A House of Gentlefolk | Page 9

you going to
stay and have tea with us?"
"I go home," answered Lemm in a surly voice; "my head aches."
"Oh, what nonsense!--do stop. We'll have an argument about
Shakespeare."
"My head aches," repeated the old man.
"We set to work on the sonata of Beethoven without you," continued
Panshin, taking hold of him affectionately and smiling brightly, "but we
couldn't get on at all. Fancy, I couldn't play two notes together
correctly."
"You'd better have sung your song again," replied Lemm, removing
Panshin's hands, and he walked away.
Lisa ran after him. She overtook him on the stairs.

"Christopher Fedoritch, I want to tell you," she said to him in German,
accompanying him over the short green grass of the yard to the gate, "I
did wrong--forgive me."
Lemm made no answer.
"I showed Vladimir Nikolaitch your cantata; I felt sure he would
appreciate it,--and he did like it very much really."
Lemm stopped.
"It's no matter," he said in Russian, and then added in his own language,
"but he cannot understand anything; how is it you don't see that? He's a
dilettante--and that's all!"
"You are unjust to him," replied Lisa, "he understands everything, and
he can do almost everything himself."
"Yes, everything second-rate, cheap, scamped work. That pleases, and
he pleases, and he is glad it is so--and so much the better. I'm not angry;
the cantata and I--we are a pair of old fools; I'm a little ashamed, but it's
no matter."
"Forgive me, Christopher Fedoritch," Lisa said again.
"It's no matter," he repeated in Russian, "you're a good girl . . . but here
is some one coming to see you. Goodbye. You are a very good girl."
And Lemm moved with hastened steps towards the gate, through which
had entered some gentleman unknown to him in a grey coat and a wide
straw hat. Bowing politely to him (he always saluted all new faces in
the town of O-----; from acquaintances he always turned aside in the
street--that was the rule he had laid down for himself), Lemm passed by
and disappeared behind the fence. The stranger looked after him in
amazement, and after gazing attentively at Lisa, went straight up to her.

Chapter VII
"You don't recognise me," he said, taking off his hat, "but I recognise
you in spite of its being seven years since I saw you last. You were a
child then. I am Lavretsky. Is your mother at home? Can I see her?"
"Mamma will be glad to see you," replied Lisa; "she had heard of your
arrival."
"Let me see, I think your name is Elisaveta?" said Lavretsky, as he
went up the stairs.
"Yes."
"I remember you very well; you had even then a face one doesn't forget.
I used to bring you sweets in those days."
Lisa blushed and thought what a queer man. Lavretsky stopped for an
instant in the hall. Lisa went into the drawing-room, where Panshin's
voice and laugh could be heard; he had been communicating some
gossip of the town to Marya Dmitrievna, and Gedeonovksy, who by
this time had come in from the garden, and he was himself laughing
aloud at the story he was telling. At the name of Lavretsky, Marya
Dmitrievna was all in a flutter. She turned pale and went up to meet
him.
"How do you do, how do you do, my dear cousin?" she cried in a
plaintive and almost tearful voice, "how glad I am to see you!"
"How are you, cousin?" replied Lavretsky, with a friendly pressure of
her out-stretched hand; "how has Providence been treating you?"

"Sit down, sit down, my dear Fedor Ivanitch. Ah, how glad I am! But
let me present my daughter Lisa to you."
"I have already introduced myself to Lisaveta Mihalovna," interposed
Lavretsky.
"Monsier Panshin . . . Sergei Petrovitch Gedeonovsky . . . Please sit
down. When I look at you, I can hardly believe my eyes. How are
you?"
"As you see, I"m flourishing. And you, too, cousin--no ill-luck to
you!--have grown no thinner in eight years."
"To think how long it is since we met!" observed Marya Dmitrievna
dreamily. "Where have you come from now? Where did you leave . . .
that is, I meant to say," she put in hastily, "I meant to say, are you
going to be with us for long?"
"I have come now from Berlin," replied Lavretsky, "and to-morrow I
shall go into the country--probably for a long time."
"You will live at Lavriky, I suppose?"
"No, not at Lavriky; I have a little place twenty miles from here: I am
going there."
"Is that the little estate that came to you from Glafira Petrovna?"
"Yes."
"Really, Fedor Ivanitch! You have such a magnificent house at
Lavriky."
Lavretsky knitted his brows