Hania

I asked Tola's father then to go to his house with me; he consented with gladness.

"I wished to propose that myself," said he; "for surely some little nose there is flattening itself against a window-pane, and eyes are looking into the street. Thou art not in a condition now to discuss serious matters; we will do that hereafter."

A few moments later we were on the street. At first I looked at people, houses, carriages, as a man who has come out for the first time after a long illness, and feels dizziness of the head. Gradually, however, movement and fresh air restored me. Above all thoughts one was dominant: "Tola loves thee; in a moment thou wilt see her!" I felt a throbbing in my temples as mighty as hammer strokes, and really a good hoop was needed round my head to contain it. An hour before I had thought that I should never see Tola again in life, or should see her sometime in some place the wife of another. And now I was going to her to tell her that she would be mine; and I was going because she had stretched out her hand first. Yesterday I called her a senseless doll, and still she had thrown herself at the feet of her parents, imploring for both of us. My heart was overflowing with sorrow, repentance, tenderness, and a feeling that I was unworthy of Tola; I swore to myself to reward her for this, to pay with attachment and boundless devotion for each tear of hers shed yesterday.

Others grew blind in love; I had no need to grow blind, for deeds were pleading for Tola. She had wrought this miracle. I had done her injustice. I had done her parents injustice as well. Had they been such as I had thought them, they would not have let themselves be persuaded. They would not have reached that simplicity, not merely human, but angelic, with which her father came to me and said: "We were mistaken; take her!" Neither society ceremonial nor vanity had the power to restrain him from this.

I remembered his words: "Indeed, thou didst pile mountains on us, but we are people of good will, though quick-tempered." That simplicity crushed me the more, the greater the mountains which I had piled on them yesterday. Not a word beyond these, no lofty phrases, a playful smile, – that was all. When I thought of this I could not restrain myself longer; I seized his hand, and raised it with reverence to my lips.

He smiled again with that kindly clear smile, and said, —

"My wife and I have said this long time that our son-in-law must love us."

And it happened as they wished, for before I was their son-in-law I loved them as if I had been their own son.

As I was walking very fast, Tola's father began to jest; he puffed, and pretended to be suffering, said that he could not keep pace with me, complained of the heat. In fact, the winter had broken the day before. A warm breeze wrinkled the water in the city garden, and in the air there was a species of revival, a kind of spring power. At last we were in front of the house. Something vanished from the window and disappeared in the depth of the room; I was not sure that it was Tola. On the steps my heart began to throb again. I feared the mother. When we had passed the dining-hall we found her in the drawing-room. As I entered, she approached me quickly and reached out her hand, which I kissed reverentially and with gratitude, stammering meanwhile, —

"How have I deserved this?"

"Forgive us yesterday's refusal," said she. "We had not thought of this, that Tola could find no greater attachment in the whole world."

"She could not! She could not!" cried I, with ardor.

"And since the happiness of our child is for us beyond everything, we give her to you, and I can only say: God grant you both happiness!"

She pressed my temples then; after that she turned toward the door and called, —

"Tola!"

And my love came in, pale, with reddened eyes, with bits of hair dropping on her forehead, confused, moved just as I was. How it was that nothing in her escaped my attention, I know not. I only know this, I saw tears gathering under her eyelids, her quivering lips, delight breaking through the tears, and a smile under the confusion. She stood for a moment with arms hanging, as if at a loss what to do; then her father, whom, as was evident, humor never deserted, said, shrugging his shoulders, —

"Ha! a hard case to cure! he has grown stubborn, and will not have thee."

She looked at me quickly, threw herself on her father's neck, and called, as if in an outburst, —

"I do not believe it; I do not believe it!"

If I had followed my heart's first impulse, I should have fallen at her feet. I did not do that simply through lack of courage, and because I had lost my head. I had just presence of mind enough to repeat in any soul, "Do not roar out, thou ass!" The honest father came again to our rescue; freeing himself from Tola's embrace, he said, as if angry with her, —

"If thou dost not believe me, then go to him."

And he pushed her toward me. Heaven opened before me at that moment. I seized her hands. I kissed them with delight, and I know not myself how long it was before I could take my lips from them. More than once I had imagined myself kissing her hands, but it is not for imagination to measure itself with reality! My love, so far, had been like a plant shut up in darkness. Now it was carried suddenly into bright air to luxuriate in warmth and in sunlight, hence the measure of my happiness was filled. I drank openly from the source of good and delight. To love and imprison that love in thyself, to love and feel that thou art entering on thy right to love and take possession, – are things entirely different. I not only had not had, but I could not have had, any comprehension of this.

The parents blessed us, and went out on purpose to leave us alone, so that we might tell each other all that we felt. But at first, instead of speaking, I only looked at her with ravishment, and her face changed beneath my gaze. Blushes covered her cheeks; the corners of her mouth quivered with a smile full of timidity and embarrassment; her eyes were mist-covered; her head sank, as it were, between her shoulders; at moments she dropped her eyelids and seemed to wait for my words.

At last, we sat down side by side at the window, each holding the other's hand. Till that day she had been for me, not of flesh and blood, as it were, but an abstraction, a beloved spirit, a precious name, an admired charm rather than a person; when her arm touched mine, however, and I felt the warmth of her face, I could not resist a certain astonishment that she was so real. A beloved woman seems known but not felt till one is near her. Now I looked with as much wonder at her face, her mouth, her eyes, her bright hair, and her still brighter eyelashes, as if I had never seen her till that moment. I was carried away by her. Never had a face so satisfied all my dreams of woman's beauty; no one had ever attracted me so irresistibly as she. And when I thought that all those treasures would be mine, that they belonged to me already, and were my highest good, the whole world whirled around with me.

At last I spoke. I told her feverishly how I had loved her from almost the very first moment, a year and a half before, in Velichka, where I met her by chance in a large society, to me unknown, and where she had grown faint at the bottom of the salt mine; and I ran to the well for water. The next day I paid a visit to her parents; from that visit I came away in love completely.

All this, as I supposed, was perfectly known to her; but she listened with the greatest delight, blushing, and sometimes even asking questions in a low voice. I spoke a long time, and toward the end less stupidly than I had expected. I told how afterward she had been my only strength; how deeply and dreadfully unhappy I was yesterday when I said to myself that all was lost, and that I had lost faith in her also.

"I was just as unhappy," said she. "And it is true that at first I could not stammer out a word, but later I tried to correct everything."

After a while we were both silent. In me there was a struggle between timidity and a wish to kiss her feet; at last, in the most monstrously awkward way possible, and worthy of the last of idiots, I asked her if she loved me even a little.

She strove for a time to give me an answer, but, unable to bring herself to it, she rose and left the room.

She returned quickly with an album in her hand; she sat again at my side and showed me a drawing, my own portrait.

"I sketched this," said she, "from memory."

"Is it possible?"

"But there is something more," added she, putting her finger on the paper.

Then only did I note that at the side near the edge of the paper, were the letters j. v. a., in a very small hand.

"This is read in French," whispered Tola.

"In French?"

And in my boundless simplicity, I could not think what they meant till she began, —

"Je vous – ?"

And hiding her face in her hands, she bent so low that I saw the short hair on her neck, and her neck itself. Then I guessed at last and said with throbbing heart, —

"Now I may, I may – "

She raised her face, smiling and radiant, —

"And you must," added she, blinking, and, as it were, commanding me for the future.

At that moment they called us to lunch. At that lunch, I might have eaten knives and forks without knowing it.

A man grows accustomed to nothing so easily as to happiness. All that had passed was simply a series of miracles, but two days later it seemed to me perfectly natural that Tola was my betrothed. I thought that it ought to be so, that she was mine; and for this reason solely, that no other man loved her as I did.

Finally, the news of my betrothal went about through the city, and I began to receive congratulations from my comrades. Tola and I drove out beyond the suburbs with her parents, on which occasion many persons saw us together. I remember that drive perfectly. Tola, in a sack trimmed with otter-skin, and a cap trimmed with the same fur, looked like a vision, for her transparent complexion seemed more delicate with the dark bronze color of the trimmings. All turned to look after us, and so admired was she that some of my acquaintances stood as if fixed to the pavement.

Beyond the barriers, when we had passed rows of cottages, each lower than the other, we reached the open country at last. In the fields, between rows of trees, lay clear water, and on this, light in long streaks was shining. The meadows were flooded; the groves had no leaves; but we felt the presence of spring. Then came the moment of darkness, during which there is great calm in the world; such a calm took possession also of us. After the violent impressions of preceding days, I felt a great and sweet calmness. I had before me the dear face of Tola, rosy from the movement of air, but also soothed in that peace and thoughtful. We were both silent, and only looked at each other from moment to moment and smiled. For the first time in life I understood the meaning of undimmed, perfect happiness. As I was very young and had lived through little, I had, in fact, no heavy sins on my conscience, but, like all men, I bore with me my own load of defects, faults, and failures. Behold, at that moment this burden dropped from my shoulders. I felt in my bosom no bitterness. I had not the least dislike for people; I was ready to forgive and help every one. I felt renewed altogether, just as if love had taken the soul out of me and put into my body an angel immediately.

And this had happened because it was permitted me to love, and she, that dear one sitting opposite, had been given to me. What is more, for that very reason the four persons in that carriage were not merely what is called happy; they were better than ever they had been before. All the pettinesses of society, the paltry ambitions, the pitiful views of existence; all that which debases life and makes it repulsive, flat, and deceitful, – we had shaken away, together with the former sorrow and bitterness. Tola's parents had barely opened their house to this blessed guest when we began to live more broadly and loftily than ever before.

Hence I could not understand why people so often reject that which in life is the one, the supreme good. Still oftener do they squander it. I know those petty wise-saws which circulate like counterfeit money: that love withers, grows old, passes away, vanishes, and that finally habit alone is the bond between man and woman. Now I will show that this truth relates solely to stupid or pitiful people. There are chosen souls, who know how to avoid that condition; I have met such in the world, hence I myself have the wish and the will to become one of them. If this flame to-day makes me so happy, my first duty, and the most direct task of selfishness, is that it should not quench, that it should not even decrease in the future. Therefore I will defy that future! it has time on its side. I have my great love and good will. To live with Tola and cease to love her, – we will see about that!

All at once an irresistible desire mastered me to begin that life at the earliest. I knew that society customs did not permit betrothed persons to marry before the end of certain weeks, or months, but I remembered that I had to deal with exceptional people. I was convinced that Tola would aid me, and I determined to involve her in the affair.

On our return home, when they left us alone, I confessed my thoughts to her. She listened with immense delight. I saw that not only the plan itself, but even discussion concerning it, had for her the charm of a lover's conspiracy, and simply carried her away. At moments she had the look of a child to whom people promise some wonderful amusement which is soon to appear, and she could not restrain herself from dancing through the room. We did not mention the matter that evening, however; but at tea I told of my hopes for the future, and the paths which were opening before me. Tola's parents listened as though those hopes had been realized. Could I have supposed those people of dove-like simplicity to be acting through politeness, I should have called that politeness the very wisest, for seeing their faith and confidence I said to myself, Though I were to lay down my head I will not deceive you.