sorrow which she had known in her life, and it reduced her almost
to distraction. She would begin accusing first one person, and then
another, of bringing this misfortune upon her, and rail at and blame
them with the most extraordinary virulence. Finally she would rise from
her arm-chair, pace the room for a while, and end by falling senseless
to the floor.
Once, when I went to her room, she appeared to be sitting quietly in her
chair, yet with an air which struck me as curious. Though her eyes were
wide open, their glance was vacant and meaningless, and she seemed to
gaze in my direction without seeing me. Suddenly her lips parted slowly
in a smile, and she said in a touchingly, tender voice: "Come here,
then, my dearest one; come here, my angel." Thinking that it was myself
she was addressing, I moved towards her, but it was not I whom she was
beholding at that moment. "Oh, my love," she went on, "if only you could
know how distracted I have been, and how delighted I am to see you once
more!" I understood then that she believed herself to be looking
upon Mamma, and halted where I was. "They told me you were gone," she
concluded with a frown; "but what nonsense! As if you could die before
ME!" and she laughed a terrible, hysterical laugh.
Only those who can love strongly can experience an overwhelming grief.
Yet their very need of loving sometimes serves to throw off their grief
from them and to save them. The moral nature of man is more tenacious of
life than the physical, and grief never kills.
After a time Grandmamma's power of weeping came back to her, and she
began to recover. Her first thought when her reason returned was for us
children, and her love for us was greater than ever. We never left her
arm-chair, and she would talk of Mamma, and weep softly, and caress us.
Nobody who saw her grief could say that it was consciously exaggerated,
for its expression was too strong and touching; yet for some reason or
another my sympathy went out more to Natalia Savishna, and to this day
I am convinced that nobody loved and regretted Mamma so purely and
sincerely as did that simple-hearted, affectionate being.
With Mamma's death the happy time of my childhood came to an end, and
a new epoch--the epoch of my boyhood--began; but since my memories of
Natalia Savishna (who exercised such a strong and beneficial influence
upon the bent of my mind and the development of my sensibility) belong
rather to the first period, I will add a few words about her and her
death before closing this portion of my life.
I heard later from people in the village that, after our return to
Moscow, she found time hang very heavy on her hands. Although the
drawers and shelves were still under her charge, and she never ceased
to arrange and rearrange them--to take things out and to dispose of them
afresh--she sadly missed the din and bustle of the seignorial mansion to
which she had been accustomed from her childhood up. Consequently
grief, the alteration in her mode of life, and her lack of activity soon
combined to develop in her a malady to which she had always been more or
less subject.
Scarcely more than a year after Mamma's death dropsy showed itself, and
she took to her bed. I can imagine how sad it must have been for her
to go on living--still more, to die--alone in that great empty house
at Petrovskoe, with no relations or any one near her. Every one there
esteemed and loved her, but she had formed no intimate friendships in
the place, and was rather proud of the fact. That was because, enjoying
her master's confidence as she did, and having so much property
under her care, she considered that intimacies would lead to culpable
indulgence and condescension. Consequently (and perhaps, also, because
she had nothing really in common with the other servants) she kept them
all at a distance, and used to say that she "recognised neither kinsman
nor godfather in the house, and would permit of no exceptions with
regard to her master's property."
Instead, she sought and found consolation in fervent prayers to God. Yet
subject, and when man's best solace is the tears and compassion of his
fellow-creatures, she would take her old dog Moska on to her bed, and
talk to it, and weep softly over it as it answered her caresses by
licking her hands, with its yellow eyes fixed upon her. When Moska
began to whine she would say as she quieted it: "Enough, enough! I know
without thy telling me that my time is near." A month before her death
she took out of her chest of drawers some fine white calico, white
cambric, and pink ribbon, and, with the help of the maidservants,
fashioned the garments in which she wished to be buried. Next she put
everything on her shelves in order and handed the bailiff an inventory
which she had made out with scrupulous accuracy. All that she kept
back was a couple of silk gowns, an old shawl, and Grandpapa's military
uniform--things which had been presented to her absolutely, and which,
thanks to her care and orderliness, were in an excellent state of
preservation--particularly the handsome gold embroidery on the uniform.
Just before her death, again, she expressed a wish that one of the gowns
(a pink one) should be made into a robe de chambre for Woloda; that the
other one (a many-coloured gown) should be made into a similar garment
for myself; and that the shawl should go to Lubotshka. As for the
uniform, it was to devolve either to Woloda or to myself, according as
the one or the other of us should first become an officer. All the rest
of her property (save only forty roubles, which she set aside for her
commemorative rites and to defray the costs of her burial) was to pass
to her brother, a person with whom, since he lived a dissipated life
in a distant province, she had had no intercourse during her lifetime.
When, eventually, he arrived to claim the inheritance, and found that
its sum-total only amounted to twenty-five roubles in notes, he refused
to believe it, and declared that it was impossible that his sister-a
woman who for sixty years had had sole charge in a wealthy house, as
well as all her life had been penurious and averse to giving away even
the smallest thing should have left no more: yet it was a fact.
Though Natalia's last illness lasted for two months, she bore her
sufferings with truly Christian fortitude. Never did she fret or
complain, but, as usual, appealed continually to God. An hour before
the end came she made her final confession, received the Sacrament with
quiet joy, and was accorded extreme unction. Then she begged forgiveness
of every one in the house for any wrong she might have done them, and
requested the priest to send us word of the number of times she had
blessed us for our love of her, as well as of how in her last moments
she had implored our forgiveness if, in her ignorance, she had ever at
any time given us offence. "Yet a thief have I never been. Never have I
used so much as a piece of thread that w
as not my own." Such was the one
quality which she valued in herself.
Dressed in the cap and gown prepared so long beforehand, and with her
head resting, upon the cushion made for the purpose, she conversed with
the priest up to the very last moment, until, suddenly, recollecting
that she had left him nothing for the poor, she took out ten roubles,
and asked him to distribute them in the parish. Lastly she made the sign
of the cross, lay down, and expired--pronouncing with a smile of joy the
name of the Almighty.
She quitted life without a pang, and, so far from fearing death,
welcomed it as a blessing. How often do we hear that said, and how
seldom is it a reality! Natalia Savishna had no reason to fear death
for the simple reason that she died in a sure and certain faith and in
strict obedience to the commands of the Gospel. Her whole life had
been one of pure, disinterested love, of utter self-negation. Had her
convictions been of a more enlightened order, her life directed to a
higher aim, would that pure soul have been the more worthy of love and
reverence? She accomplished the highest and best achievement in this
world: she died without fear and without repining.
They buried her where she had wished to lie--near the little mausoleum
which still covers Mamma's tomb. The little mound beneath which she
sleeps is overgrown with nettles and burdock, and surrounded by a black
railing, but I never forget, when leaving the mausoleum, to approach
that railing, and to salute the plot of earth within by bowing
reverently to the ground.
Sometimes, too, I stand thoughtfully between the railing and the
mausoleum, and sad memories pass through my mind. Once the idea came to
me as I stood there: "Did Providence unite me to those two beings solely
in order to make me regret them my life long?"
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Boyhood, by Leo Tolstoy
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BOYHOOD
By Leo Tolstoy
Translated by C.J. HOGARTH
I. A SLOW JOURNEY
Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe.
In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the
bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other--a britchka--sat Woloda,
myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in
a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps. He made the
sign of the cross at the windows of the carriages, and said:
"Christ go with you! Good-bye."
Jakoff and our coachman (for we had our own horses) lifted their caps in
answer, and also made the sign of the cross.
"Amen. God go with us!"
The carriages began to roll away, and the birch-trees of the great
avenue filed out of sight.
I was not in the least depressed on this occasion, for my mind was not
so much turned upon what I had left as upon what was awaiting me. In
proportion as the various objects connected with the sad recollections
which had recently filled my imagination receded behind me, those
recollections lost their power, and gave place to a consolatory feeling
of life, youthful vigour, freshness, and hope.
Seldom have I spent four days more--well, I will not say gaily, since
I should still have shrunk from appearing gay--but more agreeably and
pleasantly than those occupied by our journey.
No longer were my eyes confronted with the closed door of Mamma's room
(which I had never been able to pass without a pang), nor with the
covered piano (which nobody opened now, and at which I could never look
without trembling), nor with mourning dresses (we had each of us on our
ordinary travelling clothes), nor with all those other objects which
recalled to me so vividly our irreparable loss, and forced me to abstain
from any manifestation of merriment lest I should unwittingly offend
against HER memory.
On the contrary, a continual succession of new and exciting objects
and places now caught and held my attention, and the charms of spring
awakened in my soul a soothing sense of satisfaction with the present
and of blissful hope for the future.
Very early next morning the merciless Vassili (who had only just entered
our service, and was therefore, like most people in such a position,
zealous to a fault) came and stripped off my counterpane, affirming that
it was time for me to get up, since everything was in readiness for us
to continue our journey. Though I felt inclined to stretch myself and
rebel--though I would gladly have spent another quarter of an hour in
sweet enjoyment of my morning slumber--Vassili's inexorable face showed
that he would grant me no respite, but that he was ready to tear away
the counterpane twenty times more if necessary. Accordingly I submitted
myself to the inevitable and ran down into the courtyard to wash myself
at the fountain.
In the coffee-room, a tea-kettle was already surmounting the fire which
Milka the ostler, as red in the face as a crab, was blowing with a pair
of bellows. All was grey and misty in the courtyard, like steam from a
smoking dunghill, but in the eastern sky the sun was diffusing a clear,
cheerful radiance, and making the straw roofs of the sheds around the
courtyard sparkle with the night dew. Beneath them stood our horses,
tied to mangers, and I could hear the ceaseless sound of their chewing.
A curly-haired dog which had been spending the night on a dry dunghill
now rose in lazy fashion and, wagging its tail, walked slowly across the
courtyard.
The bustling landlady opened the creaking gates, turned her meditative
cows into the street (whence came the lowing and bellowing of other
cattle), and exchanged a word or two with a sleepy neighbour. Philip,
with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was working the windlass of a
draw-well, and sending sparkling fresh water coursing into an oaken
trough, while in the pool beneath it some early-rising ducks were taking
a bath. It gave me pleasure to watch his strongly-marked, bearded face,
and the veins and muscles as they stood out upon his great powerful
hands whenever he made an extra effort. In the room behind the
partition-wall where Mimi and the girls had slept (yet so near to
ourselves that we had exchanged confidences overnight) movements now
became audible, their maid kept passing in and out with clothes, and, at
last the door opened and we were summoned to breakfast. Woloda, however,
remained in a state of bustle throughout as he ran to fetch first one
article and then another and urged the maid to hasten her preparations.
The horses were put to, and showed their impatience by tinkling their
bells. Parcels, trunks, dressing-cases, and boxes were replaced, and we
set about taking our seats. Yet, every time that we got in, the mountain
of luggage in the britchka seemed to have grown larger than befo
re, and
we had much ado to understand how things had been arranged yesterday,
and how we should sit now. A tea-chest, in particular, greatly
inconvenienced me, but Vassili declared that "things will soon right
themselves," and I had no choice but to believe him.
The sun was just rising, covered with dense white clouds, and every
object around us was standing out in a cheerful, calm sort of radiance.
The whole was beautiful to look at, and I felt comfortable and light of
heart.
Before us the road ran like a broad, sinuous ribbon through cornfields
glittering with dew. Here and there a dark bush or young birch-tree cast
a long shadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet
even the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could
not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of
moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower
the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful
impulse to be up and doing which is a sign of sincere enjoyment.
As I had not been able to say my prayers in the courtyard of the inn,
but had nevertheless been assured once that on the very first day when
I omitted to perform that ceremony some misfortune would overtake me,
I now hastened to rectify the omission. Taking off my cap, and stooping
down in a corner of the britchka, I duly recited my orisons, and
unobtrusively signed the sign of the cross beneath my coat. Yet all the
while a thousand different objects were distracting my attention, and
more than once I inadvertently repeated a prayer twice over.
Soon on the little footpath beside the road became visible some slowly
moving figures. They were pilgrims. On their heads they had dirty
handkerchiefs, on their backs wallets of birch-bark, and on their feet