C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Lavretsky
By Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883)
A
On the evening of which we are speaking, the inhabitants of the Kalitins’s house (the eldest of them, Lenotchka’s betrothed, was only twenty-four) were engaged in a game, which, though not of a very complicated nature, was, to judge from their merry laughter, exceedingly entertaining to them,—they were running about the rooms chasing one another; the dogs too were running and barking; and the canaries, hanging in cages above the windows, were straining their throats in rivalry, and adding to the general uproar by the shrill trilling of their piercing notes. At the very height of this deafening merry-making, a mud-bespattered carriage stopped at the gate; and a man of five-and-forty, in a traveling dress, stepped out of it, and stood still in amazement. He stood a little time without stirring, watching the house with attentive eyes; then went through the little gate in the courtyard, and slowly mounted the steps. In the hall he met no one: but the door of a room was suddenly flung open, and out of it rushed Shurotchka, flushed and hot; and instantly, with a ringing shout, all the young party in pursuit of her. They stopped short at once, and were quiet, at the sight of a stranger; but their clear eyes fixed on him wore the same friendly expression, and their fresh faces were still smiling as Marya Dmitrievna’s son went up to the visitor, and asked him cordially what he could do for him.
“I am Lavretsky,” replied the visitor.
He was answered by a shout of friendliness; and not because these young people were greatly delighted at the arrival of a distant, almost forgotten, relation, but simply because they were ready to be delighted and make a noise at every opportunity. They surrounded Lavretsky at once; Lenotchka, as an old acquaintance, was the first to call him by his name, and assured him that in a little while she would certainly have recognized him. She presented him to the rest of the party, calling each, even her betrothed, by their pet names. They all trooped through the dining-room into the drawing-room. The walls of both rooms had been repapered; but the furniture remained the same. Lavretsky recognized the piano; even the embroidery frame in the window was just the same, and in the same position, and it seemed with the same unfinished embroidery on it, as eight years ago.
They made him sit down in a comfortable arm-chair; all sat down politely in a circle round him. Questions, exclamations, and anecdotes followed.
“It’s a long time since we have seen you,” observed Lenotchka simply, “and Varvara Pavlovna we have seen nothing of either.”
“Well, no wonder!” her brother hastened to interpose: “I carried you off to Petersburg, and Fedor Ivan’itch has been living all the time in the country.”
“Yes, and mamma died soon after then.”
“And Marfa Timofyevna,” observed Shurotchka.
“And Nastasya Karpovna,” added Lenotchka, “and Monsieur Lemm.”
“What? is Lemm dead?” inquired Lavretsky.
“Yes,” replied young Kalitin, “he left here for Odessa—they say some one enticed him there; and there he died.”
“You don’t happen to know—did he leave any music?”
“I don’t know; not very likely.”
All were silent and looked about them. A slight cloud of melancholy flitted over all the young faces.
“But Matross is alive,” said Lenotchka suddenly.
“And Gedeonovsky,” added her brother.
At Gedeonovsky’s name a merry laugh broke out at once.
“Yes, he is alive, and as great a liar as ever,” Marya Dmitrievna’s son continued; “and only fancy, yesterday this madcap”—pointing to the schoolgirl, his wife’s sister—“put some pepper in his snuff-box.”
“How he did sneeze!” cried Lenotchka; and again there was a burst of unrestrained laughter.
“We have had news of Lisa lately,” observed young Kalitin,—and again a hush fell upon all: “there was good news of her; she is recovering her health a little now.”
“She is still in the same convent?” Lavretsky asked, not without some effort.
“Yes, still in the same.”
“Does she write to you?”
“No, never; but we get news through other people.”
A sudden and profound silence followed. “A good angel is passing by,” all were thinking.
“Wouldn’t you like to go into the garden?” said Kalitin, turning to Lavretsky: “it is very nice now, though we have let it run wild a little.”
Lavretsky went out into the garden, and the first thing that met his eyes was the very garden seat on which he had once spent with Lisa those few blissful moments, never repeated. It had grown black and warped; but he recognized it, and his soul was filled with that emotion unequaled for sweetness and for bitterness,—the emotion of keen sorrow for vanished youth, for the happiness which has once been possessed. He walked along the avenues with the young people: the lime-trees looked hardly older or taller in the eight years, but their shade was thicker; on the other hand, all the bushes had sprung up, the raspberry bushes had grown strong, the hazels were a tangled thicket, and from all sides rose the fresh scent of the trees and grass and lilac.
“This would be a nice place for Puss-in-the-Corner,” cried Lenotchka suddenly, as they came upon a small green lawn, surrounded by lime-trees; “and we are just five, too.”
“Have you forgotten Fedor Ivan’itch?” replied her brother, “or didn’t you count yourself?”
Lenotchka blushed slightly.
“But would Fedor Ivan’itch, at his age—” she began.
“Please play your games,” Lavretsky hastened to interpose; “don’t pay attention to me. I shall be happier myself when I am sure I am not in your way. And there’s no need for you to entertain me: we old fellows have an occupation you know nothing of yet, and which no amusement can replace—our memories.”
The young people listened to Lavretsky with polite but rather ironical respect,—as though a teacher were giving them a lesson,—and suddenly they all dispersed and ran to the lawn; four stood near trees, one in the middle, and the game began.
And Lavretsky went back into the house, went into the dining-room, drew near the piano and touched one of the keys; it gave out a faint but clear sound: on that note had begun the inspired melody with which long ago on that same happy night Lemm, the dead Lemm, had thrown him into such transports. Then Lavretsky went into the drawing-room, and for a long time he did not leave it: in that room where he had so often seen Lisa, her image rose most vividly before him; he seemed to feel the traces of her presence round him: but his grief for her was crushing, not easy to bear, it had none of the peace which comes with death. Lisa still lived somewhere, hidden and afar; he thought of her as of the living, but he did not recognize the girl he had once loved in that dim, pale shadow, cloaked in a nun’s dress and encircled in misty clouds of incense. Lavretsky would not have recognized himself, could he have looked at himself as mentally he looked at Lisa. In the course of these eight years he had passed that turning-point in life which many never pass, but without which no one can be a good man to the end: he had really ceased to think of his own happiness, of his personal aims. He had grown calm, and—why hide the truth?—he had grown old not only in face and in body, he had grown old in heart. To keep a young heart up to old age, as some say, is not only difficult, but almost ridiculous: he may well be content who has not lost his belief in goodness, his steadfast will, and his zeal for work. Lavretsky had good reason to be content: he had become actually an excellent farmer, he had really learnt to cultivate the land, and his labors were not only for himself,—he had, to the best of his powers, secured on a firm basis the welfare of his peasants.
Lavretsky went out of the house into the garden, and sat down on the familiar garden seat. And on this loved spot, facing the house where for the last time he had vainly stretched out his hand for the enchanted cup which frothed and sparkled with the golden wine of delight, he, a solitary homeless wanderer, looked back upon his life; while the joyous shouts of the younger generation, who were already filling his place, floated across the garden to him. His heart was sad, but not weighed down nor bitter: much there was to regret, nothing to be ashamed of.
“Play away, be gay, grow strong, vigorous youth!” he thought—and there was no bitterness in his meditations: “your life is before you, and for you life will be easier; you have not, as we had, to find out a path for yourselves, to struggle, to fall, and to rise again in the dark; we had enough to do to last out,—and how many of us did not last out?—but you need only do your duty, work away, and the blessing of an old man be with you. For me, after to-day, after these emotions, there remains to take my leave at last; and though sadly, without envy, without any dark feelings, to say, in sight of the end, in sight of God who awaits me: ‘Welcome, lonely old age! burn out, useless life!’”
Lavretsky quietly rose and quietly went away; no one noticed him, no one detained him: the joyous cries sounded more loudly in the garden behind the thick green wall of high lime-trees. He took his seat in the carriage, and bade the coachman drive home, and not hurry the horses.
“And the end?” perhaps the dissatisfied reader will inquire. “What became of Lavretsky afterwards, and of Lisa?” But what is there to tell of people who, though still alive, have withdrawn from the battle-field of life? They say Lavretsky visited that remote convent where Lisa had hidden herself—that he saw her. Crossing over from choir to choir, she walked close past him, moving with the even, hurried, but meek walk of a nun: and she did not glance at him; only the eyelashes on the side towards him quivered a little, only she bent her emaciated face lower, and the fingers of her clasped hands, entwined with her rosary, were pressed still closer to one another. What were they both thinking, what were they feeling? Who can know? who can say? There are such moments in life, there are such feelings. One can but point to them—and pass them by.