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 crushing 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
God, ‘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 tarantass, 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 passed close
by him—passed 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.
