Liza; Or, "A Nest of Nobles" Part 18

"What is it? Tell me--tell me!"

"I really think I ought not.--However," added Liza, turning to Lavretsky with a smile, "what is the good of a half-confidence? Do you know, I received a letter to-day?"

"From Panshine?"

"Yes, from him. How did you guess that?"

"And he asks for your hand?"

"Yes," replied Liza, looking straight at Lavretsky with serious eyes.

Lavretsky, in his turn, looked seriously at Liza.

"Well, and what answer have you made him?" he said at last.

"I don't know what to answer," replied Liza, unfolding her arms, and letting them fall by her side.

"Why? Do you like him?"

"Yes, I like him; I think he is a good man."

"That is just what you told me three days ago, and in the very same words. But what I want to know is, do you love him--love him with that strong, pa.s.sionate feeling which we usually call 'love'?"

"In the sense in which you understand the word--No."

"You are not in love with him?"

"No. But is that necessary?"

"How do you mean?"

"Mamma likes him," continued Liza. "He is good: I have no fault to find with him."

"But still you waver?"

"Yes--and, perhaps--you, your words are the cause of that. Do you remember what you said the day before yesterday? But all that is weakness--"

"Oh, my child!" suddenly exclaimed Lavretsky, and his voice trembled as he spoke, "don't be fatally wise--don't stigmatize as weakness the cry of your heart, unwilling to give itself away without love! Do not take upon yourself so fearful a responsibility towards that man, whom you do not love, and yet to whom you would be about to belong."

"I shall only be obeying; I shall be taking nothing upon myself,"

began Liza.

"Obey your own heart, then. It only will tell you the truth," said Lavretsky, interrupting her. "Wisdom, experience--all that is mere vanity and vexation. Do not deprive yourself of the best, the only real happiness upon earth."

"And do you speak in that way. Fedor Ivanovich? You married for love yourself--and were you happy?"

Lavretsky clasped his hands above his head.

"Ah! do not talk about me. You cannot form any idea of what a young, inexperienced, absurdly brought-up boy may imagine to be love.

However, why should one calumniate one's self? I told you just now I had never known happiness. No! I have been happy."

"I think, Fedor Ivanovich," said Liza, lowering her voice--she always lowered her voice when she differed from the person she was speaking to; besides, she felt considerably agitated just then--"our happiness upon earth does not depend upon ourselves--"

"It does depend upon ourselves--upon ourselves:" here he seized both her hands. Liza grew pale and looked at him earnestly, but almost with alarm--"at least if we do not ruin our own lives. For some people a love match may turn out unhappily, but not for you, with your calmness of temperament; with your serenity of soul. I do beseech you not to marry without love, merely from a feeling of duty, self-denial, or the like. All that is sheer infidelity, and moreover a matter of calculation--and worse still. Trust my words. I have a right to say this; a right for which I have paid dearly. And if your G.o.d--"

At that moment Lavretsky became aware that Lenochka and Shurochka were standing by Liza's side, and were staring at him with intense astonishment. He dropped Liza's hands, saying hastily, "Forgive me,"

and walked away towards the house.

"There is only one thing I have to ask you," he said, coming back to Liza. "Don't make up your mind directly, but wait a little, and think over what I have said to you. And even if you don't believe my words, but are determined to marry in accordance with the dictates of mere prudence--even, in that case, Mr. Panshine is not the man you ought to marry. He must not be your husband. You will promise me not to be hasty, won't you?"

Liza wished to reply, but she could not utter a single word. Not that she had decided on being "hasty"--but because her heart beat too strongly, and a feeling resembling that of fear impeded her breathing.

XXVIII.

As Lavretsky was leaving the Kalitines' house he met Panshine, with whom he exchanged a cold greeting. Then he went home and shut himself up in his room. The sensations he experienced were such as he had hardly ever known before. Was it long ago that he was in a condition of "peaceful torpor?" Was it long ago that he felt himself, as he had expressed it, "at the very bottom of the river?" What then had changed his condition? What had brought him to the surface, to the light of day? Was the most ordinary and inevitable, though always unexpected, of occurrences--death? Yes. But yet it was not so much his wife's death, his own freedom, that he was thinking about, as this--what answer will Liza give to Panshine?

He felt that in the course of the last three days he had begun to look on Liza with different eyes. He remembered how, when he was returning home and thinking of her in the silence of the night, he said to himself "If!--" This "if," by which at that time he had referred to the past, to the impossible, now applied to an actual state of things, but not exactly such a one as he had then supposed. Freedom by itself was little to him now. "She will obey her mother," he thought. "She will marry Panshine. But even if she refuses him--will it not be just the same as far as I am concerned?" Pa.s.sing at that moment in front of a looking-gla.s.s, he just glanced at his face in it, and then shrugged his shoulders.

Amid such thoughts as these the day pa.s.sed swiftly by. The evening arrived, and Lavretsky went to the Kalitines. He walked fast until he drew near to the house, but then he slackened his pace. Panshine's carriage was standing before the door. "Well," thought Lavretsky, as he entered the house, "I will not be selfish." No one met him in-doors, and all seemed quiet in the drawing-room. He opened the door, and found that Madame Kalitine was playing piquet with Panshine.

That gentleman bowed to him silently, while the lady of the house exclaimed, "Well, this is an unexpected pleasure," and slightly frowned. Lavretsky sat down beside her and began looking at her cards.

"So you can play piquet?" she asked, with a shade of secret vexation in her voice, and then remarked that she had thrown away a wrong card.

Panshine counted ninety, and began to take up the tricks calmly and politely, his countenance the while wearing a grave and dignified expression. It was thus, he thought, that diplomatists ought to play.

It was thus, in all probability, that he used to play with some influential dignitary at St. Petersburg, whom he wished to impress with a favorable idea of his solidity and perspicacity. "One hundred and one, hundred and two, heart, hundred and three," said the measured tones of his voice, and Lavretsky could not tell which it expressed--dislike or a.s.surance.

"Can't I see Marfa Timofeevna?" asked Lavretsky, observing that Panshine, with a still more dignified air than before, was about to shuffle the cards; not even a trace of the artist was visible in him now.

"I suppose so. She is up-stairs in her room," answered Maria Dmitrievna. "You can ask for her."

Lavretsky went up-stairs. He found Marfa Timofeevna also at cards. She was playing at _Durachki_ with Nastasia Carpovna. Roska barked at him, but both the old ladies received him cordially. Marfa Timofeevna seemed in special good humor.

"Ah, Fedia!" she said, "do sit down, there's a good fellow. We shall have done our game directly. Will you have some preserves? Shurochka, give him a pot of strawberries. You won't have any? Well, then, sit there as you are. But as to smoking, you mustn't. I cannot abide your strong tobacco; besides, it would make Matros sneeze."

Lavretsky hastened to a.s.sure her that he had not the slightest desire to smoke.

"Have you been down-stairs?" asked the old lady. "Whom did you find there? Is Panshine always hanging about there? But did you see Liza?

No? She was to have come here. Why there she is--as soon as one mentions her."

Liza came into the room, caught sight of Lavretsky and blushed.

"I have only come for a moment, Marfa Timofeevna," she was beginning.

"Why for a moment?" asked the old lady. "Why are all you young people so restless? You see I have a visitor there. Chat a little with him, amuse him."