her hand he led her to the seat.
She followed him without resistance, her pale face, her fixed eyes, and all her gestures expressed an unutterable bewilderment. Lavretsky made her sit down and stood before her.
«I did not mean to come here,» he began. «Something brought me…. I—I love you,» he uttered in involuntary terror.
Lisa slowly looked at him. It seemed as though she only at that instant knew where she was and what was happening. She tried to get up, she could no, and she covered her face with her hands.
«Lisa,» murmured Lavretsky. «Lisa,» he repeated, and fell at her feet.
Her shoulders began to heave slightly; the fingers of her pale hands were pressed more closely to her face.
«What is it?» Lavretsky urged, and he heard a subdued sob. His heart stood still…. He knew the meaning of those tears. «Can it be that you love me?» he whispered, and caressed her knees.
«Get up,» he heard her voice, «get up, Fedor Ivanitch. What are we doing?»
He got up and sat beside her on the seat. She was not weeping now, and she looked at him steadfastly with her wet eyes.
«It frightens me: what are we doing?» she repeated.
«I love you,» he said again. «I am ready to devote my whole life to you.»
She shuddered again, as though something had stung her, and lifted her eyes towards heaven.
«All that is in God’s hands,» she said.
«But you love me, Lisa? We shall be happy.» She dropped her eyes; he softly drew her to him, and her head sank on to his shoulder…. He bent his head a little and touched her pale lips.
Half an hour later Lavretsky was standing before the little garden gate. He found it locked and was obliged to get over the fence. He returned to the town and walked along the slumbering streets. A sense of immense, unhoped-for happiness filled his soul; all his doubts had died away. «Away, dark phantom of the past,» he thought. «She loves me, she will be mine.» Suddenly it seemed to him that in the air over his head were floating strains of divine triumphant music. He stood still. The music resounded in still greater magnificence; a mighty flood of melody—and all his bliss seemed speaking and singing in its strains. He looked about him; the music floated down from two upper windows of a small house.
«Lemm?» cried Lavretsky as he ran to the house. «Lemm! Lemm!» he repeated aloud.
The sounds died away and the figure of the old man in a dressing-gown, with his throat bare and his hair dishevelled, appeared at the window.
«Aha!» he said with dignity, «is it you?»
«Christopher Fedoritch, what marvellous music! for mercy’s sake, let me in.»
Without uttering a word, the old man with a majestic flourish of the arm dropped the key of the street door from the window.
Lavretsky hastened up-stairs, went into the room and was about to rush up to Lemm; but the latter imperiously motioned him to a seat, saying abruptly in Russian, «Sit down and listen,» sat down himself to the piano, and looking proudly and severely about him, he began to play. It was long since Lavretsky had listened to anything like it. The sweet passionate melody went to his heart from the first note; it was glowing and languishing with inspiration, happiness and beauty; it swelled and melted away; it touched on all that is precious, mysterious, and holy on earth. It breathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the heavens. Lavretsky drew himself up, and rose cold and pale with ecstasy. This music seemed to clutch his very soul, so lately shaken by the rapture of love, the music was glowing with love too. «Again!» he whispered as the last chord sounded. The old man threw him an eagle glance, struck his hand on his chest and saying deliberately in his own tongue, «This is my work, I am a great musician,» he played again his marvellous composition. There was no candle in the room; the light of the rising moon fell aslant on the window; the soft air was vibrating with sound; the poor little room seemed a holy place, and the old man’s head stood out noble and inspired in the silvery half light. Lavretsky went up to him and embraced him. At first Lemm did not respond to his embrace and even pushed him away with his elbow. For a long while without moving in any limb he kept the same severe, almost morose expression, and only growled out twice, «aha.» At last his face relaxed, changed, and grew calmer, and in response to Lavretsky’s warm congratulations he smiled a little at first, then burst into tears, and sobbed weakly like a child.
«It is wonderful,» he said, «that you have come just at this moment; but I know all, I know all.»
«You know all?» Lavretsky repeated in amazement.
«You have heard me,» replied Lemm, «did you not understand that I knew all?»
Till daybreak Lavretsky could not sleep, all night he was sitting on his bed. And Lisa too did not sleep; she was praying.
Chapter XXXV
The reader knows how Lavretsky grew up and developed. Let us say a few words about Lisa’s education. She was in her tenth year when her father died; but he had not troubled himself much about her. Weighed down with business cares, for ever anxious for the increase of his property, bilious, sharp and impatient, he gave money unsparingly for the teachers, tutors, dress and other necessities of his children; but he could not endure, as he expressed it, «to be dandling his squallers,» and indeed had no time to dandle them. He worked, took no rest from business, slept little, rarely played cards, and worked again. He compared himself to a horse harnessed to a threshing-machine. «My life has soon come to an end,» was his comment on his deathbed, with a bitter smile on his parched lips. Marya Dmitrievna did not in reality trouble herself about Lisa any more than her husband, though she had boasted to Lavretsky that she alone had educated her children. She dressed her up like a doll, stroked her on the head before visitors and called her a clever child and a darling to her face, and that was all. Any kind of continuous care was too exhausting for the indolent lady. During her father’s lifetime, Lisa was in the hands of a governess, Mademoiselle Moreau from Paris, after his death she passed into the charge of Marfa Timofyevna. Marfa Timofyevna the reader knows already; Mademoiselle Moreau was a tiny wrinkled creature with little bird-like ways and a bird’s intellect. In her youth she had led a very dissipated life, but in old age she had only two passions left—gluttony and cards. When she had eaten her fill, and was neither playing cards nor chattering, her face assumed an expression almost death-like. She was sitting, looking, breathing—yet it was clear that there was not an idea in her head. One could not even call her good-natured. Birds are not good-natured. Either as a result of her frivolous youth or of the air of Paris, which she had breathed from childhood, a kind of cheap universal scepticism had found its way into her, usually expressed by the words: tout ca c’est des betises. She spoke ungrammatically, but in a pure Parisian jargon, did not talk scandal and had no caprices—what more can one desire in a governess? Over Lisa she had little influence; all the stronger was the influence on her of her nurse, Agafya Vlasyevna.
This woman’s story was remarkable. She came of a peasant family. She was married at sixteen to a peasant; but she was strikingly different from her peasant sisters. Her father had been twenty years starosta, and had made a good deal of money, and he spoiled her. She was exceptionally beautiful, the best-dressed girl in the whole district, clever, ready with her tongue, and daring. Her master Dmitri Pestov, Marya Dmitrievna’s father, a man of modest and gentle character, saw her one day at the threshing-floor, talked to her and fell passionately in love with her. She was soon left a widow; Pestov, though he was a married man, took her into his house and dressed her like a lady. Agafya at once adapted herself to her new position, just as if she had never lived differently all her life. She grew fairer and plumper; her arms grew as «floury white» under her muslin-sleeves as a merchant’s lady’s; the samovar never left her table; she would wear nothing except silk or velvet, and slept on well-stuffed feather-beds. This blissful existence lasted for five years, but Dmitri Pestov died; his widow, a kind-hearted woman, out of regard for the memory of the deceased, did not wish to treat her rival unfairly, all the more because Agafya had never forgotten herself in her presence. She married her, however, to a shepherd, and sent her a long way off. Three years passed. It happened one hot summer day that her mistress in driving past stopped at the cattle-yard. Agafya regaled her with such delicious cool cream, behaved so modestly, and was so neat, so bright, and so contented with everything that her mistress signified her forgiveness to her and allowed her to return to the house. Within six months she had become so much attached to her that she raised her to be housekeeper, and intrusted the whole household management to her. Agafya again returned to power, and again grew plump and fair; her mistress put the most complete confidence in her. So
