Part 11

"True, I shall be returning to Marino," continued Arkady, "but we might bear one another company as far as Khokhlovskïe Viselki, and there you could hire horses of Thedot. Of course, I should have been delighted to make your family's acquaintance, but, were I to accompany you, I might act as a source of constraint upon them and yourself alike. You must pay us another visit at Marino later."

"I will. As a matter of fact, I have left some of my things there." Bazarov still had his face turned to the wall.

"Why does he not ask _me_ the reason of _my_ departure--a departure as sudden as his?" reflected Arkady. "Why is either of us departing, for that matter?"

As he continued to reflect he realised that, while unable to return a satisfactory answer to the question propounded, he seemed to have got a heartache somehow, to be feeling that he would find it hard to part with the life at Nikolsköe to which he was grown so accustomed. Yet he could not remain there alone. That would be worse still.

"Between him and her there is something in the wind," he reflected. "That being so, what would my sticking here avail after he had gone? I should weary Anna Sergievna, and lose my last chance of pleasing her."

Then he began to draw a mental picture of the lady whom he had just named: until there cut across the fair presentment of the young widow another set of features.

"Katia too I shall miss," he whispered to his pillow (which had already received one of his tears). At length, raising his curly poll, he exclaimed:

"What, in the devil's name, brought that idiot Sitnikov here?"

He heard Bazarov stir under the bedclothes, then remark:

"You yourself are an idiot. We need the Sitnikovs of this world. Such donkeys are absolutely necessary to us, to _me_. The gods ought not to have to bake pots."

"Ah!" reflected Arkady. For, as in a flash, there had become revealed to him the bottomless profundity of Bazarov's conceit.

"Then you and I are the gods?" he said aloud. "Or are you a god, and I a donkey?"

"You are," came the gruff reply. "As yet, at all events, you are."

No particular astonishment was evinced by Madame Odintsov when, on the following day, Arkady informed her that it was his intention to accompany Bazarov. Rather, she looked distraught and weary. Katia glanced at him gravely and in silence, and the Princess went so far as to cross herself under her shawl--a precaution against the young men observing the gesture. Sitnikov too was dumbfounded at having just entered the breakfast-room in a new and most elegant suit (this time _not_ of "Slavophil" cut, not to mention the fact that he had also had the pleasure of amazing his temporary valet with the multitude of his shirts), only to find himself confronted with the prospect of being deserted by his comrades! He shuffled and wriggled like a hare driven to the edge of a covert, and blurted out, almost in panic-stricken fashion, that he too had a great mind to depart. Nor did Madame Odintsov make any great effort to dissuade him.

"I have an exceedingly comfortable _koliaska_," the unfortunate young man said to Arkady, "and I could give you a lift in it, and leave Evgenii Vasilitch to use your _tarantass_, which would suit him better than the _koliaska_."

"But I should not like to take you so far out of your way, for the distance to my home is considerable."

"That would not matter, that would not matter. I have plenty of time to spare, and also some business to do in that direction."

"What? Leasehold business again?" inquired Arkady disparagingly. But Sitnikov was so distraught that he forbore to giggle in his usual fashion.

"I can guarantee that the _koliaska_ is comfortable," he repeated. "Indeed, it could hold all three of us."

"Do not vex Monsieur Sitnikov by refusing," put in Madame Odintsov.

So, with a meaning glance at her, Arkady nodded assent to Sitnikov.

Breakfast over, the guests departed. Anna Sergievna offered Bazarov her hand.

"I hope we shall meet again?" she said.

"Only if you wish it," he replied.

"Then we _shall_ meet again."

The first to issue upon the verandah and enter Sitnikov's _koliaska_ was Arkady. The butler assisted him obsequiously, although Arkady could with equal readiness have struck the man or burst into tears. As for Bazarov, he took possession of the _tarantass_.

Khokhlovskïe Viselki reached, Arkady waited until Thedot, the local posting-master, had harnessed fresh horses, and then, approaching the _tarantass_, said to Bazarov with his old smile:

"Evgenii, take me with you. I should like to come to your place, after all."

"Get in, then," muttered Bazarov.

This made Sitnikov, who had been walking up and down beside his conveyance, and whistling, fairly gasp. Nevertheless the heartless Arkady removed his luggage from the _koliaska_, seated himself beside Bazarov, and, according his late fellow-traveller a courteous bow, shouted: "Right away!" The _tarantass_ started, and soon was lost to view. Much taken aback, Sitnikov gazed at his coachman. But the latter was flicking the flanks of the trace horse with his whip, and therefore Sitnikov had no choice but to leap into the vehicle, to shout to a couple of peasants: "Off with your caps, you rascals!" and be driven to the town, whither he arrived at a late hour, and where, on the following day, he declared to Madame Kukshin that he had had enough of "those odious churls and upstarts."

On Arkady seating himself beside Bazarov in the _tarantass_, he pressed his hand, and Bazarov seemed to divine the meaning of the silent hand-clasp, and to appreciate it. During the previous night the elder man had never once closed his eyes. Also, for several days past he had neither smoked a cigar nor eaten more than the merest scrap of food. Indeed, as he sat in the _tarantass_, his fine-drawn profile, under the overshadowing cap, looked sharper and grimmer than ever.

"Give me a cigar, will you?" he said. "Also, pray look at my tongue, and tell me if it has a bilious appearance."

"Yes, it has," replied Arkady.

"I thought so, for this cigar seems tasteless. Moreover, the infernal thing has come unrolled."

"You have changed a good deal of late?" hazarded Arkady.

"I daresay. But I shall be myself again, soon. The only thing now troubling me is the fact that my mother is so good-naturedly fussy. Should one's paunch not be projecting, or should one not eat at least ten meals a day, she relapses into despair. My father, of course, is different, for he has been all over the world, and knows what is what. This cigar is simply unsmokable." And Bazarov consigned it to the dust of the roadway.

"The distance to your place is twenty-five versts, I suppose?" queried Arkady.

"It is so. But inquire of that sage there." And Bazarov pointed to the peasant (an _employé_ of Thedot's) who was seated on the box.

The "sage" in question replied that he "could not say exactly," since the verst-posts in those parts had not been measured out; after which he went on to swear at the shaft horse for "kicking" its "jowl about"--that is to say, jerking its head up and down.

"Aye, aye," commented Bazarov. "Take warning from me, my young friend. An instructive example sits before you--an example of the vanity of this world. By a single thread does the destiny of every man hang, and at any moment there may open before him an abyss into which he and his may plunge. For always he is laying up for himself misfortune."

"At what are you hinting?" asked Arkady.

"At nothing. I am merely saying outright that you and I have behaved very foolishly. However, why talk of it? I have noticed that in surgical operations it is the patient who fights against his hurt who soonest gets well."

"I do not understand you," Arkady said. "So far as I can see, you have nothing whatsoever to complain of."

"You cannot understand me? Well, mark this: that you had far better go and break stones by the roadside than allow a woman to obtain even the least hold over you. Such a thing is sheer" (he nearly said "Romanticism," but changed his mind) "rubbish."

"Perhaps you do not believe me?" he went on. "Nevertheless, I tell you that, though you and I have been cultivating feminine society, and enjoying it, the sense of relief when such society is abandoned is like taking a cold bath on a summer's day. Never ought a man to touch such follies. Always he ought, as the excellent Spanish saying has it, 'to remain as the beasts of the field.' Look here," he added to the peasant on the box. "Do you, my man of wisdom, possess a wife?"

The peasant turned a portion of a flat, near-sighted visage in the friends' direction.

"A wife?" he repeated. "Yes, I do. Why shouldn't I?"

"Never mind that. Do you ever beat her?"

"My wife? Sometimes. But never without good cause."

"Excellent! And does she ever beat _you_?"

The peasant gave his reins a jerk.

"What a thing, _barin_!" he exclaimed. "Surely you must be joking?" Evidently the question had offended him.

"You hear that, Arkady Nikolaievitch?" said Bazarov. "You and I have been similarly beaten. That is what comes of being gentry."

Arkady laughed in spite of himself, but Bazarov turned away, and did not speak again until the end of the journey.

To Arkady the twenty-five versts seemed like fifty; but at length there came into view, on the slope of a low hill, the homestead of the manor where Bazarov's parents resided. On one side of it, amid a clump of young birch trees, there could be seen the servants' quarters under their thatched roofs; while at the door of the nearest hut a couple of fur-capped peasants were engaged in a contest of mutual abuse.

"You are an old pig!" one of them said to the other. "And that is worse than being a young one."

"Your wife is a witch," retorted the other.

"From the lack of restraint in their bearing," commented Bazarov, "as well as from the playfulness of their terms of speech, you will gather that my father's peasantry are not downtrodden. But here is my father himself. I can see him stepping out on to the verandah. He will have heard the sound of our collar-bells. Yes, it _is_ he! I recognise his figure. But how grey he looks, poor old fellow!"

XX

Bazarov leant forward from the _tarantass_, and Arkady, peering over his friend's shoulder, beheld, on the entrance steps of the manor-house, a tall, thin man with dishevelled hair and a narrow, aquiline nose. Clad in an old military tunic of which the front was flying open, he was standing with legs apart, a long pipe in his mouth, and eyes blinking in the glare of the sunlight.

The horses pulled up.

"So you have come at last!" exclaimed Bazarov's father, still continuing to smoke (though, as he did so, the stem of the pipe was rattling and shaking between his fingers). "Now, jump out, jump out!"

Again and again he embraced his son.

"Eniusha, Eniusha!"[1] the tremulous voice of an old woman also cried as the door of the house opened and there appeared on the threshold a short, rotund old dame in a white cap and a short striped blouse. Gasping and staggering, she would have fallen had not Bazarov hastened to support her. As he did so her fat old arms clasped him around the neck, and her head sank upon his bosom. All then was still for a moment. Only her convulsive sobs broke the silence. Meanwhile Bazarov Senior breathed hard, and blinked more vigorously than ever.

"Enough, enough, Arisha!" he said at length with a glance at Arkady, who had remained standing beside the _tarantass_ (and even the peasant on the box-seat had turned away his head). "Pray cease, I tell you. This is not necessary. I beg of you to cease."

"Ah, Vasili Ivanitch!" whimpered the poor old woman. "To think of the long while since last I saw my Eniusha, my own, my darling boy!" Still keeping her arms clasped around Bazarov, she withdrew her ruffled, convulsed, tear-stained face from his breast, looked at him for a moment with blissful, yet comical, eyes, and glued herself again to his bosom.

"Yes, yes," said Vasili Ivanitch. "Such is in the nature of things. But had we not better go indoors? See! Evgenii has brought a guest!"

With a slight scrape and a bow, he added to Arkady:

"Pray pardon us, sir, but you will understand the situation. A woman's weakness--ahem!--and a mother's heart."

His lips, chin, and eyebrows too were working. Evidently he was striving to master himself, and to appear totally indifferent. Arkady responded to his bow with a like salutation.

"Yes, yes, dear mother; let us go indoors," said Bazarov. Leading the shaking old lady into the house, he seated her in a cosy chair, bestowed upon his father another hurried embrace, and then presented Arkady.

"I am glad indeed to make your acquaintance!" said Vasili Ivanitch. "I am glad indeed! But do not expect too much of us, my dear sir. My establishment is organised on simple lines; it is placed on what I might call 'a war footing.' Come, come, Arina! Pray calm yourself, and attend to your duties as a hostess. Oh, fie, to give way in such a manner! What will our guest think of you?"

"My dear, I do not know the gentleman's name," the old lady sobbed through her tears.

"Arkady Nikolaievitch," prompted Vasili Ivanitch in an undertone, but with great ceremony.

"Then pray pardon a foolish old woman, sir." Arina Vlasievna blew her nose, inclined her head to right and left, and wiped each eye in turn as she did so. "Yes, pray pardon me, but I had thought never again to see my darling boy before I died."

"But, you see, we _have_ seen him again," said Vasili Ivanitch. "Here, Taniushka!"--this to a barefooted serf girl of thirteen who, clad in a bright red cotton frock, had been an interested, but timid, observer in the doorway. "Bring your mistress a glass of water on a salver. Do you hear? And you, gentlemen," he continued with old-fashioned sprightliness, "will you be so good as to step into the study of a retired veteran?"

"First another kiss, Eniusha," gasped Arina Vlasievna. Then, as Bazarov bent over her form, she added: "How handsome you have grown!"

"Handsome or not, he is human," said Vasili Ivanitch. "Wherefore, now that you have satisfied your mother's heart, I look to you to see also to the satisfaction of our honoured guests. For than yourself no one knows better that nightingales cannot be fed on air."

This caused the old lady to rise from her chair, and to exclaim:

"Yes, yes: in one moment, Vasili Ivanitch. The table shall be laid, and I myself will hurry to the kitchen, and see that the _samovar_ be got ready. Everything shall be done. Why, it must be three years since last I gave Eniusha a meal."

"Yes, three years, dear wife. But now bustle about, and do not let yourself get flurried. Gentlemen, accompany me, I beg of you. But here is Timotheitch coming to pay you his respects. How delighted he looks, the old rascal! Now, pray favour me with your company."

And he strode fussily ahead with much shuffling and creaking of flat-soled slippers.

The Bazarovian establishment consisted of six small rooms, of which one--the room to which Vasili Ivanitch was now conducting our friends--was looked upon as the study. Between its two windows there stood a fat-legged table, strewn with dusty, fusty papers; on the walls hung a number of Turkish weapons, _nagaiki_,[2] and swords, a couple of landscapes, a few anatomical plates, a portrait of Hufeland,[3] a black-framed monogram done in hair, and a diploma protected with a glass front; between two large birchwood cupboards stood a ragged, battered leathern sofa; on shelves lay huddled a miscellany of books, boxes, stuffed birds, jars, and bladders; and, lastly, in a corner reposed a broken electric battery.

"Already I have warned you," said Vasili Ivanitch to Arkady, "that we live here, so to speak, _en bivouac_."

"Make no excuses," put in Bazarov. "Kirsanov knows that you and I are not Croesuses, and that no butler is kept. But where can we find Arkady a bed? That is the question."

"We have an excellent room in the wing, where he would be most comfortable."

"You have added a wing, then?"

"Yes, Evgenii Vasilitch," Timotheitch interposed. "At least, a bathroom."

"But it is to a room _next_ the bathroom that I am referring," Vasili Ivanitch hastened to explain. "However, that will not matter, since it is now summer time. I will run up there at once, and see that it is put in order. Meanwhile, Timotheitch, fetch in the luggage. To you, Evgenii, I will allot the study. _Cuique suum._"[4]

"There!" said Bazarov to Arkady as soon as his father had left the room. "Is he not just such a jolly, good-hearted, queer old fellow as your own father, though in a different way? He chatters just as he always used to do."

"Yes; and your mother seems an excellent woman."

"She is. Moreover, you can see that she does not attempt to hide her feelings. Only wait and see what a dinner she will give us!"

"But as you were not expected to-day," put in Timotheitch, who had just re-entered with Bazarov's portmanteau, "no beef has been got into the house."

"Never mind. Let us dine _without_ beef--or, for that matter, without anything at all. 'Poverty is no crime.'"

"How many souls[5] are there on your father's property?" asked Arkady.

"It is not his property; it is my mother's. The number of souls on it is, I think, fifteen."

"No, twenty-two," corrected Timotheitch with an air of pride. The next moment the sound of shuffling slippers was heard once more, and Vasili Ivanitch re-entered.

"Your room will be ready for you in a few minutes," he announced grandiloquently to Arkady. "Meanwhile, here is your servant." He pointed to a close-cropped urchin who, clad in an out-at-elbows blue _kaftan_ and an odd pair of shoes, had also made his appearance. "His name is Thedika, and, for all my son's injunction, I had better repeat to you not to expect too much of him--though certainly he will be able to fill your pipe for you. I presume that you smoke?"

"I do, but only cigars."

"A commendable rule! I too prefer cigars, but find them extremely difficult to procure in this isolated part of the country."

"Have done with bewailing your poverty," Bazarov good-naturedly interrupted. "Rather, seat yourself on this sofa, and take a rest."

Vasili Ivanitch smilingly did as he was bidden. Extremely like his son in features (save that his forehead was lower and narrower, and his mouth a trifle wider), he was for ever on the move--now shrugging his shoulders as though his coat cut him under the armpits, now blinking, now coughing, now twitching his fingers. In this he was sharply differentiated from his son, whose most distinguishing characteristic was his absolute immobility.

"Have done with bewailing my poverty?" repeated the old man. "Why, you cannot surely think that I would weary our guest with complaints concerning our isolation? As a matter of fact, a man of brains need _never_ be isolated, and I myself do everything in my power to avoid becoming moss-grown, and falling behind the times."

Extracting from his pocket a new yellow handkerchief which he had contrived to lay hands upon while proceeding to Arkady's room, he continued, as he flourished the handkerchief in the air:

"Of the fact that, at some cost to myself, I have organised my peasantry on the _obrok_ system, and apportioned them one-half, even more, of my land, I will not speak, since I conceive that to have been my duty, as well as a measure dictated by prudence (though no other landowner in the neighbourhood would have done as much). Rather, I am referring to scholarships and to science."

"I see that you have here _The Friend of Health_ for 1855," remarked Bazarov.

"Yes, a friend sent it me," Vasili Ivanitch hastened to explain. "Phrenology too we take into account" (he addressed this last to Arkady rather than to Bazarov, while accompanying it with a nod towards a small plaster bust of which the cranial surface was divided into a series of numbered squares). "Yes indeed! Nor are we ignorant of Schönlein[6] and Rademacher."

"In the province of ---- you still believe in Rademacher?" queried Bazarov.

Vasili Ivanitch laughed.

"In the province of ---- we still believe in ----? Ah, gentlemen! Hardly could you expect us to move as fast as you do. You find us in a state of transition. In my day, the humoralist Hoffmann and the vitalist Braun had already come to be looked upon with ridicule (and their fulminations undoubtedly seem absurd); but now you have replaced Rademacher with a new authority, and are making obeisance to that authority exactly as though in twenty years' time he too will not have fallen into contempt."

"Let me tell you, for your comforting," said Bazarov, "that we ridicule all medicine, and render obeisance to no one."

"What? Do you not wish to become a doctor?"

"Yes; but the one thing does not preclude the other."

Vasili Ivanitch raked out his pipe until only a glowing morsel of ash remained.

"Perhaps so, perhaps so," he said. "That point I will not dispute. For who am I that I should dispute such things--I who am a mere retired army doctor, _et voilà tout_--an army doctor who has taken to agriculture?"

With that he turned to Arkady.

"Do you know, I served under your grandfather," he said. "He was then in command of a brigade. Many and many a review have I seen. And the society in which I mixed, the men whom I had as comrades! Yes, this humble individual has felt the pulses of Prince Vitzentschein and Zhukovsky, and also known all the leaders of the Southern Army of '14." He pursed his lips impressively. "At the same time, of course, my department was a separate one from theirs. It was the department of the lancet, you understand. Your grandfather stood high in the esteem of every one, and was a true soldier."

"We will agree that he was a decent old curmudgeon," drawled Bazarov.

"To think of speaking so, Evgenii!" exclaimed the old man. "General Kirsanov was not one of those who----"

"Never mind him. As we were driving hither I greatly admired your birch plantation. It is doing splendidly."

Vasili Ivanitch's face brightened instantly.

"Yes, and see what a garden I have made!" he exclaimed. "Every tree in it has been planted with my own hands--orchard trees, and bush fruit trees, and every sort of medicinal herb. Ah, young sirs, though you may be wise in your generation, many a truth did old Paracelsus[7] discover _in herbis et verbis et lapidibus_. For myself, I have now retired from practice; yet twice a week am I given a chance to refurbish my ancient store of knowledge, since folk come to me for advice, and I cannot well turn them away. In particular do the poor seek my help, since there is no other doctor hereabouts. Yet stay! A certain retired major dabbles in the art. Once I asked him whether he had ever _studied_ medicine, and he replied that he had not, that all that he did he did 'out of philanthropy'! 'Out of philanthropy'! Ha, ha, ha! What think you of that, eh? Ha, ha, ha!"

"Fill me a pipe, Thedika," said Bazarov curtly.

"And there was another doctor who came to visit a patient in this neighbourhood," continued Vasili Ivanitch in a tone of mock despair. "But by the time he arrived the patient had already joined his forefathers, and the servant of the house would not admit the doctor, saying that the latter's services were no longer required. This the doctor had scarcely expected, and he was rather taken aback. 'Did the _barin_ gasp before he died?' he inquired. 'He did, sir,' was the reply. 'Very much?' 'Yes, very much.' 'Good!--And the doctor returned home. Ha, ha, ha!"

Yet no one laughed except the old man himself. True, Arkady contrived to summon up a smile, but Bazarov only stretched himself and yawned. The conversation lasted about an hour, and then Arkady managed to get away to his room, which he found to consist of the vestibule to the bathroom, but at the same time to be clean and inviting. Soon afterwards Taniushka arrived to announce dinner.