Part 19

"To whom? To Arkady Nikolaievitch?" re-echoed Bazarov bewilderedly. "Oh, you mean that young cockerel of ours? No, no--do not disturb him, for he has just joined the company of the jackdaws. You need not be surprised at these words--they do not mean that delirium is setting in; they are merely a metaphor. Well, it is to Madame Odintsov, the lady landowner of this neighbourhood, that I desire a messenger to be sent. I suppose you have heard of her?" (Vasili Ivanitch nodded assent.) "All that the messenger need say is that Evgenii Vasilitch sends his compliments, and is dying. Will you do this?"

"Of course I will, Evgenii! But why think that you are going to die? Come, come! Were such a thing to happen, where would be the justice of the world?"

"I could not say. I only know that I desire the messenger to be sent."

"He shall start at once, and I myself will write the letter."

"No, no: that will not be necessary. Merely let the messenger deliver my greeting. That, and nothing more. Now I will return to my red dogs. How curious it is that, though I strive to concentrate my thoughts upon death, there results from them nothing--I see before me only a great blur!"

And he turned his face wearily to the wall, while Vasili Ivanitch left the room, ascended to the bedroom above, and fell upon his knees before the sacred _ikons_.

"Pray, Arina, pray!" he moaned. "Our son is dying!"

On the doctor arriving, the latter proved to be the district physician who had failed to produce hell-stone when required. After an examination of the patient he prescribed a watching course, and also added a few words as to a possible recovery.

"Have you ever known people in my condition _not_ set out for the Elysian Fields?" asked Bazarov sharply as he caught hold of the leg of a table which stood beside his sofa, and shook it until the table actually altered its position. "See my strength!" he continued. "All of it is still there, yet I must go hence! To think that, whereas an old man has lost touch with life, I should----! Ah, however much you may deny death, it never will deny _you_.... I hear some one weeping. Who is it?" There was a pause. "Is it my mother? Poor soul! No one will be left for her to stuff with her marvellous _borstchi_.[1] And you, Vasili Ivanitch--are you too whimpering? Come, come! If Christianity cannot help you, try to become a Stoic philosopher. You have often enough boasted of being one."

"Aye, a fine philosopher I, to be sure!" sobbed poor old Vasili with the tears hopping down his cheeks.

Thereafter Bazarov grew hourly worse, for the disease was taking the rapid course inevitable under the circumstances. Yet his powers of memory were unimpaired, and he understood everything that was said to him, for as yet he was making a brave fight to retain his faculties.

"No, I must not let my senses fail," he kept whispering to himself as he clenched his fists. "But oh, the folly of it all!" And then he would repeat to himself, over and over again, some such formula as "Eight and ten--what do they make?"

Meanwhile Vasili Ivanitch wandered about in a state bordering upon distraction--proposing first one remedy, and then another, and constantly covering up his son's feet.

"Suppose we wrap him in an ice-sheet?" he suggested once in a tone of agony. "How, too, about an emetic, or a mustard plaster on his stomach, or a little bloodletting?"

But to each and all of these remedies the doctor (whom Vasili Ivanitch had begged to remain in the house) demurred. Likewise the doctor drank the patient's lemonade, and then requested to be given a pipe and "something warm and strengthening"--to wit, a glassful of _vodka_. Meanwhile Arina Vlasievna sat on a chair by the door, and only at intervals retired to pray. It seemed that a few days earlier she had let fall, and broken, a toilet mirror, and that all her life long she had looked upon such an occurrence as an evil omen. With her, in silence, sat Anfisushka; while, as for Timotheitch, he had departed with the message to Madame Odintsov.

That night Bazarov did not improve, for he was racked with high fever; but as morning approached, the fever grew a little easier, and after he had asked Arina Vlasievna to perform his toilet, and had kissed her hand, he managed to swallow a little tea: which circumstance caused Vasili Ivanitch to pluck up courage, and to exclaim:

"Thank God, the crisis has both come and gone!"

"Do not be too sure of that," rejoined Bazarov. "For what does the term 'crisis' signify? Some one once invented it, shouted 'Crisis!' and congratulated himself ever after. Extraordinary how the human race continues to attach credence to mere words! For example, tell a man that he is a fool, yet refrain from assaulting him, and he will be downcast; but tell him that he is a man of wisdom, yet give him no money, and he will be overjoyed."

So reminiscent of Bazarov's former sallies was this little speech that Vasili Ivanitch's heart fairly overflowed.

"Bravo!" he cried, clapping his hands in dumb show. "Well said!"

Bazarov smiled a sad smile.

"Then you think," said he, "that the 'crisis' is either approaching or retiring?"

"I know that you are better. That I can see for myself. And the fact rejoices me."

"Well, it is not always a bad thing to rejoice. But have you sent word to, to--to _her_? You know whom I mean?"

"Of course I have, Evgenii."

The improvement did not long continue, for to it there succeeded attacks of pain. Vasili Ivanitch sat by the bed: and as he did so it seemed as though something in particular were worrying the old man. Several times he tried to speak, and each time he failed. But at length he contrived to gasp out:

"Evgenii! Son! My dearest son! My own beloved son!"

Even Bazarov could not remain wholly indifferent to such an unwonted appeal. Turning his head a little, and making an evident effort to shake off the unconsciousness that was weighing him down, he murmured:

"What is it, my father?"

"This, Evgenii." And all of a sudden the old man fell upon his knees beside the bed. "Evgenii, you are better now, and with God's help will recover; but do, in any case, seize this hour to comfort me and your mother by fulfilling all the duties of a Christian. Yes, though to say this is painful for me, how much more terribly would it hurt me if--if this chance were to pass for ever, Evgenii! Think, oh think of what----"

The old man could say no more, while over the son's face and closed eyes there passed a curious expression. A pause followed. Then Bazarov said:

"To comfort you, I will not altogether refuse your request; but, since you yourself have said that I am better, surely there can be no need for hurry?"

"Yes, you _are_ better, Evgenii--you _are_ better; but who can say what may lie in the dispensation of God? Whereas, once this duty shall have been fulfilled----"

"Yet I will wait a little," interrupted Bazarov. "This much, however, I will concede: that, should you prove to be wrong in your surmise as to my recovery, I will allow the Last Sacrament to be administered."

"And, Evgenii, I beg of you to----"

"I will wait a little, I repeat. And now let me go to sleep. Do not disturb me."

And he replaced his head in its former position, while the old man rose from his knees, reseated himself in the chair, rested his chin upon his hands, and fell to biting his fingers.

Presently Vasili's ear caught the rumble of a light carriage--the sound which is always so distinguishable in a quiet country spot. Nearer and nearer came the sound of the wheels; nearer and nearer came the hard breathing of horses. Springing from his chair, he rushed to the window. Into the courtyard of the mansion there was turning a two-seated, four-horsed buggy! Without stopping to think what this could mean, he darted forward to the front door, where, transported with joy, he was just in time to see a liveried footman open the door of the vehicle, and assist thence a lady in a black cloak, with a veil of the same hue.

"I am Madame Odintsov," she said. "Is Evgenii Vasilitch still alive? I presume you are his father? I have brought with me a doctor."

Even as she spoke the doctor in question--a German-looking little individual in spectacles--descended in a slow and dignified manner from the buggy.

"O angel of mercy!" cried Vasili Ivanitch as, seizing her hand, he pressed it convulsively to his lips. "Yes, our Evgenii is still alive! And now he will be saved! Wife! Wife! There is an angel come to us from Heaven!"

"What?" responded the old woman with a gasp as she came running out of the hall. So lost in bewilderment was she that, falling at Anna Sergievna's feet, she actually began madly to kiss the hem of the visitor's cloak.

"Come, come!" Madame exclaimed. "What does all this mean?"

But Arina Vlasievna was deaf to everything, and Vasili Ivanitch too could only continue repeating:

"There is an angel come to us from Heaven! There is an angel come to us from Heaven! There is an angel come to us from Heaven!"

"_Wo ist der Kranke_? (Where is the patient)?" asked the doctor with a touch of impatience.

This restored Vasili Ivanitch to his senses.

"Come this way, come this way," he said. "Yes, pray follow me, _Werthester Herr Kollega_" (titles based upon the strength of bygone memories).

For answer the German exclaimed "Eh?", and pulled a not very gracious smirk.

Vasili Ivanitch led the way to the study.

"Here is the doctor brought by Madame Anna Sergievna Odintsov," he said as he bent over his son.

"She herself too is here."

Bazarov opened his eyes with a start.

"What do you say?" he asked.

"I say that Madame Anna Sergievna Odintsov is here, and that she has brought with her this good doctor."

Bazarov peered around.

"Where is Anna Sergievna?" he murmured. "Do you say that she is here? Then I wish to see her."

"You shall see her, Evgenii; but first of all I must have a chat with this gentleman, and tell him the story of your illness: for Sidor Sidorovitch" (that was the name of the district physician) "has gone home, and a short consultation must be held."

Bazarov eyed the German.

"All right," he said. "Hold your consultation as soon as you like. Only, do not speak in Latin, for I know the meaning of the words _Jam moritur."_

"_Der Herr scheint des Deutschen mächtig zu sein_," the newly-arrived disciple of Æsculapius remarked to Vasili Ivanitch.

"_Ich habe_----" the old man began; then added: "But perhaps we had better speak in Russian, my dear sir?"

And the consultation followed.

Half an hour later Vasili Ivanitch conducted Anna Sergievna into the study. As the doctor passed out he whispered to her that recovery was hopeless.

She glanced at Bazarov, and halted as though petrified, so striking was the bloodshot, deathlike face, with the dim eyes turned so yearningly in her direction. Nevertheless her feeling was one merely of chill, oppressive terror, while at the same moment there flashed through her brain the thought that, if she had loved him, no such feeling could now have been present.

"I thank you," he said with an effort. "I had not expected this, and you have done a kind act in coming. So we meet once more, even as you foretold!"

"Has not Madame Anna Sergievna indeed been kind?" put in Vasili Ivanitch.

"Father, pray leave us," said Bazarov. "I know, Anna Sergievna, that you will excuse him. For at such a time as this----" And he nodded towards his weak, prostrate form.

Vasili Ivanitch left the room.

"A second time I thank you," continued Bazarov. "To have acted so is worthy of the Tsars. For they say that even the Sovereign visits a deathbed when requested."

"Evgenii Vasilitch, I hope that----"

"Let us speak plainly. My course is run. I am under the wheel, and we need not think of the future. Yet how curious it is that to each individual human being death, old though it is as an institution, comes as a novelty!... Nevertheless, it shall not make me quail: and then there will fall the curtain, and then--well, then they will write _Fuit_." There followed a feeble gesture. "But what did I want to say to you? That I have loved you? There was a time when the phrase 'I love' had for me no meaning; and now it will have less than ever, seeing that love is a form, and that my particular embodiment of it is fast lapsing towards dissolution. It Ah, how perfect you are! You stand there as beautiful as---"

There passed over Anna Sergievna an involuntary shudder.

"Nay," he said. You need not be afraid. "But will you not sit down? Seat yourself near me, but not too near, for my malady is infectious."

She crossed the room with a rapid step, and seated herself beside the sofa on which he was lying.

"O woman of kind heart!" he whispered. "And to think that you are beside me once more! To think that you, so pure and fresh and young, are in this sorry room! Well, good-bye, and may you live long, and enjoy your time while you may. Of all things in this world long life is the most desirable: yet you can see for yourself what an ugly spectacle I, a half-crushed, but still wriggling, worm, am now become. There was a time when I used to say: 'I will do many things in life, and refuse to die before I have completed those tasks, for I am a giant': but now I have indeed a giant's task in hand--the task of dying as though death were nothing to me.... No matter. I am not going to put my tail between my legs."

He broke off, and groped for his tumbler. She handed it him without drawing off her glove. Her breath was coming in jerks.

"It will not be long before you will have forgotten me," he went on. "For a dead mortal is no companion for a living one. I daresay that my father will tell you what a man is being lost to Russia; but that is all rubbish. Nevertheless, do not undeceive him, for he is old, old. Rather, comfort him as you would comfort a child, and also be kind to my mother. Two such mortals as them you will not find in all _your_ great world--no, not though you search for them with a candle by daylight.... Russia needs me, indeed! Evidently she does _not_ need me. Whom, then, does she need? She needs shoemakers, tailors, butchers.... What does a butcher sell? He sells meat, does he not?... I think that I am wandering--I seem to see before me a forest...."

He pressed his hand to his forehead, and Anna Sergievna bent over him.

"Evgenii Vasilitch," she said, "I am here."

With a combined movement he took her hand and raised himself a little.

"Good-bye," he said with a sudden spasm of energy and a last flash of his eyes. "Good-bye.... I kissed you that time, did I not, when, when----?... Ah, breathe now upon the expiring lamp, that it may go out in peace."

She pressed her lips gently to his forehead.

"Enough," he murmured as he sank back upon the pillow. "Now let there come--darkness."

She left the room quietly.

"Well?" whispered Vasili Ivanitch.

"He has gone to sleep," she replied in a voice that was scarcely audible.

But Bazarov was not fated to go to sleep. Rather, as night approached he sank into a state of coma, and, on the following day, expired. Father Alexis performed over him the last rites of religion, and at the moment when Extreme Unction was being administered, and the holy oil touched his breast, one of the dying man's eyelids raised itself, and over the face there seemed to flit something like an expression of distaste at the sight of the priest in his vestments, the smoking censer, and the candles before the _ikon._

Finally, when Bazarov's last breath had been drawn, and there had arisen in the house the sound of "the general lamentation," something akin to frenzy came upon Vasili Ivanitch.

"I declare that I protest!" he cried with his face blazing and quivering with fury, and his fist beating the air as in menace of some one. "I declare that I protest, that I protest, that I protest!"

Upon that old Arina Vlasievna, suffused in tears, laid her arms around his neck, and the two sank forward upon the floor. Said Anfisushka later, when relating the story in the servants' quarters: "There they knelt together--side by side, their heads drooping like those of two sheep at midday."

* * * * *

Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary and the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.

[1] Roast beef with horse-radish.

XXVIII

Since that time six months have passed, and there has fallen upon the country a "white" winter--a winter of clear, keen, motionless frosts, of deep, crackling snow, of pink-rimed trees, of pale-emerald heavens, of smoke-capped chimneys, of puffs of vapour from momentarily opened doors, of faces fresh and hard-bitten, of horses galloping headlong to thaw their frozen limbs. It is now the close of a January day, and the increasing chill of evening is nipping the still air in an ever-tightening vice as the sun sinks downward into a sea of red.

But in the windows of Marino there are lights burning, and Prokofitch, vested in a black tail-coat, a pair of white gloves, and a peculiar atmosphere of solemnity, is laying the table with seven covers. This is because a week ago there were solemnised in the tiny church of the parish--solemnised quietly, almost without a witness--two sets of nuptials: the nuptials of Arkady and Katia and those of Nikolai Petrovitch and Thenichka. And to-day Nikolai Petrovitch is offering his brother a farewell dinner, for the reason that Paul is on the point of departing for Moscow, whither Anna Sergievna has already removed after bestowing upon the younger of the two couples a handsome dowry.

At three o'clock precisely the company gathers around the board. Mitia too is present with his _niania_ (in nurse's cap), while Paul Petrovitch is seated between Katia and Thenichka, and the bridegrooms are ranged one on either side of their newly-wedded spouses. A change has taken place in our old acquaintances since last we saw them--they have improved, as regards the younger ones, both in appearance and in sedateness of demeanour. Only Paul Petrovitch looks thinner; though the circumstance imparts, if anything, an added touch of refinement and "grand-seignorishness" to his always expressive features. Thenichka, in particular, is a different person from what she was. Clad in a brand-new silken gown, and wearing a broad velvet band over her hair and a necklace around her throat, she holds herself with an immovable dignity, yet also with an immovable deference towards her surroundings. And meanwhile she smiles, as much as to say: "Pardon me, but _I_ am not responsible for this"; while the others respond with similar smiles, as though they too would be glad to excuse themselves for their share in the proceedings. Yet the fact that on every one present sits a touch of gravity and embarrassment becomes the company no less than do their other characteristics. Everywhere, too, there is to be seen such an anxious solicitude for mutual wants that the company could seem unanimously to be playing some simple-minded comedy; and though, of the guests, the quietest is Katia, it is plain, from her confidence of bearing, that, as a daughter-in-law, she has found favour in the eyes of Nikaiai Petrovitch.

At length the meal comes to an end, and Nikolai, rising and grasping a wine-glass, addresses Paul Petrovitch:

"Dearest brother, you are about to leave us. Yes, you are about to leave us. But not for long must you be absent, since I, for one, could never express to you how much I, how much I--that is to say, how much we But, to tell you the truth, I am not good at making a speech. Arkady, to you I depute the task."

"But I am not ready, Papa."

"Neither am I. However, Paul, I embrace you, and wish you every joy, and beg of you to return to us soon."

Whereupon Paul Petrovitch exchanges greetings all round (not excluding little Mitia), and, in particular, kisses Thenichka's hand (which she has not learnt to offer in the right way), drinks a twice-filled glass to the company at large, and says with a profound sigh: "May you all be happy, my friends! Farewell![1]" And though the English terminal flourish passes unnoticed, every one is touched with the benediction which has preceded it.

"Yes, and I drink to the memory of Bazarov," whispers Katia to her husband as she clinks glasses with him: but though, in response, he squeezes her hand, he decides not to propose the toast in public.

* * * * *

And here, apparently, there ought to follow the word _Finis_; but since some of my readers may care to know how each of the characters in the book is faring at the present day, I will satisfy that curiosity.

To take Anna Sergievna first, she has married--not for love, nor yet out of a sense of duty--a rising young statesman who is an intelligent legislator, a severely practical thinker, a man of strong will and eloquence, and a lover with a temperament as cold as ice. Nevertheless the pair reside on amicable terms, and may, in time, attain to happiness--nay, even to love.

As for the Princess, she is dead, and her memory perished with her.

The Kirsanovs, father and son, are settled at Marino, and appear to be righting their industrial affairs, in that Arkady has developed into a capable manager, and the estate now brings in a fair income. Nikolai Petrovitch, too, is constant in his endeavours to make peace on the property, and, riding systematically round it, delivers long speeches in the belief that only need the peasantry be "reasoned with"--that is to say, plied with the same words over and over again--for the _muzhik_ gradually to become a tractable animal. Yet Nikolai earns the approval neither of the educated gentry, who speak with affected jauntiness of the coming "'mancipation"[2] (they invariably give the syllable "an" a nasal inflection), nor of those uneducated landowners who roundly curse what they term "that ----'_mun_cipation." In other words, for both classes Nikolai Petrovitch is too "mild."

Katerina Sergievna has had a son born to her, and named him Kolia; Mitia is now a big, active, volubly lisping boy; and Thenichka (rather, Theodosia Nikolaievna) adores her daughter-in-law only less than her husband and Mitia. In fact, that adoration reaches the point that, should Katia sit down to the piano, Thenichka cannot leave her though the playing continue all day.

Then a word concerning Peter the valet. As much a lump of mingled stupidity and conceit as ever, he still pronounces his e's as u's, but has taken unto himself a wife, and, with her, a respectable dowry. The daughter of a market gardener of the neighbouring town, she had already refused two eligible _partis_ solely on the ground that they did not possess watches! But Peter possesses not only a watch, but also a pair of patent leather pumps.