Fathers and Sons
and thence to Nikolsköe. As he drove, the manner in which he encouraged
his postilion communicated to his progress the character, rather,
of a young officer's trip to fight his first duel, for diffidence,
impatience, and delight were well-nigh choking him.
"Above all things," he kept reflecting, "I must not think too much of
myself." And though the postilion who had fallen to his lot was of the
type of rascal who pulls up at every tavern door, there hove in sight,
before long, the familiar, high-pitched roof of the mansion.
"But what am I doing?" now occurred to him the thought. "Indeed, would
it not be better to go back?"
Unfortunately, to the sound of the postilion's whistlings and
tongue-clickings the _troika_ of horses trotted bravely forward, and
presently the bridge thundered under the combined weight of the hooves
and wheels. Ah, _there_ was the avenue of clipped firs! Yes, and
_there_ was a glimpse of a pink dress amid some dark foliage! Yes, and
_there_ a glimpse of a young face peering from the shade of a silken
parasol! Yes, yes--it _was_ Katia! He had recognised her in an instant,
as she him! Bidding the postilion pull up, Arkady leapt from the
carriage, and approached the maiden.
"So it is you?" she exclaimed. And at the same moment a blush
overspread her face. "Let us go and look for my sister. She is in the
garden, and will be delighted to see you."
So she conducted him thither. How lucky that he had met her as he had
done! More pleased he could not have felt if she had been his own
sister. Yes, things were indeed fortunate! Now there would have to be
no butler, and no formal announcement of his arrival.
Of Anna Sergievna he caught sight at a turn in the path. She had
her back to him, but presently, on hearing the sound of approaching
footsteps, faced about.
Once more confusion seized Arkady in its grip. Yet no sooner had she
spoken than he felt his courage return.
"How do you do?" she said in her even, kindly way as she advanced to
meet him with a smile that was slightly tempered with the sun and wind.
"Where did you find him, Katia?"
"I have brought with me something which you are unlikely to have been
expecting," he said. "For I----"
"But you have brought me yourself," she rejoined. "And that is the best
bringing of all."
[1] A freeholder, a member of the class which, in the days of this
story, stood midway between the _pomiestchik_, or landowner, and the
_Krestianin_, or serf.
[2] Magistrate.
XXIII
After speeding Arkady on his way with satirical expressions of regret
(as well as giving him to understand that the satirist laboured under
no delusions as to the object of the young man's journey), Bazarov
withdrew into complete seclusion, since a perfect fever for work had
come upon him. Nor did he quarrel any longer with Paul Petrovitch,
and the less so since the latter had now come to adopt an exclusively
aristocratic attitude, and to express his sentiments only in
monosyllables, not in words. Once, and once only, did he allow himself
to engage in a controversy with Bazarov over the then current question
of the rights of the _dvoriané_. But suddenly he checked himself, and
said with an air of cold politeness:
"It is clear that we shall never understand one another. At all events
_I_ have not the honour to understand _you_."
"True," agreed Bazarov. "For a man may understand the precipitation
of ether, and be _au fait_ with what is taking place in the sun, yet,
confront him with the fact that another man blows his nose differently
from the manner in which he blows his own, and at once that man will
become lost in perplexity."
At the same time, there were occasions when Paul Petrovitch requested
permission to attend the other's experiments; and once he went so far
as to apply his perfumed, clean-shaven features to the microscope, for
the purpose of observing how a transparent infusorium could swallow a
greenish-looking particle, and then masticate the same with fang-like
protuberances which grew in its throat. Still more frequently was
Nikolai Petrovitch present in Bazarov's room. Indeed, but for the
counter-distraction of estate-management, he would have spent his whole
time in the process of what he called "self-improvement." Yet he never
hampered the young naturalist: on the contrary, he would seat himself
in a remote corner of the room, and, but for a guarded question or
two, confine himself solely to silently and absorbedly watching the
experiments. Also, at meal times he always endeavoured to turn the
conversation in the direction of physics or geology or chemistry, for
the reason that he divined in any other direction (that of industry,
or, still more, that of politics) there lay a greater danger of
collisions, or, at all events, of mutual soreness. For rightly did
he divine that his brother's enmity towards Bazarov had by no means
abated. And to this conclusion an incident which occurred at a juncture
when cholera had just made its appearance in the neighbourhood, and
carried off two victims from Marino itself, lent additional colour.
One night Paul Petrovitch happened to be seized with a fainting fit,
yet refused to apply to Bazarov for assistance; and when Bazarov, on
meeting him on the following day, inquired why such a course had not
been adopted, Paul Petrovitch--still pale, but as carefully brushed and
combed as ever--retorted: "Did not you yourself tell me that you have
no belief in medicine?"
Thus day followed day. Yet, though Bazarov devoted himself wholly to
work, there was one person in the house whom he did not hold at arm's
length, but was always willing to talk to. That person was Thenichka.
Mostly he encountered her in the early mornings, when she was walking
in the garden or the courtyard; but never did he enter her room, nor
did she ever come to his door, save once, for the purpose of asking
him to help her with Mitia's bath. And she not only trusted Bazarov;
she also held him in no awe, and allowed herself more freedom in
his presence than she did in that of Nikolai Petrovitch himself.
The reason is difficult to determine. Perhaps it was the fact that
unconsciously she detected in Bazarov none of the _dvorianin_ element,
none of that superiority which at once attracts and repels; the young
Nihilist, to her, was just a clever doctor, and no more. At all events,
she was so free from shyness in his presence that she would dandle her
child unabashed, and, on one occasion, when seized with a headache,
went so far as to accept at his hands a spoonful of medicine. True,
in Nikolai Petrovitch's presence she seemed to shun Bazarov; but this
was done more out of a sense of decorum than through subtlety. As for
Paul Petrovitch, she feared him as much as ever, for he had taken to
watching her with a keen, steady eye, and to making his appearance
behind her as though his figure, clad in its inevitable English
suit, and posed in its usual attitude of hands in trousers pockets,
had suddenly sprung from the floor. "Whenever I see him I feel cold
all over," once she complained to Duniasha; whereupon that maiden's
thoughts reverted longingly to another "unfeeling" individual who had,
all unwittingly, come to be "the cruel tyrant" of her heart.
Thenichka, therefore, liked Bazarov, and Bazarov liked Thenichka.
Indeed, no sooner did he speak to her than his face would undergo a
change, and, assuming a bright, almost a good-humoured, expression,
exchange its habitual superciliousness for something like playful
solicitude. Meanwhile she grew more beautiful daily. In the lives of
young women there is a season when they begin to unfold and bloom
like the roses in summer: and to that period Thenichka had just come.
Everything, even the July heat then prevalent, contributed to it.
Dressed in a gown of some light white material, she looked even lighter
and whiter than it; and though she escaped actual sunburn, the heated
air imparted to her cheeks and ears a faint tan, and, permeating her
frame with gentle indolence, imbued her exquisite eyes with dreamy
languor. No longer could she do any work; she could only let her hands
sink upon her lap, and there remain. Seldom going even for a stroll,
she spent the most of her time in a state of gently querulous and
panting, but not distasteful, inertia.
"You should go and bathe as often as you can," Nikolai Petrovitch said
to her one day (he had had a large, canopied bathing-place constructed
in one of the last few ponds on the estate).
"Ah!" she gasped. "Even to walk to the pond half-kills me: and to walk
back from it half-kills me again. There is no shade in the garden, you
see."
"True," he agreed, wiping his forehead.
At seven o'clock one morning, when Bazarov was returning from a walk,
he encountered Thenichka in the midst of a lilac clump which, though
past the season of flowering, was still green and leafy. As usual, she
had a white scarf thrown over her head, and beside the bench on which
she was sitting there was a bunch of red and white roses with the dew
yet glistening on their petals. He bade her good morning.
"It is you, then, Evgenii Vasilitch!" she exclaimed as she put aside a
corner of her scarf to look at him--a movement which bared her arm to
the elbow.
"What are you doing?" he asked as he seated himself beside her. "Is it
a nosegay you are making?"
"Yes, for the breakfast table. Nikolai Petrovitch is so fond of such
things."
"But breakfast is not yet. What a waste of flowers!"
"I know, but I gather them now because later the weather becomes too
hot for walking. This is the only time when it is possible even to
breathe. The heat makes me faint, and I am afraid of falling ill with
it."
"Mere fancy. Let me feel your pulse."
He took her hand in his, and found the pulse to be beating with such
regularity that he did not trouble even to count its throbs.
"You will live to be a hundred," he said as he relinquished her wrist.
"God preserve me from that!" exclaimed she.
"Why so? Surely you would like to live a long time?"
"Yes--I should; but not for a hundred years. You see, my grandmother
lived to be eighty-five, but suffered terribly. Long before she died
she had a constant cough, and was also blind and deaf and crooked, and
had become a burden to herself. What would be the use of a life like
that?"
"You think that it is better to be young?"
"I do. And why not?"
"How is it better? Tell me that."
"How is it better? Oh, as long as one is young one can do what one
wants to do--one can walk about, and carry things, and not be dependent
upon other folk. Is not that the best way?"
"I do not know. At all events _I_ care not whether I be young or old."
"What makes you say that? Surely you cannot mean it?"
"No? Well, think of what my youth means to me. I am a lonely man, a man
without home or--"
"But all depends upon yourself."
"No, it does not. I only wish that some one would take pity upon my
loneliness!"
She glanced at him, but said nothing. After a pause she resumed:
"What is that book of yours?"
"This? It is a learned, scholarly work."
"How you study! Do you never grow tired of it? By this time, I should
think, you must know everything."
"Indeed I do not.... But try reading a few lines of the book."
"I should never understand them. Is it a Russian book?" (She took the
heavily bound volume into her hands.)
"What a large book!" she continued.
"Yes. Also, it is a Russian book."
"Nevertheless I should not be able to understand it.
"I do not want you to understand it. I merely want to be able to watch
you as you read. For when you read you twitch your little nose most
charmingly!"
She began to read aloud a page "on Creosote," but soon burst out