Chapter 9

On entering the drawing-room, after his return home, Lavretsky met a tall, thin man, with a wrinkled but animated face, untidy grey whiskers, a long, straight nose, and small, inflamed eyes. This individual, who was dressed in a shabby blue surtout, was Mikhalevich, his former comrade at the University. At first Lavretsky did not recognize him, but he warmly embraced him as soon as he had made himself known. The two friends had not seen each other since the old Moscow days. Then followed exclamations and questions. Memories long lost to sight came out again into the light of day. Smoking pipe after pipe in a hurried manner, gulping down his tea, and waving his long hands in the air, Mikhalevich related his adventures. There was nothing very brilliant about them, and he could boast of but little success in his various enterprises; but he kept incessantly laughing a hoarse, nervous laugh. It seemed that about a month previously he had obtained a post in the private counting-house of a rich brandy-farmer,[A] at about three hundred versts from O., and having heard of Lavretsky's return from abroad, he had turned out of his road for the purpose of seeing his old friend again. He spoke just as jerkingly as he used to do in the days of youth, and he became as noisy and as warm as he was in the habit of growing then. Lavretsky began to speak about his own affairs, but Mikhalevich stopped him, hastily stammering out, "I have heard about it, brother; I have heard about it. Who could have expected it?" and then immediately turned the conversation on topics of general interest.

[Footnote A: One of the contractors who used to purchase the right of supplying the people with brandy.]

"I must go away again to-morrow, brother," he said. "To-day, if you will allow it, we will sit up late. I want to get a thoroughly good idea of what you are now, what your intentions are and your convictions, what sort of man you have become, what life has taught you" (Mikhalevich still made use of the phraseology current in the year 1830). "As for me, brother, I have become changed in many respects. The waters of life have gone over my breast. Who was it said that? But in what is important, what is substantial, I have not changed. I believe, as I used to do, in the Good, in the True. And not only do I believe, but I feel certain now--yes, I feel certain, certain. Listen; I make verses, you know. There's no poetry in them, but there is truth. I will read you my last piece. I have expressed in it my most sincere convictions. Now listen."

Mikhalevich began to read his poem, which was rather a long one. It ended with the following lines:--

"With my whole heart have I given myself up to new feelings; In spirit I have become like unto a child, And I have burnt all that I used to worship, I worship all that I used to burn."

Mikhalevich all but wept as he pronounced these last two verses. A slight twitching, the sign of a strong emotion, affected his large lips; his plain face lighted up. Lavretsky went on listening until at last the spirit of contradiction was roused within him. He became irritated by the Moscow student's enthusiasm, so perpetually on the boil, so continually ready for use. A quarter of an hour had not elapsed before a dispute had been kindled between the two friends, one of those endless disputes of which only Russians are capable. They two, after a separation which had lasted for many years, and those passed in two different worlds, neither of them clearly understanding the other's thoughts, not even his own, holding fast by words, and differing in words alone, disputed about the most purely abstract ideas--and disputed exactly as if the matter had been one of life and death to both of them. They shouted and cried aloud to such an extent that every one in the house was disturbed, and poor Lemm, who had shut himself up in his room the moment Mikhalevich arrived, felt utterly perplexed, and even began to entertain some vague form of fear.

"But after all this, what are you? _blasé_!"[A] cried Mikhalevich at midnight.

[Footnote A: Literally, "disillusioned."]

"Does a _blasé_ man ever look like me?" answered Lavretsky. "He is always pale and sickly; but I, if you like, will lift you off the ground with one hand."

"Well then, if not _blasé_, at least a sceptic,[A] and that is still worse. But what right have you to be a sceptic? Your life has not been a success, I admit. That wasn't your fault. You were endowed with a soul full of affection, fit for passionate love, and you were kept away from women by force. The first woman you came across was sure to take you in."

[Footnote A: He says in that original _Skyeptuik_ instead of _Skeptik_, on which the author remarks, "Mikhalevich's accent testified to his birth-place having been in Little Russia."]

"She took you in, too," morosely remarked Lavretsky.

"Granted, granted. In that I was the tool of fate. But I'm talking nonsense. There's no such thing as fate. My old habit of expressing myself inaccurately! But what does that prove?"

"It proves this much, that I have been distorted from childhood."

"Well, then, straighten yourself. That's the good of being a man. You haven't got to borrow energy. But, however that may be, is it possible, is it allowable, to work upwards from an isolated fact, so to speak, to a general law--to an invariable rule?"

"What rule?" said Lavretsky, interrupting him. "I do not admit--"

"No, that is your rule, that is your rule," cried the other, interrupting him in his turn.

"You are an egotist, that's what it is!" thundered Mikhalevich an hour later. "You wanted self-enjoyment; you wanted a happy life; you wanted to live only for yourself--"

"What is self-enjoyment?"

"--And every thing has failed you; everything has given way under your feet."

"But what is self-enjoyment, I ask you?"

"--And it ought to give way. Because you looked for support there, where it is impossible to find it; because you built your house on the quicksands--"

"Speak plainer, without metaphor, _because_ I do not understand you."

"--Because--laugh away if you like--because there is no faith in you, no hearty warmth--and only a poor farthingsworth of intellect;[A] you are simply a pitiable creature, a behind--your--age disciple of Voltaire. That's what you are."

[Footnote A: Literally, "intellect, in all merely a copeck intellect."]

"Who? I a disciple of Voltaire?"

"Yes, just such a one as your father was; and you have never so much as suspected it."

"After that," exclaimed Lavretsky, "I have a right to say that you are a fanatic."

"Alas!" sorrowfully replied Mikhalevich, "unfortunately, I have not yet in any way deserved so grand a name--"

"I have found out now what to call you!" cried the self-same Mikhalevich at three o'clock in the morning.

"You are not a sceptic, nor are you a _blasé_, nor a disciple of Voltaire; you are a marmot,[A] and a culpable marmot; a marmot with a conscience, not a naïve marmot. Naïve marmots lie on the stove[B] and do nothing, because they can do nothing. They do not even think anything. But you are a thinking man, and yet you lie idly there. You could do something, and you do nothing. You lie on the top with full paunch and say, 'To lie idle--so must it be; because all that people ever do--is all vanity, mere nonsense that conduces to nothing.'"

[Footnote A: A _baibak_, a sort of marmot or "prairie dog."]

[Footnote B: The top of the stove forms the sleeping place in a Russian peasant's hut.]

"But what has shown you that I lie idle?" insisted Lavretsky. "Why do you suppose I have such ideas?"

"--And, besides this, all you people, all your brotherhood," continued Mikhalevich without stopping, "are deeply read marmots. You all know where the German's shoe pinches him; you all know what faults Englishmen and Frenchmen have; and your miserable knowledge only serves to help you to justify your shameful laziness, your abominable idleness. There are some who even pride themselves on this, that 'I, forsooth, am a learned man. I lie idle, and they are fools to give themselves trouble.' Yes! even such persons as these do exist among us; not that I say this with reference to you; such persons as will spend all their life in a certain languor of ennui, and get accustomed to it, and exist in it like--like a mushroom in sour cream" (Mikhalevich could not help laughing at his own comparison). "Oh, that languor of ennui! it is the ruin of the Russian people. Throughout all time the wretched marmot is making up its mind to work--"

"But, after all, what are you scolding about?" cried Lavretsky in his turn. "To work, to do. You had better say what one should do, instead of scolding, O Demosthenes of Poltava."[A]

[Footnote A: Poltava is a town of Little Russia. It will be remembered that Mikhalovich is a Little Russian.]

"Ah, yes, that's what you want! No, brother, I will not tell you that. Every one must teach himself that," replied Demosthenes in an ironical tone. "A proprietor, a noble, and not know what to do! You have no faith, or you would have known. No faith and no divination."[A]

[Footnote A: _Otkrovenie_, discovery or revelation.]

"At all events, let me draw breath for a moment, you fiend," prayed Lavretsky. "Let me take a look round me!"

"Not a minute's breathing-time, not a second's," replied Mikhalevich, with a commanding gesture of the hand. "Not a single second. Death does not tarry, and life also ought not to tarry."

"And when and where have people taken it into their heads to make marmots of themselves?" he cried at four in the morning, in a voice that was now somewhat hoarse, "Why, here! Why, now! In Russia! When on every separate individual there lies a duty, a great responsibility, before God, before the nation, before himself! We sleep, but time goes by. We sleep--"

"Allow me to point, out to you," observed Lavretsky, "that we do not at all sleep at present, but rather prevent other persons from sleeping. We stretch our throats like barn-door cocks. Listen, that one is crowing for the third time."

This sally made Mikhalevich laugh, and sobered him down. "Good night," he said with a smile, and put away his pipe in its bag. "Good night," said Lavretsky also. However, the friends still went on talking for more than an hour. But their voices did not rise high any longer, and their talk was quiet, sad, kindly talk.

Mikhalevich went away next day, in spite of all his host could do to detain him. Lavretsky did not succeed in persuading him to stay, but he got as much talk as he wanted out of him.

It turned out that Mikhalevich was utterly impecunious. Lavretsky had already been sorry to see in him, on the preceding evening, all the characteristics of a poverty of long standing. His shoes were trodden down, his coat wanted a button behind, his hands were strangers to gloves, one or two bits of feather were sticking in his hair. When he arrived, he did not think of asking for a wash; and at supper he ate like a shark, tearing the meat to pieces with his fingers, and noisily gnawing the bones with his firm, discolored teeth.

It turned out, also, that he had not thriven in the civil service, and that he had pinned all his hopes on the brandy-farmer, who had given him employment simply that he might have an "educated man" in his counting-house. In spite of all this, however, Mikhalevich had not lost courage, but kept on his way leading the life of a cynic, an idealist, and a poet; fervently caring for, and troubling himself about, the destinies of humanity and his special vocation in life--and giving very little heed to the question whether or no he would die of starvation.

Mikhalevich had never married; but he had fallen in love countless times, and he always wrote poetry about all his loves: with especial fervor did he sing about a mysterious, raven-haired "lady." It was rumored, indeed, that this "lady" was nothing more than a Jewess, and one who had numerous friends among cavalry officers; but, after all, if one thinks the matter over, it is not one of much importance.

With Lemm, Mikhalevich did not get on well. His extremely loud way of talking, his rough manners, frightened the German, to whom they were entirely novel. One unfortunate man immediately and from afar recognizes another, but in old age he is seldom willing to associate with him. Nor is that to be wondered at. He has nothing to share with him--not even hopes.

Before he left, Mikhalevich had another long talk with Lavretsky, to whom he predicted utter ruin if he did not rouse himself, and whom he entreated to occupy himself seriously with the question of the position of his serfs. He set himself up as a pattern for imitation, saying that he had been purified in the furnace of misfortune; and then he several times styled himself a happy man, comparing himself to a bird of the air, a lily of the valley.

"A dusky lily, at all events," remarked Lavretsky.

"Ah, brother, don't come the aristocrat," answered Mikhalevich good-humoredly; "but rather thank God that in your veins also there flows simple plebeian blood. But I see you are now in need of some pure, unearthly being, who might rouse you from your apathy."

"Thanks, brother," said Lavretsky; "I have had quite enough of those unearthly beings."

"Silence, cyneec!"[A] exclaimed Mikhalevich.

[Footnote A: He says _Tsuinnik_ instead of _Tsinik_.]

"Cynic," said Lavretsky, correcting him.

"Just so, cyneec," repeated the undisconcerted Mikhalevich.

Even when he had taken his seat in the tarantass, in which his flat and marvellously light portmanteau had been stowed away, he still went on talking. Enveloped in a kind of Spanish cloak, with a collar reddened by long use, and with lion's claws instead of hooks, he continued to pour forth his opinions on the destinies of Russia, waving his swarthy hand the while in the air, as if he were sowing the seeds of future prosperity. At last the horses set off.

"Remember my last three words!" he exclaimed, leaning almost entirely out of the carriage, and scarcely able to keep his balance. "Religion, Progress, Humanity! Farewell!" His head, on which his forage cap was pressed down to his eyes, disappeared from sight. Lavretsky was left alone at the door, where he remained gazing attentively along the road, until the carriage was out of sight. "And perhaps he is right," he thought, as he went back into the house. "Perhaps I am a marmot." Much of what Mikhalevich had said had succeeded in winning its way into his heart, although at the time he had contradicted him and disagreed with him. Let a man only be perfectly honest--no one can utterly gainsay him.

XXV.

Two days later, Maria Dmitrievna arrived at Vasilievskoe, according to her promise, and all her young people with her. The little girls immediately ran into the garden, but Maria Dmitrievna languidly walked through the house, and languidly praised all she saw. She looked upon her visit to Lavretsky as a mark of great condescension, almost a benevolent action. She smiled affably when Anton and Apraxia came to kiss her hand, according to the old custom of household serfs, and in feeble accents she asked for tea.

To the great vexation of Anton, who had donned a pair of knitted white gloves, it was not he who handed the tea to the lady visitor, but Lavretsky's hired lackey, a fellow who, in the old man's opinion, had not a notion of etiquette. However, Anton had it all his own way at dinner. With firm step, he took up his position behind Madame Kalitine's chair, and he refused to give up his post to any one. The apparition of visitors at Vasilievskoe--a sight for so many years unknown there--both troubled and cheered the old man. It was a pleasure for him to see that his master was acquainted with persons of some standing in society.

Anton was not the only person who was agitated that day. Lemm was excited too. He had put on a shortish snuff-colored coat with pointed tails, and had tied his cravat tight, he coughed incessantly, and made way for every one with kindly and affable mien. As for Lavretsky, he remarked with satisfaction that he remained on the same friendly footing with Liza as before. As soon as she arrived she cordially held out her hand to him.

After dinner, Lemm took a small roll of music-paper out of the tail-pocket of his coat, into which he had been constantly putting his hand, and silently, with compressed lips, placed it upon the piano. It contained a romance, which he had written the day before to some old-fashioned German words, in which mention was made of the stars. Liza immediately sat down to the piano, and interpreted the romance. Unfortunately the music turned out to be confused and unpleasantly constrained. It was evident that the composer had attempted to express some deep and passionate idea, but no result had been attained. The attempt remained an attempt, and nothing more. Both Lavretsky and Liza felt this, and Lemm was conscious of it too. Without saying a word, he put his romance back into his pocket; and, in reply to Liza's proposal to play it over again, he merely shook his head, and said, in a tone of meaning, "For the present--_basta_!" then bent his head, stooped his shoulders, and left the room.

Towards evening they all went out together to fish. In the little lake at the end of the garden there were numbers of carp and groundling. Madame Kalitine had an arm-chair set in the shade for her, near the edge of the water, and a carpet was spread out under her feet. Anton, as an old fisherman of great experience, offered her his services. Zealously did he fasten on the worms, slap them with his hand, and spit upon them, and then fling the line into the water himself, gracefully bending forwards the whole of his body. Maria Dmitrievna had already that day spoken about him to Fedor Ivanovich, using the following phrase of Institute-French:--"_Il n'y a plus maintenant de ces gens comme ça autre fois_."

Lemm and the two little girls went on to the dam at the end of the lake. Lavretsky placed himself near Liza. The fish kept continually nibbling. Every minute a captured carp glistened in the air with its sometimes golden, sometimes silver, sides. The little girls kept up a ceaseless flow of joyful exclamations. Madame Kalitine herself two or three times uttered a plaintive cry. Lavretsky and Liza caught fewer fish than the others; probably because they paid less attention to their fishing, and let their floats drift up against the edge of the lake. The tall, reddish reeds murmured quietly around them; in front quietly shone the unruffled water, and the conversation they carried on was quiet too.

Liza stood on the little platform [placed there for the use of the washerwomen;] Lavretsky sat on the bent stem of a willow. Liza wore a white dress, fastened round the waist by a broad, white ribbon. From one hand hung her straw hat; with the other she, not without some effort, supported her drooping fishing-rod. Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile--at the hair turned back behind her ears--at her soft cheeks, the hue of which was like that of a young child's--and thought: "How charming you look, standing there by my lake!" Liza did not look at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the water, something which might be a smile lurking about their corners. Over both Lavretsky and Liza fell the shadow of a neighboring lime-tree.

"Do you know," he began, "I have thought a great deal about our last conversation, and I have come to this conclusion, that you are exceedingly good."

"It certainly was not with that intention that I--" replied Liza, and became greatly confused.

"You are exceedingly good," repeated Lavretsky. "I am a rough-hewn man; but I feel that every one must love you. There is Lemm, for instance: he's simply in love with you."

Liza's eyebrows did not exactly frown, but they quivered. This always happened with her when she heard anything she did not like.

"I felt very sorry for him to-day, with his unsuccessful romance," continued Lavretsky. "To be young and to want knowledge--that is bearable. But to have grown old and to fail in strength--that is indeed heavy. And the worst of it is, that one doesn't know when one's strength has failed. To an old man such blows are hard to bear. Take care! you've a bite--I hear," continued Lavretsky, after a short pause, "That M. Panshine has written a very charming romance."

"Yes," replied Liza, "it is a small matter; but it isn't bad."

"But what is your opinion about him himself?" asked Lavretsky. "Is he a good musician?"

"I think he has considerable musical faculty. But as yet he has not cultivated it as he ought."

"Just so. But is he a good man?"

Liza laughed aloud, and looked up quickly at Fedor Ivanovich.

"What a strange question!" she exclaimed, withdrawing her line from the water, and then throwing it a long way in again.

"Why strange? I ask you about him as one who has been away from here a long time--as a relation."

"As a relation?"

"Yes. I believe I am a sort of uncle of yours."

"Vladimir Nikolaevich has a good heart," said Liza. "He is clever. Mamma likes him very much."

"But you--do you like him?"

"He is a good man. Why shouldn't I like him?"

"Ah!" said Lavretsky, and became silent. A half-sad, half-mocking expression played upon his face. The fixed look with which he regarded her troubled Liza; but she went on smiling.

"Well, may God grant them happiness!" he murmured at last, as if to himself, and turned away his head.

Liza reddened.

"You are wrong, Fedor Ivanovich," she said; "you are wrong in thinking--But don't you like Vladimir Ivanovich?" she asked suddenly.

"No."

"Why?"

"I think he has no heart."

The smile disappeared from Liza's lips.

"You are accustomed to judge people severely," she said, after a long silence.

"I don't think so. What right have I to judge others severely, I should like to know, when I stand in need of indulgence myself? Or have you forgotten that it is only lazy people who do not mock me? But tell me," he added, "have you kept your promise?"

"What promise?"

"Have you prayed for me?"

"Yes, I prayed for you; and I pray every day. But please do not talk lightly about that."

Lavretsky began to assure Liza that he had never dreamt of doing so--that he profoundly respected all convictions. After that he took to talking about religion, about its significance in the history of humanity, of the meaning of Christianity.

"One must be a Christian," said Liza, not without an effort, "not in order to recognize what is heavenly, or what is earthly, but because every one must die."

With an involuntary movement of surprise, Lavretsky raised his eyes to Liza's, and met her glance.

"What does that phrase of yours mean?" he said.

"It is not my phrase," she replied.

"Not yours? But why did you speak about death?"

"I don't know. I often think about it."

"Often?"

"Yes."

"One wouldn't say so, looking at you now. Your face seems so happy, so bright, and you smile--"

"Yes. I feel very happy now," replied Liza simply.

Lavretsky felt inclined to seize both her hands and press them warmly.

"Liza, Liza!" cried Madame Kalitine, "come here and see what a carp I have caught."

"Yes, mamma," answered Liza, and went to her.

But Lavretsky remained sitting on his willow stem.

"I talk to her just as if I still had an interest in life," he thought.

Liza had hung up her hat on a bough when she went away. It was with a strange and almost tender feeling that Lavretsky looked at the hat, and at its long, slightly rumpled ribbons.

Liza soon came back again and took up her former position on the platform.

"Why do you think that Vladimir Nikolaevich has no heart?" she asked, a few minutes afterwards.

"I have already told you that I may be mistaken. However, time will reveal all."