‘As you understand it – no.’
‘You’re not in love with him?’
‘No. But is that essential?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My mama likes him,’ Liza continued. ‘He’s kind and I haven’t anything against him.’
‘However, you haven’t made up your mind?’
‘Yes… and perhaps you and your words are the reason why. Do you remember what you said the day before yesterday? But this is weakness
‘Oh, my child!’ Lavretsky suddenly exclaimed, and his voice was shaking, ‘don’t deceive yourself with words, don’t call weakness the cry of your heart that does not wish to give itself up without love. Don’t take on yourself such a terrible responsibility to someone you don’t love and yet wish to belong to…’
‘I’m obedient, I don’t take anything on myself,’ Liza started to say.
‘Be obedient to your heart; it alone will tell you the truth,’ Lavretsky interrupted her. ‘Experience, reason – all that is dust and vanity! Do not deprive yourself of the best, the only happiness on earth.’
‘Is it you saying this, Fyodor Ivanych? You yourself married for love – and were you happy?’
Lavretsky flung his arms wide.
‘Ah, don’t talk about me! You can have no idea of everything that a young, inexperienced and grotesquely ill-educated boy can take for love!… Yet why should I tell lies about myself? I told you just now that I did not know happiness…. That’s not true! I was happy!’
‘It seems to me, Fyodor Ivanych,’ Liza said, lowering her voice (when she disagreed with her interlocutor she always lowered her voice; besides, she was in a state of great excitement), ‘happiness on earth does not depend on us.’
‘It depends on us and on you, believe me,’ (he seized both her hands in his; Liza grew pale and almost in fright, if attentively, gazed at him) ‘so long as we haven’t ourselves spoiled our lives. For some people a love-match can be a misfortune; but not for you, with your calm temperament and your lucid soul! I implore you, don’t get married without love, through a feeling of duty or renunciation or something of the kind…. That’s the same as lack of faith, the same as marrying for money and even worse. Believe me – I have a right to say this because I paid dearly for this right. And if your God…’
At that moment Lavretsky noticed that Lenochka and Shurochka were standing beside Liza and staring at him with dumb amazement. He released Liza’s hands and said hurriedly: ‘Please forgive me,’ and turned towards the house.
‘I ask you only one thing,’ he said, turning back to Liza, ‘don’t decide at once, wait a bit, think over what I’ve said to you. Even if you haven’t believed me, even if you should decide to marry for reasons of expediency – don’t, in that case, marry Mr Panshin: he is not the husband for you…. You will promise me, won’t you, not to hurry?’
Liza wanted to answer Lavretsky – and did not utter a word, not because she had decided to ‘hurry’, but because her heart was beating too fast and a feeling akin to terror stifled her breathing.
XXX
ON leaving the Kalitins, Lavretsky met Panshin; they bowed coldly to each other. Lavretsky returned to his rooms and locked himself in. He was experiencing feelings which he had hardly ever experienced before. Was it so long ago that he had been in a state of ‘peaceful torpor’? Was it so long ago that he had thought of himself as being at the bottom of a river? What had made his position change? What had brought him to the surface? Was it the most ordinary, inevitable, though always unexpected accident of death? Yes; but he was thinking not so much about the death of his wife and his own freedom, as about what answer Liza would give to Panshin. He felt that in the course of the last three days he had begun to look at her with different eyes; he recalled how, returning home and thinking about her in the silence of the night, he had said to himself: ‘If only!…’ That ‘if only’, related by him to the past and the impossible, had now come to pass, if not exactly as he had supposed – but his freedom alone was not enough. ‘She’ll obey her mother,’ he thought, ‘and marry Panshin; but even if she refuses him – isn’t it all the same to me?’ Passing in front of a mirror, he glanced into his face and gave a shrug.
The day passed quickly in these reflections, and it became evening. Lavretsky went to the Kalitins. He walked hurriedly, but he approached their house with slower steps. Panshin’s droshky stood before the porch. ‘Well,’ thought Lavretsky, ‘I’m not going to be an egoist,’ and he went into the house. He met no one inside, and there was no sound from the drawing-room; he opened the door and saw Marya Dmitrievna playing picquet with Panshin. Panshin bowed to him without speaking, and the mistress of the house exclaimed: ‘What a surprise!’ and slightly knitted her brows. Lavretsky sat down beside her and began looking at her cards.
‘Do you know how to play?’ she asked him with a kind of veiled annoyance and at once laid her cards on the table.
Panshin totted his score up to ninety and then began politely and composedly taking tricks, with a stern and dignified expression on his face. That is how diplomats should play; no doubt he had played like that in St Petersburg with some powerful high-up whom he wished to impress with a good opinion of his solidity and maturity. ‘A hundred and one, a hundred and two, hearts, a hundred and three,’ his voice resounded with monotonous regularity, and Lavretsky could not make up his mind whether it sounded reproachful or self-satisfied.
‘May I see Marfa Timofeyevna?’ he asked, when he noticed that Panshin had started shuffling the cards with even greater dignity. There was no inkling of the artist in him at that moment.
‘Yes, I think so. She is in her room upstairs,’ answered Marya Dmitrievna. ‘Go and find out.’
Lavretsky went upstairs. And he also found Marfa Timofeyevna playing cards: she was playing Old Maid with Nastasya Karpovna. Roska began barking at him; but both the old ladies welcomed his arrival, particularly Marfa Timofeyevna, who seemed in excellent spirits.
‘Ah! Fedya! Do come in,’ she said, ‘and sit down, my dear. We’ll be finished with our game in a moment. Would you like some jam? Shurochka, get him the pot of strawberry. You wouldn’t like that? Well, then, sit there just as you are; as for smoking – don’t smoke: I can’t stand your tobacco and it makes Sailor sneeze.’
Lavretsky hastened to announce that he had no wish to smoke.
‘Were you downstairs?’ the old lady continued. ‘Who did you see there? Is Panshin still about the place? Have you seen Liza? No? She said she’d come here…. And there she is; no sooner said than done.’
Liza entered the room and, catching sight of Lavretsky, blushed.
‘I was coming to you just for a minute, Marfa Timofeyevna,’ she began.
‘Why just for a minute?’ protested the old lady. ‘Why is it that all you young girls are such fidgets? You see I’ve got a guest: have a chat with him, keep him entertained.’
Liza sat down on the edge of a chair, raised her eyes to Lavretsky and felt at once that it was impossible for her not to let him know the result of her meeting with Panshin. But how was it to be done? She felt both ashamed and awkward. It was no time at all since she had got to know him, this man who rarely went to church and was so indifferent to the death of his wife, and yet she was now telling him her secrets…. True, he was taking an interest in her; she also trusted him and felt an attraction for him; but nevertheless she felt ashamed, as though a stranger had entered her pure, virginal world.
Marfa Timofeyevna came to her aid.
‘If you won’t keep him entertained,’ she said, ‘who will, the poor fellow? I’m too old for him, he’s too clever for me, and he’s too old for Nastasya Karpovna: it’s only the young ones for her.’
‘How can I entertain Fyodor Ivanych?’ asked Liza. ‘If he likes, I’ll play him something on the piano,’ she added indecisively.
‘And a very good idea, too; you’re my clever one,’ said Marfa Timofeyevna. ‘Be off with you down below, my dears; when you’re finis
hed, come back up here; I’m ashamed to say I’ve been left an Old Maid and I want to get my revenge.’
Liza stood up. Lavretsky followed her. Going down the stairs, Liza stopped.
‘They tell the truth,’ she began, ‘when they say the human heart is full of contradictions. Your example should frighten me, it should make me distrust love matches, but I…’
‘You refused him?’ Lavretsky interrupted.
‘No; but I also didn’t agree. I told him everything, everything I felt, and I asked him to wait. Are you satisfied?’ she asked with a quick smile and, lightly touching the bannister rail with her hand, ran down the stairs.
‘What shall I play you?’ she asked, raising the piano lid.
‘Whatever you like,’ Lavretsky answered and sat down so that he could see her.
Liza began to play and for a long while did not lift her eyes from her fingers. She looked, finally, at Lavretsky and stopped: his face looked so strange and wonderful.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he replied, ‘I feel very happy. I’m glad for you and glad to see you. Please go on playing.’
‘It seems to me’, Liza said a few moments later, ‘that if he really loved me, he wouldn’t have written me that letter; he should have felt that I couldn’t answer him now.’
‘That’s not important,’ said Lavretsky. ‘What’s important is that you don’t love him.’
‘Stop talking like that! I have visions of your dead wife, and you terrify me.’
‘How charmingly my Lisette plays, Woldemar, doesn’t she?’ Marya Dmitrievna was saying to Panshin at that moment.
‘Yes,’ answered Panshin, ‘very charmingly.’
Marya Dmitrievna looked with tenderness at her young partner; but the latter assumed a still more important and preoccupied look and declared a fourteen of kings.
XXXI
LAVRETSKY was not a young man; he could not deceive himself for long about the feeling induced in him by Liza; that day he was finally convinced he loved her. This conviction brought him no great happiness. ‘Can it be’, he thought, ‘that at thirty-five years of age I have nothing better to do than once again relinquish my soul to a woman? But Liza is not to be compared with her: she would not demand degrading sacrifices; she would not distract me from my studies; she would herself inspire me to honest, disciplined labour, and we would go forward together towards a beautiful ideal. Yes,’ he ended his reflections, ‘all this is good, but the bad part is that she has no wish to go with me. She meant it when she said I terrified her. Still she doesn’t love Panshin… a poor consolation!’
Lavretsky drove to Vasilyevskoye; but he was there less than four days – it seemed to him so boring. He was fretted also by expectation: the news given by M. Jules needed confirmation, and he had received no letters. He returned to the town and sat out the evening at the Kalitins. It was easy for him to see that Marya Dmitrievna was ranged against him; but he succeeded in ingratiating himself with her to some extent by losing fifteen roubles to her at picquet, and he spent about half an hour almost alone with Liza despite the fact that her mother had advised her the previous day not to be too familiar with someone ‘qui a un si grand ridicule’. He found a change in her: she had apparently become more thoughtful, reproached him for his absence and asked him whether he would be going to church the next day. (The next day was Sunday.)
‘Come to church,’ she said before he could answer, ‘and we’ll pray together for the peace of her soul.’ Then she added that she did not know what to do, not knowing whether she had the right to make Panshin wait any longer for her decision.
‘Why exactly?’ asked Lavretsky.
‘Because,’ she said, ‘I’m already beginning to suspect what that decision will be.’
She announced that she had a headache and went upstairs to her room, irresolutely holding out to Lavretsky the tips of her fingers.
The next day Lavretsky went to church. Liza was already there when he arrived. She noticed him although she did not turn towards him. She prayed with great devotion; her eyes radiated a quiet reverence, with quiet reverence she bowed and raised her head. He felt that she was praying for him as well, and he felt wonderfully uplifted in his soul. It was a feeling both happy and a little conscience-stricken. The people standing there in their Sunday best, the familiar faces, the harmonious singing, the smell of incense, the long oblique rays of sunlight from the windows, the very darkness of the walls and vaulted ceiling – everything spoke directly to his heart. It was a long time since he had been in a church, a long time since he had addressed himself to God; he uttered no words of prayer now – and he did not pray even wordlessly but if only for an instant, if not with his body, then with all his being, he cast himself down and bowed in humility to the ground. He was reminded how in his childhood, on each visit to the church, he would pray until such time as he felt upon his brow the touch of something sent to refresh him; that, he used to think, was his guardian angel taking him into his keeping and setting upon him the seal of grace. He glanced at Liza…. ‘You’ve brought me here,’ he thought, ‘stretch out your hand and touch me, touch my soul.’ She still prayed with the same quiet reverence; her face seemed to him radiant with joy, and again he was uplifted, and he begged peace for another person’s soul and forgiveness for his own…
They met at the entrance to the church; she greeted him with a fond and cheerful gravity. The sun shone brightly on the young grass in front of the church and the colourful dresses and headwear of the women; the bells of neighbouring churches boomed high above; sparrows chattered on the fences. Lavretsky stood smiling with uncovered head; a light breeze flicked up his hair and the ends of the ribbons of Liza’s hat. He helped Liza, and Lenochka who was accompanying her, into the carriage, distributed all the money he had with him to the beggars and went quietly home.
XXXII
DIFFICULT days set in for Fyodor Ivanych. He was in a constant fever of excitement. Each morning he went to the post office and excitedly tore open letters and journals – and yet nowhere did he find anything to confirm or deny the fateful rumour. Sometimes he became repugnant to himself: ‘Here I wait,’ he thought, ‘like a vulture waiting for blood, for genuine news of my wife’s death!’ He visited the Kalitins each day; but things were no easier for him there: the mistress of the house was obviously huffy with him and received him only out of condescension; Panshin treated him with exaggerated politeness; Lemm had assumed his misanthropic air and scarcely bowed to him, but worst of all: Liza seemed to be avoiding him. Whenever the two of them happened to be alone together, in place of the former trustfulness she showed signs of being overwrought and confused; she had no idea what to say to him and he was himself covered in embarrassment. In the course of a few days Liza became unlike the girl he had known previously: her movements, her voice, even her laughter were marked by a secret alarm and a hitherto non-existent lack of moderation. Marya Dmitrievna, like the dyed-in-the-wool egoist she was, suspected nothing; but Marfa Timofeyevna began to keep a close watch on her favourite. More than once Lavretsky reproached himself for having shown Liza the newspaper: he could not fail to recognize that his spiritual condition contained something repugnant to one of pure feeling. He also supposed that the change in Liza was due to a struggle with herself and to her doubts about what answer to give to Panshin. One day she brought him a book, a novel by Walter Scott, which she had herself asked him for.
‘Have you read this book?’ he asked.
‘No. I haven’t any time for books now,’ she answered, and wanted to go.
‘Wait a minute; it’s such a long time since we were alone. You seem to be frightened of me.’
‘I am.’
‘Why, may I ask?’
‘I don’t know.’
Lavretsky was silent a moment.
‘Tell me,’ he began, ‘have you decided yet?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, without raising her eyes.
‘You know w
hat I mean…’
Liza suddenly flared up.
‘Don’t ask me about anything!’ she cried with animation. ‘I don’t know anything, I don’t even know myself…’
And she at once left the room.
On the following day Lavretsky drove to the Kalitins after dinner and found everything ready for the celebration of an evening service. In a corner of the dining-room was a square table covered with a clean cloth, upon which, leaning against the wall, were placed small icons in gold frames, with small lustreless diamonds set in the haloes. An old servant in a grey frock-coat and shoes walked unhurriedly and without making tapping noises with his heels the whole length of the room, placed two wax candles in delicate candlesticks before the icons, made the sign of the cross, bowed and quietly went out. The unlit drawing-room was empty. Lavretsky walked through the dining-room and inquired whether it was someone’s Saint’s Day? He was told in a whisper that it was not, but that the evening service had been ordered on the wishes of Lizaveta Mikhaylovna and Marfa Timofeyevna; that they had wanted to hold aloft a miracle-working icon, but it had gone twenty miles away for the benefit of a sick man. There soon appeared, along with the deacons, the priest, a man far from young, with a large bald patch, who coughed loudly in the entrance hall; the ladies at once filed out of the study and went up to him to receive his blessing; Lavretsky bowed to them in silence; they bowed back in silence. The priest remained standing there a short while, again coughed and asked in a deep undertone:
‘Do you wish me to start?’
‘Please start, father,’ said Marya Dmitrievna.
He began to put on his vestments; a deacon in a surplice asked obsequiously for a live coal; the smell of incense arose. Household servants came in from the hall and stood in a dense crowd by the doors. Roska, who had never come downstairs before, suddenly appeared in the dining-room: they started to drive her out, but she grew frightened, dashed round and round and then sat down; a manservant picked her up and carried her away. The service began. Lavretsky pressed himself into a corner; his feelings were strange, almost sad; he had no very clear idea what he felt. Marya Dmitrievna stood at the front, before the armchairs; she made the sign of the cross with an affected nonchalance, in lordly fashion, either looking around her or suddenly raising her eyes to the ceiling: she was manifestly bored. Marfa Timofeyevna seemed preoccupied; Nastasya Karpovna bowed to the floor and rose again with a kind of soft and modest rustling; Liza stood on the one spot without moving or stirring; judging from the look of concentration on her face, it could be assumed that she was engaged in intent and fervent prayer. When the cross was placed to her lips at the end of the service, she also kissed the priest’s large red hand. Marya Dmitrievna invited him to take tea; he removed his stole, took on a slightly worldly look and joined the ladies in the drawing-room. A not unduly lively conversation began. The priest drank four cups of tea, ceaselessly wiped his bald patch with a handkerchief, related among other things that the merchant Avoshnikov had given seven hundred roubles for the gilding of the church ‘cupola’ and informed them of a reliable means of getting rid of freckles. Lavretsky was about to sit next to Liza, but she held herself stiffly, almost severely, and did not once glance in his direction. She seemed deliberately not to notice him; she was possessed by a kind of cold, serious exaltation. Lavretsky for some reason felt a constant urge to smile and say amusing things; but there was confusion in his heart, and he left finally, secretly bewildered…. He felt that there was something in Liza which he could not fathom.