Chapter 5

On Sundays, after mass, he was allowed to play--that is to say, a thick book was given to him, a mysterious book, the work of a certain Maksimovich-Ambodik, bearing the title of "Symbols and Emblems." In this book there were to be found about a thousand, for the most part, very puzzling pictures, with equally puzzling explanations in five languages. Cupid, represented with a naked and chubby body, played a great part in these pictures. To one of them, the title of which was "Saffron and the Rainbow," was appended the explanation, "The effect of this is great." Opposite another, which represented "A Stork, flying with a violet in its beak," stood this motto, "To thee they are all known;" and "Cupid, and a bear licking its cub," was styled "Little by Little." Fedia used to pore over these pictures. He was familiar with them all even to their minutest details. Some of them--it was always the same ones--made him reflect, and excited his imagination: of other diversions he knew nothing.

When the time came for teaching him languages and music, Glafira Petrovna hired an old maid for a mere trifle, a Swede, whose eyes looked sideways, like a hare's, who spoke French and German more or less badly, played the piano so so, and pickled cucumbers to perfection. In the company of this governess, of his aunt, and of an old servant maid called Vasilievna, Fedia passed four whole years. Sometimes he would sit in a corner with his "Emblems"--there he would sit and sit. A scent of geraniums filled the low room, one tallow candle burnt dimly, the cricket chirped monotonously as if it were bored, the little clock ticked busily on the wall, a mouse scratched stealthily and gnawed behind the tapestry; and the three old maids, like the three Fates, knitted away silently and swiftly, the shadows of their hands now scampering along, now mysteriously quivering in the dusk; and strange, no less dusky, thoughts were being born in the child's mind.

No one would have called Fedia an interesting child. He was rather pale, but stout, badly built, and awkward--a regular moujik, to use the expression employed by Glafira Petrovna. The pallor would soon have vanished from his face if they had let him go out more into the fresh air. He learnt his lessons pretty well, though he was often idle. He never cried, but he sometimes evinced a savage obstinacy. At those times no one could do any thing with him. Fedia did not love a single one of the persons by whom he was surrounded. Alas for that heart which has not loved in youth!

Such did Ivan Petrovich find him when he returned; and, without losing time he at once began to apply his system to him.

"I want, above all, to make a man of him--_un homme_," he said to Glafira Petrovna "and not only a man, but a Spartan." This plan he began to carry out by dressing his boy in Highland costume. The twelve-year-old little fellow had to go about with bare legs, and with a cock's feather in his cap. The Swedish governess was replaced by a young tutor from Switzerland, who was acquainted with all the niceties of gymnastics. Music was utterly forbidden, as an accomplishment unworthy of a man. Natural science, international law, and mathematics, as well as carpentry, which was selected in accordance with the advice of Jean Jacques Rousseau; and heraldry, which was introduced for the maintenance of chivalrous ideas--these were the subjects to which the future "man" had to give his attention. He had to get up at four in the morning and take a cold bath immediately, after which he had to run round a high pole at the end of a cord. He had one meal a day, consisting of one dish; he rode on horseback, and he shot with a cross-bow. On every fitting occasion he had to exercise himself, in imitation of his father, in gaining strength of will; and every evening he used to write, in a book reserved for that purpose, an account of how he had spent the day, and what were his ideas on the subject. Ivan Petrovich, on his side, wrote instructions for him in French, in which he styled him _mon fils_, and addressed him as _vous_. Fedia used to say "thou" to his father in Russian, but he did not dare to sit down in his presence.

The "system" muddled the boy's brains, confused his ideas, and cramped his mind; but, as far as his physical health was concerned, the new kind of life acted on him beneficially. At first he fell ill with a fever, but he soon recovered and became a fine fellow. His father grew proud of him, and styled him in his curious language, "the child of nature, my creation." When Fedia reached the age of sixteen, Ivan Petrovich considered it a duty to inspire him in good time with contempt for the female sex--and so the young Spartan, with the first down beginning to appear upon his lips, timid in feeling, but with a body full of blood, and strength, and energy, already tried to seem careless, and cold, and rough.

Meanwhile time passed by. Ivan Petrovich spent the greater part of the year at Lavriki--that was the name of his chief hereditary estate; but in winter he used to go by himself to Moscow, where he put up at a hotel, attended his club assiduously, aired his eloquence freely, explained his plans in society, and more than ever gave himself out as an Anglomaniac, a grumbler, and a statesman. But the year 1825 came and brought with it much trouble[A]. Ivan Petrovich's intimate friends and acquaintances underwent a heavy tribulation. He made haste to betake himself far away into the country, and there he shut himself up in his house. Another year passed and Ivan Petrovich suddenly broke down, became feeble, and utterly gave way. His health having deserted him, the freethinker began to go to church, and to order prayers to be said for him[B]; the European began to steam himself in the Russian bath, to dine at two o'clock, to go to bed at nine, to be talked to sleep by the gossip of an old house-steward; the statesman burnt all his plans and all his correspondence, trembled before the governor, and treated the _Ispravnik_[C] with uneasy civility; the man of iron will whimpered and complained whenever he was troubled by a boil, or when his soup had got cold before he was served with it. Glafira again ruled supreme in the house; again did inspectors, overseers[D], and simple peasants begin to go up the back staircase to the rooms occupied by the "old witch"--as she was called by the servants of the house.

[Footnote A: Arising from the conspiracy of the "Decembrists" and their attempts at a revolution, on the occasion of the death of Alexander I., and the accession of Nicholas to the throne.]

[Footnote B: _Molebni_: prayers in which the name of the person who has paid for them is mentioned.]

[Footnote C: Inspector of rural police.]

[Footnote D: _Prikashchiki_ and _Burmistrui_: two classes of overseers, the former dealing with economical matters only, the latter having to do with the administrative department also.]

The change which had taken place in Ivan Petrovich, produced a strong impression on the mind of his son. He had already entered on his nineteenth year; and he had begun to think for himself, and to shake off the weight of the hand which had been pressing him down. Even before this he had remarked how different were his father's deeds from his words; the wide and liberal theories he professed from the hard and narrow despotism he practiced; but he had not expected so abrupt a transformation. In his old age the egotist revealed himself in his full nature. The young Lavretsky was just getting ready to go to Moscow, with a view to preparing himself for the university, when a new and unexpected misfortune fell on the head of Ivan Petrovich. In the course of a single day the old man became blind, hopelessly blind.

Distrusting the skill of Russian medical men, he did all he could to get permission to travel abroad. It was refused. Then, taking his son with him, he wandered about Russia for three whole years, trying one doctor after another, incessantly journeying from place to place, and, by his impatient fretfulness, driving his doctors, his son, and his servants to the verge of despair. Utterly used up[A], he returned to Lavriki a weeping and capricious infant. Days of bitterness ensued, in which all suffered at his hands. He was quiet only while he was feeding. Never had he eaten so much, nor so greedily. At all other moments he allowed neither himself nor any one else to be at peace. He prayed, grumbled at fate, found fault with himself, with his system, with politics, with all which he used to boast of, with all that he had ever set up as a model for his son. He would declare that he believed in nothing, and then he would betake himself again to prayer; he could not bear a single moment of solitude, and he compelled his servants constantly to sit near his bed day and night, and to entertain him with stories, which he was in the habit of interrupting by exclamations of, "You're all telling lies!" or, "What utter nonsense!"

[Footnote A: Literally, "a regular rag."]

Glafira Petrovna had the largest share in all the trouble he gave. He was absolutely unable to do without her; and until the very end she fulfilled all the invalid's caprices, though sometimes she was unable to reply immediately to what he said, for fear the tone of her voice should betray the anger which was almost choking her. So he creaked on for two years more, and at length one day in the beginning of the month of May, he died. He had been carried out to the balcony, and planed there in the sun. "Glasha! Glashka! broth, broth, you old idi--," lisped his stammering tongue; and then, without completing the last word, it became silent forever. Glafira, who had just snatched the cup of broth from the hands of the major-domo, stopped short, looked her brother in the face, very slowly crossed herself, and went silently away. And his son, who happened also to be on the spot, did not say a word either, but bent over the railing of the balcony, and gazed for a long time into the garden, all green and fragrant, all sparkling in the golden sunlight of spring. He was twenty-three years old; how sadly, how swiftly had those years passed by unmarked! Life opened out before him now.

XII.

After his father's burial, having confided to the never-changing Glafira Petrovna the administration of his household, and the supervision of his agents, the young Lavretsky set out for Moscow, whither a vague but powerful longing attracted him. He knew in what his education had been defective, and he was determined to supply its deficiencies as far as possible. In the course of the last five years he had read much, and he had see a good deal with his own eyes. Many ideas had passed through his mind, many a professor might have envied him some of his knowledge; yet, at the same time, he was entirely ignorant of much that had long been familiar to every school-boy. Lavretsky felt that he was not at his ease among his fellow-men; he had a secret inkling that he was an exceptional character. The Anglomaniac had played his son a cruel trick; his capricious education had borne its fruit. For many years he had implicitly obeyed his father; and when at last he had learned to value him aright, the effects of his father's teaching were already produced. Certain habits had become rooted in him. He did not know how to comport himself towards his fellow-men; at the age of twenty-three, with an eager longing after love in his bashful heart, he had not yet dared to look a woman in the face. With his clear and logical, but rather sluggish intellect, with his stubbornness, and his tendency towards inactivity and contemplation, he ought to have been flung at an early age into the whirl of life, instead of which he had been deliberately kept in seclusion. And now the magic circle was broken, but he remained standing on the same spot, cramped in mind and self-absorbed.

At his age it seemed a little ridiculous to put on the uniform of a student[A], but he did not fear ridicule. His Spartan education had at all events been so far useful, inasmuch as it had developed in him a contempt for the world's gossiping. So he donned a student's uniform without being disconcerted, enrolling himself in the faculty of physical and mathematical science. His robust figure, his ruddy face, his sprouting beard, his taciturn manner, produced a singular impression on his comrades. They never suspected that under the rough exterior of this man, who attended the lectures so regularly, driving up in a capacious rustic sledge, drawn by a couple of horses, something almost childlike was concealed. They thought him an eccentric sort of pedant, and they made no advances towards him, being able to do very well without him. And he, for his part, avoided them. During the first two years he passed at the university, he became intimate with no one except the student from whom she took lessons in Latin. This student, whose name was Mikhalevich, an enthusiast, and somewhat of a poet, grew warmly attached to Lavretsky, and quite accidentally became the cause of a serious change in his fortunes.

[Footnote A: The students at the Russian universities used to wear a uniform, but they no longer do so.]

One evening, when Lavretsky was at the theatre--he never missed a single representation, for Mochalof was then at the summit of his glory--he caught sight of a young girl in a box on the first tier. Never before had his heart beaten so fast, though at that time no woman ever passed before his stern eyes without sending its pulses flying. Leaning on the velvet border of the box, the girl sat very still. Youthful animation lighted up every feature of her beautiful face; artistic feeling shone in her lovely eyes, which looked out with a soft, attentive gaze from underneath delicately pencilled eyebrows, in the quick smile of her expressive lips, in the bearing of her head, her arms, her neck. As to her dress, it was exquisite. By her side sat a sallow, wrinkled woman of five-and-forty, wearing a low dress and a black cap, with an unmeaning smile on her vacant face, to which she strove to give an aspect of attention. In the background of the box appeared an elderly man in a roomy coat, and with a high cravat. His small eyes had an expression of stupid conceit, modified by a kind of cringing suspicion; his mustache and whiskers were dyed, he had an immense meaningless forehead, and flabby cheeks: his whole appearance was that of a retired general.

Lavretsky kept his eyes fixed on the girl who had made such an impression on him. Suddenly the door of the box opened, and Mikhalevich entered. The appearance of the man who was almost his only acquaintance in all Moscow--his appearance in the company of the very girl who had absorbed his whole attention, seemed to Lavretsky strange and significant. As he continued looking at the box, he remarked that all its occupants treated Mikhalevich like an old friend. Lavretsky lost all interest in what was going on upon the stage; even Mochalof, although he was that evening "in the vein," did not produce his wonted impression upon him. During one very pathetic passage, Lavretsky looked almost involuntarily at the object of his admiration. She was leaning forward, a red glow coloring her cheeks. Her eyes were bent upon the stage, but gradually, under the influence of his fixed look, they turned and rested on him. All night long those eyes haunted him. At last, the carefully constructed dam was broken through. He shivered and he burnt by turns, and the very next day he went to see Mikhalevich. From him he learned that the name of the girl he admired so much was Varvara Pavlovna Korobine, that the elderly people who were with her in the box were her father and her mother, and that Mikhalevich had become acquainted with them the year before, during the period of his stay as tutor in Count N.'s family, near Moscow. The enthusiast spoke of Varvara Pavlovna in the most eulogistic terms. "This girl, my brother," he exclaimed, in his peculiar, jerking kind of sing-song, "is an exceptional being, one endowed with genius, an artist in the true sense of the word, and besides all that, such an amiable creature." Perceiving from Lavretsky's questions how great an impression Varvara Pavlovna had made upon him, Mikhalevich, of his own accord, proposed to make him acquainted with her, adding that he was on the most familiar terms with them, that the general was not in the least haughty, and that the mother was as unintellectual as she well could be.

Lavretsky blushed, muttered something vague, and took himself off. For five whole days he fought against his timidity; on the sixth, the young Spartan donned an entirely new uniform, and placed himself at the disposal of Mikhalevich, who, as an intimate friend of the family, contented himself with setting his hair straight--and the two companions set off together to visit the Karobines.

XIII

Varvara Pavlovna's father, Pavel Petrovich Korobine, a retired major-general, had been on duty at St. Petersburg during almost the whole of his life. In his early years he had enjoyed the reputation of being an able dancer and driller; but as he was very poor he had to act as aide-de-camp to two or three generals of small renown in succession, one of whom gave him his daughter in marriage, together with a dowry of 25,000 roubles. Having made himself master of all the science of regulations and parades, even to their subtlest details, he "went on stretching the girth" until at last, after twenty years service, he became a general, and obtained a regiment. At that point he might have reposed, and have quietly consolidated his fortune. He had indeed counted upon doing so, but he managed his affairs rather imprudently. It seems he had discovered a new method of speculating with the public money. The method turned out an excellent one, but he must needs practise quite unreasonable economy,[A] so information was laid against him, and a more than disagreeable, a ruinous scandal ensued. Some how or other the general managed to get clear of the affair; but his career was stopped, and he was recommended to retire from active service. For about a couple of years he lingered on at St. Petersburg, in hopes that a snug civil appointment might fall to his lot; but no such appointment did fall to his lot. His daughter finished her education at the Institute; his expenses increased day by day. So he determined, with suppressed indignation, to go to Moscow for economy's sake; and there, in the Old Stable Street, he hired a little house with an escutcheon seven feet high on the roof, and began to live as retired generals do in Moscow on an income of 2,700 roubles a year[B].

[Footnote A: In other words, he stole, but he neglected to bribe.]

[Footnote B: Nearly £400, the roubles being "silver" ones. The difference in value between "silver" and "paper" roubles exists no longer.]

Moscow is an hospitable city, and ready to welcome any one who appears there, especially if he is a retired general. Pavel Petrovich's form, which, though heavy, was not devoid of martial bearing, began to appear in the drawing-rooms frequented by the best society of Moscow. The back of his head, bald, with the exception of a few tufts of dyed hair, and the stained ribbon of the Order of St. Anne, which he wore over a stock of the color of a raven's wing, became familiar to all the young men of pale and wearied aspect, who were wont to saunter moodily around the card tables while a dance was going on.

Pavel Petrovich understood how to hold his own in society. He said little, but always, as of old, spoke through the nose--except, of course, when he was talking to people of superior rank. He played at cards prudently, and when he was at home he ate with moderation. At a party he seemed to be feeding for six. Of his wife scarcely anything more can be said than that her name was Calliope Carlovna--that a tear always stood in her left eye, on the strength of which Calliope Carlovna, who to be sure was of German extraction, considered herself a woman of feeling--that she always seemed frightened about something--that she looked as if she never had enough to eat--and that she always wore a tight velvet dress, a cap, and bracelets of thin, dull metal.

As to Varvara Pavlovna, the general's only daughter, she was but seventeen years old when she left the Institute in which she had been educated. While within its walls she was considered, if not the most beautiful, at all events the most intelligent of the pupils, and the best musician, and before leaving it she obtained the Cipher[A]. She was not yet nineteen when Lavretsky saw her for the first time.

[Footnote A: The initial letter of the name of the Empress, worn as a kind of decoration by the best pupils in the Imperial Institutes.]

XIV.

The Spartan's legs trembled when Mikhalevich led him into the Korobines' not over-well furnished drawing-room, and introduced him to its occupants. But he overcame his timidity, and soon disappeared. In General Korobine that kindliness which is common to all Russians, was enhanced by the special affability which is peculiar to all persons whose fair fame has been a little soiled. As for the General's wife, she soon became as it were ignored by the whole party. But Varvara Pavlona was so calmly, so composedly gracious, that no one could be, even for a moment, in her presence without feeling himself at his ease. And at the same time from all her charming form, from her smiling eyes, from her faultlessly sloping shoulders, from the rose-tinged whiteness of her hands, from her elastic, but at the same time as it were, irresolute gait, from the very sound of her sweet and languorous voice--there breathed, like a delicate perfume, a subtle and incomprehensible charm--something which was at once tender and voluptuous and modest--something which it was difficult to express in words, which stirred the imagination and disturbed the mind, but disturbed it with sensations which were not akin to timidity.

Lavretsky introduced the subject of the theatre and the preceding night's performance; she immediately began to talk about Mochalof of her own accord, and did not confine herself to mere sighs and exclamations, but pronounced several criticisms on his acting, which were as remarkable for sound judgment as for womanly penetration. Mikhalevich mentioned music; she sat down to the piano without affectation, and played with precision several of Chopin's mazurkas, which were then only just coming into fashion. Dinner time came. Lavretsky would have gone away, but they made him stop, and the General treated him at table with excellent Lafitte, which the footman had been hurriedly sent out to buy at Depre's.

It was late in the evening before Lavretsky returned home; and then he sat for a longtime without undressing, covering his eyes with his hand, and yielding to the torpor of enchantment. It seemed to him that he had not till now understood what makes life worth having. All his resolutions and intentions, all the now valueless ideas of other days, had disappeared in a moment. His whole soul melted within him into one feeling, one desire; into the desire of happiness, of possession, of love, of the sweetness of a woman's love.