The Cossacks - graf Tolstoy Leo (suggested reading TXT) 📗

Chapter I

All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in

the snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows

and the street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of

bells, borne over the city from the church towers, suggests the

approach of morning. The streets are deserted. At rare intervals a

night-cabman’s sledge kneads up the snow and sand in the street as

the driver makes his way to another corner where he falls asleep

while waiting for a fare. An old woman passes by on her way to

church, where a few wax candles burn with a red light reflected on

the gilt mountings of the icons. Workmen are already getting up

after the long winter night and going to their work—but for the

gentlefolk it is still evening.

 

From a window in Chevalier’s Restaurant a light—illegal at that

hour—is still to be seen through a chink in the shutter. At the

entrance a carriage, a sledge, and a cabman’s sledge, stand close

together with their backs to the curbstone. A three-horse sledge

from the post-station is there also. A yard-porter muffled up and

pinched with cold is sheltering behind the corner of the house.

 

‘And what’s the good of all this jawing?’ thinks the footman who

sits in the hall weary and haggard. ‘This always happens when I’m

on duty.’ From the adjoining room are heard the voices of three

young men, sitting there at a table on which are wine and the

remains of supper. One, a rather plain, thin, neat little man,

sits looking with tired kindly eyes at his friend, who is about to

start on a journey. Another, a tall man, lies on a sofa beside a

table on which are empty bottles, and plays with his watch-key. A

third, wearing a short, fur-lined coat, is pacing up and down the

room stopping now and then to crack an almond between his strong,

rather thick, but well-tended fingers. He keeps smiling at

something and his face and eyes are all aglow. He speaks warmly

and gesticulates, but evidently does not find the words he wants

and those that occur to him seem to him inadequate to express what

has risen to his heart.

 

‘Now I can speak out fully,’ said the traveller. ‘I don’t want to

defend myself, but I should like you at least to understand me as

I understand myself, and not look at the matter superficially. You

say I have treated her badly,’ he continued, addressing the man

with the kindly eyes who was watching him.

 

‘Yes, you are to blame,’ said the latter, and his look seemed to

express still more kindliness and weariness.

 

‘I know why you say that,’ rejoined the one who was leaving. ‘To

be loved is in your opinion as great a happiness as to love, and

if a man obtains it, it is enough for his whole life.’

 

‘Yes, quite enough, my dear fellow, more than enough!’ confirmed

the plain little man, opening and shutting his eyes.

 

‘But why shouldn’t the man love too?’ said the traveller

thoughtfully, looking at his friend with something like pity. ‘Why

shouldn’t one love? Because love doesn’t come … No, to be

beloved is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because

you do not give something you cannot give. O my God!’ he added,

with a gesture of his arm. ‘If it all happened reasonably, and not

all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a way of its own! Why, it’s

as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don’t deny it. You

must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and

stupid things I have found time to do in my life—and there are

many—this is one I do not and cannot repent of. Neither at the

beginning nor afterwards did I lie to myself or to her. It seemed

to me that I had at last fallen in love, but then I saw that it

was an involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the way to

love, and I could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I

couldn’t? What was I to do?’

 

‘Well, it’s ended now!’ said his friend, lighting a cigar to

master his sleepiness. ‘The fact is that you have not yet loved

and do not know what love is.’

 

The man in the fur-lined coat was going to speak again, and put

his hands to his head, but could not express what he wanted to

say.

 

‘Never loved! … Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I

have within me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger

than that desire! But then, again, does such love exist? There

always remains something incomplete. Ah well! What’s the use of

talking? I’ve made an awful mess of life! But anyhow it’s all over

now; you are quite right. And I feel that I am beginning a new

life.’

 

‘Which you will again make a mess of,’ said the man who lay on the

sofa playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen

to him.

 

‘I am sad and yet glad to go,’ he continued. ‘Why I am sad I don’t

know.’

 

And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing

that this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man

is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At

such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more

splendid and interesting than himself.

 

‘Dmitri Andreich! The coachman won’t wait any longer!’ said a

young serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf

tied round his head. ‘The horses have been standing since twelve,

and it’s now four o’clock!’

 

Dmitri Andreich looked at his serf, Vanyusha. The scarf round

Vanyusha’s head, his felt boots and sleepy face, seemed to be

calling his master to a new life of labour, hardship, and

activity.

 

‘True enough! Good-bye!’ said he, feeling for the unfastened hook

and eye on his coat.

 

In spite of advice to mollify the coachman by another tip, he put

on his cap and stood in the middle of the room. The friends kissed

once, then again, and after a pause, a third time. The man in the

fur-lined coat approached the table and emptied a champagne glass,

then took the plain little man’s hand and blushed.

 

‘Ah well, I will speak out all the same … I must and will be

frank with you because I am fond of you … Of course you love

her—I always thought so—don’t you?’

 

‘Yes,’ answered his friend, smiling still more gently.

 

‘And perhaps…’

 

‘Please sir, I have orders to put out the candles,’ said the

sleepy attendant, who had been listening to the last part of the

conversation and wondering why gentlefolk always talk about one

and the same thing. ‘To whom shall I make out the bill? To you,

sir?’ he added, knowing whom to address and turning to the tall

man.

 

‘To me,’ replied the tall man. ‘How much?’

 

‘Twenty-six rubles.’

 

The tall man considered for a moment, but said nothing and put the

bill in his pocket.

 

The other two continued their talk.

 

‘Good-bye, you are a capital fellow!’ said the short plain man

with the mild eyes. Tears filled the eyes of both. They stepped

into the porch.

 

‘Oh, by the by,’ said the traveller, turning with a blush to the

tall man, ‘will you settle Chevalier’s bill and write and let me

know?’

 

‘All right, all right!’ said the tall man, pulling on his gloves.

‘How I envy you!’ he added quite unexpectedly when they were out

in the porch.

 

The traveller got into his sledge, wrapped his coat about him, and

said: ‘Well then, come along!’ He even moved a little to make room

in the sledge for the man who said he envied him—his voice

trembled.

 

‘Good-bye, Mitya! I hope that with God’s help you…’ said the

tall one. But his wish was that the other would go away quickly,

and so he could not finish the sentence.

 

They were silent a moment. Then someone again said, ‘Good-bye,’

and a voice cried, ‘Ready,’ and the coachman touched up the

horses.

 

‘Hy, Elisar!’ One of the friends called out, and the other

coachman and the sledge-drivers began moving, clicking their

tongues and pulling at the reins. Then the stiffened carriage-wheels rolled squeaking over the frozen snow.

 

‘A fine fellow, that Olenin!’ said one of the friends. ‘But what

an idea to go to the Caucasus—as a cadet, too! I wouldn’t do it

for anything. … Are you dining at the club to-morrow?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

They separated.

 

The traveller felt warm, his fur coat seemed too hot. He sat on

the bottom of the sledge and unfastened his coat, and the three

shaggy post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into

another, past houses he had never before seen. It seemed to Olenin

that only travellers starting on a long journey went through those

streets. All was dark and silent and dull around him, but his soul

was full of memories, love, regrets, and a pleasant tearful

feeling.