After having buried his father, and entrusted to the immutable Glafira
Petrovna the management of the farming and the oversight over the
clerks, young Lavretzky betook himself to Moscow, whither he was drawn
by an obscure but powerful sentiment. He recognised the defects of his
education, and intended to repair omissions, so far as possible. During
the last five years, he had read a great deal, and had seen some things;
many thoughts had been seething in his brain; any professor might have
envied him some of his knowledge, but, at the same time, he did not know
much with which every gymnasium lad has long been familiar. The
Anglomaniac had played his son an evil trick; his whimsical education had
borne its fruits. For long years, he had abased himself before his father
without a question; but when, at last, he had divined him, the deed was
done, the habits had become rooted. He did not know how to make
acquaintance with people: at twenty-three years of age, with an
indomitable thirst for love in his shame-stricken heart, he did not dare
to look a single woman in the eye. With his clear, solid but somewhat
heavy sense, with his inclination to stubbornness, contemplation, and
indolence, he ought, from his earliest years, to have been cast into the
whirlpool of life, but he had been kept in an artificial isolation....
And now the charmed circle was broken, yet he continued to stand in one
spot, locked up, tightly compressed in himself. It was ridiculous, at his
age, to don a student's uniform; but he was not afraid of ridicule: his
Spartan training had served its turn to this extent at least, that it had
developed in him scorn for other people's remarks,--and so, unabashed, he
donned the uniform of a student. He entered the physico-mathematical
department. Healthy, rosy-cheeked, with a well-grown beard, taciturn, he
produced a strange impression upon his comrades; they did not suspect
that in this surly man, who punctually drove to the lectures in a roomy
country sledge and pair, there was concealed almost a child. He seemed to
them some sort of wise pedant; they did not need him and did not seek his
society, he avoided them. In the course of the first two years which he
spent at the university, he came into close contact with only one
student, from whom he took lessons in Latin. This student, Mikhalevitch
by name, an enthusiast and a poet, sincerely loved Lavretzky, and quite
innocently became the cause of an important change in his fate.
One day, at the theatre (Motchaloff was then at the height of his fame,
and Lavretzky never missed a performance), he saw a young girl in a box
of the _bel-etage_,--and, although no woman ever passed his surly figure
without causing his heart to quiver, it never yet had beaten so
violently. With her elbows resting on the velvet of the box, the young
girl sat motionless; alert, young life sparkled in every feature of her
pretty, round, dark-skinned face; an elegant mind was expressed in the
beautiful eyes which gazed attentively and softly from beneath slender
brows, in the swift smile of her expressive lips, in the very attitude of
her head, her arms, her neck; she was charmingly dressed. Beside her sat
a wrinkled, sallow woman, forty-five years of age, with a toothless smile
on her constrainedly-anxious and empty countenance, and in the depths of
the box an elderly man was visible, wearing an ample coat and a tall
neckcloth, with an expression of feeble stateliness and a certain
obsequious suspicion in his little eyes, with dyed moustache and
side-whiskers, an insignificant, huge forehead, and furrowed cheeks,--a
retired General, by all the signs. Lavretzky could not take his eyes
from the young girl who had startled him; all at once, the door of the
box opened, and Mikhalevitch entered. The appearance of that man, almost
his sole acquaintance in all Moscow,--his appearance in the company of
the only young girl who had engrossed his whole attention, seemed to
Lavretzky strange and significant. As he continued to gaze at the box,
he noticed that all the persons in it treated Mikhalevitch like an old
friend. The performance on the stage ceased to interest Lavretzky;
Motchaloff himself, although that evening he was "in high feather," did
not produce upon him the customary impression. In one very pathetic
passage, Lavretzky involuntarily glanced at his beauty: she was bending
her whole body forward, her cheeks were aflame; under the influence of
his persistent gaze, her eyes, which were riveted on the stage, turned
slowly, and rested upon him.... All night long, those eyes flitted before
his vision. At last, the artificially erected dam had given way: he
trembled and burned, and on the following day he betook himself to
Mikhalevitch. From him he learned, that the beauty's name was Varvara
Pavlovna Korobyn; that the old man and woman who had sat with her in
the box were her father and mother, and that he himself, Mikhalevitch,
had made their acquaintance a year previously, during his stay in the
suburbs of Moscow, "on contract service" (as tutor) with Count N. The
enthusiast expressed himself in the most laudatory manner concerning
Varvara Pavlovna--"My dear fellow," he exclaimed, with the impetuous
harmony in his voice which was peculiar to him,--"that young girl is an
amazing, a talented being, an artist in the genuine sense of the word,
and extremely amiable to boot."--Perceiving from Lavretzky's question
what an impression Varvara Pavlovna had produced upon him, he himself
proposed to introduce him to her, adding that he was quite at home in
their house; that the General was not at all a proud man, and the mother
was so stupid that she all but sucked a rag. Lavretzky blushed, muttered
something unintelligible, and fled. For five whole days he wrestled with
his timidity; on the sixth day the young Spartan donned a new uniform,
and placed himself at the disposition of Mikhalevitch, who being his own
valet, confined himself to brushing his hair,--and the two set out for
the Korobyns'.