“What nonsense! do remain. We will have
a talk about Shakspeare.”
“My head aches,” repeated the old man.
“We tried to play Beethoven’s sonata without
you,” continued Panshine, caressingly throwing
his arm over the old man’s shoulder and smiling
sweetly; “but we didn’t succeed in bringing
it to a harmonious conclusion. Just imagine,
I couldn’t play two consecutive notes right.”
“You had better have played your romance over
again,” replied Lemm; then, escaping from Panshine’s
hold he went out of the room.
Liza ran after him, and caught him on the steps.
“Christopher Fedorovich, I want to speak to
you,” she said in German, as led him across
the short green grass to the gate. “I have
done you a wrong—forgive me.”
Lemm made no reply.
“I showed your cantata to Vladimir Nikolaevich;
I was sure he would appreciate it, and, indeed, he
was exceedingly pleased with it.”
Lemm stopped still.
“It’s no matter,” he said in Russian,
and then added in his native tongue,—“But
he is utterly incapable of understanding it. How
is it you don’t see that? He is a dilettante—that
is all.”
“You are unjust towards him,” replied
Liza. “He understands every thing, and
can do almost every thing himself.”
“Yes, every thing second-rate—poor
goods, scamped work. But that pleases, and he
pleases, and he is well content with that. Well,
then, bravo!—But I am not angry. I
and that cantata, we are both old fools! I feel
a little ashamed, but it’s no matter.”
“Forgive me, Christopher Fedorovich!”
urged Liza anew.
“It’s no matter, no matter,” he
repeated a second time in Russian. “You
are a good girl.—Here is some one coming
to pay you a visit. Good-bye. You are a
very good girl.”
And Lemm made his way with hasty steps to the gate,
through which there was passing a gentleman who was
a stranger to him, dressed in a grey paletot and a
broad straw hat. Politely saluting him (he bowed
to every new face in O., and always turned away his
head from his acquaintances in the street—such
was the rule he had adopted), Lemm went past him,
and disappeared behind the wall.
The stranger gazed at him as he retired with surprise,
then looked at Liza, and then went straight up to
her.
“You won’t remember me,” he said,
as he took off his hat, “but I recognized you,
though it is seven years since I saw you last.
You were a child then. I am Lavretsky. Is
your mamma at home? Can I see her?”
“Mamma will be so glad,” replied Liza.
“She has heard of your arrival.”
“Your name is Elizaveta, isn’t it?”
asked Lavretsky, as he mounted the steps leading up
to the house.
“Yes.”
“I remember you perfectly. Yours was even
in those days one of the faces which one does not
forget. I used to bring you sweetmeats then.”
