Even when he had taken his seat in the tarantass, in which his flat and marvellously light portmanteau had been stowed away, he still went on talking. Enveloped in a kind of Spanish cloak, with a collar reddened by long use, and with lion's claws instead of hooks, he continued to pour forth his opinions on the destinies of Russia, waving his swarthy hand the while in the air, as if he were sowing the seeds of future prosperity. At last the horses set off.
"Remember my last three words!" he exclaimed, leaning almost entirely out of the carriage, and scarcely able to keep his balance. "Religion, Progress, Humanity! Farewell!" His head, on which his forage cap was pressed down to his eyes, disappeared from sight. Lavretsky was left alone at the door, where he remained gazing attentively along the road, until the carriage was out of sight. "And perhaps he is right," he thought, as he went back into the house. "Perhaps I am a marmot." Much of what Mikhalevich had said had succeeded in winning its way into his heart, although at the time he had contradicted him and disagreed with him. Let a man only be perfectly honest—no one can utterly gainsay him.
XXV.
Two days later, Maria Dmitrievna arrived at Vasilievskoe, according to her promise, and all her young people with her. The little girls immediately ran into the garden, but Maria Dmitrievna languidly walked through the house, and languidly praised all she saw. She looked upon her visit to Lavretsky as a mark of great condescension, almost a benevolent action. She smiled affably when Anton and Apraxia came to kiss her hand, according to the old custom of household serfs, and in feeble accents she asked for tea.
To the great vexation of Anton, who had donned a pair of knitted white gloves, it was not he who handed the tea to the lady visitor, but Lavretsky's hired lackey, a fellow who, in the old man's opinion, had not a notion of etiquette. However, Anton had it all his own way at dinner. With firm step, he took up his position behind Madame Kalitine's chair, and he refused to give up his post to any one. The apparition of visitors at Vasilievskoe—a sight for so many years unknown there—both troubled and cheered the old man. It was a pleasure for him to see that his master was acquainted with persons of some standing in society.
Anton was not the only person who was agitated that day. Lemm was excited too. He had put on a shortish snuff-colored coat with pointed tails, and had tied his cravat tight, he coughed incessantly, and made way for every one with kindly and affable mien. As for Lavretsky, he remarked with satisfaction that he remained on the same friendly footing with Liza as before. As soon as she arrived she cordially held out her hand to him.
After dinner, Lemm took a small roll of music-paper out of the tail-pocket of his coat, into which he had been constantly putting his hand, and silently, with compressed lips, placed it upon the piano. It contained a romance, which he had written the day before to some old-fashioned German words, in which mention was made of the stars. Liza immediately sat down to the piano, and interpreted the romance. Unfortunately the music turned out to be confused and unpleasantly constrained. It was evident that the composer had attempted to express some deep and passionate idea, but no result had been attained. The attempt remained an attempt, and nothing more. Both Lavretsky and Liza felt this, and Lemm was conscious of it too. Without saying a word, he put his romance back into his pocket; and, in reply to Liza's proposal to play it over again, he merely shook his head, and said, in a tone of meaning, "For the present—basta!" then bent his head, stooped his shoulders, and left the room.
Towards evening they all went out together to fish. In the little lake at the end of the garden there were numbers of carp and groundling. Madame Kalitine had an arm-chair set in the shade for her, near the edge of the water, and a carpet was spread out under her feet. Anton, as an old fisherman of great experience, offered her his services. Zealously did he fasten on the worms, slap them with his hand, and spit upon them, and then fling the line into the water himself, gracefully bending forwards the whole of his body. Maria Dmitrievna had already that day spoken about him to Fedor Ivanovich, using the following phrase of Institute-French:—"Il n'y a plus maintenant de ces gens comme ça autre fois."
Lemm and the two little girls went on to the dam at the end of the lake. Lavretsky placed himself near Liza. The fish kept continually nibbling. Every minute a captured carp glistened in the air with its sometimes golden, sometimes silver, sides. The little girls kept up a ceaseless flow of joyful exclamations. Madame Kalitine herself two or three times uttered a plaintive cry. Lavretsky and Liza caught fewer fish than the others; probably because they paid less attention to their fishing, and let their floats drift up against the edge of the lake. The tall, reddish reeds murmured quietly around them; in front quietly shone the unruffled water, and the conversation they carried on was quiet too.
Liza stood on the little platform [placed there for the use of the washerwomen;] Lavretsky sat on the bent stem of a willow. Liza wore a white dress, fastened round the waist by a broad, white ribbon. From one hand hung her straw hat; with the other she, not without some effort, supported her drooping fishing-rod. Lavretsky gazed at her pure, somewhat severe profile—at the hair turned back behind her ears—at her soft cheeks, the hue of which was like that of a young child's—and thought: "How charming you look, standing there by my lake!" Liza did not look at him, but kept her eyes fixed on the water, something which might be a smile lurking about their corners. Over both Lavretsky and Liza fell the shadow of a neighboring lime-tree.