After spending a day in Tula, the travelers set out in the direction of Yasnaya Polyana, quivering with anticipation. The cornfields rolling away to the horizon, the forest of Zasyeka, crowded and dim, the bright
village of Yasnaya Poly-ana with its thatched huts, village pump and little church—Sonya loved it all, and saw the owner's reflection in everything: the bearded count with the shining eyes. Evening was coming on as the coach passed between the two whitewashed brick towers at the entrance to the grounds. Leaning out over the door, the girls watched as two rows of birches followed by lime trees, lilacs, tousled bushes and a meadow of tall grass strewn with buttercups rolled by in a joggling phantasmagoria. Here the vegetation seemed to explode in riotous rejoicing. In the midst of a tangle of green stood the white house with its Greek pediment and covered veranda. The carpenter had cut out a series of figurines in the wooden railings—a rooster, a horse, a woman with outstretched arms. Heavy linen curtains hung at the windows.
Lyubov Alcxandrovna had announced her arrival, but not the exact day. At the sound of the harness bells the house, drowsing in the dusk, awoke with a start. While the servants were bustling about with the baggage, Mrs. Behrs fell into the arms of her girlhood chum, Marya Tolstoy. Then old Aunt Toinette hobbled out and welcomed the travelers in French. Behind her stood her companion and attendant, the faithful Natalya Petrovna, in a pelerine and white pique bonnet. The girls curtsied. Everyone talked at once:
"Sonya looks just like you. . . . Tanya is very like her grandmother. . .
At that point Leo 'Tolstoy appeared, so gay that Sonya thought he looked positively young.
After a tour of the orchard, where the wide-eyed young urbanites picked raspl>errics, their mother sent them to unpack in the vaulted ground-floor room that was to l>e their dormitory. Plain wooden cots lined the walls. '1 he extremely hard mattresses were covered with blue and white striped ticking. The stout birch table had been made by the village carpenter. Iron hooks protruded overhead, from which harnesses, saddles and hams had hung in Prince Volkonsky's day. Dun- yasha, the chambermaid, "rather imposing and not too ugly," made up the beds on the couches. But there were only three cots and, with Volodya, there were four children. Tolstoy solved the problem by proposing to add a footstool at the end of a deep armchair. 'This arrangement amused Sonya, who gaily said:
"I want to sleep in the armchair."
"And I shall make your bed," said 'Tolstoy, in a tone that allowed no argument.
He awkwardly unfolded and spread the sheet. Sonya helped him, laughing to hide her confusion. "It did seem a little embarrassing," she
wrote later,8 "to be making a bed with Leo Nikolayevich, but it was very nice and delightfully intimate."
When she and Tolstoy had finished arranging her bed, she went back up to the drawing room where her sister Lisa gave her a cold, questioning look. Her emotions in a whirl, she went out to sit on the veranda. 'Ihere, staring into the night, she floated off into an insane and happy fantasy. "Was it the effect of the country air, nature, space? Was it a premonition of what would happen six weeks later, when I returned to this house as its mistress? Or was it simply my farewell to my girlhood and my freedom? ... I do not know. ... I felt solemn, and happy, and something I had never known before, something infinite."4
Tolstoy came to call her in to dinner, but she would not go:
"I'm not hungry. It is so lovely out here."
Reluctantly, he left her. Behind her back she heard voices and laughter and the clink of china. Lisa must be trying to regain her lost ground. A board creaked under a footfall. Sonya turned around. It was Tolstoy, abandoning his guests at the table, coming back to her. They exchanged a few words, softly, in the darkness. Suddenly he whispered:
"How simple and clear you are."
And so she was, but what unconfcssed scheming, what unconscious hopes lay behind that candor! She lowered her eyes, for fear of being discovered. It was late. Lyubov Alexandrovna sent the girls to bed. Sonya went down to the vaulted hall, cherishing, deep in her heart, the words Tolstoy had spoken to her on the tcmicc. She repeated them over to herself as she curled up in her nightgown between the arms of the uncomfortable armchair. Sleep would not come. She listened to her sisters' breathing, tossed and turned and smiled in rapture at the thought that it was the "count's" big hands that had made her bed.
She awoke at dawn, radiant. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. The air was exhilarating. "I wanted to run everywhere, look at everything, talk to everybody,she later wrote. Just the thing: Tolstoy had planned a picnic in the forest of Zasycka. Baraban, a chestnut, and Strelka, were harnessed to a sort of primitive charabanc that could carry twelve people seated back to back. Sonya admired the gray Bye- logubka, wearing an old side-saddle, and Tolstoy asked whether she would like to ride him. She had on her pretty yellow dress with the black velvet buttons and belt.
"How can I? I didn't bring a riding habit," she frowned.
"Never mind that," lie laughed. "We're not in society here. There's nobody to see you but the trees."
And while Lisa stood by biting her lips, he helped Sonya up onto Byelogubka's back. She wrapped her yellow skirt tightly around her legs to cover them down to the ankle, arched her back and strove to appear elegant. lie straddled a magnificent white stallion and they cantered off side by side under the low branches. The wagon followed with the rest of the group in a medley of hats and parasols, jolting with ever)' turn of the wheels. Neighbors and friends had joined the outing. The entire company gathered in a clearing with a haycock in the center. Lyubov Alcxandrovna Behrs and Marya Tolstoy spread out the cloth on the grass and set the places, opened hampers and lighted the samovar. After tea, Tolstoy led his guests in games, climbing up the haystack and sliding down again. In the midst of the shouting and laughter Sonya—her yellow dress all crumpled and her hair full of straw —was in heaven, but Lisa was beginning to glower. Toward evening the whole party sat on top of the haystack and sang in chorus: "The brook flows over the pebbles . .
The next day the Behrs family went on to Ivitsi. Sonya left with a heavy heart, but was soon cheered by the sight of her grandfather Islenyev. He was so comical; a little, close-shaven, bald old man with a black skullcap, an aquiline nose and mischievous eyes glinting between wrinkled lids. Pinching the girls' cheeks between thumb and forefinger, he called them "the young ladies from Moscow," questioned them about their love affairs and uttered antiquated gallantries that brought a scowl to the face of his second wife, Sofya Alcxandrovna—the erstwhile beauty with the bewitching black eyes, who had become a gaunt, toothless crone who smoked a pipe from dawn to dark, which distended her lips and muddied her skin. To make certain that his young guests would not be bored in his home, the old man had planned a series of outings and dances for them, to which all the local young bloods were invited. But Sonya was not to be jarred from her dream world by the chatter of such provincials. Two days after their arrival at Ivitsi, she was in her bedroom with Lisa when little Tanya opened the door, eyes bulging and cheeks 011 fire, and cried out: