A House of Gentlefolk Read online

  "Christopher Fedoritch, I want to tell you," she said to him in German, accompanying him over the short green grass of the yard to the gate, "I did wrong—forgive me."

  Lemm made no answer.

  "I showed Vladimir Nikolaitch your cantata; I felt sure he would appreciate it,—and he did like it very much really."

  Lemm stopped.

  "It's no matter," he said in Russian, and then added in his own language, "but he cannot understand anything; how is it you don't see that? He's a dilettante—and that's all!"

  "You are unjust to him," replied Lisa, "he understands everything, and he can do almost everything himself."

  "Yes, everything second-rate, cheap, scamped work. That pleases, and he pleases, and he is glad it is so—and so much the better. I'm not angry; the cantata and I—we are a pair of old fools; I'm a little ashamed, but it's no matter."

  "Forgive me, Christopher Fedoritch," Lisa said again.

  "It's no matter," he repeated in Russian, "you're a good girl... but here is some one coming to see you. Goodbye. You are a very good girl."

  And Lemm moved with hastened steps towards the gate, through which had entered some gentleman unknown to him in a grey coat and a wide straw hat. Bowing politely to him (he always saluted all new faces in the town of O——-; from acquaintances he always turned aside in the street—that was the rule he had laid down for himself), Lemm passed by and disappeared behind the fence. The stranger looked after him in amazement, and after gazing attentively at Lisa, went straight up to her.

  Chapter VII

  "You don't recognise me," he said, taking off his hat, "but I recognise you in spite of its being seven years since I saw you last. You were a child then. I am Lavretsky. Is your mother at home? Can I see her?"

  "Mamma will be glad to see you," replied Lisa; "she had heard of your arrival."

  "Let me see, I think your name is Elisaveta?" said Lavretsky, as he went up the stairs.

  "Yes."

  "I remember you very well; you had even then a face one doesn't forget. I used to bring you sweets in those days."

  Lisa blushed and thought what a queer man. Lavretsky stopped for an instant in the hall. Lisa went into the drawing-room, where Panshin's voice and laugh could be heard; he had been communicating some gossip of the town to Marya Dmitrievna, and Gedeonovksy, who by this time had come in from the garden, and he was himself laughing aloud at the story he was telling. At the name of Lavretsky, Marya Dmitrievna was all in a flutter. She turned pale and went up to meet him.

  "How do you do, how do you do, my dear cousin?" she cried in a plaintive and almost tearful voice, "how glad I am to see you!"

  "How are you, cousin?" replied Lavretsky, with a friendly pressure of her out-stretched hand; "how has Providence been treating you?"

  "Sit down, sit down, my dear Fedor Ivanitch. Ah, how glad I am! But let me present my daughter Lisa to you."

  "I have already introduced myself to Lisaveta Mihalovna," interposed Lavretsky.

  "Monsier Panshin... Sergei Petrovitch Gedeonovsky... Please sit down. When I look at you, I can hardly believe my eyes. How are you?"

  "As you see, I'm flourishing. And you, too, cousin—no ill-luck to you!—have grown no thinner in eight years."

  "To think how long it is since we met!" observed Marya Dmitrievna dreamily. "Where have you come from now? Where did you leave... that is, I meant to say," she put in hastily, "I meant to say, are you going to be with us for long?"

  "I have come now from Berlin," replied Lavretsky, "and to-morrow I shall go into the country—probably for a long time."

  "You will live at Lavriky, I suppose?"

  "No, not at Lavriky; I have a little place twenty miles from here: I am going there."

  "Is that the little estate that came to you from Glafira Petrovna?"

  "Yes."

  "Really, Fedor Ivanitch! You have such a magnificent house at Lavriky."

  Lavretsky knitted his brows a little.

  "Yes... but there's a small lodge in this little property, and I need nothing more for a time. That place is the most convenient for me now."

  Marya Dmitrievna was again thrown into such a state of agitation that she became quite stiff, and her hands hung lifeless by her sides. Panshin came to her support by entering into conversation with Lavretsky. Marya Dmitrievna regained her composure, she leaned back in her arm-chair and now and then put in a word. But she looked all the while with such sympathy at her guest, sighed so significantly, and shook her head so dejectedly, that the latter at last lost patience and asked her rather sharply if she was unwell.

  "Thank God, no," replied Marya Dmitrievna; "why do you ask?"

  "Oh, I fancied you didn't seem to be quite yourself."

  Marya Dmitrievna assumed a dignified and somewhat offended air. "If that's how the land lies," she thought, "it's absolutely no matter to me; I see, my good fellow, it's all like water on a duck's back for you; any other man would have wasted away with grief, but you've grown fat on it." Marya Dmitrievna did not mince matters in her own mind; she expressed herself with more elegance aloud.

  Lavretsky certainly did not look like the victim of fate. His rosy-cheeked typical Russian face, with its large white brow, rather thick nose, and wide straight lips seemed breathing with the wild health of the steppes, with vigorous primaeval energy. He was splendidly well-built, and his fair curly hair stood up on his head like a boy's. It was only in his blue eyes, with their overhanging brows and somewhat fixed look, that one could trace an expression, not exactly of melancholy, nor exactly of weariness, and his voice had almost too measured a cadence.

  Panshin meanwhile continued to keep up the conversation. He turned it upon the profits of sugar-boiling, on which he had lately read two French pamphlets, and with modest composure undertook to expound their contents, without mentioning, however, a single word about the source of his information.

  "Good God, it is Fedya!" came through the half-opened door the voice of Marfa Timofyevna in the next room. "Fedya himself!" and the old woman ran hurriedly into the room. Lavretsky had not time to get up from his seat before she had him in her arms. "Let me have a look at you," she said, holding his face off at arm's length. "Ah! what a splendid fellow you are! You've grown older a little, but not a bit changed for the worse, upon my word! But why are you kissing my hands—kiss my face if you're not afraid of my wrinkled cheeks. You never asked after me—whether your aunt was alive—I warrant: and you were in my arms as soon as you were born, you great rascal! Well, that is nothing to you, I suppose; why should you remember me? But it was a good idea of yours to come back. And pray," she added, turning to Marya Dmitrievna, "have you offered him something to eat?"

  "I don't want anything," Lavretsky hastened to declare.

  "Come, you must at least have some tea, my dear. Lord have mercy on us! He has come from I don't know where, and they don't even give him a cup of tea! Lisa, run and stir them up, and make haste. I remember he was dreadfully greedy when he was a little fellow, and he likes good things now, I daresay."

  "My respects, Marfa Timofyevna," said Panshin, approaching the delighted old lady from one side with a low bow.

  "Pardon me, sir," replied Marfa Timofyevna, "for not observing you in my delight. You have grown like your mother, the poor darling," she went on turning again to Lavretsky, "but your nose was always your father's, and your father's it has remained. Well, and are you going to be with us for long?"

  "I am going to-morrow, aunt."

  "Where?"

  "Home to Vassilyevskoe."

  "To-morrow?"

  "Yes, to-morrow."

  "Well, if to-morrow it must be. God bless you—you know best. Only mind you come and say good-bye to me." The old woman patted his cheek. "I did not think I should be here to see you; not that I have made up my mind to die yet a while—I shall last another ten years, I daresay: all we Pestovs live long; your late grandfather used to say we had two lives; but you see there was no telling how much longer yo
u were going to dangle about abroad. Well, you're a fine lad, a fine lad; can you lift twenty stone with one hand as you used to do, eh? Your late pap was fantastical in some things, if I may say so; but he did well in having that Swiss to bring you up; do you remember you used to fight with your fists with him?—gymnastics, wasn't it they called it? But there, why I am gabbling away like this; I have only been hindering Mr. PanSHIN (she never pronounced his name PANshin as was correct) from holding forth. Besides, we'd better go and have tea; yes, let's go on to the terrace, my boy, and drink it there; we have some real cream, not like what you get in your Londons and Parises. Come along, come along, and you, Fedusha, give me your arm. Oh! but what an arm it is! Upon my word, no fear of my stumbling with you!"

  Every one got up and went out on to the terrace, except Gedeonovsky, who quietly took his departure. During the whole of Lavretsky's conversation with Marya Dmitrievna, Panshin, and Marfa Timofyevna, he sat in a corner, blinking attentively, with an open mouth of childish curiosity; now he was in haste to spread the news of the new arrival through the town.

  At eleven o'clock on the evening of the same day, this is what was happening in Madame Kalitin's house. Downstairs, Vladimir Nikolaitch, seizing a favourable moment, was taking leave of Lisa at the drawing-room door, and saying to her, as he held her hand, "You know who it is draws me here; you know why I am constantly coming to your house; what need of words when all is clear as it is?" Lisa did not speak, and looked on the ground, without smiling, with her brows slightly contracted, and a flush on her cheek, but she did not draw away her hands. While up-stairs, in Marfa Timofyevna's room, by the light of a little lamp hanging before the tarnished old holy images, Lavretsky was sitting in a low chair, his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands; the old woamn, standing before him, now and then silently stroked his hair. He spent more than an hour with her, after taking leave of his hostess; he had scarcely said anything to his kind old friend, and she did not question him.... Indeed, what need to speak, what was there to ask? Without that she understood all, and felt for everything of which his heart was full.

  Chapter VIII

  Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky—we must ask the reader's permission to break off the thread of our story for a time—came of an old noble family. The founder of the house of Lavretskky came over from Prussia in the reign of Vassili the Blind, and received a grant of two hundred chetverts of land in Byezhetsk. Many of his descendants filled various offices, and served under princes and persons of eminence in outlying districts, but not one of them rose above the rank of an inspector of the Imperial table nor acquired any considerable fortune. The richest and most distinguished of all the Lavretskys was Fedor Ivanitch's great-grandfather, Andrei, a man cruel and daring, cunning and able. Even to this day stories still linger of his tyranny, his savage temper, his reckless munificence, and his insatiable avarice. He was very stout and tall, swarthy of countenance and beardless, he spoke in a thick voice and seemed half asleep; but the more quietly he spoke the more those about him trembled. He had managed to get a wife who was a fit match for him. She was a gipsy by birth, goggle-eyed and hook-nosed, with a round yellow face. She was irascible and vindictive, and never gave way in anything to her husband, who almost killed her, and whose death she did not survive, though she had been for ever quarrelling with him. The son of Andrei, Piotr, Fedor's grandfather, did not take after his father; he was a typical landowner of the steppes, rather a simpleton, loud-voiced, but slow to move, coarse but not ill-natured, hospitable and very fond of coursing with dogs. He was over thirty when he inherited from his father a property of two thousand serfs in capital condition; but he had soon dissipated it, and had partly mortgaged his estate, and demoralised his servants. All sorts of people of low position, known and unknown, came crawling like cockroaches from all parts into his spacious, warm, ill-kept halls. All this mass of people ate what they could get, but always had their fill, drank till they were drunk, and carried off what they could, praising and blessing their genial host; and their host too when he was out humour blessed his guests—for a pack of sponging toadies, but he was bored when he was without them. Piotr Andreitch's wife was a meek-spirited creature; he had taken her from a neighbouring family by his father's choice and command; her name was Anna Pavlovna. She never interfered in anything, welcomed guests cordially, and readily paid visits herself, though being powdered, she used to declare, would be the death of her. "They put," she used to say in her old age, "a fox's brush on your head, comb all the hair up over it, smear it with grease, and dust it over with flour, and stick it up with iron pins,—there's no washing it off afterwards; but to pay visits without powder was quite impossible—people would be offended. Ah, it was a torture!"

  She liked being driven with fast-trotting horses, and was ready to play cards from morning till evening, and would always keep the score of the pennies she had lost or won hidden under her hand when her husband came near the card-table; but all her dowry, her whole fortune, she had put absolutely at his disposal. She bore him two children, a son Ivan, the father of Fedor, and a daughter Glafira. Ivan was not brought up at home, but lived with a rich old maiden aunt, the Princess Kubensky; she had fixed on him for her heir (but for that his father would not have let him go). She dressed him up like a doll, engaged all kinds of teachers for him, and put him in charge of a tutor, a Frenchman, who had been an abbe, a pupil of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a certain M. Courtin de Vaucelles, a subtle and wily intriguer—the very, as she expressed it, fine fleur of emigration—and finished at almost seventy years old by marrying this "fine fleur," and making over all her property to him. Soon afterwards, covered with rouge, and redolent of perfume a la Richelieu, surrounded by negro boys, delicate-shaped greyhounds and shrieking parrots, she died on a crooked silken divan of the time of Louis XV., with an enamelled snuff-box of Petitot's workmanship in her hand—and died, deserted by her husband; the insinuating M. Courtin had preferred to remove to Paris with her money. Ivan had only reached his twentieth year when this unexpected blow (we mean the princess's marriage, not her death) fell upon him; he did not care to stay in his aunt's house, where he found himself suddenly transformed from a wealthy heir to a poor relation; the society in Petersburg in which he had grown up was closed to him; he felt an aversion for entering the government service in the lower grades, with nothing but hard work and obscurity before him,—this was at the very beginning of the reign of the Emperor Alexander. He was obliged reluctantly to return to the country to his father. How squalid, poor, and wretched his parents' home seemed to him! The stagnation and sordidness of life in the country offended him at every step. He was consumed with ennui. Moreover, every one in the house, except his mother, looked at him with unfriendly eyes. His father did not like his town manners, his swallow-tail coats, his frilled shirt-fronts, his books, his flute, his fastidious ways, in which he detected—not incorrectly—a disgust for his surroundings; he was for ever complaining and grumbling at his son. "Nothing here," he used to say, "is to his taste; at table he is all in a fret, and doesn't eat; he can't bear the heat and close smell of the room; the sight of folks drunk upsets him, one daren't beat any one before him; he doesn't want to go into the government service; he's weakly, as you see, in health; fie upon him, the milksop! And all this because he's got his head full of Voltaire." The old man had a special dislike to Voltaire, and the "fanatic" Diderot, though he had not read a word of their words; reading was not in his line. Piotr Andreitch was not mistaken; his son's head for that matter was indeed full of both Diderot and Voltaire, and not only of them alone, of Rousseau too, and Helvetius, and many other writers of the same kind—but they were in his head only. The retired abbe and encyclopedist who had been Ivan Petrovitch's tutor had taken pleasure in pouring all the wisdom of the eighteenth century into his pupil, and he was simply brimming over with it; it was there in him, but without mixing in his blood, nor penetrating to his soul, nor shaping itself in any firm convictions.... But, indeed, could one expect convictions
from a young man of fifty years ago, when even at the present day we have not succeeded in attaining them? The guests, too, who frequented his father's house, were oppressed by Ivan Petrovitch's presence; he regarded them with loathing, they were afraid of him; and with his sister Glafira, who was twelve years older than he, he could not get on at all. This Glafira was a strange creature; she was ugly, crooked, and spare, with severe, wide-open eyes, and thin compressed lips. In her face, her voice, and her quick angular movements, she took after her grandmother, the gipsy, Andrei's wife. Obstinate and fond of power, she would not even hear of marriage. The return of Ivan Petrovitch did not fit in with her plans; while the Princess Kubensky kept him with her, she had hoped to receive at least half of her father's estate; in her avarice, too, she was like her grandmother. Besides, Glafira envied her brother, he was so well educated, spoke such good French with a Parisian accent, while she was scarcely able to pronounce "bon jour" or "comment vous portez-vous." To be sure, her parents did not know any French, but that was no comfort to her. Ivan Petrovitch did not know what to do with himself for wretchedness and ennui; he had spent hardly a year in the country, but that year seemed to him as long as ten. The only consolation he could find was in talking to his mother, and he would sit for whole hours in her low-pitched rooms, listening to the good woman's simple-hearted prattle, and eating preserves. It so happened that among Anna Pavlovna's maids there was one very pretty girl with clear soft eyes and refined features, Malanya by name, an modest intelligent creature. She took his fancy at first sight, and he fell in love with her: he fell in love with her timid movements, her bashful answers, her gentle voice and gentle smile; every day she seemed sweeter to him. And she became devoted to Ivan Petrovitch with all the strength of her soul, as none but Russian girls can be devoted—and she gave herself to him. In the large household of a country squire nothing can long be kept a secret; soon every one knew of the love between the young master and Malanya; the gossip even reached the ears of Piotr Andreitch himself. Under other circumstances, he would probably have paid no attention to a matter of so little importance, but he had long had a grudge against his son, and was delighted at an opportunity of humiliating the town-bred wit and dandy. A storm of fuss and clamour was raised; Malanya was locked up in the pantry, Ivan Petrovitch was summoned into his father's presence. Anna Pavlovna too ran up at the hubbub. She began trying to pacify her husband, but Piotr Andreitch would hear nothing. He pounced down like a hawk on his son, reproached him with immorality, with godlessness, with hypocrisy; he took the opportunity to vent on him all the wrath against the Princess Kubensky that had been simmering within him, and lavished abusive epithets upon him. At first Ivan Petrovitch was silent and held himself in, but when his father thought to fit to threaten him with a shameful punishment he could endure it no longer. "Ah," he thought, "the fanatic Diderot is brought out again, then I will take the bull by the horns, I will astonish you all." And thereupon with a calm and even voice, though quaking inwardly in every limb, Ivan Petrovitch declared to his father, that there was no need to reproach him with immorality; that though he did not intend to justify his fault he was ready to make amends for it, the more willingly as he felt himself to be superior to every kind of prejudice—and in fact—was ready to marry Malanya. In uttering these words Ivan Petrovitch did undoubtedly attain his object; he so astonished Piotr Andreitch that the latter stood open-eyed, and was struck dumb for a moment; but instantly he came to himself, and just as he was, in a dressing-gown bordered with squirrel fur and slippers on his bare feet, he flew at Ivan Petrovitch with his fists. The latter, as though by design, had that morning arranged his locks a la Titus, and put on a new English coat of a blue colour, high boots with little tassels and very tight modish buckskin breeches. Anna Pavlovna shrieked with all her might and covered her face with her hands; but her son ran over the whole house, dashed out into the courtyard, rushed into the kitchen-garden, into the pleasure-grounds, and flew across into the road, and kept running without looking round till at last he ceased to hear the heavy tramp of his father's steps behind him and his shouts, jerked out with effort, "Stop you scoundrel!" he cried, "stop! or I will curse you!" Ivan Petrovitch took refuge with a neighbour, a small landowner, and Piotr Andreitch returned home worn out and perspiring, and without taking breath, announced that he should deprive his son of his blessing and inheritance, gave orders that all his foolish books should be burnt, and that the girl Malanya should be sent to a distant village without loss of time. Some kind-hearted people found out Ivan Petrovitch and let him know everything. Humiliated and driven to fury, he vowed he would be revenged on his father, and the same night lay in wait for the peasant's cart in which Malanya was being driven away, carried her off by force, galloped off to the nearest town with her and married her. He was supplied with money by the neighbour, a good-natured retired marine officer, a confirmed tippler, who took an intense delight in every kind of—as he expressed it—romantic story.