A Nobleman's Nest Part 4

"I want nothing,"--said Lavretzky, hastily.

"Come, drink some tea, at least, my dear little father. O Lord my G.o.d! He has come, no one knows whence, and they don't give him a cup of tea! Go, Liza, and see about it, as quickly as possible. I remember that, as a little fellow, he was a dreadful glutton, and he must be fond of eating even now."

"My respects, Marfa Timofeevna,"--said Panshin, approaching the angry old woman from one side, and bowing low.

"Excuse me, sir,"--retorted Marfa Timofeevna,--"I did not notice you for joy.--Thou hast grown to resemble thy mother, the darling,"--she went on, turning again to Lavretzky:--"only, thy nose was and remains like thy father's. Well--and art thou to be long with us?"

"I am going away to-morrow, aunty."

"Whither?"

"Home, to Vasilievskoe."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes."

"Well, if it must be to-morrow, it must. G.o.d be with thee,--thou knowest best. Only, see here, thou must come to say farewell."--The old woman tapped him on the cheek.--"I did not think I should live to see thee; and that not because I was preparing to die; no--I am good for another ten years, probably: all we Pestoffs are tenacious of life; thy deceased grandfather used to call us double-lived; but the Lord only knew how much longer thou wouldst ramble about abroad. Well, but thou art a dashing fine fellow, a fine fellow; thou canst still lift ten puds in one hand as of yore, I suppose? Thy deceased father, excuse me, was cranky in some respects, but he did well when he hired a Swiss for thee; thou rememberest, how thou and he had fistfights; that's called gymnastics, isn't it?--But why have I been cackling thus? I have only been keeping Mr. Panshin" (she never called him Panshin, as she ought) "from arguing. But we had better drink tea; let us go and drink it on the terrace, my dear; our cream--is not like what you get in your Londons and Parises. Let us go, let us go, and do thou, Fediusha, give me thy arm.

O! how thick it is! There's no danger of falling with thee."

All rose and betook themselves to the terrace, with the exception of Gedeonovsky, who quietly departed. During the entire duration of Lavretzky's conversation with the mistress of the house, Panshin, and Marfa Timofeevna, he had sat in a corner, attentively blinking, and sticking out his lips, in childish curiosity: he now hastened to carry the news about the new visitor throughout the town.

On that same day, at eleven o'clock in the evening, this is what was going on at Mme. Kalitin's house. Down-stairs, on the threshold of the drawing-room, Vladimir Nikolaitch, having seized a favourable moment, was saying farewell to Liza, and telling her, as he held her hand: "You know who it is that attracts me hither; you know why I am incessantly coming to your house; what is the use of words, when everything is so plain?" Liza made him no reply, and without a smile, and with eyebrows slightly elevated, and blushing, she stared at the floor, but did not withdraw her hand; and up-stairs, in Marfa Timofeevna's chamber, by the light of the shrine-lamp, which hung in front of the dim, ancient holy pictures, Lavretzky was sitting in an arm-chair, with his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands; the old woman, standing before him, was silently stroking his hair, from time to time. He spent more than an hour with her, after taking leave of the mistress of the house; he said almost nothing to his kind old friend, and she did not interrogate him.... And what was the use of talking, what was there to interrogate him about? She understood everything as it was, and she sympathised with everything wherewith his heart was full to overflowing.

VIII

Feodor Ivanovitch Lavretzky (we must ask the reader's permission to break the thread of our narrative for a time) was descended from an ancient family of the n.o.bility. The ancestral founder of the Lavretzkys had come out of Prussia during the princely reign of Vasily the Blind, and had been granted two hundred quarters[1] of land, on Byezhetsk Heights. Many of his descendants were members of various branches of the public service, and sat under princes and distinguished personages in distant governorships, but not one of them ever rose above the rank of table-decker at the Court of the Tzars, or acquired any considerable fortune. The most opulent and noteworthy of all the Lavretzkys had been Feodor Ivanitch's great-grandfather, Andrei, a harsh, insolent, clever, and crafty man. Down to the day of which we are speaking, the fame of his arbitrary violence, of his fiendish disposition, his mad lavishness, and unquenchable thirst had not died out. He had been very stout and lofty of stature, swarthy of visage, and beardless; he lisped, and appeared to be sleepy; but the more softly he spoke, the more did every one around him tremble. He obtained for himself a wife to match.

Goggle-eyed, with hawk-like nose, with a round, sallow face, a gipsy by birth, quick-tempered and revengeful, she was not a whit behind her husband, who almost starved her to death, and whom she did not survive, although she was eternally snarling at him.

Andrei's son, Piotr, Feodor's grandfather, did not resemble his father: he was a simple squire of the steppes, decidedly hare-brained, a swashbuckler and dawdler, rough but not malicious, hospitable, and fond of dogs. He was more than thirty years old when he inherited from his father two thousand souls in capital order; but he speedily dispersed them, sold a part of his estate, and spoiled his house-servants. Petty little people, acquaintances and non-acquaintances, crawled from all sides, like black-beetles, to his s.p.a.cious, warm, and slovenly mansion; all these ate whatever came to hand, but ate their fill, drank themselves drunk, and carried off what they could, lauding and magnifying the amiable host; and the host, when he was not in a good humour, also magnified his guests--as drones and blackguards--but he was bored without them. Piotr Andreitch's wife was a meek person: he took her from a neighbouring family, at his father's choice and command; her name was Anna Pavlovna. She never interfered with anything, received visitors cordially, and was fond of going out herself, although powdering her hair, according to her own words, was death to her. They put a felt hood on your head, she was wont to narrate in her old age, combed your hair all up on top, smeared it with tallow, sprinkled on flour, stuck in iron pins,--and you could not wash yourself afterward; but to go visiting without powder was impossible--people would take offence;--torture!--She was fond of driving after trotters, was ready to play cards from morning until night, and always covered up with her hand the few farthings of winnings set down to her when her husband approached the card-table; but she gave her dowry and all her money to him, and required no accounting for its use. She bore him two children: a son, Ivan, Feodor's father, and a daughter, Glafira.

Ivan was not brought up at home, but at the house of a wealthy old aunt, Princess Kubenskoy; she had designated him as her heir (had it not been for that, his father would not have let him go); she dressed him like a doll, hired every sort of teacher for him, provided him with a governor, a Frenchman, a former abbe, a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a certain M. Courtin de Vaucelles, an adroit and subtle intriguer,--the most _fine fleur_ of the emigration, as she expressed it,--and ended by marrying this "fine-fleur" when she was almost seventy years of age; she transferred to his name her entire fortune, and soon afterward, rouged, scented with amber, _a la Richelieu_, surrounded by small negroes, slender-legged dogs, and screeching parrots, she died on a crooked little couch of the time of Louis XV, with an enamelled snuff-box, the work of Pet.i.tot, in her hands,--and died, deserted by her husband: the sneaking M. Courtin had preferred to retire to Paris with her money.

Ivan was only in his twentieth year when this blow (we are speaking of the Princess's marriage, not of her death) descended upon him; he did not wish to remain in his aunt's house, where from a wealthy heir he had suddenly been converted into a parasite; in Petersburg, the society in which he had been reared, was closed to him; to service, beginning with the lowest ranks, difficult and dark, he felt repugnance (all this took place at the very beginning of the reign of the Emperor Alexander). He was compelled, perforce, to return to the country, to his father. Dirty, poor, tattered did his native nest appear to him: the dulness and soot of existence on the steppes offended him at every step; he was tormented with boredom; on the other hand, every one in the house, with the exception of his mother, looked upon him with unfriendly eyes. His father did not like his habits of the capital; his dress-suits, frilled shirts, books, his flute, his cleanliness, in which, not without reason, they scented his fastidiousness; he was constantly complaining and grumbling at his son.--"Nothing here suits him," he was wont to say: "at table he is dainty, he does not eat, he cannot endure the odour of the servants, the stifling atmosphere; the sight of drunken men disturbs him, and you mustn't dare to fight in his presence, either; he will not enter government service: he's frail in health, forsooth; phew, what an effeminate creature! And all because Voltaire sticks in his head!"

The old man cherished a particular dislike for Voltaire, and for the "fanatic" Diderot, although he had never read a single line of their writings: reading was not in his line. Piotr Andreitch was not mistaken: Diderot and Voltaire really were sticking in his son's head, and not they only,--but Rousseau and Raynal and Helvetius, and many other writers of the same sort, were sticking in his head,--but only in his head. Ivan Petrovitch's former tutor, the retired abbe and encyclopedist, had contented himself with pouring the whole philosophy of the XVIII century into his pupil in a ma.s.s, and the latter went about brimful of it; it gained lodgment within him, without mingling with his blood, without penetrating into his soul, without making itself felt as a firm conviction.... And could convictions be demanded of a young fellow of fifty years ago, when we have not even yet grown up to them? He also embarra.s.sed the visitors to his father's house: he loathed them, and they feared him; and with his sister, Glafira, who was twelve years older than he, he did not get on at all.

This Glafira was a strange being; homely, hunchbacked, gaunt, with stern, staring eyes and thin, tightly compressed lips; in face, voice, and quick, angular movements, she recalled her grandmother, the gipsy, the wife of Andrei. Persistent, fond of power, she would not even hear of marriage. The return of Ivan Petrovitch did not please her; so long as the Princess Kubenskoy had kept him with her, she had cherished the hope of receiving at least half of the parental estate: she resembled her grandmother in her avarice. Moreover, Glafira was envious of her brother: he was so cultivated, he spoke French so well, with a Parisian accent, while she was scarcely able to say: "_bon jour_," and "_comment vous portez vous_?" To tell the truth, her parents did not understand any French at all,--but that did not render it any the more pleasant for her.

Ivan Petrovitch did not know what to do with himself for tedium and melancholy; he spent nearly a year in the country, and it seemed to him like ten years.--Only with his mother did he relieve his heart, and he was wont to sit, by the hour, in her low-ceiled rooms, listening to the simple prattle of the good woman, and gorging himself with preserves. It so happened, that among Anna Pavlovna's maids there was one very pretty girl, with clear, gentle eyes and delicate features, named Malanya, both clever and modest. She pleased Ivan Petrovitch at first sight, and he fell in love with her: he fell in love with her timid walk, her shy answers, her soft voice, her gentle smile; with every pa.s.sing day she seemed to him more charming. And she became attached to Ivan Petrovitch with her whole soul, as only Russian girls can become attached--and gave herself to him.

In the country manor-house of a landed proprietor, no secret can be kept long: every one soon knew of the bond between the young master and Malanya; the tidings of this connection at last reached Piotr Andreitch himself. At any other time, he would, in all probability, have paid no heed to such an insignificant matter; but he had long been in a rage with his son, and rejoiced at the opportunity to put to shame the Petersburg philosopher and dandy. Tumult, shrieks, and uproar arose: Malanya was locked up in the lumber-room; Ivan Petrovitch was summoned to his parent. Anna Pavlovna also hastened up at the outcry. She made an effort to pacify her husband, but Piotr Andreitch no longer listened to anything. Like a vulture he pounced upon his son, upbraided him with immorality, with impiety, with hypocrisy; incidentally, he vented on him all his acc.u.mulated wrath against the Princess Kubenskoy, and overwhelmed him with insulting epithets. At first, Ivan Petrovitch held his peace, and stood firm, but when his father took it into his head to threaten him with a disgraceful chastis.e.m.e.nt, he lost patience. "The fanatic Diderot has come on the stage again," he thought,--"so just wait, I'll put him in action; I'll astonish you all."

Thereupon, in a quiet voice, although trembling in every limb, Ivan Petrovitch announced to his father, that there was no necessity for upbraiding him with immorality, that, although he did not intend to justify his fault, yet he was ready to rectify it, and that the more willingly because he felt himself superior to all prejudices--in short, he was ready to marry Malanya. By uttering these words, Ivan Petrovitch did, undoubtedly, attain his object: he astounded Piotr Andreitch to such a degree, that the latter stared with all his eyes, and was rendered dumb for a moment; but he immediately recovered himself, and just as he was, clad in a short coat lined with squirrel-skin, and with slippers on his bare feet, he flung himself with clenched fists upon Ivan Petrovitch, who that day, as though expressly, had his hair dressed _a la t.i.tus_, and had donned a new blue English dress-coat, boots with ta.s.sels, and dandified chamois trousers, skin-tight. Anna Pavlovna shrieked at the top of her voice, and covered her face with her hands, but her son ran through the whole house, sprang out into the yard, rushed into the vegetable garden, across the garden, flew out upon the highway, and kept running, without looking behind him, until, at last, he ceased to hear behind him the heavy tramp of his father's footsteps, and his violent, broken shouts.... "Stop, rascal!" he roared,--"stop! I'll curse thee!"

Ivan Petrovitch hid himself in the house of a neighbouring peasant proprietor, while Piotr Andreitch returned home utterly exhausted and perspiring, and announcing almost before he had recovered his breath, that he would deprive his son of his blessing and his heritage, ordered all his idiotic books to be burned, and the maid Malanya to be sent forthwith to a distant village. Kind people turned up, who sought out Ivan Petrovitch and informed him of all. Mortified, enraged, he vowed that he would take revenge on his father; and that very night, lying in wait for the peasant cart in which Malanya was being carried off, he rescued her by force, galloped off with her to the nearest town, and married her. He was supplied with money by a neighbour, an eternally intoxicated and extremely good-natured retired naval officer, a pa.s.sionate lover of every sort of n.o.ble adventure, as he expressed it. On the following day, Ivan Petrovitch wrote a caustically-cold and courteous letter to Piotr Andreitch, and betook himself to an estate where dwelt his second cousin, Dmitry Pestoff, and his sister, Marfa Timofeevna, already known to the reader. He told them everything, announced that he intended to go to Petersburg to seek a place, and requested them to give shelter to his wife, for a time at least. At the word "wife" he fell to weeping bitterly, and, despite his city breeding and his philosophy, he prostrated himself humbly, after the fashion of a Russian beggar, before the feet of his relatives, and even beat his brow against the floor. The Pestoffs, kind and compa.s.sionate people, gladly acceded to his request; he spent three weeks with them, in secret expectation of a reply from his father; but no reply came,--and none could come. Piotr Andreitch, on learning of his son's marriage, had taken to his bed, and had forbidden the name of Ivan Petrovitch to be mentioned in his presence; but his mother, without the knowledge of her husband, borrowed five hundred rubles from the ecclesiastical supervisor of the diocese, and sent them to him, together with a small holy picture for his wife;[2] she was afraid to write, but she gave orders that Ivan Petrovitch was to be told, by the lean peasant her envoy, who managed to walk sixty versts in the course of twenty-four hours, that he must not grieve too much, that, G.o.d willing, everything would come right, and his father would convert wrath into mercy; that she, also, would have preferred a different daughter-in-law, but that, evidently, G.o.d had so willed it, and she sent her maternal blessing to Malanya Sergyeevna.

The lean little peasant received a ruble, requested permission to see his new mistress, to whom he was related as co-sponsor at a baptism, kissed her hand, and hastened off homeward.

And Ivan Petrovitch set off for Petersburg with a light heart. The unknown future awaited him; poverty, perhaps, menaced him, but he had bidden farewell to the life in the country which he detested, and, most important of all, he had not betrayed his teachers, he really had "put in action" and justified in fact Rousseau, Diderot, and _la declaration des droits de l'homme_. A sense of duty accomplished, of triumph, of pride, filled his soul; and his separation from his wife did not greatly alarm him; the necessity of living uninterruptedly with his wife would have perturbed him more. That affair was ended; he must take up other affairs.

In Petersburg, contrary to his own expectation, fortune smiled on him: Princess Kubenskoy--whom Monsieur Courtin had already succeeded in abandoning, but who had not yet succeeded in dying,--by way, in some measure, of repairing the injury which she had done to her nephew, recommended him to the good graces of all her friends, and gave him five thousand rubles,--almost her last farthing,--and a Lepikovsky watch with his coat of arms in a garland of cupids. Three months had not elapsed, when he had already obtained a place in the Russian mission to London, and he went to sea on the first English ship which sailed (there was no thought of steamers in those days). A few months later, he received a letter from Pestoff. The kind-hearted squire congratulated Ivan Petrovitch on the birth of a son, who had made his appearance in the world, in the village of Pokrovskoe, on August 20, 1807, and was named Feodor, in honour of the holy martyr, Feodor the Strategist. Owing to her extreme weakness, Malanya Sergyeevna added only a few lines; but those few lines astonished Ivan Petrovitch: he was not aware that Marfa Timofeevna had taught his wife to read and write. However, Ivan Petrovitch did not give himself up for long to the sweet agitation of paternal emotions: he was paying court to one of the most famous Phrynes or Lases of the period (cla.s.sical appellations were still flourishing at that epoch); the peace of Tilsit had just been concluded, and everybody was making haste to enjoyment, everything was whirling round in a sort of mad whirlwind. He had very little money; but he played luckily at cards, he picked up acquaintances, he took part in all the merrymakings,--in a word, he was dashing along under full sail.

[1] An ancient land-measure, varying in different localities; the average "quarter" being about thirty by forty fathoms.--Translator.

[2] That is to say, she sent her maternal blessing.--Translator.

IX

It was long before old Lavretzky could forgive his son for his marriage; if, after the lapse of half a year, Ivan Petrovitch had presented himself in contrition, and had flung himself at his feet, he would, probably, have pardoned him, after first scolding him roundly, and administering a few taps with his crutch, by way of inspiring awe; but Ivan Petrovitch was living abroad, and, evidently, cared not a rap.--"Hold your tongue! Don't dare!" Piotr Andreitch kept repeating to his wife, as soon as she tried to incline him to mercy: "He ought to pray to G.o.d for me forever, the pup, for not having laid my curse upon him; my late father would have slain him with his own hands, the good-for-nothing, and he would have done right." At such terrible speeches, Anna Pavlovna merely crossed herself furtively. As for Ivan Petrovitch's wife, Piotr Andreitch, at first, would not allow her to be mentioned, and even in reply to a letter of Pestoff, wherein the latter alluded to his daughter-in-law, he gave orders to say to him, that he knew nothing whatever about any daughter-in-law of his, and that it was prohibited by the laws to harbour runaway maids, on which point he regarded it as his duty to warn him; but later on, when he learned of the birth of a grandson, he softened, gave orders that inquiries should be made on the sly concerning the health of the young mother, and sent her, also as though it did not come from him, a little money. Fedya had not reached his first birthday, when Anna Pavlovna was seized with a fatal illness. A few days before her end, when she could no longer leave her bed, she declared to her husband, in the presence of the priest, that she wished to see and bid farewell to her daughter-in-law, and to bestow her blessing on her grandchild. The afflicted old man soothed her, and immediately sent his own equipage for his daughter-in-law, for the first time calling her Malanya Sergyeevna.[3] She came with her son and with Marfa Timofeevna, who would not let her go alone on any terms, and would not have allowed her to be affronted. Half dead with terror, Malanya entered Piotr Andreitch's study. The nurse carried Fedya after her. Piotr Andreitch gazed at her in silence; she approached to kiss his hand; her quivering lips hardly met in a noiseless kiss.

"Well, new-ground, undried n.o.blewoman,"--he said at last:--"how do you do; let us go to the mistress."

He rose and bent over Fedya; the baby smiled, and stretched out his little, white arms. The old man was completely upset.

"Okh," he said,--"thou orphan! Thou hast plead thy father's cause with me; I will not abandon thee, my birdling!"

As soon as Malanya Sergyeevna entered the bedchamber of Anna Pavlovna, she knelt down near the door. Anna Pavlovna beckoned her to the bed, embraced her, blessed her son; then, turning her countenance, ravaged by disease, to her husband, she tried to speak....

"I know, I know what entreaty thou desirest to make,"--said Piotr Andreitch:--"do not worry: she shall stay with us, and I will pardon Vanka for her sake."

Anna Pavlovna, with an effort, grasped her husband's hand, and pressed it to her lips. On that same evening she died.

Piotr Andreitch kept his word. He informed his son, that, for the sake of his mother's dying hour, for the sake of baby Feodor, he restored to him his blessing, and would keep Malanya Sergyeevna in his own house.

Two rooms were set apart for her use in the entresol, he introduced her to his most respected visitor, one-eyed Brigadier Skuryokhin, and to his wife; he presented her with two maids and a page-boy for errands. Marfa Timofeevna bade her farewell; she detested Glafira, and quarrelled with her thrice in the course of one day.

At first the poor woman found her situation painful and awkward; but afterward, she learned to bear things patiently, and became accustomed to her father-in-law. He, also, became accustomed to her, he even grew to love her, although he almost never spoke to her, although in his caresses a certain involuntary disdain toward her was perceptible. Malanya Sergyeevna had most of all to endure from her sister-in-law. Glafira, already during her mother's lifetime, had succeeded in getting gradually the entire house into her hands: every one, beginning with her father, was subject to her; not a lump of sugar was given out without her permission; she would have consented to die, rather than to share the power with any other mistress of the house! Her brother's marriage had angered her even more than it had Piotr Andreitch: she took it upon herself to teach the upstart a lesson, and from the very first hour Malanya Sergyeevna became her slave.

And how could she contend with the self-willed, arrogant Glafira, she who was mild, constantly agitated, and terrified, and also weak in health? Not a day pa.s.sed, that Glafira did not remind her of her former position, did not praise her for not forgetting her place. Malanya Sergyeevna would gladly have reconciled herself to these reminders and praises, however bitter they might be ... but they took Fedya away from her: that was what broke her heart. Under the pretext that she was not competent to take charge of his education, she was hardly permitted to see him; Glafira took this matter upon herself; the child pa.s.sed under her full control. Malanya Sergyeevna began, out of grief, to entreat Ivan Petrovitch, in her letters, to come home as speedily as possible; Piotr Andreitch himself wished to see his son; but he merely wrote in reply, thanking his father about his wife, and for the money sent, and promising to come soon,--and did not come. The year '12 recalled him, at last, to his fatherland from abroad.

On meeting again, for the first time, after their six years' separation, the father and son exchanged embraces, and did not allude, by so much as a word, to their former dissensions; they were not in the mood for it then: all Russia had risen against the enemy, and both of them felt that Russian blood was flowing in their veins. Piotr Andreitch, at his own expense, clothed an entire regiment of soldiers. But the war came to an end, the danger pa.s.sed; again Ivan Petrovitch began to feel bored, again he longed for far-away places, for the world to which he had grown fast, and where he felt himself at home. Malanya Sergyeevna could not hold him back; she counted for too little with him. Even her hopes had not been realised: her husband, also, deemed it much more fitting that Fedya's education should be entrusted to Glafira. Ivan Petrovitch's poor wife could not withstand this blow, could not endure this second parting: without a murmur, in a few days she expired. During the whole course of her life, she had never been able to offer resistance, and she did not combat her malady. She could no longer speak, the shadows of the tomb had already descended upon her face, but her features, as of old, expressed patient perplexity, and the steadfast gentleness of submission; with the same dumb humility she gazed at Glafira, and, like Anna Pavlovna on her deathbed, she kissed the hand of Piotr Andreitch, and pressed her lips to Glafira's hand also, entrusting to her, Glafira, her only son. Thus ended its earthly career a kind and gentle being, torn, G.o.d alone knows why, from its native soil and immediately flung aside, like an uprooted sapling, with its roots to the sun; it faded away, it vanished, without a trace, that being, and no one mentioned it.

Those who grieved for Malanya Sergyeevna were her maid and Piotr Andreitch. The old man missed her silent presence. "Forgive--farewell, my patient one!" he whispered, as he made her the parting reverence in church. He wept as he threw a handful of earth into the grave.

He did not long survive her--not more than five years. In the winter of 1819, he died peacefully in Moscow, whither he had removed with Glafira and his grandson, and left orders in his will, that he should be buried by the side of Anna Pavlovna and "Malasha." Ivan Petrovitch was in Paris at the time, for his pleasure; he had resigned from the service soon after 1815. On hearing of his father's death, he decided to return to Russia. It was necessary to consider the organisation of the estate ... and Fedya, according to Glafira's letter, had reached the age of twelve years, and the time had arrived for occupying himself seriously with the boy's education.

[3] Serfs were not addressed with their patronymic by their superiors.