"The count!. . . The count has come to see us!"
"It's not true!" exclaimed Lisa, blushing.
"Is he alone or with his sister?" asked Sonya faintly.
"Alone! On horseback," Tanya answered. "Hurry!"
They clattered down the stairs and stopped outside the door, paralyzed, in front of Leo Tolstoy, who was heavily dismounting from his white horse. He was covered with dust, his forehead shone with sweat and his eyes showed shy delight. Sonya did not dare hope he had traveled the thirty-five miles between Yasnaya Polyana and Ivitsi just for the pleasure of seeing her again. The entire household had already assembled to congratulate him. Grandfather clapped him on the shoulder and asked:
"How long did it take you?"
"A little over three hours," Tolstoy answered. "I didn't hurry. It was very hot."
Suddenly, at that instant, Sonya wanted to love him, and just as suddenly she was afraid of becoming attached to him. She thought of Lisa, whom she was betraying, and of the young and amiable horse guardsman Mitrofan Polivanov who would one day ask for her hand, and she felt guilty, but she could not think of anything particular that she had done wrong. In the evening, after a walk, all the young people in the neighborhood—officers from the nearby garrison, country squires, students on vacation—gathered in the big drawing room at Ivitsi. Parlor games were followed by dancing. Volunteer musicians took turns at the piano, pounding the keys and pumping at the pedals. Sonya wore a thin white woolen dress with a lilac-colored rosette on one shoulder, from which trailed down long ribbons known as Suivez- moi jeune homme (Follow me, young man).
"IIow elegant you arc, here," said Tolstoy.
"Aren't you dancing?" she asked.
"No. What's the use? I'm too old."
She demurred. After supper the guests began to leave. But someone wanted Tanya to sing a romance. She was not in the mood, so she hid under the piano to avoid being forced to perform, and was forgotten there. And thus she became an involuntary witness to a strange sccnc. The house had grown quiet again, when Tolstoy and Sonya came into the room. Both very intent, they sat down by a card table that had been left open.
"And so you'll be leaving again tomorrow?" said Sonya. "Why so soon? What a pity."
"My sister Marya is all alone and will soon be going abroad."
"Will you go with her?"
"No. I should have liked to go, but now I can't."
Unaware of her younger sister's presence in the room, Sonya never took her eyes from the doleful and supplicating face of the man leaning toward her. As the silence began to lengthen, she murmured:
"We had better be getting back to the dining room. Otherwise they'll begin looking for us."
"No," he said. "Wait a moment. It's so nice here."
And, taking up a piece of chalk, he wrote something on the baize.
"Sofya Andreyevna," he resumed, "can you decipher what I have written there? I put only the first letter of every word. . . ."
"I can," she confidently said.
He went on writing. "I watched his big reddish hand," she later wrote, "and felt my entire soul, all my energy and attention, focused on that piece of chalk and the hand guiding it." She read: "y.y.a.y.t.f.h.r.m.c.o.- m.a.a.t.i.o.h.f.m." She felt suddenly inspired. The blood hammered in her temples. No mystery could resist her love. With only occasional prompting from Tolstoy, she read, "Your youth and your thirst for happiness remind me cruelly of my age and the impossibility of happiness for me."
Amazed at her intuitiveness, he said:
"Then do this too."
And he wrote: "y.f.i.m.a.m.a.y.s.L.II.m.t.d.m.y.a.T." She translated:
"Your family is mistaken about me and your sister Lisa. Help me to defend myself, you and Tanya."
It was not a proposal. Nor even a declaration of love. But Sonya was too clever not to realize that this correspondence in code assumed a communion of minds between her and her partner that meant more than any protestation. Cutting through her exaltation, she heard her mother's voice crossly ordering her to bed. Before lying down she lighted a candle, sat on the floor and propped her notebook on a chair, and copied into her diary the words Tolstoy had initialed in chalk on the card table cover. Coming out of her hiding place, Tanya joined her a few moments later and confessed that she had heard and seen all, and was afraid there would be trouble ahead. Sonya was too happy to worry.
Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana the next day, but not before he had extracted a promise from the Behrs family to call again on their way back to Moscow. Behind him, he left a girl of eighteen quivering with hope, a girl of twenty smarting with jealousy, and a girl of sixteen moping because she was only a confidante. One day Lisa took Tanya aside and told her, with tears in her eyes: "Sonya is trying to take Leo Nikolayevich away from mel . . . The way she dresses and looks at him and goes off alone with him, it's as clear as day." Tanya tried to comfort her—in vain. The atmosphere was strained, as the young ladies prepared for the return trip.8
As agreed, they spent a night at Yasnaya Polyana. Marya Tolstoy had decided to take advantage of their coach as far as Moscow, before continuing abroad. Her departure saddened Aunt Toinette and the entire household. Leo was glum. At dawn, Anncnkov's big coach rolled up to the door and the farewells began. Suddenly, Tolstoy, dressed in
his traveling clothes, strode into the circle of weeping women, who were embracing each other and crossing themselves. His valet Alexis followed him with a suitcase.
"I am going to Moscow with you," he announced. "IIow could I stay on at Yasnaya now? It would seem so dull and empty."
Suffused with joy, Sonya struggled to keep her face under control as her mother watchcd her intently.
There was room for four inside the coach and two outside, behind the box. It was decided that Tolstoy would take one of the two outside places and Lisa and Sonya would take turns sitting beside him. The post horses trotted smartly along. Now and then the coachman blew his horn. The hours Sonya spent inside, with her mother and Tanya and her little brother Volodya and Marya Tolstoy, seemed endless. She envied Lisa out there in the open air, conversing freely with the writer. To while away the time, the travelers nibbled at bonbons and fruit, but Sonya refused all such treats. Leaning out, she countcd the striped mile-posts. At last, the relay! Her turn to mount beside Tolstoy. Evening was coming on. It grew cold. Nestled against her big friend's shoulder, she listened to his tales of the Caucasus, Sevastopol, the war, the savage Circassians, the French, the English, the Germans. ... lie had seen so many countries, known so many people, gone through so much! She felt very ignorant and vulnerable next to him. Light-headed with fatigue, she closed her eyes and dropped off, awoke at a sudden jolt and thrilled to find the warmth of a male body next to her, and the sound of a deep, gentle voice mixed with the jingling bells. They drove on like that all night. Inside, the family slept. Except for Lisa, perhaps, awaiting her turn. . . .
At the last relay before Moscow, when it was again Sonya's turn to sit beside Tolstoy, Lisa asked her to give up her turn on the pretext that it was too stuffy inside and she could not breathe. Sonya was enraged at this maneuver, but at her mother's command, she climbcd inside.
"Sofya Andrej'evna," Tolstoy cried out, "it's your turn to sit behind."
"I know," she said reluctantly, "but I'm cold."
Lisa was already settled triumphantly on the empty outside seat. Tolstoy stood a moment, hesitating, in the posthouse courtyard; then, without a word, he climbed up beside the driver and Anncnkov's coach rolled away with the girl sitting behind, alone and humiliated, offering her tears to the wind.
Tolstoy and Marya left them in Moscow and the Behrs went 011 to their country house at Pokrovskoye-Strcshncvo, where the doctor was waiting for them. Fresli quarrels broke out between the two sisters,
so violent that their parents could no longer pretend not to understand. The doctor, who was a man of principle, held that if a proposal were forthcoming Sonya, as the younger sister, should decline in favor of Lisa. Lyubov Alexandrovna, who was a woman of common sense, would have preferred to give priority to her children's hearts. Tanya felt sorry for the stiff and haughty Lisa, but sided openly with Sonya. Even the brothers became involved in these feminine complications. However, by tacit agreement, no one presumed to ask "the count" point-blank what his intentions were. He was too important a person, too intimidating. He must be allowed to reach his decision in his own good time, without being hurried in any way.