“I have suffered enough. I have now but one desire, and that is to put her in such a position that she will be independent of others, and that she shall have no further need of communicating with me. Then she can live her own life, and my family and I need know nothing more about her. That is all I can do.”
But the woman-heart crystallizes the teaching of the story when she replies:
“Michael, you say nothing but ‘I.’ She too is ‘I.’”
There is a fine, high spirit, too, in “Where Love is, There God is Also.”
Martin Andyeeich was an honest Russian cobbler whose wife and children had died, leaving him with but one child, a small boy, upon whom he had set his heart. But that child also died, and Martin reproached God. At length a pilgrim monk directed him to the gospels, and the cobbler became a devout follower of their teachings.
One day he heard a Voice which bade him look tomorrow into the street, for Christ would come to him. The Lord did not appear, however, and for a long while the only one with whom Martin conversed was a chilled old snow-sweeper, to whom the cobbler gave hot tea to drink, as he explained to him the gospel; after which the grateful old man left. Martin continued to look for Christ, but He did not come—though he did see a poorly clad woman with a little child. These he fed and warmed, hearing her story and bestowing an old jacket to cover her thin summer garments. He next acted as mediator between an old woman and a mischievous boy who had stolen her apples; and to her also he expounded the new truth which had possessed him—the doctrine of love. Thus all day long he had looked for the Christ and had not seen him. But now as he returned to his cellar a Presence declared itself as He who had said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” “And Martin then understood that his dream had not deceived him, and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had really received Him.”
One of the stories in Tolstoi’s earlier style is “A Prisoner in the Caucasus.”
Zhilin was an officer in the Caucasus in wartime. His aged mother persuaded him to come home once more to see her, and to marry the girl she had chosen to be his bride. The roads were impassable. The Tartars killed or carried into the mountains all Russians they captured. For this reason a military escort passed twice a week from fortress to fortress. Travelling thus, Zhilin became impatient at delays and decided to ride on alone. Kostuilin, another mounted officer, decided to go with him. They had not gone far when they were taken by the Tartars, bound, and held in a Tartar village for ransom. After many weeks, they escaped, only to be retaken and brought back to the village. And now the hut in which they were thrown and their food were worse than before. Again, after many weeks, Zhilin, with the aid of a Tartar maid, escaped, and finally reached the fortress. “You see,” he told his comrades, “I was going home to be married. But no; that is evidently not to be my fate.” Eventually he and his comrades ransomed Kostuilin for five thousand rubles.
I relate this perfectly plotless tale to show how on a slender thread of actual incident Tolstoi could hang a tremendous weight, for this story, with its naked truth-telling as to conditions, forced the government to act, by the sheer force of public opinion, and this is a miracle in Russia.
Another plotless story whose ten thousand words pile up a tremendous impression of character is “An Old Acquaintance.” The narrative, told in the first person by Prince Nelshiludof, is of how, during an expedition in the Caucasus, he met an acquaintance from Moscow. The splendor of the night in the open and the recreations of the officers are given in gems of description.