A House of Gentlefolk | Page 6

means pleased with Panshin's song, pretty though it was. After waiting a moment and flicking the dust off his boots with a coarse pocket-handkerchief, this man suddenly raised his eyes, compressed his lips with a morose expression, and his stooping figure bent forward, he entered the drawing-room.
"Ah! Christopher Fedoritch, how are you?" exclaimed Panshin before any of the others could speak, and he jumped up quickly from his seat. "I had no suspicion that you were here--nothing would have induced me to sing my song before you. I know you are no lover of light music."
"I did not hear it," declared the new-comer, in very bad Russian, and exchanging greetings with every one, he stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.
"Have you come, Monsieur Lemm," said Marya Dmitrievna, "to give Lisa her music lesson?"
"No, not Lisaveta Mihalovna, but Elena Mihalovna."
"Oh! very well. Lenotchka, go up-stairs with Mr. Lemm."
The old man was about to follow the little girl, but Panshin stopped him.
"Don't go after the lesson, Christopher Fedoritch," he said. "Lisa Mihalovna and I are going to play a duet of Beethoven's sonata."
The old man muttered some reply, and Panshin continued in German, mispronouncing the words--
"Lisaveta Mihalovna showed me the religious cantata you dedicated to her--a beautiful thing! Pray, do not suppose that I cannot appreciate serious music--quite the contrary: it is tedious sometimes, but then it is very elevating."
The old man crimsoned to his ears, and with a sidelong look at Lisa, he hurriedly went out of the room.
Marya Dmitrievna asked Panshin to sing his song again; but he protested that he did not wish to torture the ears of the musical German, and suggested to Lisa that they should attack Beethoven's sonata. Then Marya Dmitrievna heaved a sigh, and in her turn suggested to Gedeonovsky a walk in the garden. "I should like," she said, "to have a little more talk, and to consult you about our poor Fedya." Gedeonovsky bowed with a smirk, and with two fingers picked up his hat, on the brim of which his gloves had been tidily laid, and went away with Marya Dmitrievna. Panshin and Lisa remained alone in the room; she fetched the sonata, and opened it; both seated themselves at the piano in silence. Overhead were heard the faint sounds of scales, played by the uncertain fingers of Lenotchka.





Chapter V
Christopher Theodor Gottlieb Lemm was born in 1786 in the town of Chemnitz in Saxony. His parents were poor musicians. His father played the French horn, his mother the harp; he himself was practising on three different instruments by the time he was five. At eight years old he was left an orphan, and from his tenth year he began to earn his bread by his art. He led a wandering life for many years, and performed everywhere in restaurants, at fairs, at peasants' weddings, and at balls. At last he got into an orchestra and constantly rising in it, he obtained the position of director. He was rather a poor performer; but he understood music thoroughly. At twenty-eight he migrated into Russia, on the invitation of a great nobleman, who did not care for music himself, but kept an orchestra for show. Lemm lived with him seven years in the capacity of orchestra conductor, and left him empty-handed. The nobleman was ruined, he intended to give him a promissory note, but in the sequel refused him even that--in short, did not pay him a farthing. He was advised to go away; but he was unwilling to return home in poverty from Russia, that great Russia which is a mine of gold for artists; he decided to remain and try his luck. For twenty years the poor German had been trying his luck; he had lived in various gentlemen's houses, had suffered and put up with much, had faced privation, had struggled like a fish on the ice; but the idea of returning to his own country never left him among all the hardships he endured; it was this dream alone that sustained him. But fate did not see fit to grant him this last and first happiness: at fifty, broken-down in health and prematurely aged, he drifted to the town of O----, and remained there for good, having now lost once for all every hope of leaving Russia, which he detested. He gained his poor livelihood somehow by lessons. Lemm's exterior was not prepossessing. He was short and bent, with crooked shoulders, and contracted chest, with large flat feet, and bluish white nails on the gnarled bony fingers of his sinewy red hands. He had a wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and compressed lips, which he was for ever twitching and biting; and this, together with his habitual taciturnity, produced an impression almost sinister. His grey hair hung in tufts on