A Nobleman's Nest Part 17

It took his breath away.... He leaned against the wall.

"Theodore, do not drive me away!"--she said in French, and her voice cut his heart like a knife.

He glanced at her without comprehending, yet he immediately noticed that she had grown pale and thin.

"Theodore,"--she went on, from time to time raising her eyes, and cautiously wringing her wondrously-beautiful fingers, with rosy, polished nails:--"Theodore, I am to blame toward you, deeply to blame,--I will say more, I am a criminal; but do you listen to me; repentance tortures me, I have become a burden to myself, I could not longer endure my position; how many times have I meditated returning to you, but I feared your wrath;--I have decided to break every connection with the past ... _puis, j'ai ete si malade_,--I have been so ill,"--she added, and pa.s.sed her hand across her brow and her cheek,--"I have taken advantage of the rumour of my death which had got into circulation, I have abandoned everything; without halting, day and night I have hastened hither; I have hesitated, for a long time, to present myself before you, my judge--_paraitre devant vous, mon juge_,--but, at last, I made up my mind, remembering your invariable kindness, to come to you; I learned your address in Moscow. Believe me," she continued, softly rising from the floor, and seating herself on the very edge of an arm-chair:--"I have often meditated death, and I would have summoned up sufficient courage to take my life--akh, life is now an intolerable burden to me!--but the thought of my daughter, of my adotchka, held me back; she is here, she is asleep in the adjoining room, poor child! She is weary,--you shall see her: she, at least, is not guilty toward you,--and I am so unhappy, so unhappy!"--exclaimed Mme. Lavretzky, and burst into tears.

Lavretzky came to himself, at last; he separated himself from the wall, and moved toward the door.

"You are going away?"--said his wife, in despair:--"oh, this is cruel!--Without saying one word to me, without even one reproach.... This scorn is killing me, this is terrible!"

Lavretzky stopped short.

"What is it that you wish to hear from me?"--he uttered, in a toneless voice.

"Nothing, nothing,"--she caught him up with vivacity:--"I know that I have no right to demand anything;--I am not a fool, believe me;--I do not hope, I do not dare to hope for your forgiveness;--I only venture to entreat you, that you will give me directions what I am to do, where I am to live?--I will fulfil your command, whatever it may be, like a slave."

"I have no commands to give you,"--returned Lavretzky, in the same voice:--"you know, that everything is at an end between us ... and now more than ever.--You may live where you see fit;--and if your allowance is insufficient...."

"Akh, do not utter such dreadful words,"--Varvara Pavlovna interrupted him:--"spare me, if only ... if only for the sake of that angel...." And, as she said these words, Varvara Pavlovna flew headlong into the next room, and immediately returned with a tiny, very elegantly dressed little girl in her arms. Heavy, ruddy-gold curls fell over her pretty, rosy little face, over her large, black, sleepy eyes; she smiled, and blinked at the light, and clung with her chubby hand to her mother's neck.

"_Ada, vois, c'est ton pere_,"--said Varvara Pavlovna, pushing the curls aside from her eyes, and giving her a hearty kiss:--"_prie le avec moi_."

"_C'est ca, papa?_"--lisped the little girl, brokenly.

"_Oui, mon enfant, n'est ce pas, que tu l'aimes?_"

But this was too much for Lavretzky.

"In what melodrama is it that there is precisely such a scene?"--he muttered, and left the room.

Varvara Pavlovna stood for a while rooted to the spot, slightly shrugged her shoulders, carried the little girl into the other room, undressed her, and put her to bed. Then she got a book, sat down near the lamp, waited for about an hour, and, at last, lay down on the bed herself.

"_Eh bien, madame?_"--inquired her maid, a Frenchwoman, whom she had brought from Paris, as she removed her corsets.

"_Eh bien, Justine_,"--she replied;--"he has aged greatly, but it strikes me that he is as good-natured as ever.--Give me my gloves for the night, prepare my high-necked grey gown for to-morrow; and do not forget the mutton chops for Ada.... Really, it will be difficult to obtain them here; but we must make the effort."

"_a la guerre, comme a la guerre_,"--responded Justine, and put out the light.

x.x.xVII

For more than two hours Lavretzky roamed about the streets of the town.

The night which he had spent in the suburbs of Paris recurred to his mind. His heart swelled to bursting within him, and in his head, which was empty, and, as it were, stunned, the same set of thoughts kept swirling,--dark, wrathful, evil thoughts. "She is alive, she is here," he whispered, with constantly augmenting amazement. He felt that he had lost Liza. Bile choked him; this blow had struck him too suddenly. How could he so lightly have believed the absurd gossip of a feuilleton, a sc.r.a.p of paper? "Well, and if I had not believed it, what difference would that have made? I should not have known that Liza loves me; she herself would not have known it." He could not banish from himself the form, the voice, the glances of his wife ... and he cursed himself, cursed everything in the world.

Worn out, he arrived toward morning at Lemm's. For a long time, he could produce no effect with his knocking; at last, the old man's head, in a nightcap, made its appearance in the window, sour, wrinkled, no longer bearing the slightest resemblance to that inspiredly-morose head which, four and twenty hours previously, had gazed on Lavretzky from the full height of its artistic majesty.

"What do you want?"--inquired Lemm:--"I cannot play every night; I have taken a decoction."--But, evidently, Lavretzky's face was very strange: the old man made a shield for his eyes out of his hands, stared at his nocturnal visitor, and admitted him.

Lavretzky entered the room, and sank down on a chair; the old man halted in front of him, with the skirts of his motley-hued, old dressing-gown tucked up, writhing and mumbling with his lips.

"My wife has arrived,"--said Lavretzky, raising his head, and suddenly breaking into an involuntary laugh.

Lemm's face expressed surprise, but he did not even smile, and only wrapped himself more closely in his dressing-gown.

"You see, you do not know,"--went on Lavretzky:--"I imagined ... I read in a newspaper, that she was no longer alive."

"O--o, you read that a short time ago?"--asked Lemm.

"Yes."

"O--o,"--repeated the old man, and elevated his eyebrows.--"And she has arrived?"

"Yes. She is now at my house; but I ... I am an unhappy man."

And again he broke into a laugh.

"You are an unhappy man,"--repeated Lemm, slowly.

"Christofor Feodoritch,"--began Lavretzky:--"will you undertake to deliver a note?"

"H'm. May I inquire, to whom?"

"To Liza...."

"Ah,--yes, yes, I understand. Very well. But when must the note be delivered?"

"To-morrow, as early as possible."

"H'm. I can send Katrina, my cook. No, I will go myself."

"And will you bring me the answer?"

"Yes, I will."

Lemm sighed.

"Yes, my poor young friend; you really are--an unhappy man."

Lavretzky wrote a couple of words to Liza: he informed her of his wife's arrival, begged her to appoint a meeting,--and flung himself on the narrow divan, face to the wall; and the old man lay down on the bed, and tossed about for a long time, coughing and taking sips of his decoction.

Morning came: they both rose. With strange eyes they gazed at each other.

Lavretzky wanted to kill himself at that moment. The cook, Katrina, brought them some bad coffee. The clock struck eight. Lemm put on his hat, and saying that he had a lesson to give at the Kalitins' at nine, but that he would find a decent pretext, set out. Lavretzky again flung himself on the little couch, and again, from the depths of his soul, a sorrowful laugh welled up. He thought of how his wife had driven him out of his house; he pictured to himself Liza's position, closed his eyes, and threw his hands behind his head. At last Lemm returned, and brought him a sc.r.a.p of paper, on which Liza had scrawled with pencil the following words: "We cannot see each other to-day; perhaps--to-morrow evening. Farewell." Lavretzky quietly and abstractedly thanked Lemm, and went to his own house.

He found his wife at breakfast; Ada, all curls, in a white frock with blue ribbons, was eating a mutton chop. Varvara Pavlovna immediately rose, as soon as Lavretzky entered the room, and approached him, with humility depicted on her face. He requested her to follow him to his study, locked the door behind him, and began to stride to and fro; she sat down, laid one hand modestly on the other, and began to watch him with her still beautiful, although slightly painted eyes.