Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral TalesTolstoy, Leo, graf
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Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian literature -- Translations into English
"Papa, step out! You are forgetting where we are."
The old man only then seemed to recall that they had arrived, and looked
around him.
"Do step out!"
He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed through the door. The
porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking
well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the
sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the
way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her
son's arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either
side, Natálya Nikoláevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an
important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the
maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a
bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her
laughing and by her calling the old man father.
"Not that way, father,--to the right!" she said, taking hold of the
sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the right."
On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of the steps, the
doors, and the heavy breathing of the elderly lady, the same laughter
which had been heard in the vehicle, and about which any one who heard
it thought: "How excellently she laughs,--I just envy her."
Their son, Sergyéy, had attended to all the material conditions on the
road, and, though he lacked knowledge of the matter, he had attended to
it with the energy and self-satisfying activity which are characteristic
of twenty-five years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for no
important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his greatcoat, and ran
up-stairs again, shivering in the cold and taking two or three steps at
a time with his long, youthful legs. Natálya Nikoláevna asked him not to
catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued to give
orders, slamming doors, and walking, and, when it seemed that only the
servants and peasants had to be attended to, he several times walked
through all the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and coming
in through another, as though he were looking for something else to do.
"Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house? Shall I find out?" he
asked.
His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not at all conscious of
where he was. He did not answer at once. He heard the words, but did not
comprehend them. Suddenly he comprehended.
"Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone Bridge."
The head of the family walked through the rooms with hasty, agitated
steps, and seated himself in a chair.
"Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange matters," he said. "Help
along, children, lively! Like good fellows, drag things around, put them
up, and to-morrow we shall send Serézha with a note to sister Márya
Ivánovna, to the Nikítins, or we shall go there ourselves. Am I right,
Natásha? But now, fix things!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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