“Tell me, Pavel Pavlovitch,” said Velchaninoff at last, “—I see you are not quite alone here,—whose little girl is that I saw when I came in?”
Pavel Pavlovitch looked surprised and raised his eyebrow; but he gazed back at Velchaninoff with candour and apparent amiability:
“Whose little girl? Why that’s our Liza!” he said, smiling affably.
“What Liza?” asked Velchaninoff,—and something seemed to cause him to shudder inwardly.
The sensation was dreadfully sudden. Just now, on entering the room and seeing Liza, he had felt surprised more or less,—but had not been conscious of the slightest feeling of presentiment,—indeed he had had no special thought about the matter, at the moment.
“Why—our Liza!—our daughter Liza!” repeated Pavel Pavlovitch, smiling.
“Your daughter? Do you mean to say that you and Natalia Vasilievna had children?” asked Velchaninoff timidly, and in a very low tone of voice indeed!
“Of course—but—what a fool I am—how in the world should you know! Providence sent us the gift after you had gone!”
Pavel Pavlovitch jumped off his chair in apparently pleasurable excitement.
“I heard nothing of it!” said Velchaninoff, looking very pale.
“How should you? how should you?” repeated Pavel Pavlovitch with ineffable sweetness. “We had quite lost hope of any children—as you may remember,—when suddenly Heaven sent us this little one. And, oh! my feelings—Heaven alone knows what I felt! Just a year after you went, I think—no, wait a bit—not a year by a long way!—Let’s see, you left us in October, or November, didn’t you?”
“I left T—— on the twelfth of September, I remember well.”
“Hum! September was it? Dear me! Well, then, let’s see—September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April—to the 8th of May—that was Liza’s birthday—eight months all but a bit; and if you could only have seen the dear departed, how rejoiced——”
“Show her to me—call her in!” the words seemed to tear themselves from Velchaninoff, whether he liked it or no.
“Certainly—this moment!” cried Pavel Pavlovitch, forgetting that he had not finished his previous sentence, or ignoring the fact; and he hastily left the room, and entered the small chamber adjoining.
Three or four minutes passed by, while Velchaninoff heard the rapid interchange of whispers going on, and an occasional rather louder sound of Liza’s voice, apparently entreating her father to leave her alone—so Velchaninoff concluded.
At last the two came out.
“There you are—she’s dreadfully shy and proud,” said Pavel Pavlovitch; “just like her mother.”
Liza entered the room without tears, but with eyes downcast, her father leading her by the hand. She was a tall, slight, and very pretty little girl. She raised her large blue eyes to the visitor’s face with curiosity; but only glanced surlily at him, and dropped them again. There was that in her expression that one always sees in children when they look on some new guest for the first time—retiring to a corner, and looking out at him thence seriously and mistrustingly; only that there was a something in her manner beyond the usual childish mistrust—so, at least thought Velchaninoff.
Her father brought her straight up to the visitor.
“There—this gentleman knew mother very well. He was our friend; you mustn’t be shy,—give him your hand!”
The child bowed slightly, and timidly stretched out her hand.
“Natalia Vasilievna never would teach her to curtsey; she liked her to bow, English fashion, and give her hand,” explained Pavel Pavlovitch, gazing intently at Velchaninoff.
Velchaninoff knew perfectly well that the other was keenly examining him at this moment, but he made no attempt to conceal his agitation: he sat motionless on his chair and held the child’s hand in his, gazing into her face the while.
But Liza was apparently much preoccupied, and did not take her eyes off her father’s face; she listened timidly to every word he said.
Velchaninoff recognised her large blue eyes at once; but what specially struck him was the refined pallor of her face, and the colour of her hair; these traits were altogether too significant, in his eyes! Her features, on the other hand, and the set of her lips, reminded him keenly of Natalia Vasilievna. Meanwhile Pavel Pavlovitch was in the middle of some apparently most interesting tale—one of great sentiment seemingly,—but Velchaninoff did not hear a word of it until the last few words struck upon his ear:
“… So that you can’t imagine what our joy was when Providence sent us this gift, Alexey Ivanovitch! She was everything to me, for I felt that if it should be the will of Heaven to deprive me of my other joy, I should still have Liza left to me; that’s what I felt, sir, I did indeed!”
“And Natalia Vasilievna?” asked Velchaninoff.
“Oh, Natalia Vasilievna—” began Pavel Pavlovitch, smiling with one side of his mouth; “she never used to like to say much—as you know yourself; but she told me on her deathbed—deathbed! you know, sir—to the very day of her death she used to get so angry and say that they were trying to cure her with a lot of nasty medicines when she had nothing the matter but a simple little feverish attack; and that when Koch arrived (you remember our old doctor Koch?) he would make her all right in a fortnight. Why, five hours before she died she was talking of fixing that day three weeks for a visit to her Aunt, Liza’s godmother, at her country place!” Velchaninoff here started from his seat, but still held the child’s hand. He could not help thinking that there was something reproachful in the girl’s persistent stare in her father’s face.
“Is she ill?” he asked hurriedly, and his voice had a strange tone in it.
“No! I don’t think so” said Pavel Pavlovitch; “but, you see our way of living here, and all that: she’s a strange child and very nervous, besides! After her mother’s death she was quite ill and hysterical for a fortnight. Just before you came in she was crying like anything; and do you know what about, sir? Do you hear me, Liza?—You listen!—Simply because I was going out, and wished to leave her behind, and because she said I didn’t love her so well as I used to in her mother’s time. That’s what she pitches into me for! Fancy a child like this getting hold of such an idea!—a child who ought to be playing at dolls, instead of developing ideas of that sort! The thing is, she has no one to play with here.”
“Then—then—are you two quite alone here?”
“Quite! a servant comes in once a day, that’s all!”
“And when you go out, do you leave her quite alone?”
“Of course! What else am I to do? Yesterday I locked her in that room, and that’s what all the tears were about this morning. What could I do? the day before yesterday she went down into the yard all by herself, and a boy took a shot at her head with a stone! Not only that, but she must needs go and cling on to everybody she met, and ask where I had gone to! That’s not so very pleasant, you see! But I oughtn’t to complain when I say I am going out for an hour and then stay out till four in the morning, as I did last night! The landlady came and let her out: she had the door broken open! Nice for my feelings, eh! It’s all the result of the eclipse that came over my life; nothing but that, sir!”
“Papa!” said the child, timidly and anxiously.
“Now, then! none of that again! What did I tell you yesterday?”
“I won’t; I won’t!” cried the child hurriedly, clasping her hands before her entreatingly.
“Come! things can’t be allowed to go on in this way!” said Velchaninoff impatiently, and with authority. “In the first place, you are a man of property; how can you possibly live in a hole like this, and in such disorder?”
“This place! Oh, but we shall probably have left this place within a week; and I’ve spent a lot of money here, as it is, though I may be ‘a man of property;’ and——”
“Very well, that’ll do,” interrupted Velchaninoff with growing impatience, “now, I’ll make you a proposition: you have just said that you intend to stay another week—perhaps two. I have a house here—or rather I know a family where I am as much at home as at my own fireside, and have been so for twenty years. The family I mean is the Pogoryeltseffs—Alexander Pavlovitch Pogoryeltseff is a state councillor (he may be of use to you in your business!) They are now living in the country—they have a beautiful country villa; Claudia Petrovna, the lady of the house, is like a sister—like a mother to me; they have eight children. Let me take Liza down to them without loss of time! they’ll receive her with joy, and they’ll treat her like their own little daughter—they will, indeed!”
Velchaninoff was in a great hurry, and much excited, and he did not conceal his feelings.
“I’m afraid it’s impossible!” said Pavel Pavlovitch with a grimace, looking straight into his visitor’s eyes, very cunningly, as it seemed to Velchaninoff.
“Why! why, impossible?”
“Oh, why! to let the child go—so suddenly, you know, of course with such a sincere well-wisher as yourself—it’s not that!—but a strange house—and such swells, too!—I don’t know whether they would receive her!”
“But I tell you I’m like a son of the house!” cried Velchaninoff, almost angrily. “Claudia Petrovna will be delighted to take her, at
