“Yes, sir,” replied the old man mournfully.
After three weeks had passed by, Lavretsky rode into O----- to the
Kalitins, and spent an evening with them. Lemm was there; Lavretsky
took a great liking to him. Although thanks to his father, he played
no instrument, he was passionately fond of music, real classical music.
Panshin was not at the Kalitins’ that evening. The governor had sent him
off to some place out of the town. Lisa played alone and very correct;
Lemm woke up, got excited, twisted a piece of paper into a roll, and
conducted. Marya Dmitrievna laughed at first, as she looked at him,
later on she went off to bed; in her own words, Beethoven was too
agitating for her nerves. At midnight Lavretsky accompanied Lemm to his
lodging and stopped there with him till three o’clock in the morning.
Lemm talked a great deal; his bent figure grew erect, his eyes opened
wide and flashed fire; his hair even stood up on his forehead. It was
so long since any one had shown him any sympathy, and Lavretsky was
obviously interested in him, he was plying him with sympathetic and
attentive questions. This touched the old man; he ended by showing the
visitor his music, played and even sang in a faded voice some extracts
from his works, among others the whole of Schiller’s ballad, Fridolin,
set by him to music. Lavretsky admired it, made him repeat some
passages, and at parting, invited him to stay a few days with him. Lemm,
as he accompanied him as far as the street, agreed at once, and warmly
pressed his hand; but when he was left standing alone in the fresh, damp
air, in the just dawning sunrise, he looked round him, shuddered, shrank
into himself, and crept up to his little room, with a guilty air. “Ich
bin wohl nicht klug” (I must be out of my senses), he muttered, as he
lay down in his hard short bed. He tried to say that he was ill, a few
days later, when Lavretsky drove over to fetch him in an open carriage;
but Fedor Ivanitch went up into his room and managed to persuade him.
What produced the most powerful effect upon Lemm was the circumstance
that Lavretsky had ordered a piano from town to be sent into the country
expressly for him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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