The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Childhood/Chapter 11
XI.
Occupations in the Cabinet and in the Sitting-room
It was getting dark when we reached home. Mamma seated herself at the piano, and we children brought paper, pencils, and paint, and took up positions at the round table. I had only some blue paint; yet I began to picture the hunt with that alone. Having very vividly represented a blue boy astride on a blue horse, and blue dogs, I was not quite sure whether it was proper to paint a blue hare, and so I ran into papa's cabinet to take counsel with him. Papa was reading something, and to my question, "Are there any blue hares?" he answered, without raising his head, "There are, my dear, there are." I returned to the round table and painted a blue hare; but I found it necessary later to change the blue hare into a bush. The bush did not please me either; I made a tree of it, and of the tree I made a hay rick, and of the rick a cloud, and finally I so smeared the whole paper over with the blue paint, that I tore it up in anger, and dozed off in an armchair.
Mamma was playing the second concert of Field, her teacher. I was dozing, and in my imagination rose some light, bright and transparent recollections. She began to play a pathetic sonata of Beethoven, and something sad, heavy and gloomy overcast my mind. Mamma often played these two pieces. I very well remember, therefore, the feeling which they evoked in me. That feeling resembled recollections, but recollections of what? It seemed to me that I was recalling something that had never been.
Opposite me was the door to the cabinet, and I saw Yákov and some other people in caftans and beards entering through it. The door was at once closed after them. "Well, now the occupation has begun!" thought I. It seemed to me there was nothing more important in the whole world than the affairs which were transacted in the cabinet. I was strengthened in this belief because people generally walked up to the door of the cabinet whispering and on tiptoe, while from it was heard papa's loud voice, and was borne the odour of a cigar which, for some reason, always attracted me. In my waking moments I was suddenly struck by a familiar creaking of boots in the officiating room. Karl Ivánovich walked up on tiptoe, but with a gloomy and firm face, holding some kind of notes in his hand, and lightly knocked at the door. He was admitted, and the door was again closed.
"I wonder whether some misfortune has happened," thought I. "Karl Ivánovich is angry, and he is capable of doing almost anything."
I again fell asleep.
There was, however, no misfortune. An hour later the same creaking boots awoke me. Karl Ivánovich, with his handkerchief wiping off the tears which I had noticed on his cheeks, issued from the door, and mumbling something to himself, went up-stairs. Papa came out after him, and entered the sitting-room.
"Do you know what I have just decided?" said he in a happy voice, placing his hand on mamma's shoulder.
"What, my dear?"
"I shall take Karl Ivánovich along with the children. They are used to him, and he, it seems, is really attached to them. Seven hundred roubles a year does not amount to much, et puis au fond c'est un très bon diable."
I could not at all grasp why papa was scolding Karl Ivánovich.
"I am very glad," said mamma, "both for the children and for him; he is an excellent old man."
"You ought to have seen how touched he was when I told him that he should leave the five hundred roubles as a present for the children! But what is most amusing is the bill which he brought me. It is worth looking at," added he, with a smile, as he gave her the note which had been written by Karl Ivánovich's hand. "It is fine!"
Here are the contents of the note.
"For the children two fishing-rod — 70 kopek.
"Coloured paper, gold border, glew and form for boxs, as presents — 6 roubles 55 kopek.
"A book and bow, presents to children — 8 roubles 16 kopek.
"Pantaloon to Nikoláy — 4 rouble.
"Promised by Peter Aleksántrofich from Moscow in the year 18 — gold watch at 140 roubles.
"Sum total due to Karl Mauer outside of salary — 159 roubles 79 kopek."
Reading this note, in which Karl Ivánovich demanded payment for all his expenditures for presents, and even for a present which he had been promised, everybody will conclude that Karl Ivánovich was nothing more than an unfeeling and avaricious egoist, but that is a mistake.
When he entered the cabinet with the notes in his hand and with a ready speech in his head, he had intended to expatiate to papa on all the injustice which he had suffered in our house, but when he began to speak in the same touching voice and the same touching intonations in which he generally dictated to us, his eloquence acted most powerfully upon himself, so that when he reached the place where he said, "However sad it will be for me to part from the children," he completely lost himself, his voice began to tremble, and he was compelled to get his checkered handkerchief out of his pocket.
"Yes, Peter Aleksándrych," said he through tears (that passage was not at all in his prepared speech), "I am so accustomed to the children that I do not know what I am going to do without them. I should prefer to serve you without pay," he added, with one hand wiping his tears, and with the other handing in his bill.
I am absolutely sure that Karl Ivánovich was that moment speaking sincerely, because I know his good heart; but it remains a mystery to me how his bill harmonized with his words.
"If the parting is sad for you, it is still sadder for me," said papa, tapping his shoulder. "I have now changed my mind."
Shortly before supper, Grísha entered the room. He had not ceased sobbing and weeping from the time he had come to our home, which, in the opinion of those who believed in his ability to predict, foreboded some misfortune for our house. He began to take leave, and said that the next morning he would wander on. I beckoned to Volódya, and went out-of-doors.
"What?"
"If you want to see Grísha's chains, let us go up-stairs, to the apartments of the male servants. Grísha sleeps there in the second room, and we can see everything from the lumber-room, and we shall see everything—"
"Superb! Wait here awhile; I will call the girls."
The girls came out, and we proceeded up-stairs. After some dispute as to who should be the first to go into the dark lumber-room, we seated ourselves, and began to wait.