A Nobleman's Nest Part 14

"I have only one request to make of you,"--he said, returning to Liza:--"do not decide instantly, wait, think over what I have said to you. Even if you have not believed me, if you have made up your mind to a marriage of reason,--even in that case, you ought not to marry Mr.

Panshin: he cannot be your husband.... Promise me, will you not, not to be in a hurry?"

Liza tried to answer Lavretzky, but did not utter a word,--not because she had made up her mind "to be in a hurry"; but because her heart was beating too violently, and a sensation resembling fear had stopped her breath.

x.x.x

As he was leaving the Kalitins' house, Lavretzky encountered Panshin; they saluted each other coldly. Lavretzky went home to his apartment, and locked himself in. He experienced a sensation such as he had, in all probability, never experienced before. Had he remained long in that state of "peaceful numbness"? had he long continued to feel, as he had expressed it, "at the bottom of the river"? What had altered his position? what had brought him out, to the surface? the most ordinary, inevitable though always unexpected of events;--death? Yes: but he did not think so much about the death of his wife, about his freedom, as,--what sort of answer would Liza give to Panshin? He was conscious that, in the course of the last three days, he had come to look upon her with different eyes; he recalled how, on returning home, and thinking about her in the silence of the night, he had said to himself: "If...."

That "if," wherein he had alluded to the past, to the impossible, had come to pa.s.s, although not in the way he had antic.i.p.ated,--but this was little in itself. "She will obey her mother," he thought, "she will marry Panshin; but even if she refuses him,--is it not all the same to me?" As he pa.s.sed in front of the mirror, he cast a cursory glance at his face, and shrugged his shoulders.

The day sped swiftly by in these reflections; evening arrived. Lavretzky wended his way to the Kalitins. He walked briskly, but approached their house with lingering steps. In front of the steps stood Panshin's drozhky. "Come,"--thought Lavretzky,--"I will not be an egoist," and entered the house. Inside he met no one, and all was still in the drawing-room; he opened the door, and beheld Marya Dmitrievna, playing picquet with Panshin. Panshin bowed to him in silence, and the mistress of the house uttered a little scream:--"How unexpected!"--and frowned slightly. Lavretzky took a seat by her side, and began to look over her cards.

"Do you know how to play picquet?"--she asked him, with a certain dissembled vexation, and immediately announced that she discarded.

Panshin reckoned up ninety, and politely and calmly began to gather up the tricks, with a severe and dignified expression on his countenance.

That is the way in which diplomats should play; probably, that is the way in which he was wont to play in Petersburg, with some powerful dignitary, whom he desired to impress with a favourable opinion as to his solidity and maturity. "One hundred and one, one hundred and two, hearts; one hundred and three,"--rang out his measured tone, and Lavretzky could not understand what note resounded in it: reproach or self-conceit.

"Is Marfa Timofeevna to be seen?"--he asked, observing that Panshin, still with great dignity, was beginning to shuffle the cards. Not a trace of the artist was, as yet, to be observed in him.

"Yes, I think so. She is in her own apartments, up-stairs,"--replied Marya Dmitrievna:--"you had better inquire."

Lavretzky went up-stairs, and found Marfa Timofeevna at cards also: she was playing _duratchki_ (fools) with Nastasya Karpovna. Roska barked at him; but both the old ladies welcomed him cordially, and Marfa Timofeevna, in particular, seemed to be in high spirits.

"Ah! Fedya! Pray come in,"--she said:--"sit down, my dear little father.

We shall be through our game directly. Wouldst thou like some preserves?

Schurotchka, get him a jar of strawberries. Thou dost not want it? Well, then sit as thou art; but as for smoking--thou must not: I cannot bear thy tobacco, and, moreover, it makes Matros sneeze."

Lavretzky made haste to a.s.sert that he did not care to smoke.

"Hast thou been down-stairs?"--went on the old woman:--"whom didst thou see there? Is Panshin still on hand, as usual? And didst thou see Liza?

No? She intended to come hither.... Yes, there she is; speak of an angel...."

Liza entered the room and, on perceiving Lavretzky, she blushed.

"I have run in to see you for a minute, Marfa Timofeevna," she began....

"Why for a minute?"--returned the old woman. "What makes all you young girls such restless creatures? Thou seest, that I have a visitor: chatter to him, entertain him."

Liza seated herself on the edge of a chair, raised her eyes to Lavretzky,--and felt that it was impossible not to give him to understand how her interview with Panshin had ended. But how was that to be done? She felt both ashamed and awkward. She had not been acquainted with him long, with that man who both went rarely to church and bore with so much indifference the death of his wife,--and here she was already imparting her secrets to him.... He took an interest in her, it is true; she, herself, trusted him, and felt attracted to him; but, nevertheless, she felt ashamed, as though a stranger had entered her pure, virgin chamber.

Marfa Timofeevna came to her a.s.sistance.

"If thou wilt not entertain him,"--she began, "who will entertain him, poor fellow? I am too old for him, he is too clever for me, and for Nastasya Karpovna he is too old, you must give her nothing but very young men."

"How can I entertain Feodor Ivanitch?"--said Liza.--"If he likes, I will play something for him on the piano,"--she added, irresolutely.

"Very good indeed: that's my clever girl,"--replied Marfa Timofeevna,--"Go down-stairs, my dear people; when you are through, come back; for I have been left the 'fool,' and I feel insulted, and want to win back."

Liza rose: Lavretzky followed her. As they were descending the staircase, Liza halted.

"They tell the truth,"--she began:--"when they say that the hearts of men are full of contradictions. Your example ought to frighten me, to render me distrustful of marriage for love, but I...."

"You have refused him?"--interrupted Lavretzky.

"No; but I have not accepted him. I told him everything, everything that I felt, and asked him to wait. Are you satisfied?"--she added, with a swift smile,--and lightly touching the railing with her hand, she ran down the stairs.

"What shall I play for you?"--she asked, as she raised the lid of the piano.

"Whatever you like,"--replied Lavretzky, and seated himself in such a position that he could watch her.

Liza began to play, and, for a long time, never took her eyes from her fingers. At last, she glanced at Lavretzky, and stopped short: so wonderful and strange did his face appear to her.

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

"Nothing,"--he replied:--"all is very well with me; I am glad for you, I am glad to look at you,--go on."

"It seems to me,"--said Liza, a few moments later:--"that if he really loved me, he would not have written that letter; he ought to have felt that I could not answer him now."

"That is of no importance,"--said Lavretzky:--"the important point is, that you do not love him."

"Stop,--what sort of a conversation is this! I keep having visions of your dead wife, and you are terrible to me!"

"My Lizeta plays charmingly, does she not, Valdemar?"--Marya Dmitrievna was saying to Panshin at the same moment.

"Yes,"--replied Panshin;--"very charmingly."

Marya Dmitrievna gazed tenderly at her young partner; but the latter a.s.sumed a still more important and careworn aspect, and announced fourteen kings.

x.x.xI

Lavretzky was not a young man; he could not long deceive himself as to the sentiments with which Liza had inspired him; he became definitively convinced, on that day, that he had fallen in love with her. This conviction brought no great joy to him. "Is it possible," he thought, "that at the age of five and thirty I have nothing better to do than to put my soul again into the hands of a woman? But Liza is not like _that one_; she would not require from me shameful sacrifices; she would not draw me away from my occupations; she herself would encourage me to honourable, severe toil, and we would advance together toward a fine goal. Yes," he wound up his meditations:--"all that is good, but the bad thing is, that she will not in the least wish to marry me. It was not for nothing that she told me, that I am terrible to her. On the other hand, she does not love that Panshin either.... A poor consolation!"

Lavretzky rode out to Vasilievskoe; but he did not remain four days,--it seemed so irksome to him there. He was tortured, also, by expectancy: the information imparted by M--r. Jules required confirmation, and he had received no letters. He returned to the town, and sat out the evening at the Kalitins'. It was easy for him to see, that Marya Dmitrievna had risen in revolt against him; but he succeeded in appeasing her somewhat by losing fifteen rubles to her at picquet,--and he spent about half an hour alone with Liza, in spite of the fact that her mother, no longer ago than the day before, had advised her not to be too familiar with a man "_qui a un si grand ridicule_." He found a change in her: she seemed, somehow, to have become more thoughtful, she upbraided him for his absence, and asked him--would he not go to church on the following morning (the next day was Sunday)?

"Go,"--she said to him, before he had succeeded in replying:--"we will pray together for the repose of _her_ soul."--Then she added, that she did not know what she ought to do,--she did not know whether she had the right to make Panshin wait any longer for her decision.

"Why?"--asked Lavretzky.

"Because,"--said she: "I am already beginning to suspect what that decision will be."

She declared that her head ached, and went off to her own room up-stairs, irresolutely offering Lavretzky the tips of her fingers.