Liza; Or, "A Nest of Nobles" Part 19

Liza sat down on the edge of a chair, raised her eyes to Lavretsky, and felt at once that she could not do otherwise than let him know how her interview with Panshine had ended. But how was that to be managed?

She felt at the same time confused and ashamed. Was it so short a time since she had become acquainted with that man, one who scarcely ever went to church even, and who bore the death of his wife so equably?

and yet here she was already communicating her secrets to him. It was true that he took an interest in her; and that, on her side she trusted him, and felt herself drawn towards him. But in spite of all this, she felt a certain kind of modest shame--as if a stranger had entered her pure maiden chamber.

Marfa Timofeevna came to her rescue.

"Well, if you will not amuse him," she said, "who is to amuse him, poor fellow? I am too old for him; he is too clever for me; and as to Nastasia Carpovna, he is too old for her. It's only boys she cares for."

"How can I amuse Fedor Ivanovich?" said Liza. "I would rather play him something on the piano, if he likes," she continued irresolutely.

"That's capital. You're a clever creature," replied Marfa Timofeevna.

"Go down-stairs, my dears. Come back again when you've clone; but just now, here I'm left the _durachka_,[A] so I'm savage. I must have my revenge."

[Footnote A: In the game of _durachki_, the player who remains the last is called the _durachok_ or _durachka_, diminutive of _durak_, a fool. The game somewhat resembles our own "Old Bachelor" or "Old Maid."]

Liza rose from her chair, and so did Lavretsky. As she was going down-stairs, Liza stopped.

"What they say is true," she began. "The human heart is full of contradictions. Your example ought to have frightened me--ought to have made me distrust marrying for love, and yet I--".

"You've refused him?" said Lavretsky, interrupting her.

"No; but I have not accepted him either. I told him every thing--all my feelings on the subject--and I asked him to wait a little. Are you satisfied?" she asked with a sudden smile: and letting her hand skim lightly along the bal.u.s.trade, she ran down-stairs.

"What shall I play you?" she asked, as she opened the piano.

"Whatever you like," answered Lavretsky, taking a seat where he could look at her.

Liza began to play, and went on for some time with-out lifting her eyes from her fingers. At last she looked at Lavretsky, and stopped playing. The expression of his face seemed so strange and unusual to her.

"What is the, matter?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "All is well with me at present. I feel happy on your account; it makes me glad to look at you--do go on."

"I think," said Liza, a few minutes later, "if he had really loved me he would not have written that letter; he ought to have felt that I could not answer him just now."

"That doesn't matter," said Lavretsky; "what does matter is that you do not love him."

"Stop! What is that you are saying? The image of your dead wife is always haunting me, and I feel afraid of you."

"Doesn't my Liza play well, Woldemar?" Madame Kalitine was saying at this moment to Panshine.

"Yes," replied Panshine, "exceedingly well."

Madame Kalitine looked tenderly at her young partner; but he a.s.sumed a still more important and pre-occupied look, and called fourteen kings.

XXIX.

Lavretsky was no longer a very young man. He could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling with which Liza had inspired him. On that day he became finally convinced that he was in love with her. That conviction did not give him much pleasure.

"Is it possible," he thought, "that at five-and-thirty I have nothing else to do than to confide my heart a second time to a woman's keeping? But Liza is not like _her_. She would not have demanded humiliating sacrifices from me. She would not have led me astray from my occupations. She would have inspired me herself with a love for honorable hard work, and we should have gone forward together towards some n.o.ble end. Yes," he said, bringing his reflections to a close, "all that is very well. But the worst of it is that she will not go anywhere with me. It was not for nothing that she told me she was afraid of me. And as to her not being in love with Panshine--that is but a poor consolation!"

Lavretsky went to Vasilievskoe; but he could not manage to spend even four days there--so wearisome did it seem to him. Moreover, he was tormented by suspense. The news which M. Jules had communicated required confirmation, and he had not yet received any letters. He returned to town, and pa.s.sed the evening at the Kalitines'. He could easily see that Madame Kalitine had been set against him; but he succeeded in mollifying her a little by losing some fifteen roubles to her at piquet. He also contrived to get half-an-hour alone with Liza, in spite of her mother having recommended her, only the evening before, not to be too intimate with a man "_qui a tin si grand ridicule_."

He found a change in her. She seemed to have become more contemplative. She blamed him for stopping away; and she asked him if he would not go to church the next day--the next day being Sunday.

"Do come," she continued, before he had time to answer. "We will pray together for the repose of _her_ soul." Then she added that she did not know what she ought to do--that she did not know whether she had any right to make Panshine wait longer for her decision.

"Why?" asked Lavretsky.

"Because," she replied, "I begin to suspect by this time what that decision will be."

Then she said that she had a headache, and went to her room, after irresolutely holding out the ends of her fingers to Lavretsky.

The next day Lavretsky went to morning service. Liza was already in the church when he entered. He remarked her, though she did not look towards him. She prayed fervently; her eyes shone with a quiet light; quietly she bowed and lifted her head.

He felt that she was praying for him also, and a strange emotion filled his soul. The people standing gravely around, the familiar faces, the harmonious chant, the odor of the incense, the long rays slanting through the windows, the very sombreness of the walls and arches--all appealed to his heart. It was long since he had been in church--long since he had turned his thoughts to G.o.d. And even now he did not utter any words of prayer--he did not even pray without words; but nevertheless, for a moment, if not in body, at least in mind, he bowed clown and bent himself humbly to the ground. He remembered how, in the days of his childhood, he always used to pray in church till he felt on his forehead something like a kind of light touch. "That" he used then to think, "is my guardian angel visiting me and pressing on me the seal of election." He looked at Liza. "It is you who have brought me here," he thought. "Touch me--touch my soul!" Meanwhile, she went on quietly praying. Her face seemed to him to be joyous, and once more he felt softened, and he asked, for another's soul, rest--for his own, pardon. They met outside in the porch, and she received him with a friendly look of serious happiness. The sun brightly lit up the fresh gra.s.s in the church-yard and the many-colored dresses and kerchiefs of the women. The bells of the neighboring churches sounded on high; the sparrows chirped on the walls. Lavretsky stood by, smiling and bare-headed; a light breeze played with his hair and Liza's, and with the ends of Liza's bonnet strings. He seated Liza and her companion Lenochka, in the carriage, gave away all the change he had about him to the beggars, and then strolled slowly home.

x.x.x.

The days which followed were days of heaviness for Lavretsky. He felt himself in a perpetual fever. Every morning he went to the post, and impatiently tore open his letters and newspapers; but in none of them did he find anything which could confirm or contradict that rumor, on the truth of which he felt that so much now depended. At times he grew disgusted with himself. "What am I," he then would think, "who am waiting here, as a raven waits for blood, for certain intelligence of my wife's death?"

He went to the Kalitines' every day; but even there he was not more at his ease. The mistress of the house was evidently out of humor with him, and treated him with cold condescension. Panshine showed him exaggerated politeness; Lemm had become misanthropical, and scarcely even returned his greeting; and, worst of all, Liza seemed to avoid him. Whenever she happened to be left alone with him, she manifested symptoms of embarra.s.sment, instead of the frank manner of former days.

On such occasions she did not know what to say to him; and even he felt confused. In the course of a few days Liza had become changed from what he remembered her to have been. In her movements, in her voice, even in her laugh itself, a secret uneasiness manifested itself--something different from her former evenness of temper. Her mother, like a true egotist, did not suspect anything; but Marfa Timofeevna began to watch her favorite closely.

Lavretsky often blamed himself for having shown Liza the newspaper he had received; he could not help being conscious that there was something in his state of feeling which must be repugnant to a very delicate mind. He supposed, moreover, that the change which had taken place in Liza arose from a struggle with herself, from her doubt as to what answer she should give to Panshine.

One day she returned him a book--one of Walter Scott's novels--which she had herself asked him for.

"Have you read it?" he asked.

"No; I am not in a mood for books just now," she answered, and then was going away.

"Wait a minute," he said. "It is so long since I got a talk with you alone. You seem afraid of me. Is it so?"

"Yes."

"But why?"

"I don't know."

Lavretsky said nothing for a time.