A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev 1

by Ivan Turgenev

  Agafya did not, however, get on well with Marfa Timofyevna, when she came to live in the Kalitins’ house. Such gravity and dignity on the part of one who had once worn the motley skirt of a peasant wench displeased the impatient and self - willed old lady. Agafya asked leave to go on a pilgrimage and she never came back. There were dark rumours that she had gone off to a retreat of sectaries. But the impression she had left in Lisa’s soul was never obliterated. She went as before to the mass as to a festival, she prayed with rapture, with a kind of restrained and shamefaced transport, at which Marya Dmitrievna secretly marvelled not a little, and even Marfa Timofyevna, though she did not restrain Lisa in any way, tried to temper her zeal, and would not let her make too many prostrations to the earth in her prayers; it was not a lady - like habit, she would say. In her studies Lisa worked well, that is to say perseveringly; she was not gifted with specially brilliant abilities, or great intellect; she could not succeed in anything without labour. She played the piano well, but only Lemm knew what it had cost her. She had read little; she had not “words of her own,” but she had her own ideas, and she went her own way. It was not only on the surface that she took after her father; he, too, had never asked other people what was to be done. So she had grown up tranquilly and restfully till she had reached the age of nineteen. She was very charming, without being aware of it herself. Her every movement was full of spontaneous, somewhat awkward gracefulness; her voice had the silvery ring of untouched youth, the least feeling of pleasure called forth an enchanting smile on her lips, and added a deep light and a kind of mystic sweetness to her kindling eyes. Penetrated through and through by a sense of duty, by the dread of hurting any one whatever, with a kind and tender heart, she had loved all men, and no one in particular; God only she had! loved passionately, timidly, and tenderly. Lavretsky was the first to break in upon her peaceful inner life.

  Such was Lisa.

  Chapter XXXVI

  On the following day at twelve o’clock, Lavretsky set off to the Kalitins. On the way he met Panshin, who galloped past him on horseback, his hat pulled down to his very eyebrows. At the Kalitins’, Lavretsky was not admitted for the first time since he had been acquainted with them. Marya Dmitrievna was “resting,” so the footman informed him; her excellency had a headache. Marfa Timofyevna and Lisaveta Mihalovna were not at home. Lavretsky walked round the garden in the faint hope of meeting Lisa, but he saw no one. He came back two hours later and received the same answer, accompanied by a rather dubious look from the footman. Lavretsky thought it would be unseemly to call for a third time the same day, and he decided to drive over to Vassilyevskoe, where he had business moreover. On the road he made various plans for the future, each better than the last; but he was overtaken by a melancholy mood when he reached his aunt’s little village. He fell into conversation! with Anton; the old man, as if purposely, seemed full of cheerless fancies. He told Lavretsky how, at her death, Glafira Petrovna had bitten her own arm, and after a brief pause, added with a sigh: “Every man, dear master, is destined to devour himself.” It was late when Lavretsky set off on the way back. He was haunted by the music of the day before, and Lisa’s image returned to him in all its sweet distinctness; he mused with melting tenderness over the thought that she loved him, and reached his little house in the town, soothed and happy.

  The first thing that struck him as he went into the entrance hall was a scent of patchouli, always distasteful to him; there were some high travelling - trunks standing there. The face of his groom, who ran out to meet him, seemed strange to him. Not stopping to analyse his impressions, he crossed the threshold of the drawing room.... On his entrance there rose from the sofa a lady in a black silk dress with flounces, who, raising a cambric handkerchief to her pale face, made a few paces forward, bent her carefully dressed, perfumed head, and fell at his feet.... Then, only, he recognised her: this lady was his wife!

  He caught his breath.... He leaned against the wall.

  “Theodore, do not repulse me!” she said in French, and her voice cut to his heart like a knife.

  He looked at her senselessly, and yet he noticed involuntarily at once that she had grown both whiter and fatter.

  “Theodore!” she went on, from time to time lifting her eyes and discreetly wringing her marvellously - beautiful fingers with their rosy, polished nails. “Theodore, I have wronged you, deeply wronged you; I will say more, I have sinned: but hear me; I am tortured by remorse, I have grown hateful to myself, I could endure my position no longer; how many times have I thought of turning to you, but I feared your anger; I resolved to break every tie with the past.... Puis j’ai ete si malade.... I have been so ill,” she added, and passed her hand over her brow and cheek. “I took advantage of the widely - spread rumour of my death, I gave up everything; without resting day or night I hastened hither; I hesitated long to appear before you, my judge... paraitre devant vous, mon juge; but I resolved at last, remembering your constant goodness, to come to you; I found your address at Moscow. Believe me,” she went on, slowly getting up from the floor and sitting on the very! edge of an arm - chair, “I have often thought of death, and I should have found courage enough to take my life... ah! life is a burden unbearable for me now!... but the thought of my daughter, my little Ada, stopped me. She is here, she is asleep in the next room, the poor child! She is tired — you shall see her; she at least has done you no wrong, and I am so unhappy, so unhappy!” cried Madame Lavretsky, and she melted into tears.

  Lavretsky came to himself at last; he moved away from the wall and turned towards the door.

  “You are going?” cried his wife in a voice of despair. “Oh, this is cruel! Without uttering one word to me, not even a reproach. This contempt will kill me, it is terrible!”

  Lavretsky stood still.

  “What do you want to hear from me?” he articulated in an expressionless voice.

  “Nothing, nothing,” she rejoined quickly, “I know I have no right to expect anything; I am not mad, believe me; I do not hope, I do not dare to hope for your forgiveness; I only venture to entreat you to command me what I am to do, where I am to live. Like a slave I will fulfil your commands whatever they may be.”

  “I have no commands to give you,” replied Lavretsky in the same colourless voice; “you know, all is over between us... and now more than ever; you can live where you like; and if your allowance is too little — ”

  “Ah, don’t say such dreadful things,” Varvara Pavlovna interrupted him, “spare me, if only... if only for the sake of this angel.” And as she uttered these words, Varvara Pavlovna ran impulsively into the next room, and returned at once with a small and very elegantly dressed little girl in her arms.

  Thick flaxen curls fell over her pretty rosy little face, and on to her large sleepy black eyes; she smiled and blinked her eyes at the light and laid a chubby little hand on her mother’s neck.

  “Ada, vois, c’est ton pere,” said Varvara Pavlovna, pushing the curls back from her eyes and kissing her vigorously, “pre le avec moi.”

  “C’est ca, papa?” stammered the little girl lisping.

  “Oui, mon enfant, n’est - ce pas que tu l’aimes?”

  But this was more than Lavretsky could stand.

  “In such a melodrama must there really be a scene like this?” he muttered, and went out of the room.

  Varvara Pavlovna stood still for some time in the same place, slightly shrugged her shoulders, carried the little girl off into the next room, undressed her and put her to bed. Then she took up a book and sat down near the lamp, and after staying up for an hour she went to bed herself.

  “Eh bien, madame?” queried her maid, a Frenchwoman whom she had brought from Paris, as she unlaced her corset.

  “Eh bien, Justine,” se replied, “he is a good deal older, but I fancy he is just the same good - natured fellow. Give me my gloves for the night, and get out my grey high - necked dress for to - morrow, and don’t forget the mutton cutlets for Ada.... I daresay it will be dif
ficult to get them here; but we must try.”

  “A la guerre comme a la guerre,” replied Justine as she put out the candle.

  Chapter XXXVII

  For more than two hours Lavretsky wandered about the streets of town. The night he had spent in the outskirts of Paris returned to his mind. His heart was bursting and his head, dull and stunned, was filled again with the same dark senseless angry thoughts, constantly recurring. “She is alive, she is here,” he muttered with ever fresh amazement. He felt that he had lost Lisa. His wrath choked him; this blow had fallen too suddenly upon him. How could he so readily have believed in the nonsensical gossip of a journal, a wretched scrap of paper? “Well, if I had not believed it,” he thought, “what difference would it have made? I should not have known that Lisa loved me; she would not have known it herself.” He could not rid himself of the image, the voice, the eyes of his wife... and he cursed himself, he cursed everything in the world.

  Wearied out he went towards morning to Lemm’s. For a long while he could make no one hear; at last at a window the old man’s head appeared in a nightcap, sour, wrinkled, and utterly unlike the inspired austere visage which twenty - four hours ago had looked down imperiously upon Lavretsky in all the dignity of artistic grandeur.

  “What do you want?” queried Lemm. “I can’t play to you every night, I have taken a decoction for a cold.” But Lavretsky’s face, apparently, struck him as strange; the old man made a shade for his eyes with his hand, took a look at his elated visitor, and let him in.

  Lavretsky went into the room and sank into a chair. The old man stood still before him, wrapping the skirts of his shabby striped dressing - gown around him, shrinking together and gnawing his lips.

  “My wife is here,” Lavretsky brought out. He raised his head and suddenly broke into involuntary laughter.

  Lemm’s face expressed bewilderment, but he did not even smile, only wrapped himself closer in his dressing - gown.

  “Of course, you don’t know,” Lavretsky went on, “I had imagined... I read in a paper that she was dead.”

  “O — oh, did you read that lately?” asked Lemm.

  “Yes, lately.”

  “O — oh,” repeated the old man, raising his eyebrows. “And she is here?”

  “Yes. She is at my house now; and I... I am an unlucky fellow.”

  And he laughed again.

  “You are an unlucky fellow,” Lemm repeated slowly.

  “Christopher Fedoritch,” began Lavretsky, “would you undertake to carry a note for me?”

  “H’m. May I know to whom?”

  “Lisavet — ”

  “Ah... yes, yes, I understand. Very good. And when must the letter be received?”

  “To - morrow, as early as possible.”

  “H’m. I can send Katrine, my cook. No, I will go myself.”

  “And you will bring me an answer?”

  “Yes, I will bring you an answer.”

  Lemm sighed.

  “Yes, my poor young friend; you are certainly an unlucky young man.”

  Lavretsky wrote a few words to Lisa. He told her of his wife’s arrival, begged her to appoint a meeting with him, — then he flung himself on the narrow sofa, with his face to the wall; and the old man lay down on the bed, and kept muttering a long while, coughing and drinking off his decoction by gulps.

  The morning came; they both got up. With strange eyes they looked at one another. At that moment Lavretsky longed to kill himself. The cook, Katrine, brought them some villainous coffee. It struck eight. Lemm put on his hat, and saying that he was going to give a lesson at the Kalitins’ at ten, but he could find a suitable pretext for going there now, he set off. Lavretsky flung himself again on the little sofa, and once more the same bitter laugh stirred in the depth of his soul. He thought of how his wife had driven him out of his house; he imagined Lisa’s position, covered his eyes and clasped his hands behind his head. At last Lemm came back and brought him a scrap of paper, on which Lisa had scribbled in pencil the following words: “We cannot meet to - day; perhaps, to - morrow evening. Good - bye.” Lavretsky thanked Lemm briefly and indifferently, and went home.

  He found his wife at breakfast; Ada, in curl - papers, in a little white frock with blue ribbons, was eating her mutton cutlet. Varvara Pavlovna rose at once directly Lavretsky entered the room, and went to meet him with humility in her face. He asked her to follow him into the study, shut the door after them, and began to walk up and down; she sat down, modestly laying one hand over the other, and began to follow his movements with her eyes, which were still beautiful, though they were pencilled lightly under their lids.

  For some time Lavretsky could not speak; he felt that he could not master himself, he saw clearly that Varvara Pavlovna was not in the least afraid of him, but was assuming an appearance of being ready to faint away in another instant.

  “Listen, madam,” he began at last, breathing with difficulty and at moments setting his teeth: “it is useless for us to make pretense with one another; I don’t believe in your penitence; and even if it were sincere, to be with you again, to live with you, would be impossible for me.”

  Varvara Pavlovna bit her lips and half - closed her eyes. “It is aversion,” she thought; “all is over; in his eyes I am not even a woman.”

  “Impossible,” repeated Lavretsky, fastening the top buttons of his coat. “I don’t know what induced you to come here; I suppose you have come to the end of your money.”

  “Ah! you hurt me!” whispered Varvara Pavlovna.

  “However that may be — you are, any way, my wife, unhappily. I cannot drive you away... and this is the proposal I make you. You may to - day, if you like, set off to Lavriky, and live there; there is, as you know, a good house there; you will have everything you need in addition to your allowance... Do you agree?” — Varvara Pavlovna raised an embroidered handkerchief to her face.

  “I have told you already,” she said, her lips twitching nervously, “that I will consent to whatever you think fit to do with me; at present it only remains for me to beg of you — will you allow me at least to thank you for your magnanimity?”

  “No thanks, I beg — it is better without that,” Lavretsky said hurriedly. “So then,” he pursued, approaching the door, “I may reckon on — ”

  “To - morrow I will be at Lavriky,” Varvara Pavlovna declared, rising respectfully from her place. “But Fedor Ivanitch — ” (She no longer called him “Theodore.”)

  “What do you want?”

  “I know, I have not yet gained any right to forgiveness; may I hope at least that with time — ”

  “Ah, Varvara Pavlovna,” Lavretsky broke in, “you are a clever woman, but I too am not a fool; I know that you don’t want forgiveness in the least. And I have forgiven you long ago; but there was always a great gulf between us.”

  “I know how to submit,” rejoined Varvara Pavlovna, bowing her head. “I have not forgotten my sin; I should not have been surprised if I had learnt that you even rejoiced at the news of my death,” she added softly, slightly pointing with her hand to the copy of the journal which was lying forgotten by Lavretsky on the table.

  Fedor Ivanitch started; the paper had been marked in pencil. Varvara Pavlovna gazed at him with still greater humility. She was superb at that moment. Her grey Parisian gown clung gracefully round her supple, almost girlish figure; her slender, soft neck, encircled by a white collar, her bosom gently stirred by her even breathing, her hands innocent of bracelets and rings — her whole figure, from her shining hair to the tip of her just visible little shoe, was so artistic...

  Lavretsky took her in with a glance of hatred; scarcely could he refrain from crying: “Bravo!” scarcely could he refrain from felling her with a blow of his fist on her shapely head — and he turned on his heel. An hour later he had started for Vassilyevskoe, and two hours later Varvara Pavlovna had bespoken the best carriage in the town, had put on a simple straw hat with a black veil, and a modest mantle, given Ada into the
charge of Justine, and set off to the Kalitins’. From the inquiries she had made among the servants, she had learnt that her husband went to see them every day.

  Chapter XXXVIII

  The day of the arrival of Lavretsky’s wife at the town of O — — - , a sorrowful day for him, and been also a day of misery for Lisa. She had not had time to go down - stairs and say good - morning to her mother, when the tramp of hoofs was heard under the window, and with a secret dismay she saw Panshin riding into the courtyard. “He has come so early for a final explanation,” she thought, and she was not mistaken. After a turn in the drawing - room, he suggested that she should go with him into the garden, and then asked her for the decision of his fate. Lisa summoned up all her courage and told him that she could not be his wife. He heard her to the end, standing on one side of her and pulling his hat down over his forehead; courteously, but in a changed voice, he asked her, “Was this her last word, and had he given her any ground for such a change in her views?” — then pressed his hand to his eyes, sighed softly and abruptly, and took his head away from his face again.