Family Happiness - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (classic books for 10 year olds .txt) 📗
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saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others. At the
time his words seemed to me strange, and I did not understand them; but by
degrees this became a conviction with me, without thinking about it. He
revealed to me a whole new world of joys in the present, without changing
anything in my life, without adding anything except himself to each
impression in my mind. All that had surrounded me from childhood without
saying anything to me, suddenly came to life. The mere sight of him made
everything begin to speak and press for admittance to my heart, filling it
with happiness.
Often during that summer, when I went upstairs to my room and lay down on my
bed, the old unhappiness of spring with its desires and hopes for the future
gave place to a passionate happiness in the present. Unable to sleep, I
often got up and sat on Katya’s bed and told her how perfectly happy I was,
though I now realize that this was quite unnecessary, as she could see it
for herself.
But when told me that she was quite content and perfectly happy, and kissed
me. I believed her — it seemed to me so necessary and just that everyone
should be happy. But Katya could think of sleep too; and sometimes,
pretending to be angry, she drove me from her bed and went to sleep, while I
turned over and over in my mind all that made me so happy. Sometimes I got
up and said my prayers over again, praying in my own words and thanking God
for all the happiness he had given me.
All was quiet in the room; there was only the even breathing of Katya in her
sleep, and the ticking of the clock by her bed, while I turned from side to
side and whispered words of prayer, or crossed myself and kissed the cross
round my neck. The door was shut and the windows shuttered; perhaps a fly or
gnat hung buzzing in the air. I felt a wish never to leave that room — a
wish that dawn might never come, that my present frame of mind might never
change. I felt that my dreams and thoughts and prayers were live things,
living there in the dark with me, hovering about my bed, and standing over
me. And every thought was his thought, and every feeling his feeling. I did
not know yet that this was love; I though that things might go on so for
ever, and that this feeling involved no consequences.
One day when the corn was being carried, I went with Katya and Sonya to our
favorite seat in the garden, in the shade of the lime trees and above the
dell, beyond which the fields and woods lay open before us. It was three
days since Sergey Mikhaylych had been to see us; we were expecting him, all
the more because our bailiff reported that he had promised to visit the
harvest field. At two o’clock we saw him ride on to the rye field. with a
smile and a glance at me, Katya ordered peaches and cherries, of which he
was very fond, to be brought; then she lay down on the bench and began to
doze. I tore off a crooked flat lime tree branch, which made my hand wet
with its juicy leaves and juicy bark. then I fanned Katya with it and went
on with my book, breaking off from time to time, to look at the field path
along which he must come. Sonya was making a dolls’ house at the root of an
old lime tree. The day was sultry, windless, and steaming; the clouds were
packing and growing blacker; all morning a thunderstorm had been gathering,
and I felt restless, as I always did before thunder. But by afternoon the
clouds began to part, the sun sailed out into a clear sky, and only in one
quarter was there a faint fumbling. A single heavy cloud, lowering above the
horizon and mingling with the dust from the fields, was rent from time to
time by pale zigzags of lightning which ran down to the ground. It was clear
that for today the storm would pass off, with us at all events. The road
beyond the garden was visible in places, and we could see a procession of
high creaking carts slowly moving along it with their load of sheaves, while
the empty carts rattled at a faster pace to meet them, with swaying legs and
shirts fluttering in them. The thick dust neither blew away nor settled down
— it stood still beyond the fence, and we could see it through the
transparent foliage of the garden trees. A little farther off, in the
stackyard, the same voices and the same creaking of wheels were audible; and
the same yellow sheaves that had moves slowly past the fence were now flying
aloft, and I could see the oval stacks gradually rising higher, and their
conspicuous pointed tops, and the laborers swarming upon them. On the dusty
field in front more carts were moving and more yellow sheaves were visible;
and the noise of the carts, with the sound of talking and singing, came to
us from a distance. At one side the bare stubble, with strips of fallow
covered with wormwood, came more and more into view. Lower down, to the
right, the gay dresses of the women were visible, as they bent down and
swung their arms to bind the sheaves. Here the bare stubble looked untidy;
but the disorder was cleared by degrees, as the pretty sheaves were ranged
at close intervals. It seemed as if summer had suddenly turned to autumn
before my eyes. The dust and heat were everywhere, except in our favorite
nook in the garden; and everywhere, in this heat and dust and under the
burning sun, the laborers carried on their heavy task with talk and noise.
Meanwhile Katya slept so sweetly on our shady bench, beneath her white
cambric handkerchief, the black juicy cherries glistened so temptingly on
the plate, our dresses were so clean and fresh, the water in the jug was so
bright with rainbow colors in the sun, and I felt so happy. “How can I help
it?” I thought; “am I to blame for being happy? And how can I share my
happiness? How and to whom can I surrender all myself and all my
happiness?”
By this time the sun had sunk behind the tops of the birch avenue, the dust
was settling on the fields, the distance became clearer and brighter in the
slanting light. The clouds had dispersed altogether; I could see through the
trees the thatch of three new corn stacks. The laborers came down off the
stacks; the carts hurried past, evidently for the last time, with a loud
noise of shouting; the women, with rakes over their shoulders and straw
bands in their belts, walked home past us, singing loudly; and still there
was no sign of Sergey Mikhaylych, though I had seen him ride down the hill
long ago. Suddenly he appeared upon the avenue, coming from a quarter where
I was not looking for him. He had walked round by the dell. He came quickly
towards me, with his hat off and radiant with high spirits. Seeing that
Katya was asleep, he bit his lip, closed his eyes, and advanced on tiptoe; I
saw at once that he was in that peculiar mood of causeless merriment which I
always delighted to see in him, and which we called “wild ecstasy”. He was
just like a schoolboy playing truant; his whole figure, from head to foot,
breathed content, happiness, and boyish frolic.
“Well, young violet, how are you? All right?” he said in a whisper, coming
up to me and taking my hand. Then, in answer to my question, “Oh, I’m
splendid today, I feel like a boy of thirteen — I want to play at horses and
climb trees.”
“Is it wild ecstasy?” I asked, looking into his laughing eyes, and feeling
that the “wild ecstasy” was infecting me.
“Yes,” he answered, winking and checking a smile. “But I don’t see why you
need hit Katerina Karlovna on the nose.”
With my eyes on him I had gone on waving the branch, without noticing that I
had knocked the handkerchief off Katya’s face and was now brushing her with
the leaves. I laughed.
“She will say she was awake all the time,” I whispered, as if not to awake
Katya; but that was not my real reason — it was only that I liked to whisper
to him.
He moved his lips in imitation of me, pretending that my voice was too low
for him to hear. Catching sight of the dish of cherries, he pretended to
steal it, and carried it off to Sonya under the lime tree, where he sat down
on her dolls. Sonya was angry at first, but he soon made his peace with her
by starting a game, to see which of them could eat cherries faster.
“If you like, I will send for more cherries,” I said; “or let us go
ourselves.”
He took the dish and set the dolls on it, and we all three started for the
orchard. Sonya ran behind us, laughing and pulling at his coat, to make him
surrender the dolls. He gave them up and then turned to me, speaking more
seriously.
“You really are a violet,” he said, still speaking low, though there was no
longer any fear of waking anybody; “when I came to you out of all that dust
and heat and toil, I positively smelt violets at once. But not the sweet
violet — you know, that early dark violet that smells of melting snow and
spring grass.”
“Is harvest going on well?” I asked, in order to hide the happy agitation
which his words produced in me.
“First rate! Our people are always splendid. The more you know them, the
better you like them.”
“Yes,” I said; “before you came I was watching them from the garden, and
suddenly I felt ashamed to be so comfortable myself while they were hard at
work, and so …”
He interrupted me, with a kind but grave look: “Don’t talk like that, my
dear; it is too sacred a matter to talk of lightly. God forbid that you
should use fine phrases about that!”
“But it is only to you I say this.”
“All right, I understand. But what about those cherries?”
The orchard was locked, and no gardener to be seen: he had sent them all off
to help with the harvest. Sonya ran to fetch the key. But he would not wait
for her: climbing up a corner of the wall, he raised the net and jumped down
on the other side.
His voice came over the wall — “If you want some, give me the dish.”
“No,” I said; “I want to pick for myself. I shall fetch the key; Sonya
won’t find it.”
But suddenly I felt that I must see what he was doing there and what he
looked like — that I must watch his movements while he supposed that no one
saw him. Besides I was simply unwilling just then to lose sight of him for a
single minute. running on tiptoe through the nettles to the other side of
the orchard where the wall was lower, I mounted on an empty cask, till the
top of the wall was on a level with my waist, and then leaned over into the
orchard. I looked
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