"Pure maiden," he said, in a half-whisper, "pure stars," he added, with a smile, and then quietly lay down to sleep.

But Lemm sat for a long time on his bed, with a sheet of music on his knees. It seemed as if some sweet melody, yet unborn, were intending to visit him. He already underwent the feverish agitation, he already felt the fatigue and the delight, of its vicinity; but it always eluded him.

"Neither poet nor musician!" he whispered at last; and his weary head sank heavily upon the pillow.

* * * * *

The next morning Lavretsky and his guest drank their tea in the garden, under an old lime-tree.

"Maestro," said Lavretsky, among other things, "you will soon have to compose a festal cantata."

"On what occasion?"

"Why, on that of Mr. Panshine's marriage with Liza. Didn't you observe what attention he paid her yesterday? All goes smoothly with them evidently."

"That will never be!" exclaimed Lemm.

"Why?"

"Because it's impossible. However," he added after pausing awhile, "in this world everything is possible. Especially in this country of yours—in Russia."

"Let us leave Russia out of the question for the present. But what do you see objectionable in that marriage?"

"Every thing is objectionable—every thing. Lizaveta Mikhailovna is a serious, true-hearted girl, with lofty sentiments. But he—he is, to describe him by one word, a dil-le-tante"

"But doesn't she love him?"

Lemm rose from his bench.

"No, she does not love him. That is to say, she is very pure of heart, and does not herself know the meaning of the words, 'to love.' Madame Von Kalitine tells her that he is an excellent young man; and she obeys Madame Von Kalitine because she is still quite a child, although she is now nineteen. She says her prayers every morning; she says her prayers every evening—and that is very praiseworthy. But she does not love him. She can love only what is noble. But he is not noble; that is to say, his soul is not noble."

Lemm uttered the whole of this speech fluently, and with animation, walking backwards and forwards with short steps in front of the tea-table, his eyes running along the ground meanwhile.

"Dearest Maestro!" suddenly exclaimed Lavretsky, "I think you are in love with my cousin yourself."

Lemm suddenly stopped short.

"Please do not jest with me in that way," he began, with faltering voice. "I am not out of my mind. I look forward to the dark grave, and not to a rosy future."

Lavretsky felt sorry for the old man, and begged his pardon. After breakfast Lemm played his cantata, and after dinner, at Lavretsky's own instigation, he again began to talk about Liza. Lavretsky listened to him attentively and with curiosity.

"What do you say to this, Christopher Fedorovitch?" he said at last. "Every thing seems in order here now, and the garden is in full bloom. Why shouldn't I invite her to come here for the day, with her mother and my old aunt—eh? Will that be agreeable to you?"

Lemm bowed his head over his plate.

"Invite her," he said, in a scarcely audible voice.

"But we needn't ask Panshine."

"No, we needn't," answered the old man, with an almost childlike smile.

Two days later Lavretsky went into town and to the Kalatines'.



XXIV.

He found them all at home, but he did not tell them of his plan immediately. He wanted to speak to Liza alone first. Chance favored him, and he was left alone with her in the drawing-room. They began to talk. As a general rule she was never shy with any one, and by this time she had succeeded in becoming accustomed to him. He listened to what she said, and as he looked at her face, he musingly repeated Lemm's words, and agreed with him. It sometimes happens that two persons who are already acquainted with each other, but not intimately, after the lapse of a few minutes suddenly become familiar friends—and the consciousness of this familiarity immediately expresses itself in their looks, in their gentle and kindly smiles, in their gestures themselves. And this happened now with Lavretsky and Liza. "Ah, so that's what's you're like!" thought she, looking at him with friendly eyes. "Ah, so that's what's you're like!" thought he also; and therefore he was not much surprised when she informed him, not without some little hesitation, that she had long wanted to say something to him, but that she was afraid of vexing him.

"Don't be afraid, speak out," he said, standing still in front of her.

Liza raised her clear eyes to his.

"You are so good," she began—and at the same time she thought, "yes, he is really good"—"I hope you will forgive me. I scarcely ought to have ventured to speak to you about it—but how could you—why did you separate from your wife?"

Lavretsky shuddered, then looked at Liza, and sat down by her side.

"My child," he began to say, "I beg you not to touch upon that wound. Your touch is light, but—in spite of all that, it will give me pain."

"I know," continued Liza, as if she had not heard him, "that she is guilty before you. I do not want to justify her. But how can they be separated whom God has joined together?"

"Our convictions on that score are widely different, Lizaveta Mikhailovna," said Lavretsky, somewhat coldly. "We shall not be able to understand one another."

Liza grew pale. Her whole body shuddered slightly, but she was not silenced.

"You ought to forgive," she said quietly, "if you wish also to be forgiven."

"Forgive!" cried Lavretsky; you ought first to know her for whom you plead. Forgive that woman, take her back to my house, her, that hollow, heartless, creature! And who has told you that she wants to return to me? Why, she is completely satisfied with her position. But why should we talk of her? Her name ought never to be uttered by you. You are too pure, you are not in a position even to understand such a being."

"Why speak so bitterly?" said Liza, with an effort. The trembling of her hands began to be apparent. "You left her of your own accord, Fedor Ivanich."

"But I tell you," replied Lavretsky, with an involuntary burst of impatience, "you do not know the sort of creature she is."

"Then why did you marry her?" whispered Liza, with downcast eyes.

Lavretsky jumped up quickly from his chair.

"Why did I marry her? I was young and inexperienced then. I was taken in. A beautiful exterior fascinated me. I did not understand women; there was nothing I did understand. God grant you may make a happier marriage! But take my word for it, it is impossible to be certain about anything."

"I also may be unhappy," said Liza, her voice beginning to waver, "but then I shall have to be resigned. I cannot express myself properly, but I mean to say that if we are not resigned—"

Lavretsky clenched his hands and stamped his foot.

"Don't be angry; please forgive me," hastily said Liza. At that moment Maria Dmitrievna came into the room. Liza stood up and was going away, when Lavretsky unexpectedly called after her:

"Stop a moment. I have a great favor to ask of your mother and you. It is that you will come and pay me a visit in my new home. I've got a piano, you know; Lemm is stopping with me; the lilacs are in bloom. You will get a breath of country air, and be able to return the same day. Do you consent?"

Liza looked at her mother, who immediately assumed an air of suffering. But Lavretsky did not give Madame Kalatine time to open her mouth. He instantly took both of her hands and kissed them, and Maria Dmitrievna, who always responded to winning ways, and had never for a moment expected such a piece of politeness from "the bear," felt herself touched, and gave her consent. While she was considering what day to appoint, Lavretsky went up to Liza, and, still under the influence of emotion, whispered aside to her, "Thanks. You are a good girl. I am in the wrong." Then a color came into her pale face, which lighted up with a quiet but joyous smile. Her eyes also smiled. Till that moment she had been afraid that she had offended him.

"M. Panshine can come with us, I suppose?" asked Maria Dmitrievna.

"Of course," replied Lavretsky. "But would it not be better for us to keep to our family circle?"

"But I think—" began Maria Dmitrievna, adding, however, "Well, just as you like."

It was settled that Lenochka and Shurochka should go. Marfa Timofeevna refused to take part in the excursion.

"It's a bore to me, my dear," she said, "to move my old bones; and there's nowhere, I suppose, in your house where I could pass the night; besides, I never can sleep in a strange bed. Let these young folks caper as they please."

Lavretsky had no other opportunity of speaking with Liza alone, but he kept looking at her in a manner that pleased her, and at the same time confused her a little. She felt very sorry for him. When he went away, he took leave of her with a warm pressure of the hand. She fell into a reverie as soon as she found herself alone.



XXIV.[A]

[Footnote A: Omitted in the French translation.]

On entering the drawing-room, after his return home, Lavretsky met a tall, thin man, with a wrinkled but animated face, untidy grey whiskers, a long, straight nose, and small, inflamed eyes. This individual, who was dressed in a shabby blue surtout, was Mikhalevich, his former comrade at the University. At first Lavretsky did not recognize him, but he warmly embraced him as soon as he had made himself known. The two friends had not seen each other since the old Moscow days. Then followed exclamations and questions. Memories long lost to sight came out again into the light of day. Smoking pipe after pipe in a hurried manner, gulping down his tea, and waving his long hands in the air, Mikhalevich related his adventures. There was nothing very brilliant about them, and he could boast of but little success in his various enterprises; but he kept incessantly laughing a hoarse, nervous laugh. It seemed that about a month previously he had obtained a post in the private counting-house of a rich brandy-farmer,[A] at about three hundred versts from O., and having heard of Lavretsky's return from abroad, he had turned out of his road for the purpose of seeing his old friend again. He spoke just as jerkingly as he used to do in the days of youth, and he became as noisy and as warm as he was in the habit of growing then. Lavretsky began to speak about his own affairs, but Mikhalevich stopped him, hastily stammering out, "I have heard about it, brother; I have heard about it. Who could have expected it?" and then immediately turned the conversation on topics of general interest.

[Footnote A: One of the contractors who used to purchase the right of supplying the people with brandy.]

"I must go away again to-morrow, brother," he said. "To-day, if you will allow it, we will sit up late. I want to get a thoroughly good idea of what you are now, what your intentions are and your convictions, what sort of man you have become, what life has taught you" (Mikhalevich still made use of the phraseology current in the year 1830). "As for me, brother, I have become changed in many respects. The waters of life have gone over my breast. Who was it said that? But in what is important, what is substantial, I have not changed. I believe, as I used to do, in the Good, in the True. And not only do I believe, but I feel certain now—yes, I feel certain, certain. Listen; I make verses, you know. There's no poetry in them, but there is truth. I will read you my last piece. I have expressed in it my most sincere convictions. Now listen."

Mikhalevich began to read his poem, which was rather a long one. It ended with the following lines:—

"With my whole heart have I given myself up to new feelings; In spirit I have become like unto a child, And I have burnt all that I used to worship, I worship all that I used to burn."

Mikhalevich all but wept as he pronounced these last two verses. A slight twitching, the sign of a strong emotion, affected his large lips; his plain face lighted up. Lavretsky went on listening until at last the spirit of contradiction was roused within him. He became irritated by the Moscow student's enthusiasm, so perpetually on the boil, so continually ready for use. A quarter of an hour had not elapsed before a dispute had been kindled between the two friends, one of those endless disputes of which only Russians are capable. They two, after a separation which had lasted for many years, and those passed in two different worlds, neither of them clearly understanding the other's thoughts, not even his own, holding fast by words, and differing in words alone, disputed about the most purely abstract ideas—and disputed exactly as if the matter had been one of life and death to both of them. They shouted and cried aloud to such an extent that every one in the house was disturbed, and poor Lemm, who had shut himself up in his room the moment Mikhalevich arrived, felt utterly perplexed, and even began to entertain some vague form of fear.

"But after all this, what are you? blase!"[A] cried Mikhalevich at midnight.

[Footnote A: Literally, "disillusioned."]

"Does a blase man ever look like me?" answered Lavretsky. "He is always pale and sickly; but I, if you like, will lift you off the ground with one hand."

"Well then, if not blase, at least a sceptic,[A] and that is still worse. But what right have you to be a sceptic? Your life has not been a success, I admit. That wasn't your fault. You were endowed with a soul full of affection, fit for passionate love, and you were kept away from women by force. The first woman you came across was sure to take you in."

[Footnote A: He says in that original Skyeptuik instead of Skeptik, on which the author remarks, "Mikhalevich's accent testified to his birth-place having been in Little Russia."]

"She took you in, too," morosely remarked Lavretsky.

"Granted, granted. In that I was the tool of fate. But I'm talking nonsense. There's no such thing as fate. My old habit of expressing myself inaccurately! But what does that prove?"

"It proves this much, that I have been distorted from childhood."

"Well, then, straighten yourself. That's the good of being a man. You haven't got to borrow energy. But, however that may be, is it possible, is it allowable, to work upwards from an isolated fact, so to speak, to a general law—to an invariable rule?"

"What rule?" said Lavretsky, interrupting him. "I do not admit—"

"No, that is your rule, that is your rule," cried the other, interrupting him in his turn.

"You are an egotist, that's what it is!" thundered Mikhalevich an hour later. "You wanted self-enjoyment; you wanted a happy life; you wanted to live only for yourself—"

"What is self-enjoyment?"

"—And every thing has failed you; everything has given way under your feet."

"But what is self-enjoyment, I ask you?"

"—And it ought to give way. Because you looked for support there, where it is impossible to find it; because you built your house on the quicksands—"

"Speak plainer, without metaphor, because I do not understand you."

"—Because—laugh away if you like—because there is no faith in you, no hearty warmth—and only a poor farthingsworth of intellect;[A] you are simply a pitiable creature, a behind—your—age disciple of Voltaire. That's what you are."

[Footnote A: Literally, "intellect, in all merely a copeck intellect."]

"Who? I a disciple of Voltaire?"

"Yes, just such a one as your father was; and you have never so much as suspected it."

"After that," exclaimed Lavretsky, "I have a right to say that you are a fanatic."

"Alas!" sorrowfully replied Mikhalevich, "unfortunately, I have not yet in any way deserved so grand a name—"

"I have found out now what to call you!" cried the self-same Mikhalevich at three o'clock in the morning.

"You are not a sceptic, nor are you a blase, nor a disciple of Voltaire; you are a marmot,[A] and a culpable marmot; a marmot with a conscience, not a naive marmot. Naive marmots lie on the stove[B] and do nothing, because they can do nothing. They do not even think anything. But you are a thinking man, and yet you lie idly there. You could do something, and you do nothing. You lie on the top with full paunch and say, 'To lie idle—so must it be; because all that people ever do—is all vanity, mere nonsense that conduces to nothing.'"

[Footnote A: A baibak, a sort of marmot or "prairie dog."]

[Footnote B: The top of the stove forms the sleeping place in a Russian peasant's hut.]

"But what has shown you that I lie idle?" insisted Lavretsky. "Why do you suppose I have such ideas?"

"—And, besides this, all you people, all your brotherhood," continued Mikhalevich without stopping, "are deeply read marmots. You all know where the German's shoe pinches him; you all know what faults Englishmen and Frenchmen have; and your miserable knowledge only serves to help you to justify your shameful laziness, your abominable idleness. There are some who even pride themselves on this, that 'I, forsooth, am a learned man. I lie idle, and they are fools to give themselves trouble.' Yes! even such persons as these do exist among us; not that I say this with reference to you; such persons as will spend all their life in a certain languor of ennui, and get accustomed to it, and exist in it like—like a mushroom in sour cream" (Mikhalevich could not help laughing at his own comparison). "Oh, that languor of ennui! it is the ruin of the Russian people. Throughout all time the wretched marmot is making up its mind to work—"

"But, after all, what are you scolding about?" cried Lavretsky in his turn. "To work, to do. You had better say what one should do, instead of scolding, O Demosthenes of Poltava."[A]

[Footnote A: Poltava is a town of Little Russia. It will be remembered that Mikhalovich is a Little Russian.]

"Ah, yes, that's what you want! No, brother, I will not tell you that. Every one must teach himself that," replied Demosthenes in an ironical tone. "A proprietor, a noble, and not know what to do! You have no faith, or you would have known. No faith and no divination."[A]

[Footnote A: Otkrovenie, discovery or revelation.]

"At all events, let me draw breath for a moment, you fiend," prayed Lavretsky. "Let me take a look round me!"

"Not a minute's breathing-time, not a second's," replied Mikhalevich, with a commanding gesture of the hand. "Not a single second. Death does not tarry, and life also ought not to tarry."

"And when and where have people taken it into their heads to make marmots of themselves?" he cried at four in the morning, in a voice that was now somewhat hoarse, "Why, here! Why, now! In Russia! When on every separate individual there lies a duty, a great responsibility, before God, before the nation, before himself! We sleep, but time goes by. We sleep—"

"Allow me to point, out to you," observed Lavretsky, "that we do not at all sleep at present, but rather prevent other persons from sleeping. We stretch our throats like barn-door cocks. Listen, that one is crowing for the third time."

This sally made Mikhalevich laugh, and sobered him down. "Good night," he said with a smile, and put away his pipe in its bag. "Good night," said Lavretsky also. However, the friends still went on talking for more than an hour. But their voices did not rise high any longer, and their talk was quiet, sad, kindly talk.

Mikhalevich went away next day, in spite of all his host could do to detain him. Lavretsky did not succeed in persuading him to stay, but he got as much talk as he wanted out of him.

It turned out that Mikhalevich was utterly impecunious. Lavretsky had already been sorry to see in him, on the preceding evening, all the characteristics of a poverty of long standing. His shoes were trodden down, his coat wanted a button behind, his hands were strangers to gloves, one or two bits of feather were sticking in his hair. When he arrived, he did not think of asking for a wash; and at supper he ate like a shark, tearing the meat to pieces with his fingers, and noisily gnawing the bones with his firm, discolored teeth.

It turned out, also, that he had not thriven in the civil service, and that he had pinned all his hopes on the brandy-farmer, who had given him employment simply that he might have an "educated man" in his counting-house. In spite of all this, however, Mikhalevich had not lost courage, but kept on his way leading the life of a cynic, an idealist, and a poet; fervently caring for, and troubling himself about, the destinies of humanity and his special vocation in life—and giving very little heed to the question whether or no he would die of starvation.

Mikhalevich had never married; but he had fallen in love countless times, and he always wrote poetry about all his loves: with especial fervor did he sing about a mysterious, raven-haired "lady." It was rumored, indeed, that this "lady" was nothing more than a Jewess, and one who had numerous friends among cavalry officers; but, after all, if one thinks the matter over, it is not one of much importance.

With Lemm, Mikhalevich did not get on well. His extremely loud way of talking, his rough manners, frightened the German, to whom they were entirely novel. One unfortunate man immediately and from afar recognizes another, but in old age he is seldom willing to associate with him. Nor is that to be wondered at. He has nothing to share with him—not even hopes.

Before he left, Mikhalevich had another long talk with Lavretsky, to whom he predicted utter ruin if he did not rouse himself, and whom he entreated to occupy himself seriously with the question of the position of his serfs. He set himself up as a pattern for imitation, saying that he had been purified in the furnace of misfortune; and then he several times styled himself a happy man, comparing himself to a bird of the air, a lily of the valley.

"A dusky lily, at all events," remarked Lavretsky.

"Ah, brother, don't come the aristocrat," answered Mikhalevich good-humoredly; "but rather thank God that in your veins also there flows simple plebeian blood. But I see you are now in need of some pure, unearthly being, who might rouse you from your apathy."

"Thanks, brother," said Lavretsky; "I have had quite enough of those unearthly beings."

"Silence, cyneec!"[A] exclaimed Mikhalevich.

[Footnote A: He says Tsuinnik instead of Tsinik.]

"Cynic," said Lavretsky, correcting him.

"Just so, cyneec," repeated the undisconcerted Mikhalevich.

Even when he had taken his seat in the tarantass, in which his flat and marvellously light portmanteau had been stowed away, he still went on talking. Enveloped in a kind of Spanish cloak, with a collar reddened by long use, and with lion's claws instead of hooks, he continued to pour forth his opinions on the destinies of Russia, waving his swarthy hand the while in the air, as if he were sowing the seeds of future prosperity. At last the horses set off.

"Remember my last three words!" he exclaimed, leaning almost entirely out of the carriage, and scarcely able to keep his balance. "Religion, Progress, Humanity! Farewell!" His head, on which his forage cap was pressed down to his eyes, disappeared from sight. Lavretsky was left alone at the door, where he remained gazing attentively along the road, until the carriage was out of sight. "And perhaps he is right," he thought, as he went back into the house. "Perhaps I am a marmot." Much of what Mikhalevich had said had succeeded in winning its way into his heart, although at the time he had contradicted him and disagreed with him. Let a man only be perfectly honest—no one can utterly gainsay him.



XXV.

Two days later, Maria Dmitrievna arrived at Vasilievskoe, according to her promise, and all her young people with her. The little girls immediately ran into the garden, but Maria Dmitrievna languidly walked through the house, and languidly praised all she saw. She looked upon her visit to Lavretsky as a mark of great condescension, almost a benevolent action. She smiled affably when Anton and Apraxia came to kiss her hand, according to the old custom of household serfs, and in feeble accents she asked for tea.

To the great vexation of Anton, who had donned a pair of knitted white gloves, it was not he who handed the tea to the lady visitor, but Lavretsky's hired lackey, a fellow who, in the old man's opinion, had not a notion of etiquette. However, Anton had it all his own way at dinner. With firm step, he took up his position behind Madame Kalitine's chair, and he refused to give up his post to any one. The apparition of visitors at Vasilievskoe—a sight for so many years unknown there—both troubled and cheered the old man. It was a pleasure for him to see that his master was acquainted with persons of some standing in society.

Anton was not the only person who was agitated that day. Lemm was excited too. He had put on a shortish snuff-colored coat with pointed tails, and had tied his cravat tight, he coughed incessantly, and made way for every one with kindly and affable mien. As for Lavretsky, he remarked with satisfaction that he remained on the same friendly footing with Liza as before. As soon as she arrived she cordially held out her hand to him.

After dinner, Lemm took a small roll of music-paper out of the tail-pocket of his coat, into which he had been constantly putting his hand, and silently, with compressed lips, placed it upon the piano. It contained a romance, which he had written the day before to some old-fashioned German words, in which mention was made of the stars. Liza immediately sat down to the piano, and interpreted the romance. Unfortunately the music turned out to be confused and unpleasantly constrained. It was evident that the composer had attempted to express some deep and passionate idea, but no result had been attained. The attempt remained an attempt, and nothing more. Both Lavretsky and Liza felt this, and Lemm was conscious of it too. Without saying a word, he put his romance back into his pocket; and, in reply to Liza's proposal to play it over again, he merely shook his head, and said, in a tone of meaning, "For the present—basta!" then bent his head, stooped his shoulders, and left the room.

Towards evening they all went out together to fish. In the little lake at the end of the garden there were numbers of carp and groundling. Madame Kalitine had an arm-chair set in the shade for her, near the edge of the water, and a carpet was spread out under her feet. Anton, as an old fisherman of great experience, offered her his services. Zealously did he fasten on the worms, slap them with his hand, and spit upon them, and then fling the line into the water himself, gracefully bending forwards the whole of his body. Maria Dmitrievna had already that day spoken about him to Fedor Ivanovich, using the following phrase of Institute-French:—"Il n'y a plus maintenant de ces gens comme ca autre fois."

Lemm and the two little girls went on to the dam at the end of the lake. Lavretsky placed himself near Liza. The fish kept continually nibbling. Every minute a captured carp glistened in the air with its sometimes golden, sometimes silver, sides. The little girls kept up a ceaseless flow of joyful exclamations. Madame Kalitine herself two or three times uttered a plaintive cry. Lavretsky and Liza caught fewer fish than the others; probably because they paid less attention to their fishing, and let their floats drift up against the edge of the lake. The tall, reddish reeds murmured quietly around them; in front quietly shone the unruffled water, and the conversation they carried on was quiet too.

Liza stood on the little platform [placed there for the use of the washerwomen;] Lavretsky sat on the bent stem of a willow. Liza wore a white dress, fastened round the waist by a broad, white ribbon. From one hand hung her straw hat; with the other she, not without some effort, supported her drooping fishing-rod. Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile—at the hair turned back behind her ears—at her soft cheeks, the hue of which was like that of a young child's—and thought: "How charming you look, standing there by my lake!" Liza did not look at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the water, something which might be a smile lurking about their corners. Over both Lavretsky and Liza fell the shadow of a neighboring lime-tree.

"Do you know," he began, "I have thought a great deal about our last conversation, and I have come to this conclusion, that you are exceedingly good."

"It certainly was not with that intention that I—" replied Liza, and became greatly confused.

"You are exceedingly good," repeated Lavretsky. "I am a rough-hewn man; but I feel that every one must love you. There is Lemm, for instance: he's simply in love with you."

Liza's eyebrows did not exactly frown, but they quivered. This always happened with her when she heard anything she did not like.

"I felt very sorry for him to-day, with his unsuccessful romance," continued Lavretsky. "To be young and to want knowledge—that is bearable. But to have grown old and to fail in strength—that is indeed heavy. And the worst of it is, that one doesn't know when one's strength has failed. To an old man such blows are hard to bear. Take care! you've a bite—I hear," continued Lavretsky, after a short pause, "That M. Panshine has written a very charming romance."

"Yes," replied Liza, "it is a small matter; but it isn't bad."

"But what is your opinion about him himself?" asked Lavretsky. "Is he a good musician?"

"I think he has considerable musical faculty. But as yet he has not cultivated it as he ought."

"Just so. But is he a good man?"

Liza laughed aloud, and looked up quickly at Fedor Ivanovich.

"What a strange question!" she exclaimed, withdrawing her line from the water, and then throwing it a long way in again.

"Why strange? I ask you about him as one who has been away from here a long time—as a relation."

"As a relation?"

"Yes. I believe I am a sort of uncle of yours."

"Vladimir Nikolaevich has a good heart," said Liza. "He is clever. Mamma likes him very much."

"But you—do you like him?"

"He is a good man. Why shouldn't I like him?"

"Ah!" said Lavretsky, and became silent. A half-sad, half-mocking expression played upon his face. The fixed look with which he regarded her troubled Liza; but she went on smiling.

"Well, may God grant them happiness!" he murmured at last, as if to himself, and turned away his head.

Liza reddened.

"You are wrong, Fedor Ivanovich," she said; "you are wrong in thinking—But don't you like Vladimir Ivanovich?" she asked suddenly.

"No."

"Why?"

"I think he has no heart."

The smile disappeared from Liza's lips.

"You are accustomed to judge people severely," she said, after a long silence.

"I don't think so. What right have I to judge others severely, I should like to know, when I stand in need of indulgence myself? Or have you forgotten that it is only lazy people who do not mock me? But tell me," he added, "have you kept your promise?"

"What promise?"

"Have you prayed for me?"

"Yes, I prayed for you; and I pray every day. But please do not talk lightly about that."

Lavretsky began to assure Liza that he had never dreamt of doing so—that he profoundly respected all convictions. After that he took to talking about religion, about its significance in the history of humanity, of the meaning of Christianity.

"One must be a Christian," said Liza, not without an effort, "not in order to recognize what is heavenly, or what is earthly, but because every one must die."

With an involuntary movement of surprise, Lavretsky raised his eyes to Liza's, and met her glance.

"What does that phrase of yours mean?" he said.

"It is not my phrase," she replied.

"Not yours? But why did you speak about death?"

"I don't know. I often think about it."

"Often?"

"Yes."

"One wouldn't say so, looking at you now. Your face seems so happy, so bright, and you smile—"

"Yes. I feel very happy now," replied Liza simply.

Lavretsky felt inclined to seize both her hands and press them warmly.

"Liza, Liza!" cried Madame Kalitine, "come here and see what a carp I have caught."

"Yes, mamma," answered Liza, and went to her.

But Lavretsky remained sitting on his willow stem.

"I talk to her just as if I still had an interest in life," he thought.

Liza had hung up her hat on a bough when she went away. It was with a strange and almost tender feeling that Lavretsky looked at the hat, and at its long, slightly rumpled ribbons.

Liza soon came back again and took up her former position on the platform.

"Why do you think that Vladimir Nikolaevich has no heart?" she asked, a few minutes afterwards.

"I have already told you that I may be mistaken. However, time will reveal all."

Liza became contemplative. Lavretsky began to talk about his mode of life al Vasilievskoe, about Mikhalevich, about Anton. He felt compelled to talk to Liza, to communicate to her all that went on in his heart. And she listened to him so attentively, with such kindly interest; the few remarks and answers she made appeared to him so sensible and so natural. He even told her so.

Liza was astonished. "Really?" she said. "As for me, I thought I was like my maid, Nastasia, and had no words 'of my own.' She said one day to her betrothed, 'You will be sure to be bored with me. You talk to me so beautifully about every thing, but I have no words of my own.'"

"Heaven be praised!" thought Lavretsky.



XXVI.

In the meantime the evening had arrived, and Maria Dmitrievna evinced a desire to return home. With some difficulty the little girls were torn away from the lake, and got ready for the journey. Lavretsky said he would accompany his guests half-way home, and ordered a horse to be saddled for him. After seeing Maria Dmitrievna into her carriage he looked about for Lemm; but the old man could nowhere be found. He had disappeared the moment the fishing was over, Anton slammed the carriage door to, with a strength remarkable at his age, and cried in a stern voice, "Drive on, coachman!" The carriage set off. Maria Dmitrievna and Liza occupied the back seats; the two girls and the maid sat in front.

The evening was warm and still, and the windows were open on both sides. Lavretsky rode close by the carriage on Liza's side, resting a hand on the door—he had thrown the reins on the neck of his easily trotting horse—and now and then exchanged two or three words with the young girl. The evening glow disappeared. Night came on, but the air seemed to grow even warmer than before. Maria Dmitrievna soon went to sleep; the little girls and the maid servant slept also. Smoothly and rapidly the carriage rolled on. As Liza bent forwards, the moon, which had only just made its appearance, lighted up her face, the fragrant night air breathed on her eyes and cheeks, and she felt herself happy. Her hand rested on the door of the carriage by the side of Lavretsky's. He too felt himself happy as he floated on in the calm warmth of the night, never moving his eyes away from the good young face, listening to the young voice, clear even in its whispers, which spoke simple, good words.

It even escaped his notice for a time that he had gone more than half of the way. Then he would not disturb Madame Kalitine, but he pressed Liza's hand lightly and said, "We are friends now, are we not?" She nodded assent, and he pulled up his horse. The carriage rolled on its way quietly swinging and curtseying.

Lavretsky returned home at a walk. The magic of the summer night took possession of him. All that spread around him seemed so wonderfully strange, and yet at the same time so well known and so dear. Far and near all was still—and the eye could see very far, though it could not distinguish much of what it saw—but underneath that very stillness a young and flowering life made itself felt.

Lavretsky's horse walked on vigorously, swinging itself steadily to right and left. Its great black shadow moved by its side. There was a sort of secret charm in the tramp of its hoofs, something strange and joyous in the noisy cry of the quails. The stars disappeared in a kind of luminous mist. The moon, not yet at its full, shone with steady lustre. Its light spread in a blue stream over the sky, and fell in a streak of vaporous gold on the thin clouds which went past close at hand.

The freshness of the air called a slight moisture into Lavretsky's eyes, passed caressingly over all his limbs, and flowed with free current into his chest. He was conscious of enjoying, and felt glad of that enjoyment. "Well, we will live on still; she has not entirely deprived us—" he did not say who, or of what.—Then he began to think about Liza; that she could scarcely be in love with Panshine; that if he had met her under other circumstances—God knows what might have come of it; that he understood Lemm's feelings about her now, although she had "no words of her own." And, moreover, that that was not true; for she had words of her own. "Do not speak lightly about that," recurred to Lavretsky's memory. For a long time he rode on with bent head, then he slowly drew himself up repeating,—

"And I have burnt all that I used to worship, I worship all that I used to burn—"

then he suddenly struck his horse with his whip and and galloped straight away home.

On alighting from his horse he gave a final look round, a thankful smile playing involuntarily on his lips. Night—silent, caressing night—lay on the hills and dales. From its fragrant depths afar—whether from heaven or from earth could not be told—there poured a soft and quiet warmth. Lavretsky wished a last farewell to Liza—and hastened up the steps.

The next day went by rather slowly, rain setting in early in the morning. Lemm looked askance, and compressed his lips even tighter and tighter, as if he had made a vow never to open them again. When Lavretsky lay down at night he took to bed with him a whole bundle of French newspapers, which had already lain unopened on his table for two or three weeks. He began carelessly to tear open their covers and to skim the contents of their columns, in which, for the matter of that, there was but little that was new. He was just on the point of throwing them aside, when he suddenly bounded out of bed as if something had stung him. In the feuilleton of one of the papers our former acquaintance, M. Jules, communicated to his readers a "painful piece of intelligence." "The fascinating, fair Muscovite," he wrote, "one of the queens of fashion, the ornament of Parisian salons, Madame de Lavretski," had died almost suddenly. And this news, unfortunately but too true, had just reached him, M. Jules. He was, so he continued, he might say, a friend of the deceased—

Lavretsky put on his clothes, went out into the garden, and walked up and down one of its alleys until the break of day.

At breakfast, next morning, Lemm asked Lavretsky to let him have horses in order to get back to town.

"It is time for me to return to business, that is to lessons," remarked the old man. "I am only wasting my time here uselessly."

Lavretsky did not reply at once. He seemed lost in a reverie.

"Very good," he said at last; "I will go with you myself."

Refusing the assistance of a servant, Lemm packed his little portmanteau, growing peevish the while and groaning over it, and then tore up and burnt some sheets of music paper. The carriage came to the door. As Lavretsky left his study he put in his pocket the copy of the newspaper he had read the night before. During the whole of the journey neither Lavretsky nor Lemm said much. Each of them was absorbed in his own thoughts, and each was glad that the other did not disturb him. And they parted rather coldly, an occurrence which, for the matter of that, often occurs among friends in Russia. Lavretsky drove the old man to his modest dwelling. Lemm took his portmanteau with him as he got out of the carriage, and, without stretching out his hand to his friend, he held the portmanteau before him with both hands, and, without even looking at him, said in Russian, "Farewell!" "Farewell!" echoed Lavretsky, and told the coachman to drive to his apartments; for he had taken lodgings in O.

After writing several letters, and making a hasty dinner, he went to the Kalitines'. There he found no one in the drawing-room but Panshine, who told him that Maria Dmitrievna would come directly, and immediately entered into conversation with him in the kindest and most affable manner. Until that day Panshine had treated Lavretsky, not with haughtiness exactly, but with condescension; but Liza, in describing her excursion of the day before, had spoken of Lavretsky as an excellent and clever man. That was enough; the "excellent" man must be captivated.

Panshine began by complimenting Lavretsky, giving him an account of the rapture with which, according to him, all the Kalitine family had spoken of Vasilievskoe; then, according to his custom, adroitly bringing the conversation round to himself, he began to speak of his occupations, of his views concerning life, the world, and the service; said a word or two about the future of Russia, and about the necessity of holding the Governors of provinces in hand; joked facetiously about himself in that respect, and added that he, among others, had been entrusted at St. Petersburg with the commission de populariser l'idee du cadastre. He spoke at tolerable length, and with careless assurance, solving all difficulties, and playing with the most important administrative and political questions as a juggler does with his balls. Such expressions as, "That is what I should do if I were the Government," and, "You, as an intelligent man, doubtless agree with me," were always at the tip of his tongue.

Lavretsky listened coldly to Panshine's eloquence. This handsome, clever, and unnecessarily elegant young man, with his serene smile, his polite voice, and his inquisitive eyes, was not to his liking. Panshine soon guessed, with the quick appreciation of the feelings of others which was peculiar to him, that he did not confer any special gratification on the person he was addressing, so he disappeared under cover of some plausible excuse, having made up his mind that Lavretsky might be an excellent man, but that he was unsympathetic, "aigri" and, en somme, somewhat ridiculous.

Madame Kalitine arrived, accompanied by Gedeonovsky. Then came Marfa Timofeevna and Liza, and after them all the other members of the family. Afterwards, also, there arrived the lover of music, Madame Belenitsine, a thin little woman, with an almost childish little face, pretty but worn, a noisy black dress, a particolored fan, and thick gold bracelets. With her came her husband, a corpulent man, with red cheeks, large hands and feet, white eyelashes, and a smile which never left his thick lips. His wife never spoke to him in society; and at home, in her tender moments, she used to call him her "sucking pig."

Panshine returned; the room became animated and noisy. Such an assemblage of people was by no means agreeable to Lavretsky. He was especially annoyed by Madame Belenitsine, who kept perpetually staring at him through her eye-glass. If it had not been for Liza he would have gone away at once. He wanted to say a few words to her alone, but for a long time he could not obtain a fitting opportunity of doing so, and had to content himself with following her about with his eyes It was with a secret joy that he did so. Never had her face seemed to him more noble and charming. She appeared to great advantage in the presence of Madame Belenitsine. That lady was incessantly fidgeting on her chair, working her narrow shoulders, laughing affectedly, and either all but closing her eyes or opening them unnaturally wide. Liza sat still, looked straight before her, and did not laugh at all.

Madame Kalitine sat down to cards with Marfa Timofeevna, Belenitsine, and Gedeonovsky, the latter of whom played very slowly, made continual mistakes, squeezed up his eyes, and mopped his face with his handkerchief. Panshine assumed an air of melancholy, and expressed himself tersely, sadly, and significantly—altogether after the fashion of an artist who has not yet had any opportunity of showing off—but in spite of the entreaties of Madame Belenitsine, who coquetted with him to a great extent he would not consent to sing his romance. Lavretsky's presence embarrassed him.

Lavretsky himself spoke little, but the peculiar expression his face wore struck Liza as soon as he entered the room. She immediately felt that he had something to communicate to her; but, without knowing herself why, she was afraid of asking him any questions. At last, as she was passing into the next room to make the tea, she almost unconsciously looked towards him. He immediately followed her.

"What is the matter with you?" she asked, putting the teapot on the samovar.[A]

[Footnote A: Urn.]

"You have remarked something, then?" he said.

"You are different to-day from what I have seen you before."

Lavretsky bent over the table.

"I wanted," he began, "to tell you a piece of news, but just now it is impossible. But read the part of this feuilleton which is marked in pencil," he added, giving her the copy of the newspaper he had brought with him. "Please keep the secret; I will come back to-morrow morning."

Liza was thoroughly amazed. At that moment Panshine appeared in the doorway. She put the newspaper in her pocket.

"Have you read Obermann,[A] Lizaveta Mikhailovna?" asked Panshine with a thoughtful air.

[Footnote A: The sentimental romance of that name, written by E. Pivert de Senancour.]

Liza replied vaguely as she passed out of the room, and then went up-stairs. Lavretsky returned into the drawing room and approached the card table. Marfa Timofeevna flushed, and with her cap-strings untied, began to complain to him of her partner Gedeonovsky, who, according to her, had not yet learnt his steps. "Card-playing," she said, "is evidently a very different thing from gossiping." Meanwhile Gedeonovsky never left off blinking and mopping himself with his handkerchief.

Presently Liza returned to the drawing-room and sat down in a corner. Lavretsky looked at her and she at him, and each experienced a painful sensation. He could read perplexity on her face, and a kind of secret reproach. Much as he wished it, he could not get a talk with her, and to remain in the same room with her as a mere visitor among other visitors was irksome to him, so he determined to go away.

When taking leave of her, he contrived to repeat that he would come next day, and he added that he counted on her friendship. "Come," she replied, with the same perplexed look still on her face.

After Lavretsky's departure, Panshine grew animated. He began to give advice to Gedeonovsky, and to make mock love to Madame Belenitsine, and at last he sang his romance. But when gazing at Liza, or talking to her, he maintained the same air as before, one of deep meaning, with a touch of sadness in it.

All that night also, Lavretsky did not sleep. He was not unhappy, he was not agitated; on the contrary, he was perfectly calm; but he could not sleep. He was not even recalling the past. He simply looked at his present life. His heart beat firmly and equably, the hours flew by, he did not even think about sleeping. Only at times there came into his head the thought, "Surely this is not true, this is all nonsense." And then he would stop short, and presently let his head fall back and again betake himself to gazing into the stream of his life.



XXVII.

Madame Kalitine did not receive Lavretsky over cordially, when he paid her a visit next day. "Ah! he's making a custom of it," she thought. She was not of herself disposed to like him very much, and Panshine, who had got her thoroughly under his influence, had praised him the evening before in a very astutely disparaging manner. As she did not treat him as an honored guest, nor think it necessary to trouble herself about one who was a relation, almost a member of the family circle, before half an hour had elapsed he went out into the garden. There he and Liza strolled along one of the alleys, while Lenochka and Shurochka played around the flower-pots at a little distance from them.

Liza was as quiet as usual, but more than usually pale. She took the folded leaf of the newspaper from her pocket, and handed it to Lavretsky.

"That is terrible news," she said.

Lavretsky made no reply.

"But, after all, perhaps it may not be true."

"That is why I asked you not to mention it to any one."

Liza walked on a little farther.

"Tell me," she began, "are not you sorry?—not at all sorry?"

"I don't know myself what I feel," answered Lavretsky.

"But you loved her once?"

"I did."

"Very much?"

—"Yes."

"And yet you are not sorry for her death?"

"It is not only now that she has become dead for me."

"You are saying what is sinful. Don't be angry with me. You have called me your friend. A friend may say anything. And it really seems terrible to me. The expression on your face yesterday was not good to see. Do you remember your complaining about her not long ago? And at that very time, perhaps, she was already no longer among the living. It is terrible. It is just as if it had been sent you as a punishment."

Lavretsky laughed bitterly.

"You think so?—at all events I am free now."

Liza shuddered.

"Do not speak so any more. What use is your freedom to you? You should not be thinking of that now, but of forgiveness—"

"I forgave her long ago," interrupted Lavretsky, with an impatient gesture.

"No, I don't mean that," answered Liza, reddening; "you have not understood me properly. It is you who ought to strive to get pardoned."

"Who is there to pardon me?"

"Who? Why God. Who can pardon us except God?"

Lavretsky grasped her hand.

"Ah! Lizaveta Mikhailovna!" he exclaimed, "believe me, I have already been punished enough—I have already expiated all, believe me."

"You cannot tell that," said Liza, in a low voice. "You forget. It was not long ago that you and I were talking, and you were not willing to forgive her."

Both of them walked along the alley for a time in silence.

"And about your daughter?" suddenly asked Liza, and then stopped short.

Lavretsky shuddered.

"Oh! don't disturb yourself about her. I have already sent off letters in all directions. The future of my daughter, as you—as you say—is assured. You need not trouble yourself on that score."

Liza smiled sadly.

"But you are right," continued Lavretsky. "What am I to do with my freedom—what use is it to me?"

"When did you get this paper?" asked Liza, without answering his question.

"The day after your visit."

"And have not you—have not you even shed a tear?"

"No; I was thunderstruck. But whither should I look for tears? Should I cry over the past? Why, all mine has been, as it were, consumed with fire. Her fault did not actually destroy my happiness; it only proved to me that for me happiness had never really existed. What, then, had I to cry for? Besides—who knows?—perhaps I should have been more grieved if I had received this news a fortnight sooner."

"A fortnight!" replied Liza. "But what can have happened to make such a difference in that fortnight?"

Lavretsky make no reply at first, and Liza suddenly grew still redder than before.

"Yes, yes! you have guessed it!" unexpectedly cried Lavretsky. "In the course of that fortnight I have learnt what a woman's heart is like when it is pure and clear; and my past life seems even farther off from me than it used to be."

Liza became a little uncomfortable, and slowly turned to where Lenochka and Shurochka were in the flower-garden.

"But I am glad I showed you that newspaper," said Lavretsky, as he followed her. "I have grown accustomed to conceal nothing from you, and I hope you will confide in me equally in return."

"Do you really?" said Liza, stopping still. "In that case, I ought. But, no! it is impossible."

"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, passionate 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 God—"

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?" Passing at that moment in front of a looking-glass, he just glanced at his face in it, and then shrugged his shoulders.

Amid such thoughts as these the day passed 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 assurance.

"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 assure 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."

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 balustrade, 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 assumed 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 noble 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 passed 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 God. 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 grass 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.



XXX.

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 embarrassment, 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.

"Tell me," he began again presently; "haven't you made up your mind yet?"

"What do you mean?" she replied, without lifting her eyes from the ground.

"Surely you understand me?"

Liza suddenly reddened.

"Don't ask me about anything!" she exclaimed with animation. "I know nothing. I don't know myself."

And she went hastily away.

The next day Lavretsky arrived at the Kalitines' after dinner, and found all the preparations going on there for an evening service. In a corner of the dining-room, a number of small icons[A] in golden frames, with tarnished little diamonds in the aureolas, were already placed against the wall on a square table, which was covered with a table-cloth of unspotted whiteness. An old servant, dressed in a grey coat and wearing shoes, traversed the whole room deliberately and noiselessly, placed two slender candle-sticks with wax tapers in them before the icons, crossed himself, bowed, and silently left the room.

[Footnote A: Sacred Pictures.]

The drawing-room was dark and empty. Lavretsky went into the dining-room, and asked if it was any one's name-day.[A] He was told in a whisper that it was not, but that a service was to be performed in accordance with the request of Lizaveta Mikhailovna and Marfa Timofeevna. The miracle-working picture was to have been brought, but it had gone to a sick person thirty versts off.

[Footnote A: A Russian keeps, not his birthday, but his name-day—that is, the day set apart by the church in honor of the saint after whom he is called.]

Soon afterwards the priest arrived with his acolytes—a middle-aged man, with a large bald spot on his head, who coughed loudly in the vestibule. The ladies immediately came out of the boudoir in a row, and asked him for his blessing. Lavretsky bowed to them in silence, and they as silently returned his greeting. The priest remained a little longer where he was, then coughed again, and asked, in a low, deep voice—

"Do you wish me to begin?"

"Begin, reverend father," replied Maria Dmitrievna.

The priest began to robe. An acolyte in a surplice humbly asked for a coal from the fire. The scent of the incense began to spread around. The footmen and the maid-servants came in from the ante-chamber and remained standing in a compact body at the door. The dog Roska, which, as a general rule, never came down-stairs from the upper story, now suddenly made its appearance in the dining room. The servants tried to drive it out, but it got frightened, first ran about, and then lay down. At last a footman got hold of it and carried it off.

The service began. Lavretsky retired into a corner. His feelings were strange and almost painful. He himself could not well define what it was that he felt. Maria Dmitrievna stood in front of the rest, with an arm-chair behind her. She crossed herself carelessly, languidly, like a great lady. Sometimes she looked round, at others she suddenly raised her eyes towards the ceiling. The whole affair evidently bored her.

Marfa Timofeevna seemed pre-occupied. Nastasia Carpovna bowed down to the ground, and raised herself up again, with a sort of soft and modest sound. As for Liza, she did not stir from the spot where she was standing, she did not change her position upon it; from the concentrated expression of her face, it was evident that she was praying uninterruptedly and fervently.

At the end of the service she approached the crucifix, and kissed both it and the large red hand of the priest. Maria Dmitrievna invited him to take tea. He threw off his stole, assumed a sort of mundane air, and went into the drawing-room with the ladies. A conversation began, not of a very lively nature. The priest drank four cups of tea, wiping the bald part of his head the while with his handkerchief, stated among other things that the merchant Avoshnikof had given several hundred roubles towards the gilding of the church's "cumpola," and favored the company with an unfailing cure for freckles.

Lavretsky tried to get a seat near Liza, but she maintained her grave, almost austere air, and never once looked at him. She seemed intentionally to ignore him. A kind of serious, cold enthusiasm appeared to possess her. For some reason or other Lavretsky felt inclined to smile, and to utter words of jesting; but his heart was ill at ease, and at last he went away in a state of secret perplexity. There was something, he felt, in Liza's mind, which he could not understand.

On another occasion, as Lavretsky was sitting in the drawing-room, listening to the insinuating tones of Gedeonovsky's wearisome verbiage, he suddenly turned round, he knew not why, and caught the deep, attentive, inquiring look of Liza's eyes. That enigmatical look was directed towards him. The whole night long Lavretsky thought of it. His love was not like that of a boy, nor was it consistent with his age to sigh and to torment himself; and indeed it was not with a feeling of a merely passionate nature that Liza had inspired him. But love has its sufferings for every age—and he became perfectly acquainted with them.



XXXI.

One day Lavretsky was as usual at the Kalitines'. An overpoweringly hot afternoon had been followed by such a beautiful evening that Madame Kalitine, notwithstanding her usual aversion to a draught, ordered all the windows and the doors leading into the garden to be opened. Moreover, she announced that she was not going to play cards, that it would be a sin to do so in such lovely weather, and that it was a duty to enjoy the beauties of nature.

Panshine was the only stranger present. Influenced by the evening, and feeling a flow of artistic emotion, but not wishing to sing in Lavretsky's presence, he threw himself into poetry He read—and read well, only with too much consciousness, and with needlessly subtle distinctions—some of Lermontof's poems (Pushkin had not then succeeded in getting back into fashion). Suddenly, as if ashamed of his emotion, he began in reference to the well-known Duma,[A] to blame and attack the new generation, not losing the opportunity which the subject afforded him of setting forth how, if the power lay in his hands, he would alter everything his own way.

[Footnote A: For the poem, so-called, see note at end of chapter.]

"Russia," he said, "has lagged behind Europe, and must be driven up alongside of it. We are told that ours is a young country. That is all nonsense. Besides, we have no inventive power. Khomakof[A] himself admits that we have never invented so much as a mousetrap. Consequently we are obliged to imitate others, whether we like it or no."

[Footnote A: A poet, who was one of the leaders of the Slavophile party.]

"'We are ill,' says Lermontof, and I agree with him. But we are ill because we have only half become Europeans. With that which has wounded us we must be cured." ("Le cadastre" thought Lavretsky.) "Among us," he continued, "the best heads, les meilleures tetes, have long been convinced of this. In reality, all peoples are alike; only introduce good institutions, and the affair is settled. To be sure, one may make some allowance for the existing life of the nation; that is our business, the business of the people who are" (he all but said "statesmen") "in the public service; but if need arises, don't be uneasy. Those institutions will modify that life itself."

Maria Dmitrievna admiringly agreed with him. "What a clever man to have talking in my house!" she thought. Liza kept silence, leaning back in the recess of the window. Lavretsky kept silence too. Marfa Timofeevna, who was playing cards in a corner with her friend, grumbled something to herself. Panshine walked up and down the room, speaking well, but with a sort of suppressed malice. It seemed as if he was blaming, not so much a whole generation, as some individuals of his acquaintance. A nightingale had made its home in a large lilac bush which stood in the Kalitines' garden, and the first notes of its even-song made themselves heard during the pauses in the eloquent harangue; the first stars began to kindle in the rose-stained sky above the motionless tops of the lime trees. Presently Lavretsky rose and began to reply to Panshine. A warm dispute soon commenced.

Lavretsky spoke in defence of the youth of Russia, and of the capacity of the country to suffice for itself. He surrendered himself and his contemporaries, but he stood up for the new generation, and their wishes and convictions. Panshine replied incisively and irritably, declared that clever people were bound to reform every thing, and at length was carried away to such an extent that, forgetting his position as a chamberlain, and his proper line of action as a member of the civil service, he called Lavretsky a retrogade conservative, and alluded—very distantly it is true—to his false position in society. Lavretsky did not lose his temper, nor did he raise his voice; he remembered that Mikhalevich also had called him a retrograde, and, at the same time a disciple of Voltaire; but he calmly beat Panshine on every point. He proved the impracticability of reforming by sudden bounds, and of introducing changes haughtily schemed on the heights of official self-complacency—changes which were not justified by any intimate acquaintance with the country, nor by a living faith in any ideal, not even in one of negation, and in illustration of this he adduced his own education. He demanded before every thing else that the true spirit of the nation should be recognized, and that it should be looked up to with that humility without which no courage is possible, not even that wherewith to oppose falsehood. Finally he did not attempt to make any defence against what he considered a deserved reproach, that of giving way to a wasteful and inconsiderate expenditure of both time and strength.

"All that is very fine!" at last exclaimed Panshine with vexation. "But here are you, just returned to Russia; what do you intend to do?"

"To cultivate the soil," replied Lavretsky; "and to cultivate it as well as possible."

"No doubt that is very praiseworthy," answered Panshine, "and I hear you have already had great success in that line; but you must admit that every one is not fitted for such an occupation—"

"Une nature poetique," said Maria Dmitrievna, "certainly cannot go cultivating the soil—et puis, it is your vocation, Vladimir Nikolaevich, to do every thing en grand."

This was too much even for Panshine, who grew confused, and changed the conversation. He tried to turn it on the beauty of the starry heavens, on Schubert's music, but somehow his efforts did not prove successful. He ended by offering to play at piquet with Maria Dmitrievna. "What! on such an evening as this?" she feebly objected; but then she ordered the cards to be brought.

Panshine noisily tore open a new pack; and Liza and Lavretsky, as if by mutual consent, both rose from their seats and placed themselves near Marfa Timofeevna. They both suddenly experienced a great feeling of happiness, mingled with a sense of mutual dread, which made them glad of the presence of a third person; at the same time, they both felt that the uneasiness from which they had suffered during the last few days had disappeared, and would return no more.

The old lady stealthily tapped Lavretsky on the cheek, screwed up her eyes with an air of pleasant malice, and shook her head repeatedly, saying in a whisper, "You've done for the genius—thanks!" Then all became still in the room. Nothing was to be heard but the faint crackling of the wax lights, and sometimes the fall of a hand on the table, or an exclamation on the score of points, and the song of the nightingale which, powerful, almost insolently loud, flowed in a great wave through the window, together with the dewy freshness of the night.

* * * * *

NOTE.—The following is a tolerably literal translation of the poem of Lermontof's to which allusion is made on p. 208, and which created no slight sensation when it first appeared, in the year 1838:—

A THOUGHT.

Sorrowfully do I look upon the present generation! Its future seems either gloomy or meaningless, and meanwhile, whether under the burden of knowledge or of doubt, it grows old in idleness.

When scarcely out of the cradle, we reap the rich inheritance of the errors of our fathers, and the results of their tardy thoughts. Life soon grows wearisome for us, like a banquet at a stranger's festival, like a level road leading nowhere.

In the commencement of our career, we fall away without a struggle, shamefully careless about right and wrong, shamefully timid in the face of danger.

So does a withered fruit which has prematurely ripened—attractive neither to the eye nor to the palate—hang like an alien orphan among blossoms; and the hour of their beauty is that of its fall.

Our intellect has dried up in the pursuit of fruitless science, while we have been concealing the purest of hopes from the knowledge of those who are near and dear to us, and stifling the noble utterance of such sentiments as are ridiculed by a mocking spirit.

We have scarcely tasted of the cup of enjoyment, but for all that we have not husbanded our youthful strength. While we were always in dread of satiety, we have contrived to drain each joy of its best virtues.

No dreams of poetry, no creations of art, touch our hearts with a sweet rapture. We stingily hoard up within our breasts the last remnants of feeling—a treasure concealed by avarice, and which remains utterly unprofitable.

We love and we hate capriciously, sacrificing nothing either to our animosity or to our affection, a certain secret coldness possessing our souls, even while a fire is raging in our veins.

The sumptuous pleasures of our ancestors weary us, as well as their simple, childish diversions. Without enjoying happiness, without reaping glory, we hasten onwards to the grave, casting naught but unlucky glances behind us.

A saturnine crowd, soon to be forgotten, we silently pass away from the world and leave no trace behind, without having handed down to the ages to come a single work of genius, or even a solitary thought laden with meaning.

And our descendants, regarding our memory with the severity of citizens called to sit in judgment on an affair concerning the state, will allude to us with the scathing irony of a ruined son, when he speaks of the father who has squandered away his patrimony.



XXXII.

Liza had not uttered a single word during the dispute between Lavretsky and Panshine, but she had followed it attentively, and had been on Lavretsky's side throughout. She cared very little about politics; but she was repelled by the self-sufficient tone of the worldly official, who had never shown himself in that light before, and his contempt for Russia offended her. It had never occurred to Liza to imagine that she was a patriot. But she was thoroughly at her ease with the Russian people. The Russian turn of mind pleased her. She would chat for hours, without thinking anything of it, with the chief of the village on her mother's estate, when he happened to come into town, and talk with him as if he were her equal, without any signs of seigneurial condescension. All this Lavretsky knew well. For his own part, he never would have cared to reply to Panshine; it was only for Liza's sake that he spoke.

They said nothing to each other, and even their eyes but rarely met. But they both felt that they had been drawn closer together that evening, they knew that they both had the same likes and dislikes. On one point only were they at variance; but Liza secretly hoped to bring him back to God. They sat down close by Marfa Timofeevna, and seemed to be following her game; nay, more, did actually follow it. But, meantime, their hearts grew full within them, and nothing escaped their senses—for them the nightingale sang softly, and the stars burnt, and the trees whispered, steeped in slumberous calm, and lulled to rest by the warmth and softness of the summer night.

Lavretsky gave himself up to its wave of fascination, and his heart rejoiced within him. But no words can express the change that was being worked within the pure soul of the maiden by his side. Even for herself it was a secret; let it remain, then, a secret for all others also. No one knows, no eye has seen or ever will see, how the grain which has been confided to the earth's bosom becomes instinct with vitality, and ripens into stirring, blossoming life.

Ten o'clock struck, and Marfa Timofeevna went up-stairs to her room with Nastasia Carpovna. Lavretsky and Liza walked about the room, stopped in front of the open door leading into the garden, looked first into the gloaming distance and then at each other—and smiled. It seemed as if they would so gladly have taken each other's hands and talked to their hearts' content.

They returned to Maria Dmitrievna and Panshine, whose game dragged itself out to an unusual length. At length the last "king" came to an end, and Madame Kalitine rose from her cushioned chair, sighing, and uttering sounds of weariness the while. Panshine took his hat, kissed her hand, remarked that nothing prevented more fortunate people from enjoying the night or going to sleep, but that he must sit up till morning over stupid papers, bowed coldly to Liza—with-whom he was angry, for he had not expected that she would ask him to wait so long for an answer to his proposal—and retired. Lavretsky went away directly after him, following him to the gate, where he took leave of him. Panshine aroused his coachman, poking him in the neck with the end of his stick, seated himself in his droshky, and drove away. But Lavretsky did not feel inclined to go home, so he walked out of the town into the fields.

The night was still and clear, although there was no moon. For a long time Lavretsky wandered across the dewy grass. A narrow footpath lay in his way, and he followed it. It led him to a long hedge, in which there was a wicket gate. Without knowing why he did so, he tried to push it open; with a faint creak it did open, just as if it had been awaiting the touch of his hand. Lavretsky found himself in a garden, took a few steps along a lime-tree alley, and suddenly stopped short in utter amazement. He saw that he was in the Kalitines' garden.

A thick hazel bush close at hand flung a black patch of shadow on the ground. Into this he quickly passed, and there stood for some time without stirring from the spot, inwardly wondering and from time to time shrugging his shoulders. "This has not happened without some purpose," he thought.

Around all was still. From the house not the slightest sound reached him. He began cautiously to advance. At the corner of an alley all the house suddenly burst upon him with its dusky facade. In two windows only on the upper story were lights glimmering. In Liza's apartment a candle was burning behind the white blind, and in Marfa Timofeevna's bed-room glowed the red flame of the small lamp hanging in front of the sacred picture, on the gilded cover of which it was reflected in steady light. Down below, the door leading on to the balcony gaped wide open.

Lavretsky sat down on a wooden bench, rested his head on his hand, and began looking at that door, and at Liza's window. Midnight sounded in the town; in the house a little clock feebly struck twelve. The watchman beat the hour with quick strokes on his board. Lavretsky thought of nothing, expected nothing. It was pleasant to him to feel himself near Liza, to sit in her garden, and on the bench where she also often sat.

The light disappeared from Liza's room.

"A quiet night to you, dear girl," whispered Lavretsky, still sitting where he was without moving, and not taking his eyes off the darkened window.

Suddenly a light appeared at one of the windows of the lower story, crossed to another window, and then to a third. Some one was carrying a candle through the room. "Can it be Liza? It cannot be," thought Lavretsky. He rose. A well-known face glimmered in the darkness, and Liza appeared in the drawing-room, wearing a white dress, her hair hanging loosely about her shoulders. Quietly approaching the table, she leant over it, put down the candle and began looking for something. Then she turned towards the garden, and crossed to the open door; presently her light, slender, white-robed form stood still on the threshold.

A kind of shiver ran over Lavretsky's limbs, and the word "Liza!" escaped all but inaudibly from his lips.

She started, and then began to peer anxiously into the darkness.

"Liza!" said Lavretsky louder than before, and came out from the shadow of the alley.

Liza was startled. For a moment she bent forward; then she shrank back. She had recognized him. For the third time he called her, and held out his hands towards her. She passed out from the doorway and came into the garden.

"You!" she said. "You here!"

"I—I—Come and hear what I have to say," whispered Lavretsky; and then, taking her hand, he led her to the bench.

She followed him without a word; but her pale face, her fixed look, and all her movements, testified her unutterable astonishment. Lavretsky made her sit down on the bench, and remained standing in front of her.

"I did not think of coming here," he began. "I was led here—I—I—I love you," he ended by saying, feeling very nervous in spite of himself.

Liza slowly looked up at him. It seemed as if it had not been till that moment that she understood where she was, and what was happening to her. She would have risen, but she could not. Then she hid her face in her hands.

"Liza!" exclaimed Lavretsky; "Liza!" he repeated, and knelt down at her feet.

A slight shudder ran over her shoulders; she pressed the fingers of her white hands closer to her face.

"What is it?" said Lavretsky. Then he heard a low sound of sobbing, and his heart sank within him. He understood the meaning of those tears.

"Can it be that you love me?" he whispered, with a caressing gesture of the hand.

"Stand up, stand up, Fedor Ivanovich," she at last succeeded in saying. "What are we doing?"

He rose from his knees, and sat down by her side on the bench. She was no longer crying, but her eyes, as she looked at him earnestly, were wet with tears.

"I am frightened! What are we doing?" she said again.

"I love you," he repeated. "I am ready to give my whole life for you."

She shuddered again, just as if something had stung her, then she raised her eyes to heaven.

"That is entirely in the hands of God," she replied.

"But you love me, Liza? We are going to be happy?"

She let fall her eyes. He softly drew her to himself, and her head sank upon his shoulder. He bent his head a little aside, and kissed her pale lips.

* * * * *

Half an hour later Lavretsky was again standing before the garden gate. He found it closed now and was obliged to get over the fence. He returned into the town, and walked along its sleeping streets. His heart was full of happiness, intense and unexpected; all misgiving was dead within him. "Disappear, dark spirit of the Past!" he said to himself. "She loves me. She will be mine."

Suddenly he seemed to hear strange triumphal sounds floating in the air above his head. He stopped. With greater grandeur than before the sounds went clanging forth. With strong, sonorous stream did they flow along—and in them, as it seemed to him, all his happiness spoke and sang. He looked round. The sounds came from the two upper windows of a small house.

"Lemm!" he exclaimed, and ran up to the door of the house. "Lemm, Lemm!" he repeated loudly.

The sounds died away, and the form of the old man, wrapped in a dressing-gown, with exposed chest and wildly floating hair, appeared at the window.

"Ha! it is you," he said, with an air of importance.

"Christopher Fedorovich, what wonderful music! For heaven's sake let me in!"

The old man did not say a word, but with a dignified motion of the hand he threw the key of the door out of the window into the street. Lavretsky hastily ran up-stairs, entered the room, and was going to fling himself into Lemm's arms. But Lemm, with a gesture of command, pointed to a chair, and said sharply in his incorrect Russian, "Sit down and listen," then took his seat at the piano, looked round with a proud and severe glance, and began to play.

Lavretsky had heard nothing like it for a long time indeed. A sweet, passionate melody spoke to the heart with its very first notes. It seemed all thoroughly replete with sparkling light, fraught with inspiration, with beauty, and with joy. As it rose and sank it seemed to speak of all that is dear, and secret, and holy, on earth. It spoke too of a sorrow that can never end, and then it went to die away in the distant heaven.

Lavretsky had risen from his seat and remained standing, rooted to the spot, and pale with rapture. Those sounds entered very readily into his heart; for it had just been stirred into sensitiveness by the touch of a happy love, and they themselves were glowing with love.

"Play it again," he whispered, as soon as the last final chord had died away.

The old man looked at him with an eagle's glance, and said slowly, in his native tongue, striking his breast with his hand, "It is I who wrote that, for I am a great musician," and then he played once more his wonderful composition.