Chapter 11

As Lavretsky was leaving the Kalitines' house he met Panshine, with whom he exchanged a cold greeting. Then he went home and shut himself up in his room. The sensations he experienced were such as he had hardly ever known before. Was it long ago that he was in a condition of "peaceful torpor?" Was it long ago that he felt himself, as he had expressed it, "at the very bottom of the river?" What then had changed his condition? What had brought him to the surface, to the light of day? Was the most ordinary and inevitable, though always unexpected, of occurrences--death? Yes. But yet it was not so much his wife's death, his own freedom, that he was thinking about, as this--what answer will Liza give to Panshine?

He felt that in the course of the last three days he had begun to look on Liza with different eyes. He remembered how, when he was returning home and thinking of her in the silence of the night, he said to himself "If!--" This "if," by which at that time he had referred to the past, to the impossible, now applied to an actual state of things, but not exactly such a one as he had then supposed. Freedom by itself was little to him now. "She will obey her mother," he thought. "She will marry Panshine. But even if she refuses him--will it not be just the same as far as I am concerned?" Passing at that moment in front of a looking-glass, he just glanced at his face in it, and then shrugged his shoulders.

Amid such thoughts as these the day passed swiftly by. The evening arrived, and Lavretsky went to the Kalitines. He walked fast until he drew near to the house, but then he slackened his pace. Panshine's carriage was standing before the door. "Well," thought Lavretsky, as he entered the house, "I will not be selfish." No one met him in-doors, and all seemed quiet in the drawing-room. He opened the door, and found that Madame Kalitine was playing piquet with Panshine. That gentleman bowed to him silently, while the lady of the house exclaimed, "Well, this is an unexpected pleasure," and slightly frowned. Lavretsky sat down beside her and began looking at her cards.

"So you can play piquet?" she asked, with a shade of secret vexation in her voice, and then remarked that she had thrown away a wrong card.

Panshine counted ninety, and began to take up the tricks calmly and politely, his countenance the while wearing a grave and dignified expression. It was thus, he thought, that diplomatists ought to play. It was thus, in all probability, that he used to play with some influential dignitary at St. Petersburg, whom he wished to impress with a favorable idea of his solidity and perspicacity. "One hundred and one, hundred and two, heart, hundred and three," said the measured tones of his voice, and Lavretsky could not tell which it expressed--dislike or assurance.

"Can't I see Marfa Timofeevna?" asked Lavretsky, observing that Panshine, with a still more dignified air than before, was about to shuffle the cards; not even a trace of the artist was visible in him now.

"I suppose so. She is up-stairs in her room," answered Maria Dmitrievna. "You can ask for her."

Lavretsky went up-stairs. He found Marfa Timofeevna also at cards. She was playing at _Durachki_ with Nastasia Carpovna. Roska barked at him, but both the old ladies received him cordially. Marfa Timofeevna seemed in special good humor.

"Ah, Fedia!" she said, "do sit down, there's a good fellow. We shall have done our game directly. Will you have some preserves? Shurochka, give him a pot of strawberries. You won't have any? Well, then, sit there as you are. But as to smoking, you mustn't. I cannot abide your strong tobacco; besides, it would make Matros sneeze."

Lavretsky hastened to assure her that he had not the slightest desire to smoke.

"Have you been down-stairs?" asked the old lady. "Whom did you find there? Is Panshine always hanging about there? But did you see Liza? No? She was to have come here. Why there she is--as soon as one mentions her."

Liza came into the room, caught sight of Lavretsky and blushed.

"I have only come for a moment, Marfa Timofeevna," she was beginning.

"Why for a moment?" asked the old lady. "Why are all you young people so restless? You see I have a visitor there. Chat a little with him, amuse him."

Liza sat down on the edge of a chair, raised her eyes to Lavretsky, and felt at once that she could not do otherwise than let him know how her interview with Panshine had ended. But how was that to be managed? She felt at the same time confused and ashamed. Was it so short a time since she had become acquainted with that man, one who scarcely ever went to church even, and who bore the death of his wife so equably? and yet here she was already communicating her secrets to him. It was true that he took an interest in her; and that, on her side she trusted him, and felt herself drawn towards him. But in spite of all this, she felt a certain kind of modest shame--as if a stranger had entered her pure maiden chamber.

Marfa Timofeevna came to her rescue.

"Well, if you will not amuse him," she said, "who is to amuse him, poor fellow? I am too old for him; he is too clever for me; and as to Nastasia Carpovna, he is too old for her. It's only boys she cares for."

"How can I amuse Fedor Ivanovich?" said Liza. "I would rather play him something on the piano, if he likes," she continued irresolutely.

"That's capital. You're a clever creature," replied Marfa Timofeevna. "Go down-stairs, my dears. Come back again when you've clone; but just now, here I'm left the _durachka_,[A] so I'm savage. I must have my revenge."

[Footnote A: In the game of _durachki_, the player who remains the last is called the _durachok_ or _durachka_, diminutive of _durak_, a fool. The game somewhat resembles our own "Old Bachelor" or "Old Maid."]

Liza rose from her chair, and so did Lavretsky. As she was going down-stairs, Liza stopped.

"What they say is true," she began. "The human heart is full of contradictions. Your example ought to have frightened me--ought to have made me distrust marrying for love, and yet I--".

"You've refused him?" said Lavretsky, interrupting her.

"No; but I have not accepted him either. I told him every thing--all my feelings on the subject--and I asked him to wait a little. Are you satisfied?" she asked with a sudden smile: and letting her hand skim lightly along the balustrade, she ran down-stairs.

"What shall I play you?" she asked, as she opened the piano.

"Whatever you like," answered Lavretsky, taking a seat where he could look at her.

Liza began to play, and went on for some time with-out lifting her eyes from her fingers. At last she looked at Lavretsky, and stopped playing. The expression of his face seemed so strange and unusual to her.

"What is the, matter?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "All is well with me at present. I feel happy on your account; it makes me glad to look at you--do go on."

"I think," said Liza, a few minutes later, "if he had really loved me he would not have written that letter; he ought to have felt that I could not answer him just now."

"That doesn't matter," said Lavretsky; "what does matter is that you do not love him."

"Stop! What is that you are saying? The image of your dead wife is always haunting me, and I feel afraid of you."

"Doesn't my Liza play well, Woldemar?" Madame Kalitine was saying at this moment to Panshine.

"Yes," replied Panshine, "exceedingly well."

Madame Kalitine looked tenderly at her young partner; but he assumed a still more important and pre-occupied look, and called fourteen kings.

XXIX.

Lavretsky was no longer a very young man. He could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling with which Liza had inspired him. On that day he became finally convinced that he was in love with her. That conviction did not give him much pleasure.

"Is it possible," he thought, "that at five-and-thirty I have nothing else to do than to confide my heart a second time to a woman's keeping? But Liza is not like _her_. She would not have demanded humiliating sacrifices from me. She would not have led me astray from my occupations. She would have inspired me herself with a love for honorable hard work, and we should have gone forward together towards some noble end. Yes," he said, bringing his reflections to a close, "all that is very well. But the worst of it is that she will not go anywhere with me. It was not for nothing that she told me she was afraid of me. And as to her not being in love with Panshine--that is but a poor consolation!"

Lavretsky went to Vasilievskoe; but he could not manage to spend even four days there--so wearisome did it seem to him. Moreover, he was tormented by suspense. The news which M. Jules had communicated required confirmation, and he had not yet received any letters. He returned to town, and passed the evening at the Kalitines'. He could easily see that Madame Kalitine had been set against him; but he succeeded in mollifying her a little by losing some fifteen roubles to her at piquet. He also contrived to get half-an-hour alone with Liza, in spite of her mother having recommended her, only the evening before, not to be too intimate with a man "_qui a tin si grand ridicule_."

He found a change in her. She seemed to have become more contemplative. She blamed him for stopping away; and she asked him if he would not go to church the next day--the next day being Sunday.

"Do come," she continued, before he had time to answer. "We will pray together for the repose of _her_ soul." Then she added that she did not know what she ought to do--that she did not know whether she had any right to make Panshine wait longer for her decision.

"Why?" asked Lavretsky.

"Because," she replied, "I begin to suspect by this time what that decision will be."

Then she said that she had a headache, and went to her room, after irresolutely holding out the ends of her fingers to Lavretsky.

The next day Lavretsky went to morning service. Liza was already in the church when he entered. He remarked her, though she did not look towards him. She prayed fervently; her eyes shone with a quiet light; quietly she bowed and lifted her head.

He felt that she was praying for him also, and a strange emotion filled his soul. The people standing gravely around, the familiar faces, the harmonious chant, the odor of the incense, the long rays slanting through the windows, the very sombreness of the walls and arches--all appealed to his heart. It was long since he had been in church--long since he had turned his thoughts to God. And even now he did not utter any words of prayer--he did not even pray without words; but nevertheless, for a moment, if not in body, at least in mind, he bowed clown and bent himself humbly to the ground. He remembered how, in the days of his childhood, he always used to pray in church till he felt on his forehead something like a kind of light touch. "That" he used then to think, "is my guardian angel visiting me and pressing on me the seal of election." He looked at Liza. "It is you who have brought me here," he thought. "Touch me--touch my soul!" Meanwhile, she went on quietly praying. Her face seemed to him to be joyous, and once more he felt softened, and he asked, for another's soul, rest--for his own, pardon. They met outside in the porch, and she received him with a friendly look of serious happiness. The sun brightly lit up the fresh grass in the church-yard and the many-colored dresses and kerchiefs of the women. The bells of the neighboring churches sounded on high; the sparrows chirped on the walls. Lavretsky stood by, smiling and bare-headed; a light breeze played with his hair and Liza's, and with the ends of Liza's bonnet strings. He seated Liza and her companion Lenochka, in the carriage, gave away all the change he had about him to the beggars, and then strolled slowly home.

XXX.

The days which followed were days of heaviness for Lavretsky. He felt himself in a perpetual fever. Every morning he went to the post, and impatiently tore open his letters and newspapers; but in none of them did he find anything which could confirm or contradict that rumor, on the truth of which he felt that so much now depended. At times he grew disgusted with himself. "What am I," he then would think, "who am waiting here, as a raven waits for blood, for certain intelligence of my wife's death?"

He went to the Kalitines' every day; but even there he was not more at his ease. The mistress of the house was evidently out of humor with him, and treated him with cold condescension. Panshine showed him exaggerated politeness; Lemm had become misanthropical, and scarcely even returned his greeting; and, worst of all, Liza seemed to avoid him. Whenever she happened to be left alone with him, she manifested symptoms of embarrassment, instead of the frank manner of former days. On such occasions she did not know what to say to him; and even he felt confused. In the course of a few days Liza had become changed from what he remembered her to have been. In her movements, in her voice, even in her laugh itself, a secret uneasiness manifested itself--something different from her former evenness of temper. Her mother, like a true egotist, did not suspect anything; but Marfa Timofeevna began to watch her favorite closely.

Lavretsky often blamed himself for having shown Liza the newspaper he had received; he could not help being conscious that there was something in his state of feeling which must be repugnant to a very delicate mind. He supposed, moreover, that the change which had taken place in Liza arose from a struggle with herself, from her doubt as to what answer she should give to Panshine.

One day she returned him a book--one of Walter Scott's novels--which she had herself asked him for.

"Have you read it?" he asked.

"No; I am not in a mood for books just now," she answered, and then was going away.

"Wait a minute," he said. "It is so long since I got a talk with you alone. You seem afraid of me. Is it so?"

"Yes."

"But why?"

"I don't know."

Lavretsky said nothing for a time.

"Tell me," he began again presently; "haven't you made up your mind yet?"

"What do you mean?" she replied, without lifting her eyes from the ground.

"Surely you understand me?"

Liza suddenly reddened.

"Don't ask me about anything!" she exclaimed with animation. "I know nothing. I don't know myself."

And she went hastily away.

The next day Lavretsky arrived at the Kalitines' after dinner, and found all the preparations going on there for an evening service. In a corner of the dining-room, a number of small icons[A] in golden frames, with tarnished little diamonds in the aureolas, were already placed against the wall on a square table, which was covered with a table-cloth of unspotted whiteness. An old servant, dressed in a grey coat and wearing shoes, traversed the whole room deliberately and noiselessly, placed two slender candle-sticks with wax tapers in them before the icons, crossed himself, bowed, and silently left the room.

[Footnote A: Sacred Pictures.]

The drawing-room was dark and empty. Lavretsky went into the dining-room, and asked if it was any one's name-day.[A] He was told in a whisper that it was not, but that a service was to be performed in accordance with the request of Lizaveta Mikhailovna and Marfa Timofeevna. The miracle-working picture was to have been brought, but it had gone to a sick person thirty versts off.

[Footnote A: A Russian keeps, not his birthday, but his name-day--that is, the day set apart by the church in honor of the saint after whom he is called.]

Soon afterwards the priest arrived with his acolytes--a middle-aged man, with a large bald spot on his head, who coughed loudly in the vestibule. The ladies immediately came out of the boudoir in a row, and asked him for his blessing. Lavretsky bowed to them in silence, and they as silently returned his greeting. The priest remained a little longer where he was, then coughed again, and asked, in a low, deep voice--

"Do you wish me to begin?"

"Begin, reverend father," replied Maria Dmitrievna.

The priest began to robe. An acolyte in a surplice humbly asked for a coal from the fire. The scent of the incense began to spread around. The footmen and the maid-servants came in from the ante-chamber and remained standing in a compact body at the door. The dog Roska, which, as a general rule, never came down-stairs from the upper story, now suddenly made its appearance in the dining room. The servants tried to drive it out, but it got frightened, first ran about, and then lay down. At last a footman got hold of it and carried it off.

The service began. Lavretsky retired into a corner. His feelings were strange and almost painful. He himself could not well define what it was that he felt. Maria Dmitrievna stood in front of the rest, with an arm-chair behind her. She crossed herself carelessly, languidly, like a great lady. Sometimes she looked round, at others she suddenly raised her eyes towards the ceiling. The whole affair evidently bored her.

Marfa Timofeevna seemed pre-occupied. Nastasia Carpovna bowed down to the ground, and raised herself up again, with a sort of soft and modest sound. As for Liza, she did not stir from the spot where she was standing, she did not change her position upon it; from the concentrated expression of her face, it was evident that she was praying uninterruptedly and fervently.

At the end of the service she approached the crucifix, and kissed both it and the large red hand of the priest. Maria Dmitrievna invited him to take tea. He threw off his stole, assumed a sort of mundane air, and went into the drawing-room with the ladies. A conversation began, not of a very lively nature. The priest drank four cups of tea, wiping the bald part of his head the while with his handkerchief, stated among other things that the merchant Avoshnikof had given several hundred roubles towards the gilding of the church's "cumpola," and favored the company with an unfailing cure for freckles.

Lavretsky tried to get a seat near Liza, but she maintained her grave, almost austere air, and never once looked at him. She seemed intentionally to ignore him. A kind of serious, cold enthusiasm appeared to possess her. For some reason or other Lavretsky felt inclined to smile, and to utter words of jesting; but his heart was ill at ease, and at last he went away in a state of secret perplexity. There was something, he felt, in Liza's mind, which he could not understand.

On another occasion, as Lavretsky was sitting in the drawing-room, listening to the insinuating tones of Gedeonovsky's wearisome verbiage, he suddenly turned round, he knew not why, and caught the deep, attentive, inquiring look of Liza's eyes. That enigmatical look was directed towards him. The whole night long Lavretsky thought of it. His love was not like that of a boy, nor was it consistent with his age to sigh and to torment himself; and indeed it was not with a feeling of a merely passionate nature that Liza had inspired him. But love has its sufferings for every age--and he became perfectly acquainted with them.

XXXI.

One day Lavretsky was as usual at the Kalitines'. An overpoweringly hot afternoon had been followed by such a beautiful evening that Madame Kalitine, notwithstanding her usual aversion to a draught, ordered all the windows and the doors leading into the garden to be opened. Moreover, she announced that she was not going to play cards, that it would be a sin to do so in such lovely weather, and that it was a duty to enjoy the beauties of nature.

Panshine was the only stranger present. Influenced by the evening, and feeling a flow of artistic emotion, but not wishing to sing in Lavretsky's presence, he threw himself into poetry He read--and read well, only with too much consciousness, and with needlessly subtle distinctions--some of Lermontof's poems (Pushkin had not then succeeded in getting back into fashion). Suddenly, as if ashamed of his emotion, he began in reference to the well-known _Duma_,[A] to blame and attack the new generation, not losing the opportunity which the subject afforded him of setting forth how, if the power lay in his hands, he would alter everything his own way.

[Footnote A: For the poem, so-called, see note at end of chapter.]

"Russia," he said, "has lagged behind Europe, and must be driven up alongside of it. We are told that ours is a young country. That is all nonsense. Besides, we have no inventive power. Khomakof[A] himself admits that we have never invented so much as a mousetrap. Consequently we are obliged to imitate others, whether we like it or no."

[Footnote A: A poet, who was one of the leaders of the Slavophile party.]

"'We are ill,' says Lermontof, and I agree with him. But we are ill because we have only half become Europeans. With that which has wounded us we must be cured." ("_Le cadastre_" thought Lavretsky.) "Among us," he continued, "the best heads, _les meilleures têtes_, have long been convinced of this. In reality, all peoples are alike; only introduce good institutions, and the affair is settled. To be sure, one may make some allowance for the existing life of the nation; that is our business, the business of the people who are" (he all but said "statesmen") "in the public service; but if need arises, don't be uneasy. Those institutions will modify that life itself."

Maria Dmitrievna admiringly agreed with him. "What a clever man to have talking in my house!" she thought. Liza kept silence, leaning back in the recess of the window. Lavretsky kept silence too. Marfa Timofeevna, who was playing cards in a corner with her friend, grumbled something to herself. Panshine walked up and down the room, speaking well, but with a sort of suppressed malice. It seemed as if he was blaming, not so much a whole generation, as some individuals of his acquaintance. A nightingale had made its home in a large lilac bush which stood in the Kalitines' garden, and the first notes of its even-song made themselves heard during the pauses in the eloquent harangue; the first stars began to kindle in the rose-stained sky above the motionless tops of the lime trees. Presently Lavretsky rose and began to reply to Panshine. A warm dispute soon commenced.

Lavretsky spoke in defence of the youth of Russia, and of the capacity of the country to suffice for itself. He surrendered himself and his contemporaries, but he stood up for the new generation, and their wishes and convictions. Panshine replied incisively and irritably, declared that clever people were bound to reform every thing, and at length was carried away to such an extent that, forgetting his position as a chamberlain, and his proper line of action as a member of the civil service, he called Lavretsky a retrogade conservative, and alluded--very distantly it is true--to his false position in society. Lavretsky did not lose his temper, nor did he raise his voice; he remembered that Mikhalevich also had called him a retrograde, and, at the same time a disciple of Voltaire; but he calmly beat Panshine on every point. He proved the impracticability of reforming by sudden bounds, and of introducing changes haughtily schemed on the heights of official self-complacency--changes which were not justified by any intimate acquaintance with the country, nor by a living faith in any ideal, not even in one of negation, and in illustration of this he adduced his own education. He demanded before every thing else that the true spirit of the nation should be recognized, and that it should be looked up to with that humility without which no courage is possible, not even that wherewith to oppose falsehood. Finally he did not attempt to make any defence against what he considered a deserved reproach, that of giving way to a wasteful and inconsiderate expenditure of both time and strength.