Meanwhile the evening had come on, Marya Dmitrievna expressed a desire
to return home, and the little girls were with difficulty torn away from
the pond, and made ready. Lavretsky declared that he would escort his
guests half-way, and ordered his horse to be saddled. As he was handing
Marya Dmitrievna into the coach, he bethought himself of Lemm; but the
old man could nowhere be found. He had disappeared directly after
the angling was over. Anton, with an energy remarkable for his years,
slammed the doors, and called sharply, “Go on, coachman!” The coach
started. Marya Dmitrievna and Lisa were seated in the back seat; the
children and their maid in the front. The evening was warm and still,
and the windows were open on both sides. Lavretsky trotted near the
coach on the side of Lisa, with his arm leaning on the door--he had
thrown the reigns on the neck of his smoothly-pacing horse--and now and
then he exchanged a few words with the young girl. The glow of sunset
was disappearing; night came on, but the air seemed to grow even
warmer. Marya Dmitrievna was soon slumbering, the little girls and the
maid fell asleep also. The coach rolled swiftly and smoothly along;
Lisa was bending forward, she felt happy; the rising moon lighted up her
face, the fragrant night on breeze breathed on her eyes and cheeks. Her
hand rested on the coach door near Lavretsky’s hand. And he was happy;
borne along in the still warmth of the night, never taking his eyes off
the good young face, listening to the young voice that was melodious
even in a whisper, as it spoke of simple, good things, he did not even
notice that he had gone more than half-way. He did not want to wake
Marya Dmitrievna, he lightly pressed Lisa’s hand and said, “I think we
are friends now, aren’t we?” She nodded, he stopped his horse, and
the coach rolled away, lightly swaying and oscillating up and down;
Lavretsky turned homeward at a walking pace. The witchery of the summer
night enfolded him; all around him seemed suddenly so strange--and at
the same time so long known; so sweetly familiar. Everywhere near and
afar--and one could see in to the far distance, though the eye could
not make out clearly much of what was seen--all was at peace; youthful,
blossoming life seemed expressed in this deep peace. Lavretsky’s horse
stepped out bravely, swaying evenly to right and left; its great black
shadow moved along beside it. There was something strangely sweet in the
tramp of its hoofs, a strange charm in the ringing cry of the quails.
The stars were lost in a bright mist; the moon, not yet at the full,
shone with steady brilliance; its light was shot in an azure stream over
the sky, and fell in patches of smoky gold on the thin clouds as they
drifted near. The freshness of the air drew a slight moisture into the
eyes, sweetly folded all the limbs, and flowed freely into the lungs.
Lavretsky rejoiced in it, and was glad at his own rejoicing. “Come, we
are still alive,” he thought; “we have not been altogether destroyed
by”--he did not say--by whom or by what. Then he fell to thinking of
Lisa, that she could hardly love Panshin, that if he had met her under
different circumstances--God knows what might have come of it; that
he understood Lemm, though Lisa had no words of “her own;” but that, he
thought, was not true; she had words of her own. “Don’t speak light of
that,” came back to Lavretsky’s mind. He rode a long way with his head
bent in thought, then drawing himself up, he slowly repeated aloud:
“And I have burnt all I adored,
And now I adore all that I burnt.”
Then he gave his horse a switch with the whip, and galloped all the way
home.
Dismounting from his horse, he looked round for the last time with an
involuntary smile of gratitude. Night, still, kindly night stretched
over hills and valleys; from afar, out of its fragrant depths--God
knows whence--whether from the heavens or the earth--rose a soft, gentle
warmth. Lavretsky sent a last greeting to Lisa, and ran up the steps.
The next day passed rather dully. Rain was falling from early morning;
Lemm wore a scowl, and kept more and more tightly compressing his lips,
as though he had taken an oath never to open them again. When he went
to his room, Lavretsky took up to bed with him a whole bundle of French
newspapers, which had been lying for more than fortnight on his table
unopened. He began indifferently to tear open the wrappings, and glanced
hastily over the columns of the newspapers--in which, however, there was
nothing new. He was just about to throw them down--and all at once he
leaped out of bed as if he had been stung. In an article in one of the
papers, M. Jules, with whom we are already familiar, communicated to
his readers a “mournful intelligence, that charming, fascinating Moscow
lady,” he wrote, “one of the queens of fashion, who adorned Parisian
salons, Madame de Lavretsky, had died almost suddenly, and this
intelligence, unhappily only too well-founded, had only just reached
him, M. Jules. He was,” so he continued, “he might say a friend of the
deceased.”
Lavretsky dressed, went out into the garden, and till morning he walked
up and down the same path.