Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1856
Source: Text from TheAnarchistLibrary.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
More than twenty years had gone by. Much water had flowed away, many people had died, many been born, many had grown up or grown old; still more ideas had been born and had died, much that was old and beautiful and much that was old and bad had perished; much that was beautiful and new had grown up and still more that was immature, monstrous, and new, had come into God’s world.
Count Fedor Turbin had been killed long ago in a duel by some foreigner he had horse-whipped in the street. His son, physically as like him as one drop of water to another, was a handsome young man already twenty- three years old and serving in the Horse Guards. But morally the young Turbin did not in the least resemble his father. There was not a shade of the impetuous, passionate, and, to speak frankly, depraved propensities of the past age. Together with his intelligence, culture, and the gifted nature he had inherited a love of propriety and the comforts of life; a practical way of looking at men and affairs, reasonableness, and prudence were his distinguishing characteristics. The young count had got on well in the service and at twenty-three was already a lieutenant. At the commencement of the war he made up his mind that he would be more likely to secure promotion if he exchanged into the active army, and so he entered an hussar regiment as captain and was soon in command of a squadron.
In May 1848 [Footnote: Tolstoy seems here to antedate Russians intervention in the Hungarian insurrection. The Russian army did not enter Hungary till May 1849 and the war lasted till the end of September of that year.] the S-- hussar regiment was marching to the campaign through the province of K-- and the very squadron young Count Turbin commanded had to spend the night in the village of Morozovka, Anna Fedorovna’s estate.
Ann Fedorovna was still living but was already so far from young that she did not even consider herself young, which means a good deal for a woman. She had grown very fat, which is said to make a woman look younger, but deep soft wrinkles were apparent on her white plumpness. She never went to town now, it was an effort for her even to get into her carriage, but she was still just as kindhearted and as silly as ever (now that her beauty no longer biases one, the truth may be told). With her lived her twenty-three-year-old daughter Lisa, a Russian country belle, and her brother — our acquaintance the cavalryman — who had good-naturedly squandered the whole of his small fortune and had found a home for his old age with Anna Fedorovna. His hair was quite gray and his upper lip had fallen in, but the mustache above it was still carefully blackened. His back was bent, and not only his forehead and cheeks but even his nose and neck were wrinkled, yet in the movements of his feeble crooked legs the manner of a cavalryman was still perceptible.
The family and household sat in the small drawing-room of the old house, with an open door leading out onto the veranda, and open windows overlooking the ancient star-shaped garden with its lime trees. Gray-haired Anna Fedorovna, wearing a lilac jacket, sat on the sofa laying out cards on a round mahogany table. Her old brother in his clean white trousers and a blue coat had settled himself by the window and was plaiting a cord out of white cotton with the aid of a wooden fork — a pastime his niece had taught him and which he liked very much, as he could no longer do anything and his eyes were too weak for newspaper reading, his favorite occupation. Pimochka, Anna Fedorovna’s ward, sat by him learning a lesson — Lisa helping her and at the same time making a goat’s-wool stocking for her uncle with wooden knitting needles. The last rays of the setting sun, as usual at that hour, shone through the lime-tree avenue and threw slanting gleams on the farthest window and the what-not standing near it. It was so quiet in the garden and the room that one could hear the swift flutter of a swallow’s wings outside the window and Anna Fedorovna’s soft sigh or the old man’s slight groan as he crossed his legs.
“How do they go? Show me, Lisa! I always forget,” said Anna Fedorovna, at a standstill in laying out her cards for patience.
Without stopping her work Lisa went to her mother and glanced at the cards.
“Ah, you’ve muddled them all, mama dear!” she said, rearranging them. “That’s the way they should go. And what you are trying your fortune about will still come true,” she added, withdrawing a card so that it was not noticed.
“Ah yes, you always deceive me and say it has come out.”
“No, really, it means ... you’ll succeed. It has come out.”
“All right, all right, you sly puss! But isn’t it time we had tea?”
“I have ordered the samovar to be lit. I’ll see to it at once. Do you want to have it here? ... Be quick and finish your lesson Pimochka, and let’s have a run.”
And Lisa went to the door.
“Lisa, Lizzie!” said her uncle, looking intently at his fork. “I think I’ve dropped a stitch again — pick it up for me, there’s a dear.”
“Directly, directly. But I must give out a loaf of sugar to be broken up.”
And really, three minutes later she ran back, went to her uncle and pinched his ear.
“That’s for dropping your stitches!” she said, laughing, and you haven’t done your task!”
“Well, well, never mind, never mind. Put it right — there’s a little knot or something.”
Lisa took the fork, drew a pin out of her tippet — which thereupon the breeze coming in at the door blew slightly open — and managing somehow to pick up the stitch with the pin pulled two loops through, and returned the fork to her uncle.
“Now give me a kiss for it,” she said, holding out her rosy cheek to him and pinning up her tippet. “You shall have rum with your tea today. It’s Friday, you know.”
And she again went into the tea-room.
“Come here and look, uncle, the hussars are coming!” she called from there in her clear voice.
Anna Fedorovna came with her brother into the tea-room, the windows of which overlooked the village, to see the hussars. Very little was visible from the windows — only a crowd moving in a cloud of dust.
“It’s a pity we have so little room, sister, and that the wing is not yet finished,” said the old man to Anna Fedorovna. “We might have invited the officers. Hussar officers are such splendid, gay young fellows, you know. It would have been good to see something of them.”
“Why of course, I should have been only too glad, brother; but you know yourself we have no room. There’s my bedroom, Lisa’s room, the drawing-room, and this room of yours, and that’s all. Really now, where could we put them? The village elder’s hut has been cleaned up for them: Michael Matveev says its quite clean now.”
“And we could have chosen a bridegroom for you from among them, Lizzie — a fine hussar!”
“I don’t want an hussar; I’d rather have an uhlan. Weren’t you in the uhlans, uncle? ... I don’t want to have anything to do with these hussars. They are all said to be desperate fellows.” And Lisa blushed a little but again laughed her musical laugh.
“Here comes Ustyushka running; we must ask her what she has seen,” she added.
Anna Fedorovna told her to call Ustyushka.
“It’s not in you to keep to your work, you must needs run off to see the soldiers,” said Anna Fedorovna. “Well, where have the officers put up?”
“In Eromkin’s house, mistress. There are two of them, such handsome ones. One’s a count, they say!”
“And what’s his name?”
“Dazarov or Turbinov..... I’m sorry — I’ve forgotten.”
“What a fool; can’t so much as tell us anything. You might at least have found out the name.”
“Well, I’ll run back.”
“Yes, I know you’re first-rate at that sort of thing.... No, let Daniel go. Tell him to go and ask whether the officers want anything, brother. One ought to show them some politeness after all. Say the mistress sent to inquire.”
The old people again sat down in the tea-room and Lisa went to the servants’ room to put into a box the sugar that had been broken up. Ustyushka was there telling about the hussars.
“Darling miss, what a handsome man that count is!” she said. “A regular cherubim with black eyebrows. There now, if you had a bridegroom like that you would be a couple of the right sort.”
The other maids smiled approvingly; the old nurse sighed as she sat knitting at a window and even whispered a prayer, drawing in her breath.
“So you liked the hussars very much?” said Lisa. “And you’re a good one at telling what you’ve seen. Go, please, and bring some of the cranberry juice, Ustyushka, to give the hussars something sour to drink.”
And Lisa, laughing, went out with the sugar basin in her hands.
“I should really like to have seen what that hussar is like,” she thought, “brown or fair? And he would have been glad to make our acquaintance I should think.... And if he goes away he’ll never know that I was here and thought about him. And how many such have already passed me by? Who sees me here except uncle and Ustyushka? Whichever way I do my hair, whatever sleeves I put on, no one looks at me with pleasure,” she thought with a sigh as she looked at her plump white arm. “I suppose he is tall, with large eyes, and certainly small black mustaches.... Here am I, more than twenty-two, and no one has fallen in love with me except pock-marked Ivan Ipatich, and four years ago I was even prettier.... And so my girlhood has passed without gladdening anyone. Oh, poor, poor country lass that I am!”
Her mother’s voice, calling her to pour out tea, roused the country lass from this momentary meditation. She lifted her head with a start and went into the tea-room.
The best results are often obtained accidentally, and the more one tries the worse things turn out. In the country, people rarely try to educate their children and therefore unwittingly usually give them an excellent education. This was particularly so in Lisa’s case. Anna Fedorovna, with her limited intellect and careless temperament, gave Lisa no education — did not teach her music or that very useful French language — but having accidentally borne a healthy pretty child by her deceased husband she gave her little daughter over to a wet-nurse and a dry-nurse, fed her, dressed her in cotton prints and goat-skin shoes, sent her out to walk and gather mushrooms and wild berries, engaged a student from the seminary to teach her reading, writing, and arithmetic, and when sixteen years had passed she casually found in Lisa a friend, an ever-kindhearted, ever-cheerful soul, and an active housekeeper. Anna Fedorovna, being kindhearted, always had some children to bring up — either serf children or foundlings. Lisa began looking after them when she was ten years old: teaching them, dressing them, taking them to church, and checking them when they played too man pranks. Later on the decrepit kindly uncle, who had to be tended like a child, appeared on the scene. Then the servants and peasants came to the young lady with various requests and with their ailments, which latter she treated with elderberry, peppermint, and camphorated spirits. Then there was the household management which all fell on her shoulders of itself. Then an unsatisfied longing for love awoke and found its outlet only in Nature and religion. And Lisa accidentally grew into an active, good-natured, cheerful, self-reliant, pure, and deeply religious woman. It is true that she suffered a little from vanity when she saw neighbors standing by her in church wearing fashionable bonnets brought from K--, and sometimes she was vexed to tears by her old mother’s whims and grumbling. She had dreams of love, too, in most absurd and sometimes crude forms, but these were dispersed by her useful activity which had grown into a necessity, and at the age of twenty-two there was not one spot or sting of remorse in the clear calm soul of the physically and morally beautifully developed maiden. Lisa was of medium height, plump rather than thin; her eyes were hazel, not large, and had slight shadows on the lower lids; and she had a long light-brown plait of hair. She walked with big steps and with a slight sway — a “duck’s waddle” as the saying is. Her face, when she was occupied and not agitated by anything in particular, seemed to say to everyone who looked into it: “It is a joy to live in the world when one has someone to love and a clear conscience.” Even in moments of vexation, perplexity, alarm, or sorrow, in spite of herself there shone — through the tear in her eye, her frownning left eyebrow, and her compressed lips — a kind straightforward spirit unspoiled by the intellect; it shone in the dimples of her cheeks, in the corners of her mouth, and in her beaming eyes accustomed to smile and to rejoice in life.