Liza; Or, "A Nest of Nobles" Part 33

"You don't happen to know if he left any music behind?"

"I don't know, but I should scarcely think so."

A general silence ensued, and each one of the party looked at the others. A shade of sadness swept over all the youthful faces.

"But Matros is alive," suddenly cried Lenochka.

"And Gedeonovsky is alive," added her brother.

The name of Gedeonovsky at once called forth a merry laugh.

"Yes, he is still alive; and he tells stories just as he used to do," continued the young Kalitine--"only fancy! this mad-cap here"

(pointing to his wife's sister the Inst.i.tute-girl) "put a quant.i.ty of pepper into his snuff-box yesterday."

"How he did sneeze!" exclaimed Lenochka--and irrepressible laughter again broke out on all sides.

"We had news of Liza the other day," said young Kalitine. And again silence fell upon all the circle. "She is going on well--her health is gradually being restored now."

"Is she still in the same convent?" Lavretsky asked, not without an effort.

"Yes."

"Does she ever write to you?"

"No, never. We get news of her from other quarters."

A profound silence suddenly ensued. "An angel has noiselessly flown past," they all thought.

"Won't you go into the garden?" said Kalitine, addressing Lavretsky.

"It is very pleasant now, although we have neglected it a little."

Lavretsky went into the garden, and the first thing he saw there was that very bench on which he and Liza had once pa.s.sed a few happy moments--moments that never repeated themselves. It had grown black and warped, but still he recognized it, and that feeling took possession of his heart which is unequalled as well for sweetness as for bitterness--the feeling of lively regret, for vanished youth, for once familiar happiness.

He walked by the side of the young people along the alleys. The lime-trees looked older than before, having grown a little taller during the last eight years, and casting a denser shade. All the underwood, also, had grown higher, and the raspberry-bushes had spread vigorously, and the hazel copse was thickly tangled. From every side exhaled a fresh odor from the forest and the wood, from the gra.s.s and the lilacs.

"What a capital place for a game at Puss in the Corner!" suddenly cried Lenochka, as they entered upon a small gra.s.sy lawn surrounded by lime-trees. "There are just five of us."

"But have you forgotten Fedor Ivanovich?" asked her brother; "or is it yourself you have not counted?"

Lenochka blushed a little.

"But would Fedor Ivanovich like--at his age--" she began stammering.

"Please play away," hastily interposed Lavretsky; "don't pay any attention to me. I shall feel more comfortable if I know I am not boring you. And there is no necessity for your finding me something to do. We old people have a resource which you don't know yet, and which is better than any amus.e.m.e.nt--recollection."

The young people listened to Lavretsky with respectful, though slightly humorous politeness, just as if they were listening to a teacher who was reading them a lesson--then they all suddenly left him, and ran off to the lawn. One of them stood in the middle, the others occupied the four corners by the trees, and the game began.

But Lavretsky returned to the house, went into the dining-room, approached the piano, and touched one of the notes. It responded with a faint but clear sound, and a shudder thrilled his heart within him.

With that note began the inspired melody, by means of which, on that most happy night long ago, Lemm, the dead Lemm, had thrown him into such raptures. Then Lavretsky pa.s.sed into the drawing-room, and did not leave it for a long time.

In that room, in which he had seen Liza so often, her image floated more distinctly before him; the traces of her presence seemed to make themselves felt around him there. But his sorrow for her loss became painful and crus.h.i.+ng; it bore with it none of the tranquillity which death inspires. Liza was still living somewhere, far away and lost to sight. He thought of her as he had known her in actual life; he could not recognize the girl he used to love in that pale, dim, ghostly form, half-hidden in a nun's dark robe, and surrounded by waving clouds of incense.

Nor would Lavretsky have been able to recognize himself, if he could have looked at himself as he in fancy was looking at Liza. In the course of those eight years his life had attained its final crisis--that crisis which many people never experience, but without which no man can be sure of maintaining his principles firm to the last. He had really given up thinking about his own happiness, about what would conduce to his own interests. He had become calm, and--why should we conceal the truth?--he had aged; and that not in face alone or frame, but he had aged in mind; for, indeed, not only is it difficult, but it is even hazardous to do what some people speak of--to preserve the heart young in bodily old age. Contentment, in old age, is deserved by him alone who has not lost his faith in what is good, his persevering strength of will, his desire for active employment. And Lavretsky did deserve to be contented; he had really become a good landlord; he had really learnt how to till the soil; and in that he labored, he labored not for himself alone, but he had, as far as in him lay the power, a.s.sured, and obtained guarantees for, the welfare of the peasantry on his estates.

Lavretsky went out of the house into the garden, and sat down on the bench he knew so well. There--on that loved spot, in sight of that house in which he had fruitlessly, and for the last time, stretched forth his hands towards that cup of promise in which foamed and sparkled the golden wine of enjoyment,--he, a lonely, homeless wanderer, while the joyous cries of that younger generation which had already forgotten him came flying to his ears, gazed steadily at his past life.

His heart became very sorrowful, but it was free now from any crus.h.i.+ng sense of pain. He had nothing to be ashamed of; he had many sources of consolation. "Play on, young vigorous lives!" he thought--and his thoughts had no taint of bitterness in them--"the future awaits you, and your path of life in it will be comparatively easy for you. You will not be obliged, as we were, to seek out your path, to struggle, to fall, to rise again in utter darkness. We had to seek painfully by what means we might hold out to the end--and how many there were amongst us who did not hold out!--but your part is now to act, to work--and the blessing of old men like me shall be with you. For my part, after the day I have spent here, after the emotions I have here experienced, nothing remains for me but to bid you a last farewell; and, although sadly, yet without a tinge of envy, without a single gloomy feeling, to say, in sight of death, in sight of my awaiting G.o.d, 'Hail, lonely old age! Useless life, burn yourself out!'"

Lavretsky rose up quietly, and quietly went away. No one observed him, no one prevented him from going. Louder than ever sounded the joyous cries in the garden, behind the thick green walls of the lofty lime-trees. Lavretsky got into his taranta.s.s, and told his coachman to drive him home without hurrying the horses.

"And is that the end?" the unsatisfied reader may perhaps ask. "What became of Lavretsky afterwards? and of Liza?" But what can one say about people who are still alive, but who have already quitted the worldly stage? Why should we turn back to them? It is said that Lavretsky has visited the distant convent in which Liza has hidden herself--and has seen her. As she crossed from choir to choir, she pa.s.sed close by him--pa.s.sed onwards steadily, with the quick but silent step of a nun, and did not look at him. Only an almost imperceptible tremor was seen to move the eyelashes of the eye which was visible to him; only still lower did she bend her emaciated face; and the fingers of her clasped hands, enlaced with her rosary, still more closely compressed each other.

Of what did they both think? what did they both feel? Who can know?

who shall tell? Life has its moments--has its feelings--to which we may be allowed to allude, but on which it is not good to dwell.

THE END.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

(_Leisure Hour Series_.)

FATHERS AND SONS.

SMOKE.

LIZA.

ON THE EVE.

DIMITRI ROUDINE.

SPRING FLOODS; LEAR.

VIRGIN SOIL.

ANNALS OF A SPORTSMAN.