Their departure for Nikolskoye was set for the following day, June 28. That morning, while everyone in the house was still asleep, Chertkov camc gliding furtively through the mists to renew his acquaintance with his idol's haunts. He brought a letter, intended to placate Sonya: "I have heard that you have recently been speaking of me as an enemy. I think this feeling can be attributed to a passing irritation, caused by some misunderstanding that a face-to-face conversation would soon dispel, like a bad dream. Leo Nikolaycvich contains in himself so many things that represent life's most precious treasures for both you and me that a solid and indestructible bond must inevitably have been forged between us." He was about to hand this letter to a servant when Tol-
stoy, catching sight of him through tlic window, came out of his bedroom, embraced him and led him away on tiptoe into the grounds. Walking and talking with his disciple, he suddenly noticed that they were headed toward Yasenki, and the family was to catch the train at Zasyeka. By the time they had returned to the house, Sonya had already- left in a coach. lie caught up with her in Chertkov's trap, excused himself like a guilty schoolboy, climbed up beside her and patiently bore her ill-humor. During the entire train trip, whenever he got out to stretch his legs at a station, Sonya got out with him.
"I am with you, I shall go with you every time," she said, "otherwise, you might stay behind on the platform on purpose."
At Sergey's house at Nikolskoye there were too many people and too much noise, and the weary old man was sorry he had come. Sonya, however, who cared about appearances, put on a show of gaiety at her son's; but as soon as she returned to Yasnaya Polyana, on June 30, she abandoned herself once more to her idte fixe: the private diaries of the last ten years. A visit from Chertkov on July 1 drove her into a frenzy. The sight of him affected her brain like an electric shock. Her blood boiled, her mind began to race, she lost all sense of propriety. His behavior, however, was always icily correct. In the evening, after paying his respects to the mistress of the house, he withdrew with Tolstoy and Sasha into the author's study. Sonya was certain that the triumvirate was conspiring against her, and in effect, behind the closed doors, father, daughter and disciple were talking in hushed tones of the will and the diaries. After a moment, Sasha heard a rustle outside the balcony door: Sonya was there, in the dark, straining to hear. She had taken off her shoes to make less noise. She screamed:
"Another plot against me!"
Tolstoy was so upset by this nocturnal apparition that Sasha took him into the next room. Alone with Chertkov, Sonya, her eyes glittering with hatred, demanded to know where the diaries were and by what right he was keeping them. Unabashed, Chertkov counterattacked. His courtesy vanished. In a cutting voice he informed Sonya that she had no business interfering between master and disciple: "What are you afraid of? That I shall use the diaries to unmask you? Had I wanted to, I could have ruined you and your family too, without the slightest difficulty. The only thing that has stopped me is my affection for Leo Nikolayevich." Moving toward the door, he added, "If I had a wife like you, I would have blown my brains out long ago or gone to America."3
Sonya caught up with him and, in the presence of her husband and daughter, insisted that he at least promise to return the diaries when asked to produce them.
"Yes," said Chertkov, "but I will give them to Leo Nikolayevich, not to you."
He wrote out the following note to Tolstoy:
"In view of your wish to resume possession of the diaries which you gave me to keep, asking me to delete from them the passages you had marked, I shall hasten to finish this work and shall return the diaries to you immediately thereafter."
"And now," said Sonya, "I want Leo Nikolayevich to give me a paper promising to turn the diaries over to me!"
"That's all we need!" exclaimed Tolstoy. "A husband signing papers to his wife."
He muttered:
"I promised that you would have those diaries and you'll have them."
lie was so obviously insincere that Sonya wrote in her own diary, "I know there is only one purpose behind all those notes and promises: to hoodwink me. Chertkov will drag out his imaginary work on the diaries and won't ever give them to anyone."
But the following day, she played the gracious hostess to Chcrtkov's mother, "a very handsome woman, not quite normal, and extremely aged," who talked at length of her soul, her mourning, her land, and believed that Christ dwelled in her entrails. Sonya spent a pleasant day with her, but suffered agonies to see Chertkov sitting on a low sofa next to Lyovochka. They were whispering away, their knees were almost touching. "They were so happy in their intimacy together," she wrote, "and I was in torments of spite and jealousy."4 And that evening, to top off all her other sufferings, the conversation turned to suicide and madness. Sonya interrupted:
"Can't we change the subject?"
"Really, Sonya, I don't understand you," said Tolstoy. "We're talking about my article!"
"You did it on purpose! I wasn't in the room a minute before you brought up the subject again. You might have a little more consideration!"
She could not sleep that night, she was haunted by the vision of Chertkov sitting so close to Lyovochka. Her overwrought imagination produced pictures of the white-bearded old man and his corpulent disciple united in a monstrous intercourse.
In spite of her fatigue, by dawn she had determined to continue the battle. Oozing duplicity, she made a formal return call on Chertkov's mother, but went on afterward to sec Mrs. Zvegintsev, who had a great deal of influence in St. Petersburg, and asked her to persuade the authorities to banish Chertkov from the government of Tula again. Out
of ten tries, she thought, one at least would have to work. Also, her son Leo, who had recently arrived at Yasnaya Polyana, was some consolation to her. lie was an anti-Tolstoyan of long standing, who had already put Chertkov in his place once and even called him an imbecile for trying to preach to him. The moment seemed propitious for a direct attack.
During the night of July 10-11, Sonya again demanded that Lyovochka give her the diaries Chertkov was keeping. She swept up and down the balcony outside her husband's bedroom, threatening and pleading until he begged her to go away and let him get some sleep. Then she accused him of wanting to drive her away, cried out, "I'll kill Chertkov!" and rushed half-naked into the grounds. After some time passed without any sign of her, the old man began to worry; in his nightshirt, candle in hand, he went to wake his son Leo and Dr. Makovitsky and sent them out in search of the poor woman. They found her lying full length in the wet grass. She told them she had been driven away "like a dog" and would kill herself unless her husband came in person to ask her to go back to the house. Leo, who was always spoiling for a fight, ran to tell his father that he had no right to lie in his warm bed indoors while his abandoned, insulted wife was threatening to kill herself. Dragged along by his forty-year-old son, Tolstoy reluctantly trailed into the grounds. After soothing Sonya and bringing her back to the house, he wrote 111 his diary, "Only just alive, only just. Dreadful night. Until four in the morning. Leo was the worst of them all. He shouted at me as though I were a boy and ordered me to fctch Sonya back from the garden " The couple went to sleep, shattered, each in his own room.