MENTAL AGONY
It will be readily understood that no health could hold out against
such torments lasting over several months at a stretch, no less
severe, it may be said, than the tortures of the Inquisition, and
exceeding them in their uninterrupted persistence and prolongation.
And indeed, returning to Yasnaya in a vigorous and excellent state of
health, Leo Nikolaevitch began visibly fading away before her eyes in
the nightmare period of the last months of his life: in the course of
a few weeks he looked so old and drawn, so weak and thin, so pale and
in every respect so physically run down as to be unrecognisable. In
the course of those months he had several attacks of faintness. By
the day of his departure he looked only the shadow of himself: his
heart, his nerves, all his forces were utterly undermined, and of
course, under such conditions, the slightest ailment was sure to
carry him off, as happened indeed with the first cold he chanced to
catch immediately after he went away.
All Sofya Andreyevna's conduct during those last months of their life
together revealed to Leo Nikolaevitch much in her that he had never
noticed before. He was not only led to doubt of his cherished dream
of softening her heart by his all-forgiving love; he began even to
feel uncertain whether he were doing her harm or good by being near
her, and whether the doctors were not right who in her interests
advised them to live apart.[20] And in the end he became convinced
that his presence really was a direct incitement to evil for her,
calling out and accentuating all the worst sides of her character.
Speaking of his departure with that same Novikov a week before it
took place, Leo Nikolaevitch said: "For my own sake I have not done
this and could not do it, but now I see that it would be better for
my family, there would be less dispute among them on my account,
less sin."
Another reason that had previously restrained him from going away lay
in the fact that he considered that the ordeal to which he was
continually exposed in his wife's company was profitable for his own
soul, and found in it a spiritual satisfaction. But in the end Sofya
Andreyevna, as she herself expressed it after his death, "overdid it"
in her behaviour with him, putting him in such a position that
instead of satisfaction he began to experience the sense of
awkwardness and shame which one feels in taking part in something
unbecoming, unseemly. Two days before he went away he wrote to me: "I
feel something _unbefitting, something shameful_ in my position." And
in the letter to Alexandra Lvovna the day after he went away he says:
"I do not feel _that shame, that awkwardness_, that lack of freedom
which I always used to feel at home." In his last letter to Sofya
Andreyevna from Shamardino he states even more definitely that to
return to her when she is in such a state of mind would be equivalent
to committing suicide, and he did not consider that he had a right to
do that. So by now he no longer believed that staying with Sofya
Andreyevna was profitable for his own soul, and recognised it as
undesirable.
In the course of the later years his hesitation had increased with
every day, and at times he seemed to be on the very point of
flight.[21] He only stayed through not feeling as yet that
irresistible impulse which, as he so well recognised, was _essential_
in order that he might take this momentous step, not through rational
considerations alone, but with all his soul, confidently and
inevitably. And so long as this impulse was lacking and he was
more or less weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ of his departure, the
consideration that for him personally to go away would be a relief,
and that there would be more self-sacrifice in remaining, retained
its force. Thus I have been told that two days before his departure,
when he informed his old friend, the old lady Marya Alexandrovna
Schmidt (who, by the way, later on fully understood and approved his
departure), that he thought of leaving Yasnaya Polyana, and she
thereupon exclaimed: "Leo Nikolaevitch darling, it will pass, it is a
moment's weakness," he hastened to reply: "Yes, yes, I know that it
is a weakness and I hope that it will pass."
So that in spite of the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch had now become
aware of a new phase in Sofya Andreyevna's relations to him, which in
reality removed any reasonable purpose in his remaining at her side,
and justified his departure, since his presence was becoming bad for
her and unprofitable for him, nevertheless he still lingered on,
dreading to act prematurely, and as it were waiting for the last
decisive shock.
And this shock was not long in coming with startling abruptness.
FOOTNOTES
[20] At the advice of all his friends and members of his
household Leo Nikolaevitch went in September to stay with his
daughter Tatyana Lvovna Suhotin (at Kotchety) in order to have a rest
from family scenes. But Sofya Andreyevna would not leave him in peace
even there. This is what we read in Makovitsky's diary:
"This is the third day that Sofya Andreyevna is perfectly frantic.
Leo Nikolaevitch sent me to her several times during the day; in the
morning she was in her room; she complained of headache and said that
she had taken no food for two days; in the afternoon she ran off into
the garden.
"Sofya Andreyevna spent the whole day by herself in the park. Leo
Nikolaevitch sent me to find her.
"'Oh, Dushan Petrovitch!' he said to me, 'it's worse than ever;
everything is going to the worst. Sofya Andreyevna insists that I
should go away with her. But I simply cannot do it, for her demands
go _crescendo_ and _crescendo_. I don't know what to do!'" (September
11, 1910, Kotchety.)
[21] Thus in D. P. Makovitsky's diary we read:
"Leo Nikolaevitch spoke to Alexandra Lvovna of how heavy their family
atmosphere was, and said that if it had not been for her he would
have gone away. He is on the alert. Yesterday morning he asked me
what were the morning trains to the south. He had said to Marya
Alexandrovna, and before that to us, that he has not been able to
work for the last four months and that Sofya Andreyevna keeps
running in to him, and always suspecting that some secrets are
being concealed from her, written documents and conversations"
(October 26, 1910).