_ Eight years passed away. The spring had come again--
But we will first of all say a few words about the fate of Mikhalevich, Panshine, and Madame Lavretsky, and then take leave of them forever.
Mikhalevich, after much wandering to and fro, at last hit upon the business he was fitted for, and obtained the post of Head Inspector in one of the Government Educational Institutes. His lot thoroughly satisfies him, and his pupils "adore" him, though at the same time they mimic him. Panshine has advanced high in the service, and already aims at becoming the head of a department. He stoops a little as he walks; it must be the weight of the Vladimir Cross which hangs from his neck, that bends him forward. In him the official decidedly preponderates over the artist now. His face, though still quite young, has grown yellow, his hair is thinner than it used to be, and he neither sings nor draws any longer. But he secretly occupies himself with literature. He has written a little comedy in the style of a "proverb;" and--as every one who writes now constantly brings on the stage some real person or some actual fact--he has introduced a coquette into it, and he reads it confidentially to a few ladies who are very kind to him. But he has never married, although he has had many excellent opportunities for doing so. For that Varvara Pavlovna is to blame.
As for her, she constantly inhabits Paris, just as she used to do. Lavretsky has opened a private account for her with his banker, and has paid a sufficient sum to ensure his being free from her--free from the possibility of being a second time unexpectedly visited by her. She has grown older and stouter, but she is still undoubtedly handsome, and always dresses in taste. Every one has his ideal. Varvara Pavlovna has found hers--in the plays of M. Dumas _fils_. She assiduously frequents the theatres in which consumptive and sentimental Camelias appear on the boards; to be Madame Doche seems to her the height of human happiness. She once announced that she could not wish her daughter a happier fate. It may, however, be expected that destiny will save Mademoiselle Ada from that kind of happiness. From being a chubby, rosy child, she has changed into a pale, weak-chested girl, and her nerves are already unstrung. The number of Varvara Pavlovna's admirers has diminished, but they have not disappeared. Some of them she will, in all probability, retain to the end of her days. The most ardent of them in recent times has been a certain Zakurdalo-Skubyrnikof, a retired officer of the guard, a man of about thirty-eight years of age, wearing long mustaches, and possessing a singularly vigorous frame. The Frenchmen who frequent Madame Lavretsky's drawing-room call him _le gros taureau de l'Ukraine_. Varvara Pavlovna never invites him to her fashionable parties, but he is in full possession of her good graces.
And so--eight years had passed away. Again spring shone from heaven in radiant happiness. Again it smiled on earth and on man. Again, beneath its caress, all things began to love, to flower, to sing.
The town of O. had changed but little in the course of these eight years, but Madame Kalitine's house had, as it were, grown young again. Its freshly-painted walls shone with a welcome whiteness, while the panes of its open windows flashed ruddy to the setting sun. Out of these windows there flowed into the street mirthful sounds of ringing youthful voices, of never-ceasing laughter. All the house seemed teeming with life and overflowing with irrepressible merriment. As for the former mistress of the house, she had been laid in the grave long ago. Maria Dmitrievna died two years after Liza took the veil. Nor did Marfa Timofeevna long survive her niece; they rest side by side in the cemetery of the town. Nastasia Carpovna also was no longer alive. During the course of several years the faithful old lady used to go every day to pray at her friend's grave. Then her time came, and her bones also were laid in the mould.
But Maria Dmitrievna's house did not pass into the hands of strangers, did not go out of her family--the nest was not torn to pieces. Lenochka, who had grown into a pretty and graceful girl; her betrothed, a flaxen locked officer of hussars; Maria Dmitrievna's son, who had only recently married at St. Petersburg, and had now arrived with his young bride to spend the spring in O.; his wife's sister, a sixteen-year-old Institute-girl, with clear eyes and rosy cheeks; and Shurochka, who had also grown up and turned out pretty--these were the young people who made the walls of the Kalitine house resound with laughter and with talk. Every thing was altered in the house, every thing had been made to harmonize with its new inhabitants. Beardless young servant-lads, full of fun and laughter, had replaced the grave old domestics of former days. A couple of setters tore wildly about and jumped upon the couches, in the rooms up and down which Roska, after it had grown fat, used to waddle seriously. In the stable many horses were stalled--clean-limbed canterers, smart trotters for the centre of the _troika_, fiery gallopers with platted manes for the side places, riding horses from the Don. The hours for breakfast, dinner, and supper, were all mixed up and confounded together. In the words of neighbors, "Such a state of things as never had been known before" had taken place.
On the evening of which we are about to speak, the inmates of the Kalitine house, of whom the eldest, Lenochka's betrothed, was not more than four-and-twenty, had taken to playing a game which was not of a very complicated nature, but which seemed to be very amusing to them, to judge by their happy laughter,--that of running about the rooms, and trying to catch each other. The dogs, too, ran about and barked; and the canaries which hung up in cages before the windows, straining their throats in rivalry, heightened the general uproar by the piercing accents of their shrill singing. Just as this deafening amusement had reached its climax, a tarantass, all splashed with mud, drew up at the front gate, and a man about forty-five years old, wearing a travelling dress, got out of it and remained standing as if bewildered.
For some time he stood at the gate without moving, but gazing at the house with observant eyes; then he entered the court-yard by the wicket-gate, and slowly mounted the steps. He encountered no one in the vestibule; but suddenly the drawing-room door was flung open, and Shurochka, all rosy red, came running out of the room; and directly afterwards, with shrill cries, the whole of the youthful band rushed after her. Suddenly, at the sight of an unknown stranger, they stopped short, and became silent; but the bright eyes which were fixed on him still retained their friendly expression, the fresh young faces did not cease to smile. Then Maria Dmitrievna's son approached the visitor, and politely asked what he could do for him.
"I am Lavretsky," said the stranger.
A friendly cry of greeting answered him--not that all those young people were inordinately delighted at the arrival of a distant and almost forgotten relative, but simply because they were ready to rejoice and make a noise over every pleasurable occurrence. They all immediately surrounded Lavretsky. Lenochka, as his old acquaintance, was the first to name herself, assuring him that, if she had had a very little more time, she would most certainly have recognized him; and then she introduced all the rest of the company to him, giving them all, her betrothed included, their familiar forms of name. The whole party then went through the dining-room into the drawing-room. The paper on the walls of both rooms had been altered, but the furniture remained just as it used to be. Lavretsky recognized the piano. Even the embroidery-frame by the window remained exactly as it had been, and in the very same position as of old; and even seemed to have the same unfinished piece of work on it which had been there eight years before. They placed him in a large arm-chair, and sat down gravely around him. Questions, exclamations, anecdotes, followed swiftly one after another.
"What a long time it is since we saw you last!" naively remarked Lenochka; "and we haven't seen Varvara Pavlovna either."
"No wonder!" her brother hastily interrupted her--"I took you away to St. Petersburg; but Fedor Ivanovich has lived all the time on his estate."
"Yes, and mamma too is dead, since then."
"And Marfa Timofeevna," said Shurochka.
"And Nastasia Corpovna," continued Lenochka, "and Monsieur Lemm."
"What? is Lemm dead too?" asked Lavretsky.
"Yes," answered young Kalitine. "He went away from here to Odessa. Some one is said to have persuaded him to go there, and there he died."
"You don't happen to know if he left any music behind?"
"I don't know, but I should scarcely think so."
A general silence ensued, and each one of the party looked at the others. A shade of sadness swept over all the youthful faces.
"But Matros is alive," suddenly cried Lenochka.
"And Gedeonovsky is alive," added her brother.
The name of Gedeonovsky at once called forth a merry laugh.
"Yes, he is still alive; and he tells stories just as he used to do," continued the young Kalitine--"only fancy! this mad-cap here" (pointing to his wife's sister the Institute-girl) "put a quantity of pepper into his snuff-box yesterday."
"How he did sneeze!" exclaimed Lenochka--and irrepressible laughter again broke out on all sides.
"We had news of Liza the other day," said young Kalitine. And again silence fell upon all the circle. "She is going on well--her health is gradually being restored now."
"Is she still in the same convent?" Lavretsky asked, not without an effort.
"Yes."
"Does she ever write to you?"
"No, never. We get news of her from other quarters."
A profound silence suddenly ensued. "An angel has noiselessly flown past," they all thought.
"Won't you go into the garden?" said Kalitine, addressing Lavretsky. "It is very pleasant now, although we have neglected it a little."
Lavretsky went into the garden, and the first thing he saw there was that very bench on which he and Liza had once passed a few happy moments--moments that never repeated themselves. It had grown black and warped, but still he recognized it, and that feeling took possession of his heart which is unequalled as well for sweetness as for bitterness--the feeling of lively regret, for vanished youth, for once familiar happiness.
He walked by the side of the young people along the alleys. The lime-trees looked older than before, having grown a little taller during the last eight years, and casting a denser shade. All the underwood, also, had grown higher, and the raspberry-bushes had spread vigorously, and the hazel copse was thickly tangled. From every side exhaled a fresh odor from the forest and the wood, from the grass and the lilacs.
"What a capital place for a game at Puss in the Corner!" suddenly cried Lenochka, as they entered upon a small grassy lawn surrounded by lime-trees. "There are just five of us."
"But have you forgotten Fedor Ivanovich?" asked her brother; "or is it yourself you have not counted?"
Lenochka blushed a little.
"But would Fedor Ivanovich like--at his age--" she began stammering.
"Please play away," hastily interposed Lavretsky; "don't pay any attention to me. I shall feel more comfortable if I know I am not boring you. And there is no necessity for your finding me something to do. We old people have a resource which you don't know yet, and which is better than any amusement--recollection."
The young people listened to Lavretsky with respectful, though slightly humorous politeness, just as if they were listening to a teacher who was reading them a lesson--then they all suddenly left him, and ran off to the lawn. One of them stood in the middle, the others occupied the four corners by the trees, and the game began.
But Lavretsky returned to the house, went into the dining-room, approached the piano, and touched one of the notes. It responded with a faint but clear sound, and a shudder thrilled his heart within him. With that note began the inspired melody, by means of which, on that most happy night long ago, Lemm, the dead Lemm, had thrown him into such raptures. Then Lavretsky passed into the drawing-room, and did not leave it for a long time.
In that room, in which he had seen Liza so often, her image floated more distinctly before him; the traces of her presence seemed to make themselves felt around him there. But his sorrow for her loss became painful and crushing; it bore with it none of the tranquillity which death inspires. Liza was still living somewhere, far away and lost to sight. He thought of her as he had known her in actual life; he could not recognize the girl he used to love in that pale, dim, ghostly form, half-hidden in a nun's dark robe, and surrounded by waving clouds of incense.
Nor would Lavretsky have been able to recognize himself, if he could have looked at himself as he in fancy was looking at Liza. In the course of those eight years his life had attained its final crisis--that crisis which many people never experience, but without which no man can be sure of maintaining his principles firm to the last. He had really given up thinking about his own happiness, about what would conduce to his own interests. He had become calm, and--why should we conceal the truth?--he had aged; and that not in face alone or frame, but he had aged in mind; for, indeed, not only is it difficult, but it is even hazardous to do what some people speak of--to preserve the heart young in bodily old age. Contentment, in old age, is deserved by him alone who has not lost his faith in what is good, his persevering strength of will, his desire for active employment. And Lavretsky did deserve to be contented; he had really become a good landlord; he had really learnt how to till the soil; and in that he labored, he labored not for himself alone, but he had, as far as in him lay the power, assured, and obtained guarantees for, the welfare of the peasantry on his estates.
Lavretsky went out of the house into the garden, and sat down on the bench he knew so well. There--on that loved spot, in sight of that house in which he had fruitlessly, and for the last time, stretched forth his hands towards that cup of promise in which foamed and sparkled the golden wine of enjoyment,--he, a lonely, homeless wanderer, while the joyous cries of that younger generation which had already forgotten him came flying to his ears, gazed steadily at his past life.
His heart became very sorrowful, but it was free now from any crushing sense of pain. He had nothing to be ashamed of; he had many sources of consolation. "Play on, young vigorous lives!" he thought--and his thoughts had no taint of bitterness in them--"the future awaits you, and your path of life in it will be comparatively easy for you. You will not be obliged, as we were, to seek out your path, to struggle, to fall, to rise again in utter darkness. We had to seek painfully by what means we might hold out to the end--and how many there were amongst us who did not hold out!--but your part is now to act, to work--and the blessing of old men like me shall be with you. For my part, after the day I have spent here, after the emotions I have here experienced, nothing remains for me but to bid you a last farewell; and, although sadly, yet without a tinge of envy, without a single gloomy feeling, to say, in sight of death, in sight of my awaiting God, 'Hail, lonely old age! Useless life, burn yourself out!'"
Lavretsky rose up quietly, and quietly went away. No one observed him, no one prevented him from going. Louder than ever sounded the joyous cries in the garden, behind the thick green walls of the lofty lime-trees. Lavretsky got into his tarantass, and told his coachman to drive him home without hurrying the horses.
* * * * *
"And is that the end?" the unsatisfied reader may perhaps ask. "What became of Lavretsky afterwards? and of Liza?" But what can one say about people who are still alive, but who have already quitted the worldly stage? Why should we turn back to them? It is said that Lavretsky has visited the distant convent in which Liza has hidden herself--and has seen her. As she crossed from choir to choir, she passed close by him--passed onwards steadily, with the quick but silent step of a nun, and did not look at him. Only an almost imperceptible tremor was seen to move the eyelashes of the eye which was visible to him; only still lower did she bend her emaciated face; and the fingers of her clasped hands, enlaced with her rosary, still more closely compressed each other.
Of what did they both think? what did they both feel? Who can know? who shall tell? Life has its moments--has its feelings--to which we may be allowed to allude, but on which it is not good to dwell.
[THE END]
[Ivan Turgenev's Novel: Liza; or, "A Nest of Nobles"] _