"What a good place this would be to play at puss-in-the-corner,"--suddenly cried Lyenotchka, as they entered a small, verdant glade, hemmed in by lindens:--"by the way, there are five of us."
"And hast thou forgotten Feodor Ivanitch?"--her brother observed to her.... "Or art thou not reckoning in thyself?"
Lyenotchka blushed faintly.
"But is it possible that Feodor Ivanitch, at his age, can..."--she began.
"Please play,"--interposed Lavretzky, hastily:--"pay no heed to me. It will be all the more agreeable to me if I know that I am not embarra.s.sing you. And there is no need for you to bother about me; we old fellows have occupations of which you, as yet, know nothing, and which no diversion can replace: memories."
The young people listened to Lavretzky with courteous and almost mocking respect,--exactly as though their teacher were reading them a lesson,--and suddenly all of them flew away from him, and ran over the glade; four of them took up their stand near the trees, one stood in the centre,--and the fun began.
But Lavretzky returned to the house, went into the dining-room, approached the piano, and touched one of the keys: a faint, but pure sound rang out, and secretly trembled in his heart: with that note began that inspired melody wherewith, long ago, on that same blissful night, Lemm, the dead Lemm, had led him to such raptures. Then Lavretzky pa.s.sed into the drawing-room, and did not emerge from it for a long time: in that room, where he had so often seen Liza, her image rose up before him more vividly than ever; it seemed to him, that he felt around him the traces of her presence; but his grief for her was exhausting and not light: there was in it none of the tranquillity which death inspires.
Liza was still living somewhere, dully, far away; he thought of her as among the living, but did not recognise the young girl whom he had once loved in that pale spectre swathed in the conventual garment, surrounded by smoky clouds of incense. Lavretzky would not have recognised himself, had he been able to contemplate himself as he mentally contemplated Liza.
In the course of those eight years the crisis had, at last, been effected in his life; that crisis which many do not experience, but without which it is not possible to remain an honourable man to the end: he had really ceased to think of his own happiness, of selfish aims. He had calmed down, and--why should the truth be concealed?--he had aged, not alone in face and body, he had aged in soul; to preserve the heart youthful to old age, as some say, is difficult, and almost absurd: he may feel content who has not lost faith in good, steadfastness of will, desire for activity.... Lavretzky had a right to feel satisfied: he had become a really fine agriculturist, he had really learned to till the soil, and he had toiled not for himself alone; in so far as he had been able, he had freed from care and established on a firm foundation the existence of his serfs.
Lavretzky emerged from the house into the garden: he seated himself on the familiar bench--and in that dear spot, in the face of the house, where he had, on the last occasion, stretched out his hands in vain to the fatal cup in which seethes and sparkles the wine of delight,--he, a solitary, homeless wanderer,--to the sounds of the merry cries of the younger generation which had already superseded him,--took a survey of his life. His heart was sad, but not heavy and not very sorrowful: he had nothing which he had need to regret or be ashamed of. "Play on, make merry, grow on, young forces,"--he thought, and there was no bitterness in his meditations:--"life lies before you, and it will be easier for you to live: you will not be compelled, as we have been, to seek your road, to struggle, to fall, and to rise to your feet again amid the gloom; we have given ourselves great trouble, that we might remain whole,--and how many of us have failed in that!--but you must do deeds, work,--and the blessing of old fellows like me be upon you. But all that remains for me, after to-day, after these emotions, is to make my final reverence to you, and, although with sadness, yet without envy, without any dark feelings, to say, in view of the end, in view of G.o.d who is awaiting me: "Long live solitary old age! Burn thyself out, useless life!""
Lavretzky rose softly, and softly went away; no one noticed him, no one detained him; the merry cries resounded more loudly than ever in the garden behind the green, dense wall of lofty lindens. He seated himself in his tarantas, and ordered the coachman to drive home, and not to press the horses hard.
"And the end?" perchance some dissatisfied reader will say. "And what became of Lavretzky? of Liza?" But what can one say about people who are still alive, but who have already departed from the earthly arena,--why revert to them? They say that Lavretzky paid a visit to that distant convent where Liza had hidden herself--and saw her. In going from one choir to the other, she pa.s.sed close to him--pa.s.sed with the even, hurriedly-submissive gait of a nun--and did not cast a glance at him; only the lashes of the eye which was turned toward him trembled almost imperceptibly, and her haggard face was bowed a little lower than usual--and the fingers of her clasped hands, interlaced with her rosary, were pressed more tightly to one another. What did they both think,--what did they both feel? Who knows? Who shall say? There are moments in life, there are feelings ... we can only indicate them,--and pa.s.s by.
[15] The trotter as shaft-horse, and the galloping side-horses of a troka.--Translator.