The Last Days of Tolstoy

by V. G. Chertkov

Thus the cup was already full and only the last drop was lacking. And just at this time suddenly the new element in his wife's behaviour which provided that last impulse to departure was revealed to Leo Nikolaevitch.

What was new to him was the sudden revelation of the atmosphere of lying and hypocrisy in which he saw himself entangled. He unexpectedly became the involuntary witness of how Sofya Andreyevna, when she thought he was asleep, secretly stole up to his papers, and of how, as soon as she found out that he was not asleep, she began again at once as though nothing were the matter, expressing solicitude for his health. His eyes were at once opened and he saw what had long been well known to his intimate friends, but what the remnant of confidence in and respect for his wife which were still preserved in his soul, forbade him even to admit in his thoughts: that is, that she was acting a farce with him.

Together with this discovery everything was transformed for Leo Nikolaevitch, and indeed that was inevitable. It was of little moment that the incident which opened his eyes may seem in itself not to be of much importance. For married people who have lived together fifty years the first incident which reveals hypocrisy in one of them is always of importance. This incident at once threw quite a new light for Leo Nikolaevitch on all that had passed between him and Sofya Andreyevna. Till that time he had supposed that he had to do with sincere egoism and ill-will, with open wilfulness and innate coarseness and with morbid abnormality. And meeting this with unvarying mildness, patience and love, he recognised that he was doing as he ought, and therefore felt an inner satisfaction. Now all this was turned upside down. In the past the position had been clear; before him was a definite evil which laid on him as definite a duty to meet the evil with good. Now he had to do with a sort of tangle in which there was so much falsity that it was impossible to make out where reality ended and deception began; so that instead of his former satisfaction Leo Nikolaevitch suddenly felt the ambiguous position in which he found himself. So at

least I explain to myself the extreme emotion which Leo Nikolaevitch felt at his final decision to go away.

It is true that even before this he knew of Sofya Andreyevna's insincere behaviour. A month before he went away he wrote of Sofya Andreyevna in this diary: "I cannot get accustomed to regarding her words as the ravings of delirium. All my trouble comes from that. It is impossible to talk to her, because she does not recognise the obligation of truth nor of logic, nor of her own words, nor of conscience. It is awful. I am not speaking now of love for me, of which there is no trace. She does not want my love for her either; all she wants is that people should think that I love her, and that is so awful." (Diary, September 10, 1910.) Yet apparently Leo Nikolaevitch still had no idea of the degree of insincerity and deception of which Sofya Andreyevna was capable in her relations with him personally. But on that night he was involuntarily brought face to face with the manifestation of it, and he was the more revolted because he had hitherto so scrupulously striven in his soul to preserve some sort of trust in his wife.

Finally, convinced that he was incapable of changing the spiritual condition of Sofya

Andreyevna, he saw now that his presence at her side could only serve as a cause of offence for her, exciting the worst side of her nature. And so the former obstacles to his departure were removed from him, and his soul demanded release from the unbefitting position in which he found himself.

It is easy to understand that under such conditions the first serious occasion was sufficient to impel him to carry out his long-cherished intention, and he went away.[25]

FOOTNOTE

[25] I have heard—it is true, from very few persons, and those chiefly belonging to Leo Nikolaevitch's family—regret expressed that he did not die peaceably at Yasnaya Polyana in the midst of his family. The picture imagined by these people of the death-bed of Leo Nikolaevitch in the home of his ancestors, surrounded by all his family, and giving his blessing to his grief-stricken wife, may perhaps be very touching. But such a scene would in reality be impossible, since Sofya Andreyevna was in such a condition of mind that, apart from a simulated exaggeration of feeling and the basest preoccupation with the material heritage, nothing more would have happened than on previous occasions when Leo Nikolaevitch was taken with the attacks and fainting fits to which he was liable, and it would have been painful for him. We ought, on the contrary, to rejoice that circumstances gave Leo Nikolaevitch the chance of spending the last days of his life and the last hours of his consciousness in a quiet, genuine atmosphere, among intimate friends who truly loved and understood him, and who strenuously watched over his spiritual peace and did not pester him in those last minutes with any worldly cares or material considerations. In this I cannot but see an immense happiness and blessing for Leo Nikolaevitch.