Liza; Or, "A Nest of Nobles" Part 27

That yawn did not escape Varvara's notice. She suddenly turned her back upon the piano, saying, "_a.s.sez de musique comme ca_; let us talk a little," and crossed her hands before her.

"_Oui, a.s.ses de musique_," gladly repeated Panshine, and began a conversation with her--a brisk and airy conversation, carried on in French. "Exactly as if it were in one of the best Paris drawing-rooms," thought Maria Dmitrievna, listening to their quick and supple talk.

Panshine felt completely happy. He smiled, and his eyes shone. At first, when he happened to meet Maria Dmitrievna's eyes, he would pa.s.s his hand across his face and frown and sigh abruptly, but after a time he entirely forgot her presence, and gave himself up unreservedly to the enjoyment of a half-fashionable, half-artistic chat.

Varvara Pavlovna proved herself a great philosopher. She had an answer ready for everything; she doubted nothing; she did not hesitate at anything. It was evident that she had talked often and much with all kinds of clever people. All her thoughts and feelings circled around Paris. When Panshine made literature the subject of the conversation, it turned out that she, like him, had read nothing but French books.

George Sand irritated her; Balzac she esteemed, although he wearied her; to Eugene Sue and Scribe she ascribed a profound knowledge of the human heart; Dumas and Feval she adored. In reality she preferred Paul de k.o.c.k to all the others; but, as may be supposed, she did not even mention his name. To tell the truth, literature did not interest her overmuch.

Varvara Pavlovna avoided with great skill every thing that might, even remotely, allude to her position. In all that she said, there was not even the slightest mention made of love; on the contrary, her language seemed rather to express an austere feeling with regard to the allurements of the pa.s.sions, and to breathe the accents of disillusionment and resignation.

Panshine replied to her, but she refused to agree with him. Strange to say, however, at the very time when she was uttering words which conveyed what was frequently a harsh judgment, the accents of those very words were tender and caressing, and her eyes expressed--What those charming eyes expressed it would be hard to say, but it was something which had no harshness about it, rather a mysterious sweetness. Panshine tried to make out their hidden meaning, tried to make his own eyes eloquent, but he was conscious that he failed. He acknowledged that Varvara Pavlovna, in her capacity as a real lioness from abroad, stood on a higher level than he; and, therefore, he was not altogether master of himself.

Varvara Pavlovna had a habit of every now and then just touching the sleeve of the person with whom she was conversing. These light touches greatly agitated Panshine. She had the faculty of easily becoming intimate with any one. Before a couple of hours had pa.s.sed, it seemed to Panshine as if he had known her an age, and as if Liza--that very Liza whom he had loved so much, and to whom he had proposed the evening before--had vanished in a kind of fog.

Tea was brought; the conversation became even more free from restraint than before. Madame Kalitine rang for the page, and told him to ask Liza to come down if her headache was better. At the sound of Liza's name, Panshine began to talk about self-sacrifice, and to discuss the question as to which is the more capable of such sacrifice--man or woman. Maria Dmitrievna immediately became excited, began to affirm that the woman is the more capable, a.s.serted that she could prove the fact in a few words, got confused over them, and ended with a sufficiently unfortunate comparison. Varvara Pavlovna took up a sheet of music, and half-screening her face with it, bent over towards Panshine, and said in a whisper, while she nibbled a biscuit, a quiet smile playing about her lips and her eyes, "_Elle n'a pas invente la poudre, la bonne dame_."

Panshine was somewhat astonished, and a little alarmed by Varvara's audacity, but he did not detect the amount of contempt for himself that lay hid in that unexpected sally, and--forgetting all Maria Dmitrievna's kindness and her attachment towards him, forgetting the dinners she had given him, the money she had lent him--he replied (unhappy mortal that he was) in the same tone, and with a similar smile, "_Je crois bien_!" and what is more he did not even say "_Je crois bien_!" but "_J'crois ben_!"

Varvara Pavlovna gave him a friendly look, and rose from her seat.

At that moment Liza entered the room. Marfa Timofeevna had tried to prevent her going but in vain. Liza was resolved to endure her trial to the end. Varvara Pavlovna advanced to meet her, attended by Panshine, whose face again wore its former diplomatic expression.

"How are you now?" asked Varvara.

"I am better now, thank you," replied Liza.

"We have been pa.s.sing the time with a little music," said Panshine.

"It is a pity you did not hear Varvara Pavlovna. She sings charmingly, _en artiste consommee_."

"Come here, _ma chere_," said Madame Kalitine's voice.

With childlike obedience, Varvara immediately went to her, and sat down on a stool at her feet. Maria Dmitrievna had called her away, in order that she might leave her daughter alone with Panshine, if only for a moment. She still hoped in secret that Liza would change her mind. Besides this, an idea had come into her mind, which she wanted by all means to express.

"Do you know," she whispered to Varvara Pavlovna, "I want to try and reconcile you and your husband. I cannot promise to succeed, but I will try. He esteems me very much, you know."

Varvara slowly looked up at Maria Dmitrievna, and gracefully clasped her hands together.

"You would be my saviour, _ma tante_," she said, with a sad voice. "I don't know how to thank you properly for all your kindness; but I am too guilty before Fedor Ivanovich. He cannot forgive me."

"But did you actually--in reality--?" began Maria Dmitrievna, with lively curiosity.

"Do not ask me," said Varvara, interrupting her, and then looked down. "I was young, light headed--However, I don't wish to make excuses for myself."

"Well, in spite of all that, why not make the attempt? Don't give way to despair," replied Maria Dmitrievna, and was going to tap her on the cheek, but looked at her, and was afraid. "She is modest and discreet," she thought, "but, for all that, a _lionne_ still!"

"Are you unwell?" asked Panshine, meanwhile.

"I am not quite well," replied Liza.

"I understand," he said, after rather a long silence, "Yes, I understand."

"What do you mean?"

"I understand," significantly repeated Panshine, who simply was at a loss for something to say.

Liza felt confused, but then she thought, "What does it matter?"

Meanwhile Panshine a.s.sumed an air of mystery and maintained silence, looking in a different direction with a grave expression on his face.

"Why I fancy it must be past eleven!" observed Maria Dmitrievna.

Her guests understood the hint and began to take leave. Varvara was obliged to promise to come and dine to-morrow, and to bring Ada with her. Gedeonovsky, who had all but gone to sleep as he sat in a corner, offered to escort her home. Panshine bowed gravely to all the party; afterwards, as he stood on the steps after seeing Varvara into her carriage, he gave her hand a gentle pressure, and exclaimed, as she drove away, "_Au revoir_!" Gedeonovsky sat by her side in the carriage, and all the way home she amused herself by putting the tip of her little foot, as if by accident, on his foot. He felt abashed, and tried to make her complimentary speeches. She t.i.ttered, and made eyes at him when the light from the street lamps shone Into the carriage. The waltz she had played rang in her ears and excited her.

Wherever she might be she had only to imagine a ballroom and a blaze of light, and swift circling round to the sound of music, and her heart would burn within her, her eyes would glow with a strange l.u.s.tre, a smile would wander around her lips, a kind of baccha.n.a.lian grace would seem to diffuse itself over her whole body.

When they arrived at her house Varvara lightly bounded from the carriage, as only a _lionne_ could bound, turned towards Gedeonovsky, and suddenly burst out laughing in his face.

"A charming creature," thought the councillor of state, as he made his way home to his lodgings, where his servant was waiting for him with a bottle of opodeldoc. "It's as well that I'm a steady man--But why did she laugh?"

All that night long Marfa Timofeevna sat watching by Liza's bedside.

x.x.xIX.

Lavretsky spent a day and a half at Vasilievskoe, wandering about the neighborhood almost all the time. He could not remain long in any one place. His grief goaded him on. He experienced all the pangs of a ceaseless, impetuous, and impotent longing. He remembered the feeling which had come over him the day after his first arrival. He remembered the resolution he had formed then, and he felt angrily indignant with himself. What was it that had been able to wrest him aside from that which he had acknowledged as his duty, the single problem of his future life? The thirst after happiness--the old thirst after happiness. "It seems that Mikhalevich was right after all," he thought. "You wanted to find happiness in life once more," he said to himself. "You forgot that for happiness to visit a man even once is an undeserved favor, a steeping in luxury. Your happiness was incomplete--was false, you may say. Well, show what right you have to true and complete happiness! Look around you and see who is happy, who enjoys his life! There is a peasant going to the field to mow. It may be that he is satisfied with his lot. But what of that? Would you be willing to exchange lots with him? Remember your own mother. How exceedingly modest were her wishes, and yet what sort of a lot fell to her share! You seem to have only been boasting before Panshine, when you told him that you had come into Russia to till the soil. It was to run after the girls in your old age that you came. Tidings of freedom, reached you, and you flung aside every thing, forgot every thing, ran like a child after a b.u.t.terfly."

In the midst of his reflections the image of Liza constantly haunted him. By a violent effort he tried to drive it away, and along with it another haunting face, other beautiful but ever malignant and hateful features.

Old Anton remarked that his master was not quite himself; and after sighing several times behind the door, and several times on the threshold, he ventured to go up to him, and advised him to drink something hot. Lavretsky spoke to him harshly, and ordered him out of the room: afterwards he told the old man he was sorry he had done so; but this only made Anton sadder than he had been before.

Lavretsky could not stop in the drawing-room. He fancied that his great grandfather, Andrei, was looking out from his frame with contempt on his feeble descendant. "So much for you! You float in shallow water!"[A] the wry lips seemed to be saying to him. "Is it possible," he thought, "that I cannot gain mastery over myself; that I am going to yield to this--this trifling affair!" (Men who are seriously wounded in a battle always think their wounds "a mere trifle;" when a man can deceive himself no longer, it is time to give up living). "Am I really a child? Well, yes I have seen near at hand, I have almost grasped, the possibility of gaining a life-long happiness--and then it has suddenly disappeared. It is just the same in a lottery. Turn the wheel a little more, and the pauper would perhaps be rich. If it is not to be, it is not to be--and all is over.

I will betake me to my work with set teeth, and I will force myself to be silent; and I shall succeed, for it is not for the first time that I take myself in hand. And why have I run away? Why do I stop here, vainly hiding my head, like an ostrich? Misfortune a terrible thing to look in the face! Nonsense!"

[Footnote A: See note to page 142.]

"Anton!" he called loudly, "let the taranta.s.s be got ready immediately."

"Yes," he said to himself again. "I must compel myself to be silent; I must keep myself tightly in hand."

With such reflections as these Lavretsky sought to a.s.suage his sorrow; but it remained as great and as bitter as before. Even Apraxia, who had outlived, not only her intelligence, but almost all her faculties, shook her head, and followed him with sad eyes as he started in the taranta.s.s for the town. The horses galloped. He sat erect and motionless, and looked straight along the road.

XL.

Liza had written to Lavretsky the night before telling him to come and see her on this evening; but he went to his own house first. He did not find either his wife or his daughter there; and the servant told him that they had both gone to the Kalitines'! This piece of news both annoyed and enraged him. "Varvara Pavlovna seems to be determined not to let me live in peace," he thought, an angry feeling stirring in his heart. He began walking up and down the room, pushing away every moment, with hand or foot, one of the toys or books or feminine belongings which fell in his way. Then he called Justine, and told her to take away all that "rubbish."