A House of Gentlefolk eBook

drawing-room; it seemed to him that his great-grandfather Andrey, was looking contemptuously from the canvas at his feeble descendant.  “Bah:  you swim in shallow water,” the distorted lips seemed to be saying.  “Is it possible,” he thought, “that I cannot master myself, that I am going to give in to this . . . nonsense?” (Those who are badly wounded in war always call their wounds “nonsense.”  If man did not deceive himself, he could not live on earth.) “Am I really a boy?  Ah, well; I saw quite close, I almost held in my hands the possibility of happiness for my whole life; yes, in the lottery too—­turn the wheel a little and the beggar perhaps would be a rich man.  If it does not happen, then it does not—­and it’s all over.  I will set to work, with my teeth clenched, and make myself be quiet; it’s as well, it’s not the first time I have had to hold myself in.  And why have I run away, why am I stopping here sticking my head in a bush, like an ostrich?  A fearful thing to face trouble . . . nonsense!  Anton,” he called aloud, “order the coach to be brought round at once.  Yes,” he thought again, “I must grin and bear it, I must keep myself well in hand.”

With such reasonings Lavretsky tried to ease his pain; but it was deep and intense; and even Apraxya who had outlived all emotion as well as intelligence shook her head and followed him mournfully with her eyes, as he took his seat in the coach to drive to the town.  The horses galloped away; he sat upright and motionless, and looked fixedly at the road before him.

Chapter XLII

Lisa had written to Lavretsky the day before, to tell him to come in the evening; but he first went home to his lodgings.  He found neither his wife nor his daughter at home; from the servants he learned that she had gone with the child to the Kalitins’.  This information astounded and maddened him.  “Varvara Pavlovna has made up her mind not to let me live at all, it seems,” he thought with a passion of hatred in his heart.  He began to walk up and down, and his hands and feet were constantly knocking up against child’s toys, books and feminine belongings; he called Justine and told her to clear away all this “litter.”  “Oui, monsieur,” she said with a grimace, and began to set the room in order, stooping gracefully, and letting Lavretsky feel in every movement that she regarded him as an unpolished bear.

He looked with aversion at her faded, but still “piquante,” ironical, Parisian face, at her white elbow-sleeves, her silk apron, and little light cap.  He sent her away at last, and after long hesitation (as Varvara Pavlovna still did not return) he decided to go to the Kalitins’—­not to see Marya Dmitrievna (he would not for anything in the world have gone into that drawing-room, the room where his wife was), but to go up to Marfa Timofyevna’s.  He remembered that the back staircase from the servants’ entrance led straight to her apartment.  He acted on this plan; fortune favoured him; he met Shurotchka in the court-yard; she conducted him up to Marfa Timofyevna’s.  He found her, contrary to her usual habit, alone; she was sitting without a cap in a corner, bent, and her arms crossed over her breast.  The old lady was much upset on seeing Lavretsky, she got up quickly and began to move to and fro in the room as if she were looking for her cap.