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 belated 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 “Théodore.”)
“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.