Liza; Or, "A Nest of Nobles"

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Lenochka blushed a little.

"But would Fedor Ivanovich like—at his age—" she began stammering.

"Please play away," hastily interposed Lavretsky; "don't pay any attention to me. I shall feel more comfortable if I know I am not boring you. And there is no necessity for your finding me something to do. We old people have a resource which you don't know yet, and which is better than any amusement—recollection."

The young people listened to Lavretsky with respectful, though slightly humorous politeness, just as if they were listening to a teacher who was reading them a lesson—then they all suddenly left him, and ran off to the lawn. One of them stood in the middle, the others occupied the four corners by the trees, and the game began.

But Lavretsky returned to the house, went into the dining-room, approached the piano, and touched one of the notes. It responded with a faint but clear sound, and a shudder thrilled his heart within him. With that note began the inspired melody, by means of which, on that most happy night long ago, Lemm, the dead Lemm, had thrown him into such raptures. Then Lavretsky passed into the drawing-room, and did not leave it for a long time.

In that room, in which he had seen Liza so often, her image floated more distinctly before him; the traces of her presence seemed to make themselves felt around him there. But his sorrow for her loss became painful and crushing; it bore with it none of the tranquillity which death inspires. Liza was still living somewhere, far away and lost to sight. He thought of her as he had known her in actual life; he could not recognize the girl he used to love in that pale, dim, ghostly form, half-hidden in a nun's dark robe, and surrounded by waving clouds of incense.

Nor would Lavretsky have been able to recognize himself, if he could have looked at himself as he in fancy was looking at Liza. In the course of those eight years his life had attained its final crisis—that crisis which many people never experience, but without which no man can be sure of maintaining his principles firm to the last. He had really given up thinking about his own happiness, about what would conduce to his own interests. He had become calm, and—why should we conceal the truth?—he had aged; and that not in face alone or frame, but he had aged in mind; for, indeed, not only is it difficult, but it is even hazardous to do what some people speak of—to preserve the heart young in bodily old age. Contentment, in old age, is deserved by him alone who has not lost his faith in what is good, his persevering strength of will, his desire for active employment. And Lavretsky did deserve to be contented; he had really become a good landlord; he had really learnt how to till the soil; and in that he labored, he labored not for himself alone, but he had, as far as in him lay the power, assured, and obtained guarantees for, the welfare of the peasantry on his estates.

Lavretsky went out of the house into the garden, and sat down on the bench he knew so well. There—on that loved spot, in sight of that house in which he had fruitlessly, and for the last time, stretched forth his hands towards that cup of promise in which foamed and sparkled the golden wine of enjoyment,—he, a lonely, homeless wanderer, while the joyous cries of that younger generation which had already forgotten him came flying to his ears, gazed steadily at his past life.

His heart became very sorrowful, but it was free now from any crushing sense of pain. He had nothing to be ashamed of; he had many sources of consolation. "Play on, young vigorous lives!" he thought—and his thoughts had no taint of bitterness in them—"the future awaits you, and your path of life in it will be comparatively easy for you. You will not be obliged, as we were, to seek out your path, to struggle, to fall, to rise again in utter darkness. We had to seek painfully by what means we might hold out to the end—and how many there were amongst us who did not hold out!—but your part is now to act, to work—and the blessing of old men like me shall be with you. For my part, after the day I have spent here, after the emotions I have here experienced, nothing remains for me but to bid you a last farewell; and, although sadly, yet without a tinge of envy, without a single gloomy feeling, to say, in sight of death, in sight of my awaiting God, 'Hail, lonely old age! Useless life, burn yourself out!'"

Lavretsky rose up quietly, and quietly went away. No one observed him, no one prevented him from going. Louder than ever sounded the joyous cries in the garden, behind the thick green walls of the lofty lime-trees. Lavretsky got into his tarantass, and told his coachman to drive him home without hurrying the horses.