Fathers and Sons
Egorovna, is dead."
"Dead? Oh, the poor old woman! But Prokofitch--is _he_ still alive?"
"He is so, and in no way changed--that is to say, he grumbles as much
as ever. In fact, you will find that no _really_ important alterations
have taken place at Marino."
"And have you the same steward as before?"
"No; I have appointed a fresh one, for I came to the conclusion that
I could not have any freed serfs about the place. That is to say,
I did not feel as though I could trust such fellows with posts of
responsibility." Arkady indicated Peter with his eyes, and Nikolai
Petrovitch therefore subdued his voice a little. "He? Oh, _il est
libre, en effet_. You see, he is my valet. But as regards a steward,
I have appointed a _miestchanin_,[1] at a salary of 250 roubles a
year, and he seems at least capable. But"--and here Nikolai Petrovitch
rubbed his forehead, which gesture with him always implied inward
agitation--"I ought to say that, though I have told you that you will
find no alterations of importance at Marino, the statement is not
strictly true, seeing that it is my duty to warn you that, that----"
Nikolai Petrovitch hesitated again--then added in French: "Perhaps by a
stern moralist my frankness might be considered misplaced; yet I will
not conceal from you, nor can you fail to be aware, that always I have
had ideas of my own on the subject of the relations which ought to
subsist between a father and his son. At the same time, this is not to
say that you have not the right to _judge_ me. Rather, it is that at my
age----Well, to put matters bluntly, the girl whom you will have heard
me speak of----"
"You mean Thenichka?" said Arkady.
Nikolai Petrovitch's face went red.
"Do not speak of her so loudly," he advised. "Yes, _she_ is living with
us. I took her in because two of our smaller rooms were available. But
of course the arrangement must be changed."
"Why must it, Papa?"
"Because this friend of yours is coming, and also because--well, it
might make things awkward."
"Do not disturb yourself on Bazarov's account. He is altogether
superior to such things."
"Yes, so you say; but the mischief lies in the fact that the wing is so
small."
"Papa, Papa!" protested Arkady. "Almost one would think that you
considered yourself to blame for something; whereas you have _nothing_
to reproach yourself with."
"Ah, but I have," responded Nikolai Petrovitch. His face had turned
redder than ever.
"No, you have _not_, Papa," repeated Arkady with a loving smile, while
adding to himself with a feeling of indulgent tenderness for his good,
kind father, as well as with a certain sense of "superiority": "Why is
he making these excuses?"
"I beg of you to say no more," he continued with an involuntary feeling
of exultation in being "grown up" and "emancipated." As he did so
Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at him from under the fingers of the hand
which was still rubbing his brows. At the same moment something seemed
to give his heart a stab. Mentally, as before, he blamed himself.
"Here our fields begin," he observed after a pause.
"I see," rejoined Arkady. "And that is our forest in front, I suppose?"
"It is so. Only, only--I have sold it, and this year it is to be
removed."
"Why have you sold it?"
"Because I needed the money. Moreover, the land which it occupies must
go to the peasants."
"What? To the peasants who pay you no tithes?"
"Possibly. But some day they will pay me."
"I regret the forest's loss," said Arkady, and then resumed his
contemplation of the landscape.
The scenery which the party were traversing could not have been called
picturesque, for, with slight undulations, only fields, fields, and
again fields, stretched to the very horizon. True, a few patches of
copse were visible, but the ditches, with their borderings of low,
sparse brushwood, recalled the antique land-measurement of Katherine's
day. Also, streams ran pent between abruptly sloping banks, hamlets
with dwarfed huts (of which the blackened roofs were, for the most
part, cracked in half) stood cheek by jowl with crazy grinding-byres
of plaited willow, empty threshing-floors had their gates sagging,
and from churches of wood or of brick which stood amid dilapidated
graveyards the stucco was peeling, and the crosses were threatening at
any moment to fall. As he gazed at the scene Arkady's heart contracted.
Moreover, the peasants encountered on the road looked ragged, and were
riding sorry nags, while the laburnum trees which stood ranged like
miserable beggars by the roadside had their bark hanging in strips,
and their boughs shattered. Lastly, the lean, mud-encrusted cows which
could be seen hungrily cropping the herbage in the ditches were so
"staring" of coat that the animals might just have been rescued from
the talons of some terrible, death-dealing monster; and as one gazed at
those weak, pitiful beasts, almost one could fancy that one saw uprisen
from amid the beauty of spring, the pale phantoms of Winter--its storms
and its frost and its snow.
"Evidently this is not a rich district," reflected Arkady. "Rather,
it is a district which gives one the impression neither of abundance
nor of hard work. Yet can it be left as it is? No! Education is what
we need. But how is that education to be administered, or, for that
matter, to be introduced?"
Thus Arkady. Yet, even as the thought passed through his mind, Spring
seemed once more to regain possession of her kingdom, and everything
around him grew golden-green, and trees, shrubs, and herbage started
to wave and glimmer under the soft, warm breath of the vernal zephyrs,
and larks took to pouring out their souls in endless, ringing strains,
and siskins, circling high over sunken ponds, uttered their cry, then
skimmed the hillocks in silence, and handsome black rooks stalked
among the tender green of the short corn-shoots, or settled among the
pale-white, smokelike ripples of the young rye, whence at intervals
they protruded their heads.
Arkady gazed and gazed; and gradually, as he did so, his late thoughts
grew dimmer and disappeared, and, throwing off his travelling-cloak,
he peered so joyously, with such a boyish air, into his father's face
that Nikolai Petrovitch bestowed upon him yet another embrace.
"We have but little further to go now," he remarked. "In fact, when
once we have topped that rise the house will come into view. And what
a time we are going to have together, Arkasha! For you will be able
to help me with the estate (if you care to, that is to say?), and you
and I will draw nearer to one another, and make one another's better
acquaintance."
"We will!" cried Arkady. "And what splendid weather for us both!"
"Yes; specially for your home-coming is spring in all its glory. Yet I
am not sure that I do not agree with Pushkin where he says, in _Eugène
Onegin_:
/$
"How sad to me is your coming,
O spring, spring, season of love!"
$/
"Arkady," shouted Bazarov from the _tarantass_, "please send me a match
or two, for I have nothing to light my pipe with."
Instantly Nikolai Petrovitch ceased quoting poetry, and Arkady (who
had listened with considerable surprise, though also with a certain
measure of sympathy, to his father) hastened to produce from his pocket
a silver matchbox, and to dispatch the same by the hand of Peter.
"In return, would you care to have a cigar?" called Bazarov.
"I should," replied Arkady.
The result was that when Peter returned to the _koliaska_ he handed
Arkady not only the matchbox, but also a fat black cigar. This Arkady
lit at leisure, and then proceeded to diffuse around him so strong and
acrid an odour of tobacco that Nikolai Petrovitch (a non-smoker from
birth) found himself forced to avert his nose (though he did this
covertly, for fear of offending his son).
A quarter of an hour later the vehicles drew up at the steps of a new
wooden mansion, painted grey, and roofed with red sheet-iron. The
mansion was Marino, or Novaia Sloboda, or, to quote the peasants' name,
"Bobili Chutor."
[1] A member of the trading or shopkeeping class.
IV
There issued on to the verandah to greet the arrivals no throng of
household serfs--only a solitary girl of twelve. Presently, however,
she was joined by a young fellow much resembling Peter, but dressed
in a grey livery coat to which embossed, silver-gilt buttons were
attached. This was Paul Kirsanov's valet. In silence he opened the door
of the _koliaska_, and unhooked the apron of the _tarantass_; whereupon
the three gentlemen alighted, passed through a dark, bare hall (the
face of a young woman peered at them for a moment from behind a door),
and entered a drawing-room upholstered in the latest fashion.
"So here we are at home again!" exclaimed Nikolai Petrovitch, taking
off his cap, and shaking back his hair. "Let us have supper, and then
for bed, bed!"
"Yes, something to eat would undoubtedly be welcome," remarked Bazarov
as, yawning, he seated himself upon a sofa.
"Quite so; I will have supper served at once." Nikolai Petrovitch,
for no apparent reason, tripped over his own feet. "And here comes
Prokofitch," he added.
As he spoke entered a man of about sixty who, white-haired, and of
thin, swarthy features, was wearing a cinnamon-coloured tail-coat
with brass buttons and a crimson collar. He smiled with delight as he
approached and shook hands with Arkady. Then, with a bow to the guest,
he retired to the doorway, and folded his hands behind his back.
"So here is the young master, Prokofitch!" said Nikolai Petrovitch.
"He is home at last. And how, think you, is he looking?"
"Very well, very well," the old man said with another smile. The next
moment, however, he knit his shaggy brows, and suggested: "Shall I lay
the table?"
"If you please, if you please." Nikolai Petrovitch turned to Bazarov.
"Before supper," he said, "would you care to go to your room?"
"I thank you, no. But please have my trunk conveyed thither, and also
this wrap." And Bazarov divested himself of his cloak.
"Certainly. Prokofitch, take the gentleman's cloak."
The old butler received the garment gingerly, held it well away from
him with both hands, and left the room on tiptoe.
"And you, Arkady?" continued Nikolai Petrovitch. "Do you not wish to go
to your room?"
"Yes; for a wash I should be thankful," was Arkady's reply as he moved
towards the door. At that moment it opened to admit a man of medium
height who was dressed in a dark English suit, a fashionably low
collar, and a pair of patent leather boots. This was Paul Petrovitch
Kirsanov. Although forty-five, he had close-cropped grey hair of the
sheen of new silver, and his sallow, unwrinkled face was as clear-cut
and regular of outline as though carved with a light, fine chisel.
Still retaining traces of remarkable comeliness, his bright, black,
oblong eyes had a peculiar attraction, and his every well-bred, refined
feature showed that symmetry of youth, that air of superiority to the
rest of the world which usually disappears when once the twenties have
been passed.
Drawing from his trouser pocket a slender hand the long, pink nails
of which looked all the slenderer for the snowy whiteness of the
superimposed cuff and large opal sleeve-link, he offered it to his
nephew; after which, this prefatory European "handshake" over, he
thrice kissed Arkady in the Russian fashion--that is to say, touched
his nephew's cheek with his perfumed moustache, and murmured: "I
congratulate you."
Next Nikolai Petrovitch presented to him Bazarov. Inclining his supple
figure with a faint smile, Paul Petrovitch this time did not offer his
hand. On the contrary, he replaced it in his pocket.
"I was beginning to think that you never meant to arrive," he said with