With the first warm days, the family moved to their country house at Pokrovskoyc-Strcshncvo, only eight miles from town—near enough for the faithful swains to continue paying their calls. Starry nights,
singing nightingales, fragrance of hay and flowering lilacs—everything was ideal for setting hearts on lire. Each of the three girls—Lisa, Sonya and Tanya, entertained her own private fantasies and held those of the other two in utter contempt. When the young men came they played four-handed piano, danced, rehearsed plays and exchanged languorous glances; afterward, the overexcited young ladies tossed and turned in their beds for hours before falling asleep.
The most animated gatherings took place on Saturday evenings in the winter in Moscow. The drawing room was lighted, the samovar steamed amidst cream "cutlets" and heavy dough cakcs. At eight o'clock, the cadets and students who were friends of the family camc trooping in, their noses scarlet and their coats covered with frost. The girls, both they and their hair dressed for the occasion, came toward them with a swirl of wide skirts, but their governess stopped them with a cry: "They're all cold! Don't go near them yet!"
Their mother brought her daughters up strictly and kept a close watch over them, but according to Fet all three possessed "that particular form of appeal the French call du chien" (a rather knowing allure). The eldest, Lisa, had lovely, regular features and pretended to be as aloof as a statue, accepting admiration without ever provoking it; she was interested in literature and philosophy and smiled condescendingly when her sisters teased her, calling her "the scholar." At the other extreme was Tanya, the youngest, all bright mischief and emotion. One moment she would be sighing over the novel she was reading in hiding, and the next she would be giggling in front of her mirror at some new grimace she had invented. Two jet eyes, glittering with mettle and wit, flashed in her narrow face with its full lips and big nose. One day she wanted to be a dancer, the next a singer, the next a mother. She had a pleasant contralto voice and, with clownish deference, Tolstoy nicknamed her "Mine. Viardot." Sonya, more pliant than Lisa, less mercurial than Tanya, boasted a graceful carriage, lovely complexion, dark hair, a smile of dazzling whiteness and large, dark, somewhat myopic eyes whose attentive and wondering expression was as disturbing as a confession. She was withdrawn, willful and melancholy and seemed, as Tanya wrote in her memoirs, "to be suspicious of happiness, never really able to grasp or enjoy it fully." She read a great deal, cultivated herself, wrote stories, painted in watercolor, played the piano and had chosen the education of children as her life work. At seventeen she had received her teacher's certificate: the student who helped her to study for her examination had also tried to convcrt her to atheist materialism, but she speedily recovered her faith. Like her sisters, all her hopes were centered on love and marriage.
The young horse guardsman Mitrofan Polivanov, a friend of her brother's, was already courting her assiduously. Would she become Mrs. Polivanov and end her days as the wife of a general? The idea did not horrify her, but neither did it thrill her. Her older sister Lisa would have a more exotic fate should she, as was likely, marry Count Leo Tolstoy. He was coming to the house more and more often, but could not make up his mind to propose. And to tell the truth, Lisa was so cool and haughty that she was not making it any easier for him. Sonya thought to herself that in her sister's place she would have spared no effort to elicit his impassioned avowals. She was awed by Tolstoy's talent, his fame, his legend. She remembered that in 1854, when she was ten,* he had come to call on her parents at their apartment in the Kremlin. He was in uniform then, about to join the Army of the Danube. After he left she had tied a ribbon around the low mahogany chair, upholstered in ccrise, on which he had sat. She learned whole passages of his works by heart and had copied out a few lines of Childhood which she kept as a talisman inside her schoolgirl shirtwaist. He had reappeared in 1856, still in uniform, full of war stories and plans for novels. Now he had left the army, but seemed no happier than before. He wrote less, traveled, gave all his time to his village schools. True, he was not handsome. Average height, stocky, bony and brawny, his face overgrown by a bushy chestnut beard, thick lips planted in the midst of all that hair, a crooked nose and iron-gray eyes with a piercing glint. A muzhik, with calloused hands and a mystic's stare. His body was used to the unconstraint of country life, and was uncomfortable in the elegant attire he wore in Moscow. He looked as though he were in disguise and hating it. Thirty-four years old—an old man! And to top it off he had lost nearly all his teeth. The girls must have discussed this detail among themselves, ruefully. But Lisa was not going to marry a man for his teeth. For her, marriage meant founding a home, making a distinguished entrance into the world: Countess Leo Tolstoy . . . Her sisters, who did not like her very much, teased her because when the count was there her expression changed, she warbled and coocd and, they said, played the "sweet almond." Sonya sometimes felt that she would know better than Lisa how to make a great author happy. To whom could she turn in her dilemma? No one would understand. Before going to bed, she spent ages in prayer before the icon. Little Tanya surveyed her out of the corner of her eye, and one evening, when the two had just gotten into bed and blown out the candle, asked in a low voice:
•Sofya Andreycvna Behrs was born on August 22, 1844.
"Sonya, do you love the count?"
"I don't know," she answered.
Then, after a pause, she sighed:
"Oh, Tanya, two of his brothers died of consumption."
"What of it?" said Tanya. "I lis complexion is not at all like theirs. Believe me, Papa knows better than anyone else."-
Sonya lav awake a long time. In the ensuing days she wrote a story to ease her aching heart. The heroine was Helen, a charming girl with black eyes and a passionate temperament; she had two sisters: Zinaida, the elder, who was fair and distant, and Natasha, the younger, who was petite, spritely and sweet-natured. Although a young man of twenty- three (alias Mitrofan Polivanov) was courting Helen, she had eyes only for a friend of the family, a middle-aged man of unprepossessing appearancc named Dublitsky. Dublitsky, who was about to become engaged to the fair-haired and disagreeable Zinaida, was being increasingly drawn to the dark-haired and charming Helen. Torn between love and duty, the girl planned to enter a convent. . . . She read this transparent tale to her younger sister, who thought it splendid, but she did not dare to show it to "the count."
July was almost over when Tolstoy, dreadfully upset by the police search in his house, next saw the Behrs, in Moscow. Pale and tense, his eyes flashing lightning, he talked of leaving the country if the government did not make amends to him. Seated at the end of the table, Sonya never took her eyes from him, and silently prayed that he would Stay in Russia. He returned to Yasnaya Polyana, and a few days later Lyubov Alexandrovna Behrs was suddenly inspired to visit her old father at Ivitsi and take her three daughters and her son Volodya with her. Now, Ivitsi was not far from Yasnaya Polyana, where Leo's sister Marya, an intimate childhood friend of Lyubov Alexandrovna's, was sta\-ing. By all means, Mrs. Behrs would call on her old friend. Indeed she was looking forward to the meeting; also, by bearding the lion in his den, she hoped to force his hand, overpower him and compel him, after so many months of indecision, to propose to Lisa. Her thoughts full of this subtle maternal stratagem, she persuaded her husband that the trip was absolutely essential and ordered new gowns for the girls. A coach for six was hired from Annenkov the coachmaker, baggage was piled onto the roof until the springs groaned, and, leaving the anxious doctor waving his handkerchief behind them, they drove away in a cloud of dust.