A House of Gentlefolk eBook

They met in the porch; she greeted him with glad and gracious seriousness.  The sun brightly lighted up the young grass in the church-yard, and the striped dresses and kerchiefs of the women; the bells of the churches near were tinkling overhead; and the crows were cawing about the hedges.  Lavretsky stood with uncovered head, a smile on his lips; the light breeze lifted his hair, and the ribbons of Lisa’s hat.  He put Lisa and Lenotchka who was with her into their carriage, divided all his money among the poor, and peacefully sauntered home.

Chapter XXXII

Painful days followed for Fedor Ivanitch.  He found himself in a continual fever.  Every morning he made for the post, and tore open letters and papers in agitation, and nowhere did he find anything which could confirm or disprove the fateful rumour.  Sometimes he was disgusting to himself.  “What am I about,” he thought, “waiting, like a vulture for blood, for certain news of my wife’s death?” He went to the Kalitins every day, but things had grown no easier for him there; the lady of the house was obviously sulky with him, and received him very condescendingly.  Panshin treated him with exaggerated politeness; Lemm had entrenched himself in his misanthropy and hardly bowed to him, and, worst of all, Lisa seemed to avoid him.  When she happened to be left alone with him, instead of her former candour there was visible embarrassment on her part, she did not know what to say to him, and he, too, felt confused.  In the space of a few days Lisa had become quite different from what she was as he knew her:  in her movements, her voice, her very laugh a secret tremor, an unevenness never there before was apparent.  Marya Dmitrievna, like a true egoist, suspected nothing; but Marfa Timofyevna began to keep a watch over her favourite.  Lavretsky more than once reproached himself for having shown Lisa the newspaper he had received; he could not but be conscious that in his spiritual condition there was something revolting to a pure nature.  He imagined also that the change in Lisa was the result of her inward conflicts, her doubts as to what answer to give Panshin.

One day she brought him a book, a novel of Walter Scott’s, which she had herself asked him for.

“Have you read it?” he said.

“No; I can’t bring myself to read just now,” she answered, and was about to go away.

“Stop a minute, it is so long since I have been alone with you.  You seem to be afraid of me.”

“Yes.”

“Why so, pray?”

“I don’t know.”

Lavretsky was silent.

“Tell me,” he began, “you haven’t yet decided?”

“What do you mean?” she said, not raising her eyes.

“You understand me.”

Lisa flushed crimson all at once.

“Don’t ask me about anything!” she broke out hotly.  “I know nothing; I don’t know myself.”  And instantly she was gone.