Part 9 (1/2)

”(I really cannot make up my mind to call you Barbe or Varvara). I have waited in vain for you at the corner of the Boulevard. Come to our rooms to-morrow at half-past one. That excellent husband of yours is generally absorbed in his books at that time--we will sing over again that song of your poet Pushkin which you taught me, 'Old husband, cruel husband!' A thousand kisses to your dear little hands and feet. I await you.

”ERNEST.”

At first Lavretsky did not comprehend the meaning of what he had read.

He read it a second time--and his head swam, and the ground swayed beneath his feet like the deck of a s.h.i.+p in a storm, and a half-stifled sound issued from his lips, that was neither quite a cry nor quite a sob.

He was utterly confounded. He had trusted his wife so blindly; the possibility of deceit or of treachery on her part had never entered into his mind. This Ernest, his wife's lover, was a pretty boy of about three-and-twenty, with light hair, a turned-up nose, and a small moustache--probably the most insignificant of all his acquaintances.

Several minutes pa.s.sed; a half hour pa.s.sed. Lavretsky still stood there, clenching the fatal note in his hand, and gazing unmeaningly on the floor. A sort of dark whirlwind seemed to sweep round him, pale faces to glimmer through it.

A painful sensation of numbness had seized his heart. He felt as if he were falling, falling, falling--into a bottomless abyss.

The soft rustle of a silk dress roused him from his torpor by its familiar sound. Varvara Pavlovna came in hurriedly from out of doors.

Lavretsky shuddered all over and rushed out of the room. He felt that at that moment he was ready to tear her to pieces, to strangle her with his own hands, at least to beat her all but to death in peasant fas.h.i.+on. Varvara Pavlovna, in her amazement, wanted to stay him. He just succeeded in whispering ”Betty”--and then he fled from the house.

Lavretsky took a carriage and drove outside the barriers. All the rest of the day, and the whole of the night he wandered about, constantly stopping and wringing his hands above his head. Sometimes he was frantic with rage, at others every thing seemed to move him to laughter, even to a kind of mirth. When the morning dawned he felt half frozen, so he entered a wretched little suburban tavern, asked for a room, and sat down on a chair before the window. A convulsive fit of yawning seized him. By that time he was scarcely able to keep upright, and his bodily strength was utterly exhausted. Still he was not conscious of fatigue. But fatigue had its own way. He continued sitting there and gazing vacantly, but he comprehended nothing. He could not make out what had happened to him, why he found himself there, alone, in an empty, unknown room, with numbed limbs, with a sense of bitterness in his mouth, with a weight like that of a great stone on his heart. He could not understand what had induced her, his Varvara, to give herself to that Frenchman, and how, knowing herself to be false to him, she could have remained as calm as ever in his presence, as confiding and caressing as ever towards him. ”I cannot make it out,” whispered his dry lips. ”And how can I be sure now that even at St. Petersburg--?” but he did not complete the question; a fresh gaping fit seized him, and his whole frame shrank and s.h.i.+vered.

Sunny and sombre memories equally tormented him. He suddenly recollected how a few days before, she had sat at the piano, when both he and Ernest were present, and had sung ”Old husband, cruel husband!”

He remembered the expression of her face, the strange brilliance of her eyes, and the color in her cheeks--and he rose from his chair, longing to go to them and say, ”You were wrong to play your tricks on me. My great grandfather used to hang his peasants on hooks by their ribs, and my grandfather was a peasant himself,”--and then kill them both. All of a sudden it would appear to him as if every thing that had happened were a dream, even not so much as a dream, but just some absurd fancy; as if he had only to give himself a shake and take a look round--and he did look round; and as a hawk claws a captured bird, so did his misery strike deeper and deeper into his heart. What made things worse was that Lavretsky had hoped, in the course of a few months, to find himself once more a father. His past, his future, his whole life was poisoned.

At last he returned to Paris, went to a hotel, and sent Varvara Pavlovna M. Ernest's note with the following letter:--

”The sc.r.a.p of paper which accompanies this will explain every thing to you. I may as well tell you that you do not seem to have behaved in this matter with your usual tact. You, so careful a person, to drop such important papers (poor Lavretsky had been preparing this phrase, and fondling it, as it were, for several hours). I can see you no more, and I suppose that you too can have no wish for an interview with me. I a.s.sign you fifteen thousand roubles a year. I cannot give you more. Send your address to the steward of my estate. And now do what you like; live where you please. I wish you all prosperity. I want no answer.”

Lavretsky told his wife that he wanted no answer; but he did expect, he even longed for an answer--an explanation of this strange, this incomprehensible affair. That same day Varvara Pavlovna sent him a long letter in French. It was the final blow. His last doubts vanished, and he even felt ashamed of having retained any doubts.

Varvara Pavlovna did not attempt to justify herself. All that she wanted was to see him; she besought him not to condemn her irrevocably. The letter was cold and constrained, though marks of tears were to be seen on it here and there. Lavretsky smiled bitterly, and sent a message by the bearer, to the effect that the letter needed no reply.

Three days later he was no longer in Paris; but he went to Italy, not to Russia. He did not himself know why he chose Italy in particular.

In reality, it was all the same to him where he went--so long as he did not go home. He sent word to his steward about his wife's allowance, ordering him, at the same time, to withdraw the whole management of the estate from General Korobine immediately, without waiting for any settlement of accounts, and to see to his Excellency's departure from Lavriki. He indulged in a vivid picture of the confusion of the expelled general, the useless airs which he would put on, and, in spite of his sorrow, he was conscious of a certain malicious satisfaction. At the same time he wrote to Glafira Petrovna, asking her to return to Lavriki, and drew up a power-of-attorney in her name. But Glafira Petrovna would not return to Lavriki; she even advertised in the newspapers that the power-of-attorney was cancelled,--a perfectly superfluous proceeding on her part.

Lavretsky hid himself in a little Italian town; but for a long time he could not help mentally following his wife's movements. He learned from the newspapers that she had left Paris for Baden, as she had intended. Her name soon appeared in a short article signed by the M.

Jules of whom we have already spoken. The perusal of that article produced a very unpleasant effect on Lavretsky's mind. He detected in it, underneath the writer's usual sprightliness, a sort of tone of charitable commiseration. Next he learned that a daughter had been born to him. Two months later he was informed by his steward that Varvara Pavlovna had drawn her first quarter's allowance. After that, scandalous reports about her began to arrive; then they became more and more frequent; at last a tragicomic story, in which she played a very unenviable part, ran the round of all the journals, and created a great sensation. Affairs had come to a climax. Varvara Pavlovna was now ”a celebrity.”

Lavretsky ceased to follow her movements. But it was long before he could master his own feelings. Sometimes he was seized by such a longing after his wife, that he fancied he would have been ready to give every thing he had--that he could, perhaps, even have forgiven her--if only he might once more have heard her caressing voice, have felt once more her hand in his. But time did not pa.s.s by in vain. He was not born for suffering. His healthy nature claimed its rights.

Many things became intelligible for him. The very blow which had struck him seemed no longer to have come without warning. He understood his wife now. We can never fully understand persons with whom we are generally in close contact, until we have been separated from them. He was able to apply himself to business again, and to study, although now with much less than his former ardor; the scepticism for which both his education and his experience of life had paved the way, had taken lasting hold upon his mind. He became exceedingly indifferent to every thing. Four years pa.s.sed by, and he felt strong enough to return to his home, to meet his own people.

Without having stopped either at St. Petersburg or at Moscow, he arrived at O., where we left him, and whither we now entreat the reader to return with us.

XVII.

About ten o'clock in the morning, on the day after that of which we have already spoken, Lavretsky was going up the steps of the Kalitines' house, when he met Liza with her bonnet and gloves on.

”Where are you going?” he asked her.

”To church. To-day is Sunday.”