‘Really? You permit me?’ Varvara Pavlovna asked and lightly, with a show of emotion, clasped her hands.
‘Of course. You’ll have dinner with us, I hope. I… I’ll introduce you to my daughter.’ Marya Dmitrievna grew a little confused. ‘Well, what’s it matter!’ she thought. ‘She is not quite herself today.’
‘Oh, ma tante, how kind of you!’ exclaimed Varvara Pavlovna and raised a handkerchief to her eyes.
A page-boy announced Gedeonovsky’s arrival. The old gossip entered, bowing low and smirking. Marya Dmitrievna introduced him to her guest. At first he made a show of being put out; but Varvara Pavlovna was so respectfully coquettish towards him that his ears turned a fiery red, and stories, gossip and compliments flowed like honey from his lips. Varvara Pavlovna listened to him, smiled with restraint and began gradually to join in the conversation. She spoke modestly about Paris, her travels and Baden; once or twice she made Marya Dmitrievna laugh and each time she sighed lightly afterwards and seemed mentally to scold herself for such inappropriate gaiety; she asked permission to bring Ada; after removing her gloves, she demonstrated with her smooth hands smelling of soap à la guimauve how and where flounces, frills, lace and choux were worn; she promised to bring a bottle of the new English scent, Victoria Essence2, and was as pleased as a child when Marya Dmitrievna agreed to accept it as a present; she grew tearful when she recalled what she had felt on hearing Russian church bells for the first time: ‘So deeply they struck me, in my very heart,’ she murmured.
At that instant Liza entered.
Ever since the morning and that very moment when, cold with horror, she had read Lavretsky’s note, Liza had been preparing herself to meet his wife; she had a presentiment that she would see her. She had resolved not to avoid her, in punishment for her – as she called them – criminal hopes. The sudden crisis in her destiny had shaken her to the core; in no more than a couple of hours her face had grown thin; yet she had not shed a single tear. ‘It serves me right!’ she had told herself, suppressing excitedly and with difficulty certain bitter, malicious eruptions of feeling which frightened even her. ‘Well, I must go,’ she thought, as soon as she heard of Mrs Lavretsky’s arrival, and go she did… She stood for a long while in front of the drawing-room door before she could make up her mind to open it; with the thought ‘I have wronged her’, she entered the room and forced herself to look at her, to smile at her. Varvara Pavlovna came towards her as soon as she saw her and bowed slightly, but nevertheless politely. ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ she began ingratiatingly. ‘Your maman has been so gracious to me that I hope you will also be… kind.’ The expression on Varvara Pavlovna’s face when she said this last word, her insinuating smile, her cold and, at the same time, soft glance, the movement of her hands and shoulders, what she was wearing and her whole being aroused such a feeling of repugnance in Liza that she could not answer and it was with an effort that she stretched out her hand. ‘This young lady can’t stand me,’ thought Varvara Pavlovna, firmly pressing Liza’s cold fingers, and, turning to Marya Dmitrievna, she said in a low voice: ‘Mais elle est délicieuse!’ Liza coloured faintly at the mockery and insult which she heard in this exclamation; but she was determined not to trust her first impressions and sat down by the window with her embroidery. Varvara Pavlovna gave her no peace even there: she approached her, began praising her taste and her artistry…. Liza’s heart beat violently and sickeningly: she could hardly contain herself, hardly stay where she was. It seemed to her that Varvara Pavlovna knew everything and, secretly triumphant, was making fun of her. Luckily for her, Gedeonovsky began talking to Varvara Pavlovna and distracted her attention. Liza bent over her embroidery and covertly observed her. ‘This was the woman’, she thought, ‘that he loved.’ But she at once banished from her head all thought of Lavretsky, for she was frightened of losing control of herself and felt her head quietly spinning. Marya Dmitrievna started talking about music.
‘I have heard, my dear,’ she began, ‘that you’re astonishingly gifted.’
‘I haven’t played for a long time,’ Varvara Pavlovna responded, immediately seating herself at the piano, and she briskly ran her fingers over the keys. ‘Would you like me to?’
‘Please do.’
Varvara Pavlovna gave a masterly rendering of a brilliant and difficult étude by Herz3. She played with great power and agility.
‘Sylph-like!’ exclaimed Gedeonovsky.
‘Extraordinary!’ agreed Marya Dmitrievna. ‘Well, Varvara Pavlovna, I confess’, she said, calling her by her name for the first time, ‘you’ve astonished me; you ought to give concerts. We have a musician here, an old man, a German, eccentric, very learned; he gives Liza lessons; he’d be simply thrilled to bits by you.’
‘Lizaveta Mikhaylovna also plays?’ asked Varvara Pavlovna, slightly turning her head towards her.
‘Yes, she doesn’t play badly and is fond of music; but what’s that compared to you? But there is a young man here, whom you ought to get to know. He has the soul of an artist and composes very charmingly. He alone could appreciate you to the full.’
A young man?’ asked Varvara Pavlovna. ‘Who is he? Is he some poor fellow?’
‘Not at all. He’s the most eligible young man we have, and not only here – et à Pétersbourg. He has a position at court and is received in the best society. You may have heard of him: Panshin, Vladimir Nikolaich. He is here on government business… a future minister for certain!’
‘And an artist?’
‘The soul of an artist, and so charming. You will see him. All the time he has been coming here very frequently; I invited him for this evening; I do hope he comes.’ added Marya Dmitrievna with a short sigh and a bitter smile to one side.
Liza understood the meaning of this smile, but was unconcerned by it.
‘And young?’ asked Varvara Pavlovna again, modulating her voice slightly from one tone to another.
‘Twenty-eight – and of most pleasant appearance. Un jeune homme accompli, believe me.’
‘An exemplary young man, one might say,’ remarked Gedeonovsky.
Varvara Pavlovna suddenly launched into a noisy Strauss waltz, beginning with such a strong and rapid trill that Gedeonovsky even jumped; in the middle of the waltz she suddenly changed to a sad melody and ended with the aria from Lucia, Fra poco…4 She surmised that gay music did not go with her position. The aria from Lucia, with its emphasis on emotive notes, touched Marya Dmitrievna very much.
‘What soulfulness,’ she remarked to Gedeonovsky in a low voice.
‘Sylph-like!’ repeated Gedeonovsky and raised his eyes to heaven.
Time for dinner arrived. Marfa Timofeyevna came downstairs when the soup was already on the table. She behaved very drily towards Varvara Pavlovna, answered her compliments in monosyllables and did not look at her. Varvara Pavlovna herself soon realized that nothing was to be got from this old lady and ceased talking to her; whereat Marya Dmitrievna became even more solicitous towards her guest: her aunt’s rudeness infuriated her. However, it was not only at Varvara Pavlovna that Marfa Timofeyevna was not looking: she also did not look at Liza, although her eyes literally shone. She sat there as if made of stone, yellow and pale, with tightly closed lips, and ate nothing. Liza seemed calm; and she was. Her soul had grown calmer; a strange absence of feeling, the absence of feeling of a condemned man, had settled upon her. At dinner Varvara Pavlovna spoke little, as if she had grown shy once again, and spread upon her face an expression of modest melancholy. Gedeonovsky was the only one to enliven the conversation with his stories, although he now and then glanced apprehensively in Marfa Timofeyevna’s direction and coughed – he always had a coughing fit when he was about to tell fibs in her presence – but she did not prevent or interrupt him. After dinner it transpired that Varvara Pavlovna was very fond of preference; Marya Dmitrievna was so pleased by this that she even became sentimental and thought to herself: ‘What a fool Fyodor Ivanych must be, not to know how to understand a woman
like this!’
She sat down to cards with her and Gedeonovsky, while Marfa Timofeyevna led Liza upstairs to her room, saying that she was nothing to look at and most likely had a headache.
‘Yes, she has an awful headache,’ murmured Marya Dmitrievna, turning to Varvara Pavlovna and rolling her eyes. ‘I also have such attacks of migraine…’
‘You don’t say!’ responded Varvara Pavlovna.
Liza entered her aunt’s room and sank exhausted into a chair. Marfa Timofeyevna gave her a long, silent look and quietly kneeled down before her – and began, silently as ever, to kiss each of her hands in turn. Liza leaned forward, reddened – and burst into tears, but did not make Marfa Timofeyevna rise and did not withdraw her hands: she felt she had no right to withdraw them, had no right to prevent the old woman from expressing her repentance and concern and asking forgiveness for what happened yesterday; and Marfa Timofeyevna could not have enough of kissing the poor, pale powerless hands – and noiseless tears flowed from her eyes and from Liza’s; and Sailor, the cat, purred next to a ball of wool in the wide armchair, and the long, long flame of the lamp made a slight flickering and wavered before the icon; in the little neighbouring room, behind the door, stood Nastasya Karpovna and also furtively wiped her eyes with a checked handkerchief compressed into a little ball.
XL
MEANWHILE below, in the drawing-room, the game of preference was continuing; Marya Dmitrievna was winning and in high spirits. A footman entered and announced the arrival of Panshin.
Marya Dmitrievna dropped her cards and fussed about in her armchair; Varvara Pavlovna looked at her with a half-smile and then turned her eyes to the door. Panshin appeared in a black frock-coat with a high English collar buttoned up to the top. ‘It was hard for me to comply but, as you can see, I have come’ – so said the expression on his unsmiling, newly shaven face.
‘Really, Woldemar,’ cried Marya Dmitrievna, ‘you’ve always come in unannounced before!’
Panshin answered Marya Dmitrievna with no more than a glance, bowed politely to her, but did not kiss her hand. She introduced him to Varvara Pavlovna; he stepped back a pace, bowed to her just as politely, but with a suggestion of elegance and respect, and sat down at the card table. The game soon ended. Panshin asked about Lizaveta Mikhaylovna, learned that she was not quite well and expressed his regret; then he struck up a conversation with Varvara Pavlovna, diplomatically weighing and neatly rounding each word and respectfully hearing out her answers to the end. But the self-importance of his diplomatic tone did not have any effect on Varvara Pavlovna and was not even communicated to her. On the contrary, she looked him in the face with gay attentiveness, speaking without constraint, and her delicate nostrils quivered slightly as if from suppressed laughter. Marya Dmitrievna began to praise her talents; Panshin courteously bowed his head (as much as his collar would permit him), declared that ‘he had been sure of that from the start’ – and embarked on a discourse that led him almost to Metternich1. Varvara Pavlovna screwed up her velvety eyes and, saying in a low voice: ‘Yes, you’re an artist, too, un confrère,’ added even more quietly: ‘Venez!’ and nodded in the direction of the piano. This one casual word: ‘Venez!’ instantly, as if by magic, changed Panshin’s whole appearance. His preoccupied expression vanished; he smiled, grew animated, undid his coat and, repeating: ‘What sort of an artist am I, indeed? But you, I hear, are a true artist,’ followed Varvara Pavlovna to the piano.
‘Make him sing his romance “The moon sails high…”,’ exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna.
‘You sing, do you?’ asked Varvara Pavlovna, flashing a bright, quick glance at him. ‘Sit down.’
Panshin began to cry off.
‘Sit down,’ she repeated, insistently tapping the back of the chair.
He sat down, cleared his throat, tugged at his collar and sang his romance.
‘Charmant,’ said Varvara Pavlovna, ‘you sing beautifully, vous avez du style. Sing it again.’
She went round the piano and stood directly opposite Panshin. He sang his romance again, giving his voice a melodramatic quavering. Varvara Pavlovna watched him intently, leaning on the piano and holding her white hands level with her lips. Panshin finished.
‘Charmant, idée charmante,’ she said with the calm assurance of an expert. ‘Tell me, have you written anything for a woman’s voice, for a mezzo-soprano?’
‘I have written almost nothing,’ Panshin replied. ‘I only did this for amusement, in my spare time…. Do you sing?’
‘I do.’
‘Oh, do sing us something!’ said Marya Dmitrievna.
Varvara Pavlovna drew her hair back from her crimsoning cheeks and gave a shake of the head.
‘Our voices should go together,’ she said, turning to Panshin. ‘Let’s sing a duet. Do you know “Son geloso” or “La ci darem” or “Mira la bianca luna”?’2
‘I used to sing “Mira la bianca luna”,’ Panshin answered, ‘but a long time ago, and I’ve forgotten it.’
‘No matter. We’ll rehearse it in a low voice. Allow me.’
Varvara Pavlovna sat down at the piano. Panshin stood beside her. They sang the duet in a low voice, with Varvara Pavlovna correcting him a number of times, and then they sang it aloud and twice repeated: ‘Mira la bianca lu…u… una.’ Varvara Pavlovna’s voice had lost its freshness, but she used it very cleverly. Panshin was diffident at first and slightly out of tune, then he came into his own and, if he did not sing irreproachably, he at least made his shoulders quiver, swayed his whole body and raised his hand from time to time like a real singer. Varvara Pavlovna played two or three pieces by Thalberg3 and coquettishly ‘spoke’ a French ariette. Marya Dmitrievna had no idea how to express her pleasure; several times she wanted to send for Liza; Gedeonovsky also was at a loss for words and could only shake his head – but suddenly gave an unexpected yawn and barely succeeded in hiding his mouth with his hand. This yawn did not slip by Varvara Pavlovna; she suddenly turned her back on the piano, said: ‘Assez de musique comme ça, now we’ll talk,’ and folded her hands. ‘Oui, assez de musique,’ Panshin gaily repeated and initiated a conversation with her in French that was dashing and light-hearted. ‘Just as in the best Paris salon,’ thought Marya Dmitrievna, listening to their devious and fanciful speeches. Panshin felt complete satisfaction; his eyes were radiant and he was smiling; to start with he had passed his hand across his face, knitted his brows and sighed abruptly whenever he happened to exchange glances with Marya Dmitrievna; but later he quite forgot about her and surrendered himself utterly to enjoyment of the semi-worldly, semi-artistic chatter. Varvara Pavlovna revealed herself as quite a thinking woman: she had a ready answer to everything, never wavered, never doubted; it was evident that she had conversed much and often with all manner of clever people. All her thoughts and feelings revolved about Paris. Panshin directed the conversation towards literature; it turned out that both of them read only French books; George Sand4 made her indignant, Balzac she respected, although he bored her, in Sue and Scribe she saw great connoisseurs of the human heart, and she adored Dumas and Féval; in her soul she preferred Paul de Kock to all of them, but it goes without saying that she did not so much as mention his name. For her own part, literature did not interest her too much. Varvara Pavlovna very artfully avoided everything that could even remotely remind them of her position; no hint of love was there in her words; on the contrary, they were filled rather with severity towards the passions, with disillusionment and humility. Panshin made objections; she did not agree with him…. But – strange indeed! – at the same time as her lips uttered words of censure, often harsh, the sound of these words was soft and caressive, and her eyes said… it was difficult to say precisely what these beautiful eyes said, save that their message was not severe, not clear and sugary. Panshin tried to understand their secret meaning, and tried himself to say things with his eyes, but he felt that nothing came of it; he realized that Varvara Pavlovna, as a real foreign lioness, stood above him, and fo
r this reason he was not fully in command of his powers. Varvara Pavlovna had a habit during conversation of lightly touching her interlocutor’s sleeve; these momentary contacts excited Vladimir Nikolaich very much. Varvara Pavlovna had a capacity for being on easy terms with anyone; two hours had hardly passed before it seemed to Panshin he had known her all his life, while Liza, that very same Liza whom he had nevertheless loved and to whom he had proposed the previous day, had vanished as if in a mist. Tea was served; the talk became even less restrained. Marya Dmitrievna rang for the pageboy and ordered Liza to be told she should come down if her headache was better. Panshin, hearing Liza’s name, began to discuss the subject of self-sacrifice and whether a man or a woman was more capable of making sacrifices. Marya Dmitrievna at once grew excited and began to insist that a woman was more capable, declared that she could demonstrate this in a couple of words, got tied up in what she was saying and ended by making a rather unsuccessful comparison. Varvara Pavlovna took a music-book, half hid her face behind it and, leaning towards Panshin and nibbling a biscuit, said in a low voice with a calm smile of her lips and eyes: ‘Elle n’a pas inventi la poudre, la bonne dame.’ Panshin was a trifle frightened and astonished at Varvara Pavlovna’s audacity; but he did not understand how much loathing for himself was secreted in this unexpected outburst and, forgetting the kindness and devotion of Marya Dmitrievna, forgetting the dinners she had given him and the money she had loaned him, he (the wretch!) responded with the same little smile and tone of voice: ‘Je crois bien’ – and not even: ‘Je crois bien’, but ‘J’ crois ben!’
Varvara Pavlovna threw him a friendly glance and rose. Liza came in; Marfa Timofeyevna had not succeeded in preventing her from coming down, and she was determined to endure her ordeal to the end. Varvara Pavlovna went to meet her together with Panshin, whose face wore his former diplomatic expression.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked Liza.