Childhood
列夫·托尔斯泰 / Leo Tolstoy
Happy, happy, never-returning time of childhood! How can we help loving and dwelling upon its recollections? They cheer and elevate the soul, and become to one source of higher joys.
Sometimes, when dreaming of bygone days, fancy that, tired out with running about, I have sat down in my high arm-chair by the tea-table. It is late, and I have long since drunk my cup of milk. My eyes are heavy with sleep as I sit there and listen. How could I not listen, seeing that Mamma is speaking to somebody, and that the sound of her voice is so melodious and kind? How much its echoes recall to my heart! With my eyes veiled with drowsiness I gaze at her wistfully. Suddenly she seems to grow smaller and smaller, and her face vanishes to a point; yet I can still see it — can still see her as she looks at me and smiles. Somehow it pleases me to see her grown so small. I blink and blink, yet she looks no larger than a boy ref?lected in the pupil of an eye. Then I rouse myself, and the picture fades. Once more I half-close my eyes, and cast about to try and recall the dream, but it has gone, I rise to my feet, only to fall back comfortably into the armchair.
“There! You are falling asleep again, little Nicolas,” says Mamma. “You had better go to by-by.”
“No, I won’t go to sleep, Mamma,” I reply, though almost inaudibly, for pleasant dreams are f?illing all my soul. The sound sleep of childhood is weighing my eyelids down, and for a few moments. I sink into slumber and oblivion until awakened by some one. I feel in my sleep as though a soft hand were caressing me. I know it by the touch, and, though still dreaming, I seize hold of it and press it to my lips. Every one else has gone to bed, and only one candle remains burning in the drawing-room. Mamma has said that she herself will wake me. She sits down on the arm of the chair in which I am asleep, with her soft hand stroking my hair, and I hear her beloved, well-known voice say in my ear: “Get up, my darling. It is time to go by-by.”
No envious gaze sees her now. She is not afraid to shed upon me the whole of her tenderness and love. I do not wake up, yet I kiss and kiss her hand.
“Get up, then, my angel.”
She passes her other arm round my neck, and her f?ingers tickle me as they move across it. The room is quiet and in half-darkness, but the tickling has touched my nerves and I begin to awake. Mamma is sitting near me — that I can tell — and touching me; I can hear her voice and feel her presence. This at last rouses me to spring up, to throw my arms around her neck, to hide my head in her bosom, and to say with a sigh:
“Ah, dear, darling Mamma, how much I love you!”
She smiles her sad, enchanting smile, takes my head between her two hands, kisses me on the forehead, and lifts me on to her lap.
“Do you love me so much, then?” she says. Then, after a few moments’ silence, she continues: “And you must love me always, and never forget me. If your Mamma should no longer be here, will you promise never to forget her — never, Nicolinka?” and she kisses me more fondly than ever.
“Oh, but you must not speak so, darling Mamma, my own darling Mamma!” I exclaim as I clasp her knees, and tears of joy and love fall from my eyes.
How, after scenes like this! I would go upstairs, and stand before the icons, and say with a rapturous feeling, “God bless Papa and Mamma!” and repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt to lisp — the love of God and other blending strangely in a single emotion!