Part 18

"When I left you at Marino I had no thought of this," said Arkady. "You are the dissembler, though, are you not? For when you say 'It is an excellent course to take,' you dissemble, as well as waste your time, seeing that I am well aware of your views on marriage."

"Merely my way of expressing myself. You see what I am doing at this moment. In my trunk is a vacant space. I am packing it with straw. And the same with life's trunk. To avoid leaving empty spaces therein we pad the interstices. You need not be offended. You cannot fail to remember what I really think of Katerina Sergievna. While some maidens earn cheap reputations by merely smiling at right moments, your _inamorata_ can show more--indeed, so much more that soon you will be (and very properly) under her thumb."

Slapping down the lid of the trunk, Bazarov rose from the floor.

"Now, farewell," he said. "No, I will not deceive you: we are parting for ever, and you know it. In my opinion you have acted wisely, for you were not meant to live the hard, bitter, reckless life of Nihilism--you lack at once the necessary coolness and the necessary venom. But this is not to say that in you there is not a due measure of youthful spirit. What I mean is that that asset alone is not sufficient for the work. The _dvorianin_ is powerless to progress beyond either well-bred effervescence or well-bred humility: and both sentiments are futile. For example, you have not yet been blooded, yet already you think yourself a man: whereas the two chief conditions of our existence are battle and bloodshed. Yes, the dust from our heels hurts your eyes, and the grime on our bodies makes you feel dirty. In other words, although you derive a certain gratification from indulging in self-criticism, and think no small beer of yourself, you have failed to grow to our stature. To us such things are vanities. Tools' of an altogether different kind are what we need for the task. Consequently I repeat that, though a fine young fellow enough, you are also just a little-minded, so-called 'liberal-minded' _baritch_[1]--what my father calls a 'product of evolution.'"

"Evgenii," was Arkady's sad reply, "we are parting for ever, yet this is all that you have to say to me!"

Bazarov scratched his head.

"Something else I could say, Arkady," he replied. "But I will not say that something--it would savour too much of Romanticism. Get married as soon as you can, line your nest, and beget plenty of offspring. Nor will those offspring be altogether fools, seeing that they will be born in due season, and not when you and I were.... My horses are ready and I must depart. Of the rest of the household I have taken leave already. Shall we embrace once more, eh?"

The tears gushed in torrents from Arkady's eyes as he flung himself upon his old friend and mentor.

"Ah, youth, youth!" commented Bazarov. "See what comes of being young! But before long, I know, Katerina Sergievna will have set things right. Yes, she will console you."

With a last good-bye he mounted the travelling cart, and, in the act of doing so, pointed to a pair of jackdaws which were sitting perched upon the stable roof.

"See!" he cried. "_There's_ an instructive lesson for you!"

"What do you mean?" queried Arkady.

"What?" was Bazarov's ejaculation. "Are you so ignorant of, or so forgetful of, natural history as not to know that the jackdaw is the most respected of family birds? Mark the good example before you. Farewell, señor!"

And with a clatter the cart started on its way.

Nor was Bazarov mistaken, for, even before nightfall, Arkady, deep in conversation with Katia, had completely forgotten his vanished instructor. Moreover, already the young fellow was beginning to play second fiddle to his _fiancée_: which circumstance the girl, on realising, in no way felt surprised at. So it was arranged that on the following day he should depart for Marino to interview his father; and in the meanwhile, Anna Sergievna, having no desire to hamper the young couple, merely observed such a show of propriety as involved her not leaving them together for long, but at the same time keeping at a distance the Princess, who, since the tidings of the impending union, had been in a state of lachrymose rancour. For herself, Anna Sergievna had at first feared that the spectacle of the young people's happiness would prove too much for her; but now the contrary proved to be the case, and she not only failed to feel hurt at the spectacle, but even found that it interested her and eventually softened her--a consummation which brought both relief and regret.

"Bazarov was right," she reflected. "It was mere curiosity, mere love of ease, mere egoism, mere----"

"Children, is love an empirical sentiment?" once she asked of Arkady and Katia: but neither of the pair understood her meaning. Moreover, they were fighting a little shy of her, since they could not altogether forget the conversation which they had involuntarily overheard; but in time Anna Sergievna succeeded in overcoming also this timidity, and found the task the more easy to perform in that she had succeeded also in overcoming her disappointment.

[1] A small squire.

XXVII

The old Bazarovs' delight at their son's return was the greater in that the event was so unexpected. To such an extent did Anna Vlasievna fuss and flounce about the house that Vasili Ivanitch likened her to a hen partridge (no doubt the short tail of her blouse _did_ impart to her rather a bird-like aspect); while, as regards Vasili himself, he grunted, and sucked the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, and, grasping the shank, inverted the bowl as though to make sure that it was secure, and, finally, parted his capacious lips, and gave vent to a noiseless chuckle.

"I am going to spend with you six whole weeks," said Bazarov. "But I desire to work, and therefore must not be disturbed."

"Before we will disturb you, you shall forget what my face looks like," replied Vasili Ivanitch.

And he kept his word; for, after allotting his son the study, he not only remained completely out of sight, but even prevented his wife from manifesting the least sign of tenderness.

"When Evgenii last visited us," he said to her, "you and I proved a little wearisome; so this time we must be more discreet."

Anna Vlasievna agreed, much as she lost by the arrangement, seeing that now she beheld her son only at meal times, and feared, even then, to speak to him.

"Eniushenka," she would begin--then, before he had had time to raise his eyes, pluck nervously at the strings of her cap, and whisper: "Oh no; it was nothing," and address herself, instead, to Vasili Ivanitch; saying, for instance (with cheek on hand as usual): "My dear, which would our darling Eniusha prefer for dinner--cabbage soup or beef with horse-radish?" And when Vasili Ivanitch would reply: "Why should you not ask him yourself?" she would exclaim: "Oh no, for that might vex him."

But eventually Bazarov ceased to closet himself, in that there came an abatement of the work fever, and to it succeeded fits of depression, _ennui_, and an inordinate restlessness. In his every movement there began to loom a strange discontent, from his gait there disappeared its old firm, active self-confidence, and, ceasing to indulge in solitary rambles, he took to cultivating society, to attending tea in the drawing-room, to pacing the kitchen garden, and to joining Vasili Ivanitch in a silent smoking of pipes. Nay, on one occasion he even paid Father Alexis a visit!

At first the new order of things rejoiced Vasili Ivanitch's heart: but that joy proved short-lived.

"Though I could not say why, Eniusha makes me anxious," he confided to his spouse. "Not that he is discontented or ill-tempered--such things would not have mattered: rather, it is that he is sad and brooding, and never opens his lips. Would that he would curse you and me, for instance! Also, he is thinner; nor do I like the colour of his face."

"O God!" whispered the old woman. "Yet I may not even put my arms around his neck!"

From that time onwards Vasili Ivanitch began to make cautious attempts to question Bazarov concerning his work, his health, and his friend Arkady; but always Bazarov returned reluctant, indifferent replies, and once, when his father was for introducing the foregoing topics, said irritably:

"Why are you for ever tiptoeing around me? Your present manner is even worse than your former one."

"There, there--I did not mean anything," was poor Vasili Ivanitch's reply.

Political allusions proved equally fruitless. For instance, when Vasili Ivanitch was seeking to engage his son's interest on the score of the impending emancipation of the serfs and progress in general, the other muttered carelessly:

"Yesterday, when passing through the courtyard, I heard some peasant lads singing, not one of the good old songs, but I The age of truth is coming in, when hearts shall glow with love.' There's progress for you!"

Occasionally Bazarov would repair to the village, and, in his usual bantering fashion, enter into conversation with some peasant.

"Well," he said to a _muzhik_, "pray expound to me your views on life. For they tell me that in you lie the whole strength and the whole future of Russia--that you are going to begin a new epoch in our history, and to give us both a real language and new laws."

The peasant made no reply at the moment. Then he said:

"We might do all that if first we had a new chapel here."

"Tell me something, though, about the world in general," Bazarov interrupted. "The world stands on three fishes, does it not?"

"It does that, _batiushka_," the peasant replied with the quiet, good-humoured sweetness of the patriarchal age. "But above it stands the will of the masters. The _baré_ are our fathers, and the harder the _barin_ drives, the better for the _muzhik_."

Shrugging his shoulders contemptuously at this statement, Bazarov turned away, while the peasant slunk off homewards.

"What did he say?" asked a sullen-looking, middle-aged peasant who had been standing at the door of his hut during the course of the foregoing colloquy. "Was he talking of arrears of taxes?"

"Of arrears of taxes!" retorted the first peasant, his tone now containing not a trace of its late patriarchal sweetness, but, rather, a note of purely dry contempt. "He was chattering just for chattering's sake--he likes to hear his own tongue wag. Do not all of us know what a _barin_ and the likes of him are good for?"

"Aye," agreed the second peasant; whereafter, with much nodding of caps and gesticulating of fists, they fell to discussing their own affairs and requirements. So alas for Bazarov's scornful shrug of the shoulders! And alas for that knowledge of the way in which the peasant should be talked to whereof the young Nihilist had made such boast when disputing with Paul Petrovitch! In fact, never had it dawned upon the mind of the self-confident Bazarov that, in the eyes of the _muzhik_, he was no better than a pease-pudding.

However, he succeeded in discovering for himself an occupation. This was when, in bandaging a peasant's leg, Vasili Ivanitch's hands shook a little through senility, and his son hastened to his assistance: and from that time forth Bazarov acted as Vasili Ivanitch's partner, even though he maintained unabated his ridicule both of the remedies which he himself advised and of the father who hastened to put them into practice. Yet in no way did his son's raillery annoy Vasili Ivanitch: rather, it heartened the old man. Smoking his pipe, and drawing his dirty overall in to his waist with both thumbs, he would listen delightedly to the scoffer, and chuckle, and show his blackened teeth the more in proportion as the sallies contained a greater measure of venom. Nay, stupid or simply senseless as many of these witticisms were, he would frequently catch them up, and repeat them. To take one instance, he, for several days in succession, kept assuring every one in the village and in the town that "we call this the nine o'clock office"--the sole basis being the fact that once, on learning of his (Vasili Ivanitch's) habit of attending Matins, Bazarov had made use of the phrase in question.

"Thank God, Evgenii has ceased to mope," he confided in a whisper to his wife. "In fact, you should have heard him rating me to-day!"

Also, the thought that he had such an assistant in his labours filled the old man with pride.

"Yes, yes," he would say as he handed some peasant woman in a man's jacket a phial of medicinal water or a pot of cold cream, "you ought daily to thank God that my son happens to be staying with me, since otherwise you could not possibly have been treated according to the latest and most scientific methods. Do you understand? I say that even Napoleon, the Emperor of the French, has not at his disposal a better physician than my son."

And the peasant woman (who had come, it may be, to complain of "a lifting with the gripes"--an expression which probably she herself could not have explained) would bow, then proffer the three or four eggs which would be tied up in a corner of her neckcloth.

Also, when Bazarov extracted a tooth from the jaw of a travelling pedlar, Vasili Ivanitch could not allow even the very ordinary character of the tooth to prevent him from preserving it as a rarity, and showing it to Father Alexis.

"See what a fang!" he said. "And to think of the strength which Evgenii must possess! He lifted the pedlar clean from the ground! It was like uprooting an oak tree!"

"Splendid!" was Father Alexis' comment--he knew not what else to say, nor, for that matter, how else to get rid of the enthusiastic veteran.

Lastly, there was an occasion when a peasant from a neighbouring village brought his brother to be treated. Suffering from typhus, the patient was lying face downwards on the straw in the cart, and had reached the last stage, since already his body was covered with spots of a hectic nature, and he had long lost consciousness. To an expression of regret that resort had not sooner been had to medical aid, Vasili Ivanitch could add no more than an intimation that no hope was left: nor was he wrong, seeing that even before the peasant succeeded in conveying his brother back to the village, the sick man had breathed his last.

Three days later Bazarov entered his father's room with an inquiry for some hell-stone.

"I have some," said Vasili Ivanitch; "but what do you want it for?"

"For the cauterisation of a wound."

"A wound on whom?"

"A wound on myself."

"On yourself? Let me see the place. Where is it?"

"There--on that finger. To-day I went to the village whence they brought the typhus patient the other day; and though they tried to conceal the body, I succeeded in discovering it. Not for a long time had I had a chance of doing that sort of work."

"Yes?"

"And the sequel was that I cut myself, and, on repairing to the district physician, found that he did not possess what I wanted."

Vasili Ivanitch went white to the lips. Hurrying, without a word, into his study, he returned thence with some hell-stone. Bazarov was for carrying it away forthwith.

"No, no!" cried Vasili Ivanitch. "For God's sake allow me to see to this in person."

Bazarov smiled.

"You are indeed a keen practitioner," he commented.

"Do not jest, I beg of you. Show me the finger. No, it is not a large wound. Am I hurting it at all?"

"Not in the least. Have no fear. You can press it harder still if you like."

Vasili Ivanitch paused.

"Do you not think," he said, "that it would be better to cauterise the finger with an iron?"

"No, I do not. Moreover, that ought, in any case, to have been done sooner; whereas by now even the hell-stone is unlikely to prove effectual, seeing that, as you know, once absorbed into the system, the germ renders all remedies too late."

"How 'too late'?" gasped Vasili Ivanitch.

"What I say. Four hours have elapsed since the injury."

Vasili Ivanitch gave the wound a further cauterisation. "So the district physician had no hell-stone?" he queried.

"None."

"God in heaven! To think of that man calling himself a doctor, yet being without such an indispensable remedy!"

"You should have seen his lancets!" remarked Bazarov. Then he left the room.

Throughout that evening and the next few days Vasili Ivanitch kept making every possible excuse to enter his son's room; and though he never actually referred to the wound--he even strove to confine his conversation to purely extraneous subjects--his observation of his son remained so persistent, his solicitude so marked, that at length Bazarov, losing patience, bade him begone. Of course Vasili Ivanitch promised not to repeat the intrusion; and as a matter of fact he kept this promise the more religiously in that Arina Vlasievna (who had had the matter carefully concealed from her) was beginning to scent something in the wind, and to press for reasons why, during the previous night, her husband had never once closed his eyes. Accordingly, for the next two days Vasili Ivanitch faithfully observed the undertaking he had given; and that although the covert observation of his son's looks which he maintained showed them to be growing by no means to his liking: but on the third day, during dinner, Vasili Ivanitch could bear it no more, for Bazarov was sitting with his eyes lowered and his plate empty.

"You are eating nothing, Evgenii?" he said with his face composed to express absolute indifference. "In my opinion, the dinner is well cooked."

"The only reason why I am eating nothing," replied Bazarov, "is that I am not hungry."

"You have no appetite?" the old man queried timidly. "Also, is--is your head aching at all?"

"Yes. Why should it not ache?"

Arina Vlasievna began to prick up her ears.

"Do not be angry, Evgenii," Vasili Ivanitch continued, "b-but might I feel your pulse and examine you?"

Bazarov looked at him.

"You need not feel my pulse," he said. "Without that, I can tell that I have a touch of fever."

"You feel shivery, eh?"

"Yes. I think I will go and lie down. Pray make me a little lime-juice tea, for I seem to have caught a chill."

"Yes," Arina Vlasievna put in, "I heard you coughing last night."

"But it is only a chill," added Bazarov, and left the room.

So Arina Vlasievna set to work to make the lime-juice tea, and Vasili Ivanitch went into an adjoining room and tore his hair.

Bazarov did not get up again that day, but passed the night in a state of heavy coma. At one o'clock he opened his eyes with an effort, and, on seeing his father's pale face in the lamp-light, bade him depart. At once the other excused himself for the intrusion, but nevertheless returned on tiptoe, and, concealing himself behind the open doors of a cupboard, remained there to watch his son. Nor did Arina Vlasievna go to bed, but at intervals set the study door ajar, in order that she might "see how our Eniusha was sleeping" and look at Vasili Ivanitch: for though nothing of the latter was to be discerned except a bowed, motionless back, even that much afforded her a little comfort.

In the morning Bazarov attempted to rise, but his head swam, and blood gushed from his nose, so he desisted from the attempt. In silence Vasili Ivanitch tended him, and Arina Vlasievna came to ask him how he felt. He replied "Better," then turned his face to the wall. Instantly Vasili Ivanitch fell to gesticulating violently at his wife with both hands: which proceeding proved so far successful that, by dint of biting her lips, Arina Vlasievna contrived to force back the tears, and leave the room. Of a sudden everything in the house had seemed to turn dark. Everywhere faces looked drawn, and everywhere there was to be observed a curious stillness of which one cause, among others, was the fact that there had hastily been removed from the courtyard of the village a vociferous cock which no reasoning had been able to convince of the necessity of silence.

So Bazarov continued lying with his face to the wall. Once or twice Vasili Ivanitch essayed a tentative question or two, but the attempt only wearied Bazarov, and the old man at length subsided into an armchair, and sat nervously twitching his fingers. Next, Vasili repaired to the garden for a few minutes, and looked, as he stood there, like a statue which has been struck with immeasurable astonishment (never at any time was the expression of surprise absent from his features); whereafter he returned to his son's room, in the hope of evading questions on the part of his wife, but she took him by the hand, and grimly, almost threateningly asked: "What is the matter with our Eniusha?" and when Vasili strove to pull himself together, and to force a smile, there issued, to his horror, not a smile at all, but a sort of irresponsible laugh.

Earlier in the morning he had sent for a doctor to assist him; wherefore he now considered that it would be well to advise his son of the fact, lest Bazarov should lose his temper on discovering the fact in question for himself.

Vasili Ivanitch explained the situation, and then Bazarov turned himself about on the sofa, gazed at his father for a moment or two, and asked to be given something to drink. Vasili Ivanitch handed him some water, and seized the opportunity also to feel his son's forehead. It seemed to be on fire.

"My father," said Bazarov in a hoarse, dragging voice, "I fear that my course is run. The infection has caught me, and in a few days you will be laying me in my grave."

Some one might have thrust Vasili Ivanitch violently backwards, so sharply did he stagger.

"Evgenii," he gasped, "why say that? God have you in his keeping! It is merely that you have caught a chill."

"Come, come!" interrupted Bazarov, but in the same dragging tone as before. "It is useless to talk like that to a doctor. All the signs of infection are present. That you know for yourself."

"But--but where are the signs of--of infection?"

"Look at these. What do they mean?"

And Bazarov pulled up the sleeve of his shirt. What he showed his father was a number of red, angry-looking patches that were coming into view.

Vasili Ivanitch started and turned cold with fear. At length he contrived to stammer out:

"Yet--even supposing that, that there should be anything in the nature of infection----"

"Of pyæmia, you mean," the son prompted.

"Anything in the nature of epidemic infec----"

"Of pyæmia, I repeat," grimly, insistently corrected Bazarov. "Have you forgotten your textbooks?"

"Yes--well, have it your own way. But we will cure you, all the same."

"Fiddlesticks! But, apart from that question, I had scarcely looked to die so soon. To be frank, I think it hard upon me. And now you and my mother must fall back upon the fund of religious strength which lies within you. The hour to put it to the test has arrived." He drank some more water. "One particular request I desire to make while my brain is yet clear, for, by to-morrow, or the day after, it will, as you know, have failed, and even now I am not sure whether I am expressing myself sensibly, seeing that, as I was lying here just now, I seemed to see a pack of red dogs leaping around me, and yourself making a point at me as a dog does at a partridge. Yes, it was like being drunk. Can you understand what I say?"

"Yes, yes, Evgenii; you are talking quite sensibly."

"Very well. Now, I believe that you have sent for a doctor; and if the fact will give you any comfort, I too shall be pleased. But also I beg that you will send word to, to----"

"To Arkady Nikolaievitch?" the old man suggested.