A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  “How can I entertain Fedor Ivanitch?” said Lisa. “If he likes, had I not better play him something on the piano?” she added irresolutely.

  “Capital; you’re my clever girl,” rejoined Marfa Timofyevna. “Step down - stairs, my dears; when you have finished, come back: I have been made old maid, I don’t like it, I want to have my revenge.”

  Lisa got up. Lavretsky went after her. As she went down the staircase, Lisa stopped.

  “They say truly,” she began, “that people’s hearts are full of contradictions. Your example ought to frighten me, to make me distrust marriage for love; but I — ”

  “You have refused him?” interrupted Lavretsky.

  “No; but I have not consented either. I told him everything, everything I felt, and asked him to wait a little. Are you pleased with me?” she added with a swift smile — and with a light touch of her hand on the banister she ran down the stairs.

  “What shall I play to you?” she asked, opening the piano.

  “What you like,” answered Lavretsky as he sat down so that he could look at her.

  Lisa began to play, and for a long while she did not lift her eyes from her fingers. She glanced at last at Lavretsky, and stopped short; his face seemed strange and beautiful to her.

  “What is the matter with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he replied; “I’m very happy; I’m glad of you, I’m glad to see you — go on.”

  “It seems to me,” said Lisa a few moments later, “that if he had really loved me, he would not have written that letter; he must have felt that I could not give him an answer now.”

  “That is of no consequence,” observed Lavretsky, “what is important is that you don’t love him.”

  “Stop, how can we talk like this? I keep thinking of you dead wife, and you frighten me.”

  “Don’t you think, Voldemar, that Liseta plays charmingly?” Marya Dmitrievna was saying at that moment to Panshin.

  “Yes,” answered Panshin, “very charmingly.”

  Marya Dmitrievna looked tenderly at her young partner, but the latter assumed a still more important and care - worn air and called fourteen kings.

  Chapter XXXI

  Lavretsky was not a young man; he could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling inspired in him by Lisa; he was brought on that day to the final conviction that he loved her. This conviction did not give him ay great pleasure. “Have I really nothing better to do,” he thought, “at thirty - five than to put my soul into a woman’s keeping again? But Lisa is not like her; she would not demand degrading sacrifices from me: she would not tempt me away from my duties; she would herself incite me to hard honest work, and we would walk hand in hand towards a noble aim. Yes,” he concluded his reflections, “that’s all very fine, but the worst of it is that she does not in the least wish to walk hand in hand with me. She meant it when she said that I frightened her. But she doesn’t love Panshin either — a poor consolation!”

  Lavretsky went back to Vassilyevskoe, but he could not get through four days there — so dull it seemed to him. He was also in agonies of suspense; the news announced by M. Jules required confirmation, and he had received no letters of any kind. He returned to the town and spent an evening at the Kalitins’. He could easily see that Marya Dmitrievna had to been set against him; but he succeeded in softening her a little, by losing fifteen roubles to her at picquet, and he spent nearly half an hour almost alone with Lisa in spite of the fact that her mother had advised her the previous evening not to be too intimate with a man qui a un si grand ridicule. He found a change in her; she had become, as it were, more thoughtful. She reproached him for his absence and asked him would he not go on the morrow to mass? (The next day was Sunday.)

  “Do go,” she said before he had time to answer, “we will pray together fro the repose of her soul.” Then she added that she did not know how to act — she did not know whether she had the right to make Panshin wait any longer for her decision.

  “Why so?” inquired Lavretsky.

  “Because,” she said, “I begin now to suspect what that decision will be.”

  She declared that her head ached and went to her own room up - stairs, hesitatingly holding out the tips of her fingers to Lavretsky.

  The next day Lavretsky went to mass. Lisa was already in the church when he came in. She noticed him though she did not turn round towards him. She prayed fervently, her eyes were full of a calm light, calmly she bowed her head and lifted it again. He felt that she was praying for him too, and his heart was filled with a marvelous tenderness. He was happy and a little ashamed. The people reverently standing, the homely faces, the harmonious singing, the scent of incense, the long slanting gleams of light from the windows, the very darkness of the walls and arched roofs, all went to his heart. For long he had not been to church for long he had not turned to God: even now he uttered no words of prayer — he did not even pray without words — but, at least, for a moment in all his mind, if not in his body, he bowed down and meekly humbled himself to earth. He remembered how, in his childhood, he had always prayed in church until he had felt, as it were, a cool touch on his! brow; that, he used to think then, is the guardian angel receiving me, laying on me the seal of grace. He glanced at Lisa. “You brought me here,” he thought, “touch me, touch my soul.” She was still praying calmly; her face seemed him to him full of joy, and he was softened anew: he prayed for another soul, peace; for his own, forgiveness.

  They met in the porch; she greeted him with glad and gracious seriousness. The sun brightly lighted up the young grass in the church - yard, and the striped dresses and kerchiefs of the women; the bells of the churches near were tinkling overhead; and the crows were cawing about the hedges. Lavretsky stood with uncovered head, a smile on his lips; the light breeze lifted his hair, and the ribbons of Lisa’s hat. He put Lisa and Lenotchka who was with her into their carriage, divided all his money among the poor, and peacefully sauntered home.

  Chapter XXXII

  Painful days followed for Fedor Ivanitch. He found himself in a continual fever. Every morning he made for the post, and tore open letters and papers in agitation, and nowhere did he find anything which could confirm or disprove the fateful rumour. Sometimes he was disgusting to himself. “What am I about,” he thought, “waiting, like a vulture for blood, for certain news of my wife’s death?” He went to the Kalitins every day, but things had grown no easier for him there; the lady of the house was obviously sulky with him, and received him very condescendingly. Panshin treated him with exaggerated politeness; Lemm had entrenched himself in his misanthropy and hardly bowed to him, and, worst of all, Lisa seemed to avoid him. When she happened to be left alone with him, instead of her former candour there was visible embarrassment on her part, she did not know what to say to him, and he, too, felt confused. In the space of a few days Lisa had become quite different from what she was as he knew her: in her movements, her voice, her very laugh a secret tremor, an unevenness never there before was apparent. Marya Dmitrievna, like a true egoist, suspected nothing; but Marfa Timofyevna began to keep a watch over her favourite. Lavretsky more than once reproached himself for having shown Lisa the newspaper he had received; he could not but be conscious that in his spiritual condition there was something revolting to a pure nature. He imagined also that the change in Lisa was the result of her inward conflicts, her doubts as to what answer to give Panshin.

  One day she brought him a book, a novel of Walter Scott’s, which she had herself asked him for.

  “Have you read it?” he said.

  “No; I can’t bring myself to read just now,” she answered, and was about to go away.

  “Stop a minute, it is so long since I have been alone with you. You seem to be afraid of me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why so, pray?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lavretsky was silent.

  “Tell me,” he began, “you haven’t yet decided?”

  “Wh
at do you mean?” she said, not raising her eyes.

  “You understand me.”

  Lisa flushed crimson all at once.

  “Don’t ask me about anything!” she broke out hotly. “I know nothing; I don’t know myself.” And instantly she was gone.

  The following day Lavretsky arrived at the Kalitins’ after dinner and found there all the preparations for an evening service. In the corner of the dining - room on a square table covered with a clean cloth were already arranged, leaning up against the wall, the small holy pictures in old frames, set with tarnished jewels. The old servant in a grey coat and shoes was moving noiselessly and without haste all about the room; he set two wax - candles in the slim candlesticks before the holy pictures, crossed himself, bowed, and slowly went out. The unlighted drawing - room was empty. Lavretsky went into the dining - room and asked if it was some one’s name - day.

  In a whisper the told him no, but that the evening service had been arranged at the desire of Lisaveta Mihalovna and Marfa Timofyevna; that it had been intended to invite a wonder - working image, but that the latter had gone thirty versts away to visit a sick man. Soon the priest arrived with the deacons; he was a man no longer young, with a large bald head; he coughed loudly in the hall: the ladies at once filed slowly out of the boudoir, and went up to receive his blessing; Lavretsky bowed to them in silence; and in silence to him. The priest stood still for a little while, coughed once again, and asked in a bass undertone —

  “You wish me to begin?”

  “Pray begin father,” replied Marya Dmitrievna.

  He began to put on his robes; a deacon in a surplice asked obsequiously for a hot ember; there was a scent of incense. The maids and men - servants came out from the hall and remained huddled close together before the door. Roska, who never came down from up - stairs, suddenly ran into the dining - room; they began to chase her out; she was scared, doubled back into the room and sat down; a footman picked her up and carried her away.

  The evening service began. Lavretsky squeezed himself into a corner; his emotions were strange, almost sad; he could not himself make out clearly what he was feeling. Marya Dmitrievna stood in front of all, before the chairs; she crossed herself with languid carelessness, like a grand lady, and first looked about her, then suddenly lifted her eyes to the ceiling; she was bored. Marfa Timofyevna looked worried; Nastasya Karpovna bowed down to the ground and got up with a kind of discreet, subdued rustle; Lisa remained standing in her place motionless; from the concentrated expression of her face it could be seen that she was praying steadfastly and fervently. When she bowed to the cross at the end of the service, she also kissed the large red hand of the priest. Marya Dmitrievna invited the latter to have some tea; he took off his vestment, assumed a somewhat more worldly air, and passed into the drawing - room with the ladies. Conversation — not too lively — began. The priest drank four cups of tea, incessantly wiping his bald head with his handkerchief; he related among other things that the merchant Avoshnikov was subscribing seven hundred roubles to gilding the “cumpola” of the church, and informed them of a sure remedy against freckles. Lavretsky tried to sit near Lisa, but her manner was severe, almost stern, and she did not once glance at him. She appeared intentionally not to observe him; a kind of cold, grave enthusiasm seemed to have taken possession of her. Lavretsky for some reason or other tried to smile and to say something amusing; but there was perplexity in his heart, and he went away at last in secret bewilderment .... He felt there was something in Lisa to which he could never penetrate.

  Another time Lavretsky was sitting in the drawing - room listening to the sly but tedious gossip of Gedeonovsky, when suddenly, without himself knowing why, he turned round and caught a profound, attentive questioning look in Lisa’s eyes.... It was bent on him, this enigmatic look. Lavretsky thought of it the whole night long. His love was not like a boy’s; sighs and agonies were not in his line, and Lisa herself did not inspire a passion of that kind; but for every age love has its tortures — and he was spared none of them.

  Chapter XXXIII

  One day Lavretsky, according to his habit, was at the Kalitins’. After an exhaustingly hot day, such a lovely evening had set in that Marya Dmitrievna, in spite of her aversion to a draught, ordered all the windows and doors into the garden to be thrown open, and declared that she would not play cards, that it was a sin to play cards in such weather, and one ought to enjoy nature. Panshin was the only guest. He was stimulated by the beauty of the evening, and conscious of a flood of artistic sensations, but he did not care to sing before Lavretsky, so he fell to reading poetry; he read aloud well, but too self - consciously and with unnecessary refinements, a few poems of Lermontov (Pushkin had not then come into fashion again). Then suddenly, as though ashamed of his enthusiasm, began, a propos of the well - known poem, “A Reverie,” to attack and fall foul of the younger generation. While doing so he did not lose the opportunity of expounding how he would change everything! after his own fashion, if the power were in his hands. “Russia,” he said, “has fallen behind Europe; we must catch her up. It is maintained that we are young — that’s nonsense. Moreover we have no inventiveness: Homakov himself admits that we have not even invented mouse - traps. Consequently, whether we will or no, we must borrow from others. We are sick, Lermontov says — I agree with him. But we are sick from having only half become Europeans, we must take a hair of the dog that bit us (“le cadastre,” thought Lavretsky). “The best head, les meilleures tetes,” he continued, “among us have long been convinced of it. All peoples are essentially alike; only introduce among them good institutions, and the thing is done. Of course there may be adaptation to the existing national life; that is our affair — the affair of the official (he almost said “governing”) class. But in case of need don’t be uneasy. The institutions will transform the life itself.” Marya Dmitrievna most feelingly assented to all Panshin said. “What a clever man,” she thought, “is talking in my drawing - room!” Lisa sat in silence leaning back against the window; Lavretsky too was silent. Marfa Timofyevna, playing cards with her old friend in the corner, muttered something to herself. Panshin walked up and down the room, and spoke eloquently, but with secret exasperation. It seemed as if he were abusing not a whole generation but a few people known to him. In a great lilac bush in the Kalitins’ garden a nightingale had built its nest; its first evening notes filled the pauses of the eloquent speech; the first stars were beginning to shine in the rosy sky over the motionless tops of the limes. Lavretsky got up and began to answer Panshin; an argument sprang up. Lavretsky championed the youth and the independence of Russia; he was ready to throw over himself and his generation, but he stood up for the new men, their convictions and desires. Panshin answered sharply and irritably. He maintained that the intelligent people ought to change everything, and was at last even brought to the point of forgetting his position as a kammer - yunker, and his career as an official, and calling Lavretsky an antiquated conservative, even hinting — very remotely it is true — at his dubious position in society. Lavretsky did not lose his temper. He did not raise his voice (he recollected that Mihalevitch too had called him antiquated but an antiquated Voltairean), and calmly proceeded to refute Panshin at all points. He proved to him the impracticability of sudden leaps and reforms from above, founded neither on knowledge of the mother - country, nor on any genuine faith in any ideal, even a negative one. He brought forward his own education as an example, and demanded before all things a recognition of the true spirit of the people and submission to it, without which even a courageous combat against error is impossible. Finally he admitted the reproach — well - deserved as he thought — of reckless waste of time and strength.

  “That is all very fine!” cried Panshin at last, getting angry. “You now have just returned to Russia, what do you intend to do?”

  “Cultivate the soil,” answered Lavretsky, “and try to cultivate it as well as possible.”

  “That is very praiseworthy, no doubt,” r
ejoined Panshin, “and I have been told that you have already had great success in that line; but you must allow that not every one is fit for pursuits of that kind.”

  “Une nature poetique,” observed Marya Dmitrievna, “cannot, to be sure, cultivate... et puis, it is your vocation, Vladimir Nikolaich, to do everything en grand.”

  This was too much even for Panshin: he grew confused and changed the conversation. He tried to turn it upon the beauty of the starlit sky, the music of Schubert; nothing was successful. He ended by proposing to Marya Dmitrievna a game of picquet. “What! on such an evening?” she replied feebly. She ordered the cards to be brought in, however. Panshin tore open a new pack of cards with a loud crash, and Lisa and Lavretsky both got up as if by agreement, and went and placed themselves near Marfa Timofyevna. They both felt all at once so happy that they were even a little afraid of remaining alone together, and at the same time they both felt that the embarrassment they had been conscious of for the last few days had vanished, and would return no more. The old lady stealthily patted Lavretsky on the cheek, slyly screwed up her eyes, and shook her head once or twice, adding in a whisper, “You have shut up our clever friend, many thanks.” Everything was hushed in the room; the only sound was the faint crackling of the wax - candles, and sometimes the tap of a hand on the table, and an exclamation or reckoning of points; and the rich torrent of the nightingale’s song, powerful piercingly sweet, poured in at the window, together with the dewy freshness of the night.

  Chapter XXXIV

  Lisa had not uttered a word in the course of the dispute between Lavretsky and Panshin, but she had followed it attentively and was completely on Lavretsky’s side. Politics interested her very little; but the supercilious tone of the worldly official (he had never delivered himself in that way before) repelled her; his contempt for Russia wounded her. It had never occurred to Lisa that she was a patriot; but her heart was with the Russian people; the Russian turn of mind delighted her; she would talk for hours together without ceremony to the peasant - overseer of her mother’s property when he came to the town, and she talked to him as to an equal, without any of the condescension of a superior. Lavretsky felt all this; he would not have troubled himself to answer Panshin by himself; he had spoken only for Lisa’s sake. They had said nothing to one another, their eyes even had seldom met. But they both knew that they had grown closer that evening, they knew that they liked! and disliked the same things. On one point only were they divided; but Lisa secretly hoped to bring him to God. They sat near Marfa Timofyevna, and appeared to be following her play; indeed, they were really following it, but meanwhile their hearts were full, and nothing was lost on them; for them the nightingale sang, and the stars shone, and the trees gently murmured, lulled to sleep by the summer warmth and softness. Lavretsky was completely carried away, and surrendered himself wholly to his passion — and rejoiced in it. But no word can express what was passing in the pure heart of the young girl. It was a mystery for herself. Let it remain a mystery for all. No one knows, no one has seen, nor will ever see, how the grain, destined to life and growth, swells and ripens in the bosom of the earth.