A House of Gentlefolk Part 14

"You have refused him?" interrupted Lavretsky.

"No; but I have not consented either. I told him everything, everything I felt, and asked him to wait a little. Are you pleased with me?" she added with a swift smile--and with a light touch of her hand on the banister she ran down the stairs.

"What shall I play to you?" she asked, opening the piano.

"What you like," answered Lavretsky as he sat down so that he could look at her.

Lisa began to play, and for a long while she did not lift her eyes from her fingers. She glanced at last at Lavretsky, and stopped short; his face seemed strange and beautiful to her.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied; "I'm very happy; I'm glad of you, I'm glad to see you--go on."

"It seems to me," said Lisa a few moments later, "that if he had really loved me, he would not have written that letter; he must have felt that I could not give him an answer now."

"That is of no consequence," observed Lavretsky, "what is important is that you don't love him."

"Stop, how can we talk like this? I keep thinking of you dead wife, and you frighten me."

"Don't you think, Voldemar, that Liseta plays charmingly?" Marya Dmitrievna was saying at that moment to Panshin.

"Yes," answered Panshin, "very charmingly."

Marya Dmitrievna looked tenderly at her young partner, but the latter a.s.sumed a still more important and care-worn air and called fourteen kings.

Chapter x.x.xI

Lavretsky was not a young man; he could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling inspired in him by Lisa; he was brought on that day to the final conviction that he loved her. This conviction did not give him ay great pleasure. "Have I really nothing better to do,"

he thought, "at thirty-five than to put my soul into a woman's keeping again? But Lisa is not like her; she would not demand degrading sacrifices from me: she would not tempt me away from my duties; she would herself incite me to hard honest work, and we would walk hand in hand towards a n.o.ble aim. Yes," he concluded his reflections, "that's all very fine, but the worst of it is that she does not in the least wish to walk hand in hand with me. She meant it when she said that I frightened her. But she doesn't love Panshin either--a poor consolation!"

Lavretsky went back to Va.s.silyevskoe, but he could not get through four days there--so dull it seemed to him. He was also in agonies of suspense; the news announced by M. Jules required confirmation, and he had received no letters of any kind. He returned to the town and spent an evening at the Kalitins'. He could easily see that Marya Dmitrievna had to been set against him; but he succeeded in softening her a little, by losing fifteen roubles to her at picquet, and he spent nearly half an hour almost alone with Lisa in spite of the fact that her mother had advised her the previous evening not to be too intimate with a man qui a un si grand ridicule. He found a change in her; she had become, as it were, more thoughtful. She reproached him for his absence and asked him would he not go on the morrow to ma.s.s? (The next day was Sunday.)

"Do go," she said before he had time to answer, "we will pray together fro the repose of her soul." Then she added that she did not know how to act--she did not know whether she had the right to make Panshin wait any longer for her decision.

"Why so?" inquired Lavretsky.

"Because," she said, "I begin now to suspect what that decision will be."

She declared that her head ached and went to her own room up-stairs, hesitatingly holding out the tips of her fingers to Lavretsky.

The next day Lavretsky went to ma.s.s. Lisa was already in the church when he came in. She noticed him though she did not turn round towards him.

She prayed fervently, her eyes were full of a calm light, calmly she bowed her head and lifted it again. He felt that she was praying for him too, and his heart was filled with a marvelous tenderness. He was happy and a little ashamed. The people reverently standing, the homely faces, the harmonious singing, the scent of incense, the long slanting gleams of light from the windows, the very darkness of the walls and arched roofs, all went to his heart. For long he had not been to church for long he had not turned to G.o.d: even now he uttered no words of prayer--he did not even pray without words--but, at least, for a moment in all his mind, if not in his body, he bowed down and meekly humbled himself to earth. He remembered how, in his childhood, he had always prayed in church until he had felt, as it were, a cool touch on his!

brow; that, he used to think then, is the guardian angel receiving me, laying on me the seal of grace. He glanced at Lisa. "You brought me here," he thought, "touch me, touch my soul." She was still praying calmly; her face seemed him to him full of joy, and he was softened anew: he prayed for another soul, peace; for his own, forgiveness.

They met in the porch; she greeted him with glad and gracious seriousness. The sun brightly lighted up the young gra.s.s in the church-yard, and the striped dresses and kerchiefs of the women; the bells of the churches near were tinkling overhead; and the crows were cawing about the hedges. Lavretsky stood with uncovered head, a smile on his lips; the light breeze lifted his hair, and the ribbons of Lisa's hat. He put Lisa and Lenotchka who was with her into their carriage, divided all his money among the poor, and peacefully sauntered home.

Chapter x.x.xII

Painful days followed for Fedor Ivanitch. He found himself in a continual fever. Every morning he made for the post, and tore open letters and papers in agitation, and nowhere did he find anything which could confirm or disprove the fateful rumour. Sometimes he was disgusting to himself. "What am I about," he thought, "waiting, like a vulture for blood, for certain news of my wife's death?" He went to the Kalitins every day, but things had grown no easier for him there; the lady of the house was obviously sulky with him, and received him very condescendingly. Panshin treated him with exaggerated politeness; Lemm had entrenched himself in his misanthropy and hardly bowed to him, and, worst of all, Lisa seemed to avoid him. When she happened to be left alone with him, instead of her former candour there was visible embarra.s.sment on her part, she did not know what to say to him, and he, too, felt confused. In the s.p.a.ce of a few days Lisa had become quite different from what she was as he knew her: in her movements, her voice, her very laugh a secret tremor, an unevenness never there before was apparent. Marya Dmitrievna, like a true egoist, suspected nothing; but Marfa Timofyevna began to keep a watch over her favourite. Lavretsky more than once reproached himself for having shown Lisa the newspaper he had received; he could not but be conscious that in his spiritual condition there was something revolting to a pure nature. He imagined also that the change in Lisa was the result of her inward conflicts, her doubts as to what answer to give Panshin.

One day she brought him a book, a novel of Walter Scott's, which she had herself asked him for.

"Have you read it?" he said.

"No; I can't bring myself to read just now," she answered, and was about to go away.

"Stop a minute, it is so long since I have been alone with you. You seem to be afraid of me."

"Yes."

"Why so, pray?"

"I don't know."

Lavretsky was silent.

"Tell me," he began, "you haven't yet decided?"

"What do you mean?" she said, not raising her eyes.

"You understand me."

Lisa flushed crimson all at once.

"Don't ask me about anything!" she broke out hotly. "I know nothing; I don't know myself." And instantly she was gone.

The following day Lavretsky arrived at the Kalitins' after dinner and found there all the preparations for an evening service. In the corner of the dining-room on a square table covered with a clean cloth were already arranged, leaning up against the wall, the small holy pictures in old frames, set with tarnished jewels. The old servant in a grey coat and shoes was moving noiselessly and without haste all about the room; he set two wax-candles in the slim candlesticks before the holy pictures, crossed himself, bowed, and slowly went out. The unlighted drawing-room was empty. Lavretsky went into the dining-room and asked if it was some one's name-day.

In a whisper the told him no, but that the evening service had been arranged at the desire of Lisaveta Mihalovna and Marfa Timofyevna; that it had been intended to invite a wonder-working image, but that the latter had gone thirty versts away to visit a sick man. Soon the priest arrived with the deacons; he was a man no longer young, with a large bald head; he coughed loudly in the hall: the ladies at once filed slowly out of the boudoir, and went up to receive his blessing; Lavretsky bowed to them in silence; and in silence to him. The priest stood still for a little while, coughed once again, and asked in a ba.s.s undertone--

"You wish me to begin?"

"Pray begin father," replied Marya Dmitrievna.

He began to put on his robes; a deacon in a surplice asked obsequiously for a hot ember; there was a scent of incense. The maids and men-servants came out from the hall and remained huddled close together before the door. Roska, who never came down from up-stairs, suddenly ran into the dining-room; they began to chase her out; she was scared, doubled back into the room and sat down; a footman picked her up and carried her away.

The evening service began. Lavretsky squeezed himself into a corner; his emotions were strange, almost sad; he could not himself make out clearly what he was feeling. Marya Dmitrievna stood in front of all, before the chairs; she crossed herself with languid carelessness, like a grand lady, and first looked about her, then suddenly lifted her eyes to the ceiling; she was bored. Marfa Timofyevna looked worried; Nastasya Karpovna bowed down to the ground and got up with a kind of discreet, subdued rustle; Lisa remained standing in her place motionless; from the concentrated expression of her face it could be seen that she was praying steadfastly and fervently. When she bowed to the cross at the end of the service, she also kissed the large red hand of the priest.

Marya Dmitrievna invited the latter to have some tea; he took off his vestment, a.s.sumed a somewhat more worldly air, and pa.s.sed into the drawing-room with the ladies. Conversation--not too lively--began. The priest drank four cups of tea, incessantly wiping his bald head with his handkerchief; he related among other things that the merchant Avoshnikov was subscribing seven hundred roubles to gilding the "c.u.mpola" of the church, and informed them of a sure remedy against freckles. Lavretsky tried to sit near Lisa, but her manner was severe, almost stern, and she did not once glance at him. She appeared intentionally not to observe him; a kind of cold, grave enthusiasm seemed to have taken possession of her. Lavretsky for some reason or other tried to smile and to say something amusing; but there was perplexity in his heart, and he went away at last in secret bewilderment .... He felt there was something in Lisa to which he could never penetrate.

Another time Lavretsky was sitting in the drawing-room listening to the sly but tedious gossip of Gedeonovsky, when suddenly, without himself knowing why, he turned round and caught a profound, attentive questioning look in Lisa's eyes.... It was bent on him, this enigmatic look. Lavretsky thought of it the whole night long. His love was not like a boy's; sighs and agonies were not in his line, and Lisa herself did not inspire a pa.s.sion of that kind; but for every age love has its tortures--and he was spared none of them.