered, and one must be careful not to hurt his weaknesses. He was sure that I could not live without light, that the countryside was not for me, and that I had to submit to this unfortunate taste. And we both avoided direct conversations about these subjects, and both judged each other falsely. We have long ceased to be for each other the most perfect people in the world, but made comparisons with others and secretly judged one another. I became unwell before leaving, and instead of the village we moved to the dacha, from where the husband went alone to his mother. When he left, I had already recovered enough to go with him, but he persuaded me to stay, as if he was afraid for my health. I felt that he was afraid not for my health, but for the fact that it would not be good for us in the village; I didn't really insist and stayed. Without him, I was empty, lonely, but when he arrived, I saw that he no longer added to my life what he had added before. Our former relations, when, it happened, every thought, impression that was not conveyed to him, weighed me down like a crime, when his every deed, word seemed to me a model of perfection, when we wanted to laugh at something with joy, looking at each other, these relations are so imperceptibly passed into others, which we did not miss, as they were gone. Each of us had our own separate interests, concerns, which we no longer tried to make common. We were even no longer embarrassed by the fact that everyone has their own separate world, alien to the other. We got used to this idea, and after a year the boys even stopped running in our eyes; when we looked at each other. His fits of joy with me, his childishness, disappeared completely, his forgiveness and indifference to everything, which previously revolted me, disappeared, there was no more this deep look, which previously embarrassed and delighted me, there were no prayers, delights together, we did not even see each other often, he was constantly on the road and was not afraid, did not regret leaving me alone; I was constantly in the light where I didn't need it. There were no more scenes and quarrels between us, I tried to please him, he fulfilled all my desires, and we seemed to love each other. When we were alone, which rarely happened, I felt neither joy, nor excitement, nor confusion with him, as if I were left with myself. I knew very well that it was my husband, not some new, unknown person, but good man- my husband, whom I knew as myself. I was sure that I knew everything he would do, what he would say, how he would look; and if he did or looked differently from what I expected, then it already seemed to me that he was mistaken. I didn't expect anything from him. In a word, it was my husband and nothing else. It seemed to me that this was how it should be, that there were no others, and that there had never even been other relations between us. When he left, especially at first, I felt lonely, scared, without him I felt stronger value for me its props; when he came, I threw myself on his neck for joy, although after two hours I completely forgot this joy, and there was nothing for me to talk to him. Only in the moments of quiet, moderate tenderness that happened between us, it seemed to me that something was not right, that something hurt my heart, and in his eyes, it seemed to me, I read the same thing. I felt this border of tenderness, beyond which now he seemed not to want, but I could not cross. Sometimes I was sad, but there was no time to think about anything, and I tried to forget this sadness of a vaguely felt change in the entertainment that was constantly ready for me. Worldly life, which at first befuddled me with brilliance and flattery of self-love, soon completely took possession of my inclinations, became habits, imposed its shackles on me and occupied in my soul all the place that was ready for feeling. I was never left alone with myself and was afraid to think about my situation. All my time from late morning until late at night was occupied and did not belong to me, even if I did not leave. It was no longer fun and boring for me, but it seemed that this, and not otherwise, should always be. So three years passed, during which our relations remained the same, as if they had stopped, froze and could not become either worse or better. During these three years in our family life happened two important events but both didn't change my life. It was the birth of my first child and the death of Tatyana Semyonovna. At first, maternal feeling seized me with such force and produced such an unexpected delight in me that I thought a new life would begin for me; but two months later, when I began to travel again, this feeling, diminishing and diminishing, turned into a habit and a cold fulfillment of duty. My husband, on the contrary, since the birth of our first son, has become his former, meek, calm homebody and transferred his former tenderness and fun to the child. Often when I ball gown I went into the nursery to cross the child at night, and found my husband in the nursery, I noticed his reproachful and strictly attentive look fixed on me, and I felt ashamed. I was suddenly horrified at my indifference to the child and asked myself: “Am I really worse than other women? I won't do anything." The death of his mother was a great grief to him; it was hard for him, as he said, to live after her in Nikolskoye, and although I felt sorry for her, and I sympathized with the grief of my husband, I was now more pleasant and calmer in the countryside. All these three years we spent mostly in the city, I went to the countryside only once for two months, and in the third year we went abroad. We spent the summer on the waters. I was then twenty-one years old, our state, I thought, was in a flourishing position, from family life I did not demand anything more than what she gave me; everyone I knew seemed to love me; my health was good, my toilets were the best on the waters, I knew that I was good, the weather was beautiful, some kind of atmosphere of beauty and grace surrounded me, and I was very cheerful. I was not as cheerful as I used to be in Nikolskoye, when I felt that I was happy in myself, that I was happy because I deserved this happiness, that my happiness is great, but there should be even more, that I still want more and more happiness . Then it was different; but this summer I was fine. I didn’t want anything, I didn’t hope for anything, I wasn’t afraid of anything, and my life, it seemed to me, was full, and my conscience seemed to be at peace. Of all the youth of this season, there was not a single person whom I could distinguish in any way from others, or even from old Prince K., our envoy, who courted me. One was young, the other old, one blond English, the other French with a beard, they were all equal to me, but all of them were necessary to me. They were all equally indifferent faces, constituting the joyful atmosphere of life that surrounded me. Only one of them, the Italian Marquis D., attracted my attention more than others by his boldness in expressing admiration for me. He did not miss any opportunity to be with me, to dance, to ride a horse, to be in a casino, etc., and to tell me that I was good. Several times I saw him from the windows near our house, and often the unpleasant gaze of his shining eyes made me blush and look around. He was young, good-looking, elegant, and, most importantly, in his smile and expression on his forehead he resembled my husband, although much better than him. He struck me with this resemblance, although in general, in his lips, in his eyes, in his long chin, instead of the charm of an expression of kindness and ideal calmness of my husband, he had something rude, animal. I believed then that he passionately loved me, and sometimes I thought of him with proud condolences. Sometimes I wanted to reassure him, to put him into the tone of a semi-friendly, quiet trust, but he sharply rejected these attempts and continued to unpleasantly embarrass me with his unexpressed, but at any moment ready to express passion. Although not admitting to myself, I was afraid of this man and often thought about him against my will. My husband was familiar with him and even more than with our other acquaintances, for whom he was only the husband of his wife, he behaved coldly and arrogantly. By the end of the season, I got sick and didn't leave the house for two weeks. When for the first time after my illness I went out to music in the evening, I found out that the long-awaited lady S, known for her beauty, had arrived without me. A circle formed around me, I was greeted joyfully, but even better the circle was formed near the visiting lioness. Everyone around me was talking only about her and her beauty. They showed her to me, and indeed, she was lovely, but I was unpleasantly struck by the self-satisfaction of her face, and I said this. That day seemed boring to me, everything that before was so much fun. The next day Lady S. arranged a trip to the castle, which I declined. Almost no one stayed with me, and everything completely changed in my eyes. Everything and everyone seemed to me stupid and boring, I wanted to cry, finish my course as soon as possible and go back to Russia. I had some kind of bad feeling in my soul, but I still didn’t admit it to myself. I showed myself weak and ceased to appear in a large society, only in the morning I occasionally went out alone to drink water or with L. M., a Russian acquaintance, went to the neighborhood. The husband was not at this time; he went to Heidelberg for a few days, waiting for the end of my course, in order to go to Russia, and occasionally came to see me. One day, Lady S. took the whole society hunting, and L. M. and I went to the castle after dinner. While we were driving the carriage at a pace along the winding highway between the centuries-old chestnut trees, through which these pretty elegant Baden countryside, illuminated by the setting sun, opened further and further, we began to talk seriously, as we never spoke. L. M., whom I had known for a long time, for the first time presented herself to me as a good, intelligent woman, with whom one could talk everything and with whom it was pleasant to be a friend. We talked about the family, children, about the emptiness of life here, we wanted to go to Russia, to the village, and somehow we felt sad and good. Under the influence of the same serious feeling, we entered the castle. It was shady and fresh in the walls, the sun played over the ruins above, someone's steps and voices were heard. From the door, as if in a frame, one could see this charming, but cold for us Russians, Baden picture. We sat down to rest and silently watched the setting sun. The voices were heard more distinctly, and it seemed to me that they called my name. I began to listen and involuntarily heard every word. The voices were familiar; it was the Marquis D. and the Frenchman, his friend, whom I also knew. They talked about me and about Lady S. The Frenchman compared me and her and made out the beauty of both. He did not say anything offensive, but my blood rushed to my heart when I heard his words. He explained in detail what was good in me and what was good in Lady S. I already had a child, and Lady S. was nineteen years old, I had a better braid, but the lady had a graceful figure, lady is a big lady, while "Yours," he said, "so-so, one of those little Russian princesses who start showing up here so often." He concluded that I was doing very well without trying to fight Lady S., and that I was finally buried in Baden. -- I feel sorry for her. “Unless she wants to console herself with you,” he added with a cheerful and cruel laugh. "If she leaves, I'll go after her," a voice said roughly in an Italian accent. "Happy mortal!" he can still love! French laughed. -- Be in love! said the voice and paused. "I can't help but love!" without it there is no life. - Making a novel out of life is one thing that is good. And my novel never stops in the middle, and I will see this one through to the end. - Bonne chance, mon ami, *[I wish you success, my friend] - said the Frenchman. We did not hear further, because they went around the corner, and from the other side we heard their steps. They came down the stairs and a few minutes later came out the side door and were quite surprised to see us. I blushed when the Marquis D. came up to me, and I became afraid when, leaving the castle, he gave me his hand. I could not refuse, and behind L. M., who was walking with his friend, we went to the carriage. I was offended by what the Frenchman said about me, although I secretly realized that he only named what I myself felt; but the words of the marquis surprised and angered me with their rudeness. I was tormented by the thought that I heard his words, and despite the fact that he is not afraid of me. I hated to feel him so close to me; and without looking at him, without answering him, and trying to hold my hand so as not to hear him, I hurriedly followed L. M. and Frenchman. The marquis was saying something about the beautiful view, about the unexpected happiness of meeting me and something else, but I did not listen to him. At that time I was thinking about my husband, about my son, about Russia; I felt ashamed of something, felt sorry for something, longed for something, and I hurried home, to my lonely room at the Hotel de Bade, in order to think in the open about everything that had just now risen in my soul. But L. M. walked quietly, it was still far from the carriage, and my gentleman, it seemed to me, stubbornly reduced his step, as if trying to stop me. "Can't be!" I thought and resolutely went faster. But positively he held me back and even pressed my hand. L.M. rounded the corner of the road and we were completely alone. I got scared. "Excuse me," I said coldly and tried to free my hand, but the lace on my sleeve caught on his button. He, bending down to me with his chest, began to unfasten it, and his fingers without a glove touched my hand. Some new feeling of something like horror, something like pleasure ran like frost down my spine. I looked at him with a cold look to express all the contempt that I feel for him; but my glance expressed something else, it expressed fear and excitement. His burning, moist eyes, close to my very face, looked passionately at me, at my neck, at my chest, his both hands went over my arm above the wrist, his open lips said something, they said that he loved me, that I everything is for him, and those lips drew closer to me, and my hands gripped mine tighter and burned me. Fire ran through my veins, my eyes darkened, I trembled, and the words with which I wanted to stop him dried up in my throat. Suddenly I felt a kiss on my cheek and, trembling and cold, I stopped and looked at him. Unable to speak or move, I was horrified, waiting and wishing for something. All this went on for an instant. But this moment was terrible! I just saw him in that moment. I could understand his face so clearly: that steep, low forehead that looked like my husband's, that handsome, straight nose with flared nostrils, that long, sharply pomaded mustache and goatee, those smoothly shaven cheeks and tanned neck. I hated, I was afraid of him, he was such a stranger to me; but at that moment the excitement and passion of this hated stranger resounded in me so strongly! I wanted so irresistibly to give myself up to the kisses of that coarse and beautiful mouth, to the embrace of those white hands with thin veins and rings on their fingers. I was so drawn to throw myself headlong into the suddenly opened, attracting abyss of forbidden pleasures... "I am so unhappy," I thought, "let more and more misfortunes gather on my head." He put his arm around me and leaned towards my face. "Let, let more and more shame and sin accumulate on my head." "Je vous aime, *[I love you]" he whispered in a voice that was so similar to my husband's. My husband and child were remembered to me as long-time dear beings with whom everything is over with me. But suddenly, at this time, from around the turn, I heard the voice of L. M., who was calling me. I came to my senses, tore my hand away and, without looking at him, almost ran after L. M. We got into the carriage, and then I just looked at him. He took off his hat and asked something, smiling. He did not understand the inexpressible disgust that I felt for him at that moment. My life seemed to me so unhappy, the future so hopeless, the past so black! L.M. spoke to me, but I did not understand her words. It seemed to me that she spoke to me only out of pity, to hide the contempt I aroused in her. In every word, in every look, I felt this contempt and insulting pity. The kiss burned my cheek with shame, and the thought of a husband and child was unbearable to me. Left alone in my room, I hoped to think over my situation, but I was afraid to be alone. I did not finish the tea that was served to me, and, without knowing why, with feverish haste, I immediately began to pack for the evening train to Heidelberg to see my husband. When the girl and I got into an empty car, the car started off, and fresh air smelled on me through the window, I began to come to my senses and more clearly imagine my past and future. All my married life from the day we moved to Petersburg suddenly appeared to me in a new light and reproachfully fell on my conscience. For the first time I vividly recalled our first time in the village, our plans, for the first time the question came to my mind: what were his joys during all this time? And I felt guilty before him. "But why didn't he stop me, why was he hypocritical in front of me, why did he avoid explanations, why did he insult me?" I asked myself. "Why didn't he use his power of love over me? Or did he not love me?" But no matter how guilty he was, a stranger's kiss was right here on my cheek, and I felt it. The closer and closer I drove to Heidelberg, the more clearly I imagined my husband and the more terrible the upcoming meeting became for me. "I will tell him everything, everything, I will pay everything to him with tears of repentance," I thought, "and he will forgive me." But I myself did not know what "everything" was, I would tell him, and I myself did not believe that he would forgive me. But as soon as I entered my husband's room and saw his calm, albeit surprised face, I felt that I had nothing to say to him, nothing to confess and nothing to ask for his forgiveness. Unspoken grief and remorse had to remain in me. - How did you think of that? - he said: - and I wanted to go to you tomorrow. But, looking closer into my face, he seemed to be frightened. -- What you? what's wrong? he said. “Nothing,” I answered, barely holding back tears. - I just arrived. Let's go home to Russia tomorrow. He looked at me for a long time in silence. “Tell me, what happened to you?” -- he said. I involuntarily blushed and lowered my eyes. In his eyes flashed a sense of insult and anger. I was frightened by the thoughts that could come to him, and with a force of pretense that I myself did not expect in myself, I said: “Nothing happened, it was just boring and sad to be alone, and I thought a lot about our life and about you. It's been so long since I blamed you! Why are you going with me where you don't want to go? I have been guilty before you for a long time,” I repeated, and again tears welled up in my eyes. - Let's go to the village and forever. -- Ah! my friend, get away from sensitive scenes, - he said coldly: - that you want to go to the village, that's fine, because we don't have much money either; and that forever is a dream. I know you won't survive. But drink some tea, it will be better,” he concluded, getting up to call the man. It seemed to me everything that he could think of me, and I was offended by those terrible thoughts that I attributed to him, meeting an unfaithful and, as it were, ashamed look directed at me. Not! he does not want and cannot understand me! I said that I would go to see the child, and left him. I wanted to be alone and cry, cry, cry... The long-unheated empty Nikolsky house came to life again, but what lived in it did not come to life. Mother was gone, and we were alone against each other. But now we not only did not need loneliness, it already embarrassed us. The winter passed all the worse for me because I was sick and recovered only after the birth of my second son. Our relations with my husband continued to be coldly friendly as well, as during our city life, but in the village every floorboard, every wall, sofa reminded me of what he was for me, and what I had lost. It was as if there was an unforgiven grievance between us, as if he was punishing me for something and pretending that he himself did not notice it. There was nothing to ask for forgiveness, there was no reason to ask for pardon: he punished me only by not giving me all of himself, all of his soul, as before; but neither did he give it to anyone or anything, as if he no longer had it. Sometimes it occurred to me that he was only pretending to be like this in order to torment me, and that the old feeling was still alive in him, and I tried to arouse him. But every time he seemed to avoid frankness, as if he suspected me of pretense and was afraid, as ridiculous, of any sensitivity. His look and tone said: I know everything, I know everything, there is nothing to say, I know everything that you want to say. I also know that you will say one thing and do another. At first I was offended by this fear of frankness, but then I got used to the idea that it was not lack of frankness, but a lack of need for frankness. I would not turn my tongue now to suddenly tell him that I love him, or ask him to read prayers with me, or call him to listen to me play. Already known conditions of decency were felt between us. We lived separately. He with his studies, in which I did not need and did not want to participate now, I with my idleness, which did not offend and sadden him, as before. The children were still too small and could not yet join us. But spring came, Katya and Sonya came to the village for the summer, they began to rebuild our house in Nikolskoye, we moved to Pokrovskoye. The same was the old Pokrovsky house with its own terrace, with a sliding table and pianos in the bright hall and my former room with white curtains and my girlish dreams, as if forgotten there. There were two beds in this room, one was mine, in which I baptized the sprawling chubby Kokosha in the evenings, and the other was small, in which Vanya's face peeped out of the diapers. Having crossed them, I often stopped in the middle of a quiet room, and suddenly from all corners, from the walls, from the curtains, old, forgotten young visions rose. Old voices began to sing girlish songs. And where are these visions? where are those sweet, sweet songs? Everything that I hardly dared to hope for has come true. Vague, merging dreams became reality; and reality has become a hard, difficult and joyless life. And all the same: the same garden is visible through the window, the same playground, the same path, the same bench over there over the ravine, the same nightingale songs rush from the pond, the same lilacs in all their bloom, and the same moon stands over the house ; but everything is so terrible, it is so impossible to change! So cold is everything that could be so dear and close! Just like in the old days, we are quietly together, sitting in the living room, talking with Katya, and talking about him. But Katya frowned, turned yellow, her eyes do not shine with joy and hope, but express sympathetic sadness and regret. We do not admire him in the old way, we judge him, we are not surprised why and for what we are so happy, and not in the old way we want to tell the whole world what we think; we, like conspirators, whisper to each other and ask each other for the hundredth time why everything has changed so sadly? And he is still the same, only deeper is the wrinkle between his eyebrows, more gray hairs in his temples, but a deep, attentive look is constantly clouded from me by a cloud. I am still the same, but there is no love in me, no desire for love. There is no need for labor, no self-satisfaction. And so distant and impossible seem to me the former religious enthusiasm and the former love for him, the former fullness of life. I would not understand now what seemed to me so clear and just before: the happiness of living for another. Why for another? when you don't want to live for yourself? I have completely abandoned music ever since I moved to St. Petersburg; but now the old piano, the old notes, have made me feel good again. One day I was unwell, I was left alone at home; Katya and Sonya went with him to Nikolskoye to see the new building. The tea table was laid, I went downstairs and, waiting for them, sat down at the piano. I opened the sonata quasi una fantasia * [in the form of a fantasy] and began to play it. No one was seen or heard, the windows were open to the garden; and familiar, sadly solemn sounds resounded in the room. I finished the first part and quite unconsciously, out of old habit, looked around at the corner in which he used to sit, listening to me. But he was not; a chair, not moved for a long time, stood in its corner; and through the window one could see a lilac bush at a bright sunset, and the freshness of the evening poured into the open windows. I leaned on the piano with both hands, covered my face with them and thought. I sat like this for a long time, recalling with pain the old, the irretrievable, and timidly inventing the new. But it was as if there was nothing ahead, as if I didn’t want or hope for anything. "Have I survived!" I thought, raised my head in horror, and in order to forget and not think, I began to play again, and all the same andante. "My God!" I thought, "forgive me if I am guilty, or return to me everything that was so beautiful in my soul, or teach me what to do? how can I live now?" The noise of wheels was heard on the grass, and in front of the porch, and on the terrace, cautious familiar steps were heard and died away. But no longer the former feeling responded to the sound of those familiar footsteps. When I had finished, footsteps were heard behind me, and a hand was placed on my shoulder. “What a smart girl you are for playing that sonata,” he said. I was silent. - You didn't drink tea? I shook my head and didn't look back at him, so as not to betray the traces of excitement left on my face. - They will arrive now; the horse got naughty and they got off on foot from the main road, he said. “Let’s wait for them,” I said, and went out onto the terrace, hoping that he would follow me; but he asked about the children and went to them. Again his presence, his simple, kind voice dissuaded me from the fact that something was lost by me. What more could you want? He is kind, meek, he is a good husband, good father I myself do not know what else I lack. I went out onto the balcony and sat under the canvas of the terrace on the same bench on which I had been sitting on the day of our explanation. The sun had already set, it was beginning to get dark, and a dark spring cloud hung over the house and garden, only from behind the trees one could see the clear edge of the sky with the fading dawn and the evening star just flaring up. Over everything stood the shadow of a light cloud, and everything was waiting for a quiet spring rain. The wind stopped, not a single leaf, not a single grass stirred, the smell of lilac and bird cherry was so strong, as if all the air was in bloom, it stood in the garden and on the terrace and suddenly weakened, then intensified in influxes, so that I wanted to close my eyes and see nothing , not to hear except this sweet smell. Dahlias and rose bushes, still colorless, stretched motionless on their dug-up black ridge, seemed to be slowly growing up their white trimmed stands; the frogs, with all their might, as if at last before the rain that would drive them into the water, chirped in unison and piercingly from under the ravine. One thin continuous watery sound stood above this cry. The nightingales called to each other interspersed, and one could hear how they anxiously flew from place to place. Again this spring, one nightingale tried to settle in a bush under the window, and when I went out, I heard how he moved beyond the alley and from there clicked once and fell silent, also waiting. In vain did I reassure myself: I was waiting and regretting something. He came back from above and sat down beside me. “It seems to help ours,” he said. “Yes,” I said, and we were both silent for a long time. And the cloud without wind kept sinking lower and lower; everything became quieter, more fragrant and stiller, and suddenly a drop fell and seemed to bounce on the canvas canopy of the terrace, another broke on the rubble of the path; there was a slap on the burdock, and a large, fresh, intensifying rain began to fall. The nightingales and frogs were completely quiet, only a thin watery sound, although it seemed farther away because of the rain, was still in the air, and some kind of bird, which must have nestled in dry leaves not far from the terrace, evenly brought out its two monotonous notes. He got up and wanted to leave. -- Where are you going? I asked holding him. - It's so good here. “We must send an umbrella and galoshes,” he answered. - No need, it'll go away. He agreed with me, and together we remained at the railing of the terrace. I leaned my hand on the slimy wet bar and stuck my head out. Fresh rain sprinkled unevenly on my hair and neck. A cloud, brightening and thinning, poured over us; the steady sound of rain was replaced by occasional drops falling from above and from the leaves. Again the frogs crackled below, again the nightingales stirred, and from the wet bushes they began to respond first from one side, then from the other. Everything brightened before us. -- How good! he said, sitting down on the railing and running his hand through my wet hair. This simple caress, like a reproach, had an effect on me, I felt like crying. - And what else does a person need? -- he said. "I'm so satisfied now that I don't need anything, I'm perfectly happy!" “That’s not how you once told me about your happiness,” I thought. “However great it was, you said that you still wanted something more. there seems to be unspoken repentance and unshed tears in the soul. “And I feel good,” I said, “but it’s sad precisely because everything is so good in front of me. In me it is so incoherent, incomplete, everything wants something; it's so beautiful and peaceful here. Isn’t it true that you also have some kind of melancholy mixed in with the enjoyment of nature, as if you want something impossible, and feel sorry for something that has passed. He took his hand from my head and was silent for a while. “Yes, it happened to me before too, especially in the spring,” he said, as if remembering. “And I, too, spent my nights wishing and hoping and good nights !.. But then everything was in front, and now everything is behind; now I’ve had enough of what I have, and I’m happy,” he concluded so confidently casually that, no matter how painful it was to hear this, I believed that he was telling the truth. "And you don't want anything?" I asked. “Nothing is impossible,” he answered, guessing my feeling. “You wet your head,” he added, caressing me like a child, once again running his hand through my hair, “you envy both the leaves and the grass because the rain wets them, you would like to be both grass and leaves and rain. And I just rejoice in them, as in everything in the world that is good, young and happy. "Don't you feel sorry for anything in the past?" I kept asking, feeling that my heart was getting heavier and heavier. He thought about it and fell silent again. I saw that he wanted to answer quite sincerely. -- Not! he answered shortly. -- Not true! not true! I said, turning to him and looking into his eyes. - Don't you regret the past? -- Not! he repeated once more, “I am grateful for him, but I do not regret the past. "But wouldn't you like to bring him back?" -- I said. He turned away and looked out into the garden. “I don’t want, just as I don’t want wings to grow in me,” he said. -- It is forbidden! - And you do not correct the past? do not blame yourself or me? -- Never! Everything was for the best! -- Listen! I said, touching his hand so that he would look back at me. “Listen, why didn’t you ever tell me that you wanted me to live exactly the way you wanted, why did you give me a will that I didn’t know how to use, why did you stop teaching me? If you wanted, if you had led me otherwise, nothing, nothing would have happened,” I said in a voice in which cold annoyance and reproach were expressed more and more strongly, and not former love. -- What would not be? - he said in surprise, turning to me: - and so there is nothing. Everything is fine. Very well,” he added, smiling. "Does he really not understand, or, even worse, does not want to understand?" I thought, and tears came to my eyes. “It wouldn’t be that, not to blame for you, I am punished by your indifference, even contempt,” I suddenly spoke out. “It would not be that, without any fault of mine, you suddenly took from me everything that was dear to me. - What are you, my soul! he said, as if not understanding what I was saying. - No, let me finish... You took away your trust, love, even respect from me; because I won't believe that you love me now, after what happened before. No, I have to say at once everything that has been tormenting me for a long time,” I interrupted him again. “Is it my fault that I didn’t know life, and you left me alone to look for ... Is it my fault that now, when I myself have understood what is needed, when I, soon a year, I fight to return to you , you push me away, as if you don’t understand what I want, and everything is so that you can’t blame you for anything, but that I’m both to blame and unhappy! Yes, you want to throw me back into that life that could make both mine and your misfortune. “But why did I show you this?” he asked with sincere fear and surprise. “Didn’t you say yesterday, and you keep saying that I won’t live here, and that we have to go to Petersburg again for the winter, which I hate?” I continued. - What would support me, you avoid any frankness, any sincere, tender word with me. And then, when I fall completely, you will reproach me and rejoice at my fall. "Wait, wait," he said sternly and coldly, "it's not good what you're saying now." It only proves that you are ill disposed against me, that you don't... "That I don't love you?" speak! speak! I said, and tears welled up in my eyes. I sat down on a bench and covered my face with a handkerchief. "That's how he understood me!" I thought, trying to hold back the sobs that were crushing me. “Our old love is over, over,” said a voice in my heart. He did not come to me, did not console me. He was offended by what I said. His voice was calm and dry. “I don’t know what you reproach me for,” he began, “if I didn’t love you as much as before ...” - I said into the handkerchief, and bitter tears poured over him even more abundantly. “Then time and ourselves are to blame for this. Every season has its own love…” He paused. "And tell you the whole truth?" if you already want frankness. As in that year, when I first got to know you, I spent my nights without sleep, thinking about you, and I made my own love, and this love grew and grew in my heart, so it’s true, both in St. Petersburg and abroad, I didn’t sleep terrible nights and broke, destroyed this love that tormented me. I did not destroy it, but only destroyed what tormented me, I calmed down and still love, but with a different love. “Yes, you call it love, and this is torture,” I said. “Why did you let me live in the world, if it seemed so harmful to you that you stopped loving me for it?” “Not light, my friend,” he said. “Why didn’t you use your power,” I continued, “didn’t you tie me up, didn’t kill me? It would be better for me now than to lose everything that made up my happiness, I would feel good, I would not be ashamed. I sobbed again and covered my face. At this time, Katya and Sonya, cheerful and wet, with loud talk and laughter, entered the terrace; but when they saw us, they calmed down and immediately went out. We were silent for a long time when they left; I cried my tears, and I felt better. I looked at him. He sat with his head resting on his hands, and wanted to say something in response to my opinion, but he only sighed heavily and leaned back on his elbows. I walked over to him and took his hand away. His gaze turned to me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said, as if continuing his thoughts. “All of us, and especially you women, must live all the nonsense of life yourself in order to return to life itself; and you can't trust anyone else. You were still far from having lived then this lovely and sweet nonsense, which I admired in you; and I left you to survive it and felt that I had no right to embarrass you, although for me the time had long passed. Why did you live with me and let me live this nonsense if you love me? -- I said. “Because you would like to, but could not believe me; You yourself should have found out, and you found out. “You talked, you talked a lot,” I said. You didn't love much. We were silent again. “It’s cruel what you just said, but it’s true,” he said, suddenly getting up and starting to walk around the terrace, “yes, it’s true. I was to blame! he added, stopping in front of me. “Either I shouldn’t have allowed myself to love you at all, or love easier, yes. “Let’s forget everything,” I said timidly. “No, what has passed will never return, you will never return,” and his voice softened when he said this. “It’s all back already,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He took my hand away and shook it. - No, I did not tell the truth that I do not regret the past; no, I'm sorry, I'm crying about that past love which no longer exists and cannot exist. I don’t know who is to blame for this. I don’t know. Love remains, but not the same, its place remains, but it is all sick, there is no strength and juiciness in it, memories and gratitude remain: but ... - Don’t say that ... I interrupted. "Let everything be as it was before... Could it be? Yes?" I asked, looking into his eyes. But his eyes were clear, calm and did not look deeply into mine. At that time as I said, I already felt that what I wanted and asked him for was impossible. He smiled a calm, meek, as it seemed to me, old man’s smile. “How young you are, and how old I am,” he said. "I no longer have what you are looking for; why deceive yourself?" he added, continuing to smile in the same way. I silently stood beside him, and my soul became calmer. "Let's not try to repeat life," he continued, "let us not lie to ourselves. And that there are no old worries and worries, and thank God! We have nothing to look for and worry about. We have already found, and enough happiness has fallen to our lot. Now we really need to wash off and make way for someone like that, ”he said, pointing to the nurse, who came up with Vanya and stopped at the terrace door. “That’s right, dear friend,” he concluded, bending my head to him and kissing it. Not a lover, but an old friend kissed me. And from the garden the fragrant freshness of the night rose stronger and sweeter, the sounds and silence became more and more solemn, and the stars lit up in the sky more often. I looked at him, and suddenly I felt light in my soul; as if they took away from me that sick moral nerve that made me suffer. I suddenly realized clearly and calmly that the feeling of that time had irretrievably passed, like time itself, and that now it would not only be impossible to return it, but it would be difficult and embarrassing. Yes, and that's enough, was this time so good, which seemed to me so happy? And so long ago, all this was long ago! .. - However, it's time to drink tea! he said, and we went into the drawing-room with him. At the door I again met the nurse with Vanya. I took the child in my arms, covered his exposed red legs, pressed him to me and, lightly touching my lips, kissed him. As if in a dream, he moved his little hand with spread wrinkled fingers and opened his cloudy little eyes, as if looking for or remembering something; suddenly those eyes stopped on me, a spark of thought flashed in them, plump protruding lips began to gather and opened into a smile. "My, my, my!" I thought, with happy tension in all my limbs pressing him to my chest and with difficulty restraining myself from hurting him. And I began to kiss his cold legs, tummy and hands, and a little hairy head. My husband came up to me, I quickly covered the face of the child and opened it again. - Ivan Sergeyevich! said the husband, touching him under the chin with his finger. But again I quickly closed Ivan Sergeyevich. No one but me was supposed to look at him for a long time. I looked at my husband, his eyes were laughing, looking into mine, and for the first time after a long time it was easy and joyful to look into them. From that day my romance with my husband ended; the old feeling became a dear, irrevocable memory, and the new feeling of love for the children and for the father of my children laid the foundation for another, but completely different happy life which I have not yet lived at the present moment ... 1859

Family happiness Lev Tolstoy

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Title: Family Happiness

About the book "Family Happiness" Leo Tolstoy

"Family Happiness" is a novel by the classic of Russian literature Leo Tolstoy. Not too much famous novel, we know more about Anna Karenina, War and Peace, which is a pity ... Family Happiness is a book about romantic illusions and what happens to people in marriage, about unsatisfied ambitions and true love.

After the death of their mother, the young girls Maria and Sonya are left on the estate all alone, with only their governess with them. For Maria, this is a double blow - she is seventeen, and this year she had to go to St. Petersburg and be represented in society. She dreamed of shining at balls, meeting her only one ... But now these dreams are not destined to come true ...

The guardian of the girls, a friend of their late father, Sergei Mikhailovich, arrives at the estate. By Maria's standards, he is already old, he is 37. But they quickly converge, they both love to read and play the piano, they walk for a long time and talk a lot. And Maria eventually realizes that she fell in love with her guardian. Sergei Mikhailovich is trying to cool the girl's ardor, he even tells her fictional stories about young beauties who married old people and were unhappy in marriage. But in fact, he himself is infatuated with Mary. In the end, the girl almost herself proposes to him.

The newlyweds settle in the village, on the estate of Sergei Mikhailovich. And in the first years of marriage they are so happy, so passionate about each other that they don’t think about anything else. But Sergei Mikhailovich begins to think that Maria is bored. And he decides to move to St. Petersburg so that his young wife can have fun. He seems to want to return to Mary the youth that she did not have - balls, gentlemen, luxurious trips and beautiful outfits. And Maria likes it all - likes it too much! So much so that she is no longer sure if she wants to go back to the estate with her husband ...

Is it possible to return love and passion? Or, having been married for several years, do you need to look for other feelings? Or will there no longer be any feelings, except for irritation and resentment? It is to these questions that Leo Tolstoy seeks answers in the book “Family Happiness”. Therefore, it is interesting to read the novel at all times.

When the novel "Family Happiness" was published in 1859, neither the public nor literary criticism almost ignored him. Yes, and Leo Tolstoy himself wrote that, having taken up reading his “Family Happiness” a few years later, he was surprised at what a “shameful muck” it was. But this is just the case when you want to disagree with the classic. Masha, of course, is deprived of the tragic charm of Anna Karenina, and Sergei Mikhailovich is far from Vronsky. But that is why reading "Family Happiness" is so interesting. This is the usual story of two ordinary people- kind, loving, decent. Leo Tolstoy described what inevitably happens in every marriage. Therefore, it is best to read "Family Happiness" after several years of family life - then this book can even save.

On our site about books, you can download the site for free without registration or read online book"Family Happiness" by Leo Tolstoy in epub, fb2, txt, rtf, pdf formats for iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. Buy full version you can have our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from literary world, find out the biography of your favorite authors. For beginner writers there is a separate section with useful tips and recommendations interesting articles, thanks to which you yourself can try your hand at literary skills.

Quotes from the book "Family Happiness" by Leo Tolstoy

I felt that I was all his and that I was happy with his power over me.

And every thought was his thought, and every feeling was his feeling. I didn’t know then that it was love, I thought that it could always be that way, that this feeling was given so freely.

He opened to me a whole life of joys in the present, without changing anything in my life, adding nothing but himself to every impression. All the same since childhood was silent around me, and as soon as he came, all the same spoke and vying with each other asked for my soul, filling it with happiness.

I have lived a lot, and it seems to me that I have found what is needed for happiness. Quiet, solitary life in our rural wilderness, with the opportunity to do good to people who find it so easy to do good to which they are not accustomed; then labor, labor that seems to be useful; then rest, nature, books, music, love for a loved one - this is my happiness, above which I did not dream. And here, on top of all this, a friend like you, a family, maybe everything that a person could wish for.

I

We wore mourning for our mother, who died in the autumn, and lived all winter in the country, alone with Katya and Sonya.

Katya was an old friend of the house, the governess who nursed us all, and whom I remembered and loved from as long as I could remember myself. Sonya was my younger sister. We spent a gloomy and sad winter in our old Pokrovsky house. The weather was cold and windy, so that the snowdrifts piled up above the windows; the windows were almost always cold and dim, and for almost a whole winter we did not go anywhere or go anywhere. Few people came to us; Yes, whoever came did not add fun and joy to our house. Everyone had sad faces, everyone spoke quietly, as if afraid to wake someone up, did not laugh, sighed and often cried, looking at me and especially at little Sonya in a black dress. Death still seemed to be felt in the house; sadness and horror of death were in the air. Mother's room was locked, and I felt terrible, and something pulled me to look into this cold and empty room when I went to sleep past her.

I was then seventeen years old, and in the very year of her death my mother wanted to move to the city to take me out. The loss of my mother was a great grief for me, but I must admit that because of this grief it was also felt that I was young, good, as everyone told me, but the second winter for nothing, in solitude, I kill in the village. Before the end of winter, this feeling of longing of loneliness and simply boredom increased to such an extent that I did not leave the room, did not open the piano and did not pick up books. When Katya persuaded me to do this or that, I answered: I don’t want to, I can’t, but in my heart I said: why? Why do anything when my best time is wasted so much? What for? And on why there was no other answer than tears.

I was told that I lost weight and became ugly at this time, but it did not even interest me. What for? for whom? It seemed to me that my whole life should pass in this lonely wilderness and helpless anguish, from which I myself, alone, had no strength and even no desire to get out. At the end of winter, Katya began to fear for me and decided to take me abroad at all costs. But this needed money, and we hardly knew what was left of us after our mother, and every day we were waiting for a guardian who was supposed to come and sort out our affairs.

In March, a guardian arrived.

- Well, thank God! - Katya once said to me, when I, like a shadow, idle, without thought, without desires, went from corner to corner, - Sergey Mikhailych came, sent to ask about us and wanted to be at dinner. Shake yourself up, my Masha," she added, "otherwise what will he think of you? He loved all of you so much.

Sergei Mikhailovich was a close neighbor of ours and a friend of our late father, although much younger than he was. In addition to the fact that his arrival changed our plans and made it possible to leave the village, from childhood I got used to love and respect him, and Katya, advising me to shake things up, guessed that of all the people I knew, it would be most painful for me to appear in an unfavorable light in front of Sergei Mikhailovich . In addition to the fact that I, like everyone else in the house, from Katya and Sonya, his goddaughter, to the last coachman, loved him out of habit, he had special meaning one word my mother said in front of me. She said that she would like such a husband for me. Then it seemed to me surprising and even unpleasant; My hero was completely different. My hero was thin, lean, pale and sad. Sergei Mikhailovich was no longer young, tall, stout, and, it seemed to me, always cheerful; but despite the fact that these words of my mother sunk into my imagination, and six years ago, when I was eleven years old and he told me you, played with me and nicknamed me violet girl, I sometimes asked myself, not without fear, what would I do if he suddenly wanted to marry me?

Before dinner, to which Katya added a cream cake and spinach sauce, Sergei Mikhailovich arrived. I saw through the window how he drove up to the house in a small sled, but as soon as he drove around the corner, I hurried into the living room and wanted to pretend that I did not expect him at all. But, hearing the sound of feet in the hall, his loud voice and Katya's steps, I could not resist and went to meet him myself. He, holding Katya by the hand, spoke loudly and smiled. Seeing me, he stopped and looked at me for some time without bowing. I felt embarrassed and felt myself blush.

– Ah! is it you? he said with his resolute and simple manner, spreading his arms and coming up to me. - Is it possible to change like that! how you have grown! Here are those and the violet! You have become a rose.

He took my hand with his big hand and shook me so hard, honestly, it just didn't hurt. I thought that he would kiss my hand, and I bent down to him, but he shook my hand again and looked straight into my eyes with his firm and cheerful look.

I haven't seen him for six years. He has changed a lot; aged, blackened and overgrown with whiskers, which did not go well with him; but they were the same simple tricks, an open, honest face with large features, intelligent sparkling eyes and an affectionate, as if childish, smile.

Five minutes later he ceased to be a guest, but became his own person for all of us, even for people who, it was clear from their helpfulness, were especially happy about his arrival.

He did not behave at all like the neighbors who came after the death of my mother and considered it necessary to be silent and cry while sitting with us; he, on the contrary, was talkative, cheerful, and did not say a word about my mother, so that at first this indifference seemed to me strange and even indecent on the part of such loved one. But then I realized that it was not indifference, but sincerity, and I was grateful for it.

PART ONE

We wore mourning for our mother, who died in the autumn, and lived all winter in the country, alone with Katya and Sonya.

Katya was an old friend of the house, the governess who nursed us all, and whom I remembered and loved from as long as I could remember myself. Sonya was my younger sister. We spent a gloomy and sad winter in our old Pokrovsky house. The weather was cold and windy, so that the snowdrifts piled up above the windows; the windows were almost always cold and dim, and for almost a whole winter we did not go anywhere or go anywhere. Few people came to us; Yes, whoever came did not add fun and joy to our house. Everyone had sad faces, everyone spoke quietly, as if afraid to wake someone up, did not laugh, sighed and often cried, looking at me and especially at little Sonya in a black dress. Death still seemed to be felt in the house; sadness and horror of death were in the air. Mother's room was locked, and I felt terrible, and something pulled me to look into this cold and empty room when I went to sleep past her.

I was then seventeen years old, and in the very year of her death my mother wanted to move to the city to take me out. The loss of my mother was a great grief for me, but I must admit that because of this grief it was also felt that I was young, good, as everyone told me, but the second winter for nothing, in solitude, I kill in the village. Before the end of winter, this feeling of longing of loneliness and simply boredom increased to such an extent that I did not leave the room, did not open the piano and did not pick up books. When Katya persuaded me to do this or that, I answered: I don’t want to, I can’t, but in my heart I said: why? Why do anything when my best time is wasted so much? What for? And to "why" there was no other answer than tears.

I was told that I lost weight and became ugly at this time, but it did not even interest me. What for? for whom? It seemed to me that my whole life should pass in this lonely wilderness and helpless anguish, from which I myself, alone, had no strength and even no desire to get out. At the end of winter, Katya began to fear for me and decided to take me abroad at all costs. But this needed money, and we hardly knew what was left of us after our mother, and every day we were waiting for a guardian who was supposed to come and sort out our affairs.

In March, a guardian arrived.

Well, thank God! - Katya once said to me, when I, like a shadow, idle, without thought, without desires, went from corner to corner, - Sergey Mikhailych came, sent to ask about us and wanted to be at dinner. Shake yourself up, my Masha," she added, "otherwise what will he think of you? He loved all of you so much.

Sergei Mikhailovich was a close neighbor of ours and a friend of our late father, although much younger than he was. In addition to the fact that his arrival changed our plans and made it possible to leave the village, from childhood I got used to love and respect him, and Katya, advising me to shake things up, guessed that of all the people I knew, it would be most painful for me to appear in an unfavorable light in front of Sergei Mikhailovich . In addition to the fact that I, like everyone in the house, from Katya and Sonya, his goddaughter, to the last coachman, loved him out of habit, he had a special meaning for me from one word my mother said in front of me. She said that she would like such a husband for me. Then it seemed to me surprising and even unpleasant; My hero was completely different. My hero was thin, lean, pale and sad. Sergei Mikhailovich was no longer young, tall, stout, and, it seemed to me, always cheerful; but, despite the fact that these words of my mother sunk into my imagination, and six years ago, when I was eleven years old and he told me you, played with me and called me the violet girl, I sometimes asked myself, not without fear, what will I do if he suddenly wants to marry me?

Before dinner, to which Katya added a cake, cream and spinach sauce, Sergei Mikhailovich arrived. I saw through the window how he drove up to the house in a small sled, but as soon as he drove around the corner, I hurried into the living room and wanted to pretend that I did not expect him at all. But, hearing the sound of feet in the hall, his loud voice and Katya's steps, I could not resist and went to meet him myself. He, holding Katya by the hand, spoke loudly and smiled. Seeing me, he stopped and looked at me for some time without bowing. I felt embarrassed and felt myself blush.

Oh! is it you! he said with his resolute and simple manner, spreading his arms and leading me towards me. - Is it possible to change like that! how you have grown! Here is the violet! You have become a rose.

He took my hand with his big hand and shook me so hard, honestly, it just didn't hurt. I thought that he would kiss my hand, and I bent down to him, but he shook my hand again and looked straight into my eyes with his firm and cheerful look.

I haven't seen him for six years. He has changed a lot; aged, blackened and overgrown with whiskers, which did not go well with him; but there were the same simple manners, an open, honest face with large features, intelligent sparkling eyes, and an affectionate smile, as if of a child.

Five minutes later he ceased to be a guest, but became his own person for all of us, even for people who, it was clear from their helpfulness, were especially happy about his arrival.

He did not behave at all like the neighbors who came after the death of my mother and considered it necessary to be silent and cry while sitting with us; he, on the contrary, was talkative, cheerful, and did not say a word about my mother, so that at first this indifference seemed to me strange and even indecent on the part of such a close person. But then I realized that it was not indifference, but sincerity, and I was grateful for it.

In the evening Katya sat down to pour tea in the old place in the drawing-room, as she used to do in her mother's time; Sonya and I sat down beside her; old Grigory brought him a pipe he had found, and he, as in the old days, began to pace up and down the room.

How many terrible changes in this house, what do you think! he said, stopping.

Yes, - said Katya with a sigh and, covering the samovar with a lid, looked at him, already ready to burst into tears.

Do you remember your father? he turned to me.

Few, I replied.

And how good it would be for you now with him! he said, looking quietly and thoughtfully at my head above my eyes. - I really loved your father! he added even more quietly, and it seemed to me that his eyes became shining.

Lucy Redcomb

Family happiness

Vivien put the book aside and closed her eyes. A light breeze played with a strand of her dark hair that had fallen out of her hairdo, the warm rays of the sun caressed her skin. The sweet aroma of rose hips mixed with the smell of linden blossoms, but no matter how hard Viv tried, she could not get rid of the smell of burning ... and as soon as she closed her eyelashes, a terrible picture again and again surfaced before her eyes.

Mother Mother! - Little Jefferson William Hartley pounded his hand on her knee. - There is such a beetle ... terrible, terrible ...

Don't be afraid, darling, he won't hurt you. Vivien stroked her son's blond head. - Run, play. Your dad will pick us up soon.

Four years ago, on the site of this square, there was an old house where she spent her childhood. Here she and Jeff were intimate for the first time...

Now that only memories of the house remained, Vivien often came here to sit, reflecting on the life she had lived.

And we must ... Well, you understand?

Vivienne looked with pity at the frightened face of the young man, who at that moment looked more like a victim doomed to the slaughter than an ardent lover.

Kiss? Of course not,” she said firmly, and the shadow of a fleeting smile touched her lips in response to his sigh of relief.

Chris leaned back heavily on the leather sofa, square his thin shoulders.

I have nothing against you,” he added with a frown, stealing a glance at Vivienne.

Don't worry, I'll survive, - she answered seriously, although a spark of amusement flashed in her wide-open dark brown eyes.

Perhaps you can't deny Dick the power of persuasion, Vivienne thought, annoyed that she had succumbed to her brother's persuasion and now she was forced to sit here, on this chic leather sofa, next to the frightened boy, feeling like a complete idiot.

AT luxury home parents Christian Rous Vivien had to constantly overcome awe. She did not know that Dick was friends with the son of such rich people! Everything in this amazing house spoke of good taste and very big money.

She had to rent a black silk dress especially for the occasion. She had never worn anything like this before in her life, and not only because she could not afford such a luxury. It's just that Viv is used to buying clothes for practicality and convenience, and not to splurge. She always wore jeans, and in her wardrobe there was only one skirt, which she wore to friends' weddings, relatives' funerals and meetings with a bank manager.

Now it seemed to her that in this breathtaking outfit she looked ridiculous. And poor Chris, it seemed, was ready to run from her wherever his eyes looked.

Be patient, there is not much left, - Vivien promised, and immediately remembered that she had not checked the clock with Dick when he gave her instructions.

She glanced at Christian and tried to put on a smile of motherly warmth on her face. She succeeded without much difficulty, because the boy was almost five years younger, and she felt like an old woman next to him.

Did your parents leave for a long time? Viv asked.

Why the hell did I let myself be dragged into this story? - she thought, feeling her cheekbones already cramped from a forced smile. What am I going to do if Chris faints before Dick and his buddies get here?

Mom was going to spend a week or two in Mexico, - answered Christian, - and dad, probably, will return earlier. He left on business.

Or maybe spit on everything and run away, Viv looked hopefully at the heavy door trimmed with bog oak. She had dated Henry Rose, Chris' father. He appeared to be a likeable, sensible man who was perfectly capable of handling his son's problems without outside help.

They are lucky. I would love to run away from here somewhere, - she sighed, cursing her kindness and gullibility.

Mom doesn't like to leave for a long time, - said Chris.

Still, having such a house! Vivien thought, not without envy, and sighed softly. Next month she can afford to buy kitchen paint, but a warm new jacket can wait...

Not like Uncle Jeff. Wherever he went! - continued the young man.

Uncle Jeff? Viv burst out, and interpreting this exclamation as a sign of interest, Chris decided to develop the topic he had begun.

As he talked about his idol, his lifeless features gradually came to life.

But Vivienne already knew everything about Uncle Jeff. Ever since this man had settled here, taking care of his nephew, he had been Chris' main and only topic of conversation.

However, Viv did not share Chris's feelings towards his uncle and believed that this was not at all best example to emulate. It is a pity if an already spoiled child, imitating his idol, turns into a young infantile man who causes nothing but disgust.

Jeff was a smug young man with bulging biceps, and Vivienne suspected that the endless exploits he told his nephew about were slightly exaggerated. However, such an impressionable young man as Christian, who also suffers from an inferiority complex, could not help but admire the athletic, courageous uncle.

Uncle Jeff says…” Chris stopped abruptly. "They're coming," he breathed, and stared in horror at the window that overlooked the driveway. - I see them. What should we do, Viv?

First, stop panicking, - the girl said quickly, although she suddenly had a disgusting suck in her stomach. “Perhaps you should mess up your hair a bit,” she added, looking critically at Chris, and then, ignoring her brother’s instructions, she automatically pulled down the silk hem of her short dress.

Like this. Vivien shook her head impatiently, and her jet-black locks flew up. - Let me do it myself, - she threw, hiding her irritation, and, reaching forward, ruffled the young man's naughty blond strands. - Now hug me! We need to make it look like we're kissing.

Chris shifted awkwardly in place.

I can not. I never…

Don't drift, I'll show you how it's done. - Yes, you and I are just comrades in misfortune, Vivien mentally grinned.

Ah, that's it, baby! - came suddenly low voice that made her freeze. - I don't think Chris needs such a mentor.

It only took one quick glance for Jeff to realize that this was not his nephew's school girlfriend, but adult woman who knows what she's doing well.

Viv glared at the man who had entered the room. It didn't take a subtle intuition to figure out who she was being mistaken for.

So, I've had the honor of meeting the legendary Uncle Jeff, the girl told herself ironically.

I thought you weren't home," Chris murmured timidly.

And he wasn't exaggerating too much when describing his uncle, Vivienne involuntarily noted.

Strong hands they roughly grabbed her, dragging her off the sofa, and she involuntarily buried her face in her powerful chest.

Jeff must have just stepped out of the shower, with a towel wrapped around his hips and drops of water glistening on his bare chest and shoulders. Viv even caught the light, chilly-transparent scent of an expensive men's cologne.

Someday you will thank me for this. - Uncle gave his nephew a mocking look and turned back to the girl. She raised her eyes in embarrassment, but his face was instantly filled with contempt. - You can't pretend! Unlike Chris, I'm not interested in girls like you. Judging by what I saw, you didn't do too well," he added with a tense half-smile and shamelessly cast a critical look at her slender legs in thin black stockings.

Looks like he thinks I'm a whore, Vivien thought. The man's mocking arrogance prompted her to make a scandal, but she pulled herself together, reasoning that anyone in his place could come to the same conclusion. Nothing, the girl reassured herself, in time he would learn the truth.

It's not what you think, Mr. Hartley," she remarked calmly.

You know who I am? Jeff's blue eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Chris talked a lot about you,” Vivien explained.

It looks like the truth, Jeff thought, and his eyes involuntarily swept over the girl's seductive figure again. Well, it's no surprise that a teenager could not resist the temptation to chat with such a sexy beauty. I remember myself and my feelings at that age well, and I can easily understand what he feels.

This girl was not one of those that Jeff himself liked - he preferred little blondes with big breasted and slim waist- but he guessed what attracted Christian to her.

But why did she need this youngster? .. - he wondered. Probably, she was attracted by the money of his parents, because everything shows that she does not feel emotional attraction to the guy.

But I don't want to know your name, he chuckled and thought that if Laura, Chris's mother, ever found out about this incident, he would not be able to take off his head.

His sister, like a mother hen, took care of her only son, and her husband hardly managed to convince her that the young man Jeff could be trusted.

I wasn't going to…" Viv started hotly, but then she stopped short and shook her head in dismay.

Not a single man had ever looked at her like that ... If only he had put something on himself!

Unable to take her eyes off the half-naked muscular body, she felt that some unpleasant, unsettling feeling gripped her more and more.

Even with the tall platform of trendy shoes, Viv had to lift her head to look Jeff in the face. His sharply defined cheekbones were full of jaws, his cold blue eyes glittered hostilely from under heavy lids, his sensual lips were pressed into a hard line.

Vivienne felt that one more insult and she would slap him in the face, and this was not at all her habit.

Uncle Jeff! Chris couldn't help it as his uncle's heavy hand landed on Viv's shoulder. - You do not understand…

He looked coldly at his nephew.

Why, Chris, I understand, and even very well. At best, you've run into a prostitute who has genuine sympathy for you, but it could very well be that this bitch just hunts for rich youngsters. Anyone with a little experience will understand that a girl with a pretty face, a seductive body and an innocent look is actually creeping up on your father's money.

Viv was so taken aback by this assessment of her appearance that all she could do was mutter pathetically in response.

Jeff pretended not to hear her.

When I walked in, I thought you... changed your mind, Chris. I'm right?

Yes, but ... She ... - the young man began, throwing a guilty look at the girl.

Well, they are already discussing me in my presence, Vivienne thought, and a wave of self-disgust swept over her.

So you don't want to use her services? Jeff continued. - But in vain. It can be quite funny, especially if your feelings are mutual...

And then Viv noticed with surprise that something human flashed in his eyes. Maybe it was a memory own youth?

No, she told herself, this type is not prone to sentimentality and cannot feel nostalgia for first love.

Fortunately for her, at that moment Dick and his friends entered the room.

Viv looked pleadingly at younger brother. He instantly assessed the situation and, hiding his disappointment at the failure of a carefully thought-out plan, immediately made the necessary adjustments to it.

Get out, all of you! said Dick to his friends. He didn't even look back to make sure they were gone, and Viv found herself jealous of her brother's ability to be a leader in any company. - What's going on here? he turned to Chris.

Jeff looked at the guest in bewilderment.

Do you have anything to do with this story?

Is everything all right, Viv? - Dick turned to his sister, not reacting to the question asked.

He felt that she was taking everything too seriously, and regretted that he turned to her for help.

You see for yourself! she screamed hysterically.

Do you know this girl? Jeff Hartley looked suspiciously from Dick to Vivienne.

Of course. This is my sister.

And how often do you make your little brother pimp, baby?

Blimey! Vivien sighed. She firmly believed that Dick would save her from this stupid situation, and did not expect such an interpretation of his role. Looking up, eyes that were about to burst into tears, she came across the contemptuous gaze of Jeff's blue eyes.

Let him think what he wants!

Vivienne, stumbling, rushed headlong out. Anger and resentment choked her, but she could not allow this monster to see her tears.

The door she had knocked on for almost five minutes finally opened.

Toby's face fell and his mouth dropped open in surprise.

If you say a word, blame yourself,” Viv snapped angrily. - I forgot my keys.

O! Do you have a new outfit? He gave her outfit a skeptical look.

It doesn't concern you. - Vivien proudly tossed her head and began to understand the stairs, trying to ignore the loud laughter that came after her. - Stop whining! I had a terrible day! she said over her shoulder.

We urgently need to change the carpet, the girl thought, looking at her feet.

Her and Dick's parents had died five years ago, and Viv knew that in this situation, the most reasonable thing would be to put the old dilapidated building up for auction. But how could she deprive her thirteen-year-old brother of the home he grew up in, and even at a time when the pain of loss was so acute? .. Besides, then Dick would have to change schools, and she would have to get into debt to buy a new home. And Viv made a promise to herself that, no matter how difficult it was for her, Dick should not suffer!

To clear her conscience, she nevertheless consulted with lawyers who, of course, advocated the sale: “You don’t have enough strength and money to keep the house in good condition!” they said. Vivienne listened attentively to them and said that she would keep the house behind her. They just shook their heads with a smile: well, what to take from a stupid girl!

It's nice to know that such pundits were wrong, the girl thought with pleasure. For five years now, Toby had lived here, who became almost a member of the family, and with other guests who rented two free rooms, he and Dick were lucky. As a result, life in the “terrible Victorian monster,” as Vivien always called this house, turned out to be not so scary!

Sometimes she asked Toby why he did not move to a more comfortable home, but he only laughed it off ... In fact, both understood that he was just used to this house. When Toby rented a room from Viv, she was not even nineteen, and, of course, there were many evil tongues, grinding their bones, but time passed, and gradually the stupid gossip died out by itself.

Maintaining the house in decent condition took almost everything that Vivien earned, but, observing a strict economy, she still somehow managed to get out. In addition, Dick recently won the prestigious school olympiad which guaranteed him free education at the university for three years.

Better spend it on yourself, Viv,” he protested when she stated that the money set aside for his education could now be used to repair the roof. - It's time for you to take care of yourself!

It was then that he proposed that insane plan, to which she managed to agree ...

And now Vivienne stood in front of the mirror, which stood on an antique mahogany dressing table, and looked at her reflection with disgust. She grabbed a napkin and wiped the bright lipstick from her lips with a sharp movement.

How could one succumb to Dick's entreaties!

His carefully crafted plan failed in disgrace.

Vivienne couldn't resist when her brother brought his girlfriend and she dumped the contents of her makeup bag on the table. She still weakly objected for some time, arguing that she did not care much about makeup, but then she gave up.

If you had stopped in time, the girl cursed herself, pulling off her luxurious dress, then you would not have had to endure such humiliation today.

She was seething with anger as she pulled on her frayed jeans.

That damn Jeff Hartley... No wonder poor Chris didn't trust his uncle and wouldn't share his personal problems with him.

The memory of those icy blue eyes made Viv feel guilty again.

And what exactly am I guilty of? she tried to reason with herself. If the legendary Mr. Hartley had not been so preoccupied with narcissism, he might have noticed that his nephew was not all right. And you could easily put this presumptuous type in his place ...

The right words, to Viv's no small regret, only now came to her mind, but she decided that it was not too late to stand up for herself.

Toby looked up from the pot and set the spice jar on the shelf.

Phew… The whole house stinks of your sauce,” Viv grimaced as she entered the kitchen.

What does "stink" mean? - he responded indignantly, stirring the brew. - How can you talk like that about the delicate bouquet of fragrances that I managed to compose?!

I don't like this smell! - the girl grunted and, with a sharp movement, she pulled out one of the chairs and sat down at the table.

What exactly?

I can see that you're not well," he remarked softly. - Tell me everything, maybe it will make you feel better...

Vivienne shrugged slightly and leaned her elbows on the heavy oak table, covering her face with her hands.

I have never experienced such humiliation! She seemed to be having a hard time finding the right words. It's all Dick's fault.

What happened?

Viv told the old true friend and cautiously raised her eyes, afraid to see the mockery in his eyes. But Toby's face was serious.

Do you think I did something stupid? she asked, not waiting for his reaction.

I think, - he replied, - that this was a classic example of stupid coincidences.

Could I refuse Dick? Viv sighed. “Poor Chris has been through hell! He was not allowed to pass at school, and he is such an impressionable boy ...

She remembered with compassion the pale, frightened face of the young man.

So you and Dick decided that if a girl showed up at Chris' house and his buddies found out about it, then the gossip that he was gay, the end will come? Toby stated. Vivien nodded and he looked at her carefully. “Are you certain that this is not true?”

Absolutely! she exclaimed hotly. “The poor boy is just terribly shy. Once alone with me, he fell into a complete stupor. You yourself know that not all seventeen-year-old boys are as smart as Dick and know how to communicate with the opposite sex.

Yeah, she thought, my brother can't complain about being shy, and that gives me a lot of trouble.

And Dick was supposed to bring a couple of friends with him, - Toby continued, - who, having seen Chris in the company of a woman, would dispel rumors about his non-traditional sexual orientation? He shook his head thoughtfully. Well, the plan isn't bad at all. But in this situation, you needed a mature woman, because then Chris would have instantly gained fame as a ladies' man? Did I understand correctly?