Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/336

322 you see the abashed and happy soldier who indiscriminately salutes every one, not knowing who is who, and when at last he recognizes the young woman as his daughter, again draws her to him and kisses her this time, not simply as any young woman, but kisses her as his daughter, whom he had left long before, as if without compunction.

The father had reformed. How many false and awkward phrases we should have put in at such an opportunity. But Fedka simply told how the daughter brought wine, but he refused to drink. And you see also the peasant woman, as she gets out her last twenty kopeks, and breathlessly whispers to the young woman in the entry to go after liquor, and thrusts the copper coins into her hand. And you see that young woman, as with her apron over her arm, with the flask in her hand, her shoes clattering, her elbows flying out behind her back, runs off to the kabak. You see her coming back to the izba all flushed, taking the flask out from under her apron, her mother with pride and elation setting it on the table, and then showing first some offense and then joy because her husband did not proceed to drink. And you see that, if he resists the temptation to drink now, he has really reformed. You feel how completely other people have become all members of the family.

"My father asked a blessing and sat down at the table. I sat next him; my sister sat on the bench, but mother stood by the table and kept gazing at father and saying:—

"'Why, how young you have grown! You have no beard!'

"Every one laughed."

And only when all have taken their departure the genuine family talk begins. Here only is it revealed that the soldier has been thriving, and thriving by the simplest and most natural means, just as almost all men in the world thrive: in other words, the money belonging to others, to the treasury, to society, has by a fortunate chance been diverted into his hands.