The young people listened to Lavretsky with polite but rather ironical respect—as though a teacher were giving them a lesson—and suddenly they all dispersed, and ran to the lawn; four stood near trees, one in the middle, and the game began.
And Lavretsky went back into the house, went into the dining-room, drew near the piano and touched one of the keys; it gave out a faint but clear sound; on that note had begun the inspired melody with which long ago on that same happy night Lemm, the dead Lemm, had thrown him into such transports. Then Lavretsky went into the drawing-room, and for a long time he did not leave it; in that room where he had so often seen Lisa, her image rose most vividly before him; he seemed to feel the traces of her presence round him; but his grief for her was crushing, not easy to bear; it had none of the peace which comes with death. Lisa still lived somewhere, hidden and afar; he thought of her as of the living, but he did not recognize the girl he had once loved in that dim pale shadow, cloaked in a nun’s dress and encircled in misty clouds of incense. Lavretsky would not have recognized himself, could he have looked at himself, as mentally he looked at Lisa. In the course of these eight years he had passed that turning-point in life, which many never pass, but without which no one can be a good man to the end; he had really ceased to think of his own happiness, of his personal aims. He had grown calm, and—why hide the truth?—he had grown old not only in face and in body, he had grown old in heart; to keep a young heart up to old age, as some say, is not only difficult, but almost ridiculous; he may well be content who has not lost his belief in goodness, his steadfast will, and his zeal for work. Lavretsky had good reason to be content; he had become actually an excellent farmer, he had really learnt to cultivate the land, and his labours were not only for himself; he had, to the best of his powers, secured on a firm basis the welfare of his peasants.
Lavretsky went out of the house into the garden, and sat down on the familiar garden seat. And on this loved spot, facing the house where for the last time he had vainly stretched out his hand for the enchanted cup which frothed and sparkled with the golden wine of delight, he, a solitary homeless wanderer, looked back upon his life, while the joyous shouts of the younger generation who were already filling his place floated across the garden to him. His heart was sad, but not weighed down, nor bitter; much there was to regret, nothing to be ashamed of.
“Play away, be gay, grow strong, vigorous youth!” he thought, and there was no bitterness in his meditations; “your life is before you, and for you life will be easier; you have not, as we had, to find out a path for yourselves, to struggle, to fall, and to rise again in the dark; we had enough to do to last out—and how many of us did not last out?—but you need only do your duty, work away, and the blessing of an old man be with you. For me, after today, after these emotions, there remains to take my leave at last—and though sadly, without envy, without any dark feelings, to say, in sight of the end, in sight of God who awaits me: ‘Welcome, lonely old age! burn out, useless life!’ ”
Lavretsky quietly rose and quietly went away; no one noticed him, no one detained him; the joyous cries sounded more loudly in the garden behind the thick green wall of high lime-trees. He took his seat in the carriage and bade the coachman drive home and not hurry the horses.
“And the end?” perhaps the dissatisfied reader will inquire. “What became of Lavretsky afterwards, and of Lisa?” But what is there to tell of people who, though still alive, have withdrawn from the battlefield of life? They say, Lavretsky visited that remote convent where Lisa had hidden herself—that he saw her. Crossing over from choir to choir, she walked close past him, moving with the even, hurried, but meek walk of a nun; and she did not glance at him; only the eyelashes on the side towards him quivered a little, only she bent her emaciated face lower, and the fingers of her clasped hands, entwined with her rosary, were pressed still closer to one another. What were they both thinking, what were they feeling? Who can know? who can say? There are such moments in life, there are such feelings … One can but point to them—and pass them by.
Colophon
A House of Gentlefolk
was published in by
Ivan Turgenev.
It was translated from Russian in by
Constance Garnett.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Stephan Bots,
and is based on a transcription produced in by
L. Michelle Baker and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Cast Shadows,
a painting completed in by
Émile Friant.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in and by
The League of Moveable Type.
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