[1]Used, as in French, in formal speech or that of a person addressing a social superior.
[1]Used, as in French, in formal speech or that of a person addressing a social superior.
The same day also saw Bazarov make Thenichka's acquaintance. This was when he was walking in the garden with Arkady, and discussing the question of why certain trees in the garden, especially oaks, had not prospered as they might have done. Said he:
"You ought to plant the place with as many silver poplars as you can, and also with Norwegian firs—limes too, if loam should first be added. For instance, the reason why this clump has done so well is that it is made up of lilacs and acacias, of which neither require much room. But hullo! There is some one sitting there!"
The persons seated in the arbour were Thenichka, Duniasha, and little Mitia. Bazarov halted, and Arkady nodded to Thenichka as to an old acquaintance. Then the pair passed on again, and Bazarov inquired of his companion:
"Who was she?"
"To whom are you referring?"
"You know to whom. My word, sheisgood-looking!"
Arkady explained, with a touch of embarrassment, the identity of Thenichka.
"Ah!" Bazarov remarked. "Then your father has not at all bad taste. Indeed, I commend it. But what a young dog he is! I too must be introduced."
And he turned back in the direction of the arbour.
"Evgenii!" exclaimed Arkady nervously as he followed his friend. "For God's sake be careful what you do!"
"You need not be alarmed. I know what is what. I am no rustic."
And, approaching Thenichka, he doffed his cap.
"Allow me to introduce myself," he said with a polite bow. "I am a friend of Arkady's, and a perfectly harmless individual."
Rising from her seat, Thenichka gazed at him in silence.
"Oh, and what a fine baby!" he continued. "Pray do not disturb yourself. Never yet have I cast upon a child an evil spell. But why are his cheeks so red? Is he cutting teeth?"
"Yes," replied Thenichka. "He has now cut four of them, and the gums are a little swelled."
"Then let me see them. Do not be afraid. I am a doctor."
With that he took the baby into his arms, and both Thenichka and Duniasha were astonished at the fact that it made no resistance, showed no fear.
"I see," he continued. "Well, everything is going right with him, and he will have plenty of teeth. Nevertheless, should he in any way ail, please let me know. Are you yourself well?"
"Yes, thank God!"
"'Thank God,' say I too, for health on the part of the mother is the chief point of all. And you?" he added, turning to Duniasha. The latter, ultra-prim of demeanour in the drawing-room, and ultra-frivolous of behaviour in the kitchen, answered with a giggle.
"Well, youlookall right. Here! Take your hero back again."
He replaced the baby in Thenichka's arms.
"How quiet he has been with you!" she exclaimed under her breath.
"Always children are quiet with me," he remarked. "You see, I know how to handle them."
"Andtheyknow when people are fond of them," put in Duniasha.
"True," assented Thenichka. "Though it is seldom that Mitia will go to any one's arms but mine."
"Would he come to me?" ventured Arkady, who, until now standing in the background, at this moment came forward towards the arbour. But on his attempting to wheedle Mitia to his arms, the infant threw back its head, and started to cry—a circumstance which greatly perturbed Thenichka.
"Another time—when he has come to be more used to me," said Arkady indulgently. And the two friends departed.
"What is her name?" asked Bazarov.
"Thenichka—Theodosia," replied Arkady.
"And her patronymic?"
"Nikolaievna."
"Bene! What I like about her is her total absence of shyness. True, that is atraitwhich some might have condemned in her, but I say, 'What rubbish!' For why need she be bashful? She is a mother, and therefore justified."
"I agree," said Arkady. "And my father——"
"Also is justified," concluded Bazarov.
"No, I do not agree in that respect."
"You do not altogether welcome a superfluous heir?"
"For shame, Evgenii!" cried Arkady heatedly. "How can you impute such motives? What I mean is that my father is not justified fromonepoint of view. That is to say, he ought to marry her."
"Oh, ho!" said Bazarov quietly. "How high and mighty we are getting! So you still attribute importance to the marriage rite? This I should not have expected of you."
For some paces the friends walked on in silence. Then Bazarov continued:
"I have been inspecting your father's establishment. The cattle look poor, the horses seem broken-down, the buildings have a tipsy air, the workmen manifest a tendency to loaf, and I cannot yet determine whether the new steward is a fool or a rogue."
"You are censorious to-day?"
"I am; and the reason is that these good peasants are cheating your father—exemplifying the proverb that 'The Russianmuzhikwill break even the back of God.'"
"Soon I shall have to agree with my uncle in his opinion that you think but poorly of Russia."
"Rubbish! The Russian's very best point is that he holds a poor opinion ofhimself. Two and two make four. Nothing but that matters."
"And is nature also rubbish?" queried Arkady with a musing glance at the mottled fields where they lay basking in the soft, kindly rays of the morning sun.
"Natureisrubbish—at least in the sense in whichyouunderstand her. She is not a church, but a workshop wherein man is the labourer."
At this moment there came wafted to their ears the long-drawn strains of a violoncello, on which a sensitive, but inexperienced, hand was playing Schubert'sErwartung. Like honey did the voluptuous melody suffuse the air.
"Who is the musician?" asked Bazarov in astonishment.
"My father."
"What? Your father plays the 'cello?"
"He does."
"At his age?"
"Yes—he is only forty-four."
Bazarov burst out laughing.
"Why do you laugh?" asked Arkady.
"Pardon me, but the idea that your father—a man of forty-four, a paterfamilias, and a notable in the county—should play the 'cello!"
And he continued laughing, though Arkady, for all his reverence for his mentor, failed to accomplish even a smile.
During the next two weeks life at Marino pursued its normal course. Arkady took things easily, and Bazarov worked. In passing, it may be said that, for all his careless manner and abrupt, laconic speech, the latter had become an accepted phenomenon in the house. In particular had Thenichka so completely lost her shyness of him that one night she sent to awake him because Mitia had been seized with convulsions; whereupon Bazarov arrived, and, half-joking, half-yawning, according to his usual manner, helped her for two hours in the task of attending to the baby. Only Paul Petrovitch disliked the man with the whole strength of his soul, for he accounted him a proud, cynical, conceited plebeian, and suspected him not only of failing to respect, but even of holding in contempt, the personality of Paul Petrovitch Kirsanov. Also, Nikolai Petrovitch stood in slight awe of the young Nihilist, since he doubted the likelihood of any good accruing from Bazarov's influence over Arkady. Yet always he would listen with pleasure to Bazarov's discourses, and gladly attend the chemical or physical experiments with which the young doctor (who had brought a microscope with him) would occupy himself for hours at a stretch. On the other hand, in spite of Bazarov's domineering manner, all the servants had become attached to him, for they felt him to be less abarinthan their brother; and in particular did Duniasha readily joke and talk with him, and throw him many meaning glances as she sped past in quail-like fashion, while Peter himself, though a man full of conceit and stupidity, with a forehead perpetually puckered, and a dignity which consisted of a deferential demeanour, a practice of reading journals syllable by syllable, and a habit of constantly brushing his coat; even Peter, I say, would brighten and strike an attitude when he was noticed by Bazarov. In fact, the only servant to disapprove of Bazarov was old Prokofitch, the butler, who looked sour whenever he handed the young doctor a dish, and called him a "sharper" and a "flaunter," and declared that, for all his whiskers, Bazarov was no better than "a dressed-up pig," whereas he, Prokofitch, was practically as good an aristocrat as Paul Petrovitch himself.
In the early days of June, the best season of the year, the weather became beautiful. True, from afar there came threatenings of cholera, but to the local inhabitants such visitations had become a commonplace. Each day Bazarov rose early to set forth upon a tramp of some two or three versts; nor were those tramps undertaken merely for the sake of the exercise (he could not abide aimless expeditions), but, rather, for the sake of collecting herbs and insects. Sometimes, too, he would succeed in inducing Arkady to accompany him; and whenever this was the case the pair would, on the way back, engage in some dispute which always left Arkady vanquished in spite of his superior profusion of argument.
One morning the pair lingered considerably by the way, and Nikolai Petrovitch set out across the garden to meet them. Just as he reached the arbour, he heard their voices and brisk footsteps approaching, though he himself was invisible to the returning friends.
"You do not understand my father," Arkady was saying.
Nikolai Petrovitch halted instead of revealing himself.
"Oh, he is a good fellow enough," replied Bazarov. "But also he is a man on the shelf, a man whose song has been sung."
Though Nikolai Petrovitch strained his ears, he failed to catch Arkady's reply. So the "man on the shelf" lingered for a minute or two—then walked slowly back to the house.
"For the past three days I have noted him reading Pushkin," continued Bazarov. "You ought to explain to him that no good can come of that, for he is no longer a boy, and ought to have shaken himself free of such fiddlesticks. Who would desire to be a Romanticist? Give him somethingpractical."
"For instance?"
"Let me consider. For a start, give him Büchner's[1]Stoff und Kraft."
"Good!" Arkady's tone was approving. "Stoff und Kraftis at least written in a popular style."
The same day Nikolai Petrovitch was sitting with his brother. At length he said:
"I find that you and I are men on the shelf, that our songs have been sung. Eh? And perhaps Bazarov is right. Yet I confess that one thing hurts me: and that is that, though I had hoped to draw nearer to Arkady, I am being left in the rear, and he is for ever marching ahead. No longer do he and I understand one another."
"And why is he for ever marching ahead?" asked Paul Petrovitch indignantly. "How comes he to stand at such a distance from us? The reason is simply the ideas which that precious 'Nihilist' is putting into his head. For myself, I detest the fellow, and think him a charlatan. Also, I am certain that, in spite of his frogs, he is making no real progress in physics."
"We ought not to say that, brother. For my own part, I look upon him as a man of culture and ability."
"If so, a detestably conceited one."
"Perhaps heisconceited," Nikolai Petrovitch allowed. "But then it would appear that nothing can be done without something of the kind. What I cannot make out is the following. As you know, I have done everything possible to keep up with the times—I have organised my peasantry, I have set up such a farm that throughout the province I am known as 'Fine Kirsanov,' persistently I read and educate myself, in general I try to march abreast of the needs of the day. Yet, though I do all this, I am now given to understand that my day is past and gone! And, brother, I do not say that I am not partially inclined to accept that view."
"For what reason?"
"For the following. To-day, as I was reading Pushkin (I think it was 'The Gipsies' that I had lighted upon), there suddenly entered the room Arkady. Silently, and with an air of kindly regret, and as gently as a child, he withdrew the book from my hand, and laid before me another book—a German production of some kind. That done, he gave me another smile, and departed with my volume of Pushkin under his arm."
"Good gracious! And what might be the book which he has given you?"
"This."
Nikolai Petrovitch extracted from the tail pocket of his frock-coat a copy (ninth edition) of Büchner's well-known work.
Paul Petrovitch turned it over in his hands.
"H'm!" he grunted. "Arkady does indeed seem solicitous for your education! Have you tried reading the book?"
"Yes."
"And how do you like it?"
"Well, either I am a fool or the thing is rubbish. Of the two views, the former seems to me the most probable."
"It is not because you have forgotten your German, I suppose?"
"Oh no. I understand the language perfectly."
Again Paul Petrovitch turned over the book, and again he glanced at his brother from under his brows. A moment's silence ensued.
"By the way," continued Nikolai Petrovitch with an evident desire to change the conversation, "I have received a letter from Koliazin."
"From Matvei Ilyitch?"
"From the same. It seems that he has just arrived at ——, for the purpose of carrying out the Revision[2]of the province, and he writes very civilly that, as our kinsman, he would be glad to see Arkady and you and myself."
"Do you intend to accept his invitation?" asked Paul Petrovitch.
"I do not. Do you?"
"No. We have no need to drag ourselves fifty versts to eat blanc-mange. The good Mathieu wants to show off a little—that is all. He can do without us. But what an honour to be a Privy Councillor! Had I continued in the Service, continued hauling at the old tow-rope, I myself might have been Adjutant-General! As it is, I, like yourself, am on the shelf."
"Yes, brother. Clearly it is time that we ordered our tombstones, and folded our hands upon our breasts."
A sigh concluded Nikolai Petrovitch's speech.
"ButIdo not intend to give in so soon," muttered his brother. "There is first going to be a skirmish between that chirurgeon of Arkady's and myself. That I can see beyond a doubt."
And, sure enough, the "skirmish" occurred the same evening. Ready for battle as soon he repaired to the drawing-room for tea, Paul Petrovitch entered angrily, but firmly, and sat waiting for an excuse to advance upon the foe. Yet for a while that excuse hung fire, since Bazarov never said much in the presence of "the old Kirsanovs," and to-night was feeling out of spirits, and drank his tea in absolute silence. However, Paul Petrovitch was so charged with impatience that his wish was bound to attain fulfilment.
It happened that the conversation became turned upon a neighbouring landowner.
"He is just a petty aristocrat," Bazarov drily remarked (it seemed that he and the landowner had met in St. Petersburg).
"Allow me," put in Paul Petrovitch, his lips quivering. "In your view, do the terms 'good-for-nothing' and 'aristocrat' connote the same thing?"
"I said 'pettyaristocrat,'" replied Bazarov as he lazily sipped his tea.
"Quite so. Then I take it that you hold the same opinion of aristocrats as of 'petty aristocrats'? Well, I may remark that your opinion is not mine. And to that I would add that, while I myself possess a reputation for Liberal and progressive views, I possess that reputation for the very reason that I can respectrealaristocrats. For instance, my dear sir" (the latter term was so heatedly uttered that Bazarov raised his eyebrows), "for instance, my dear sir, take the aristocracy of England. While yielding upon their rights not an iota, they yet know how to respect the rights of others. While demanding fulfilment of obligations due to themselves, they yet fulfil their own obligations. And for those reasons it is to her aristocratic caste that England stands indebted for her freedom. It is because the English aristocratic caste itself supports that freedom."
"A tale which we have heard many times before!" commented Bazarov. "But what are you seeking to prove?"
"I am seeking to prove this," replied Paul Petrovitch. "That without a certain sense of personal dignity, without a sense of self-respect (both of which senses are inborn in the true aristocrat), the social edifice, thebien public, cannot rest upon a durable basis. It ispersonalitythat matters, my dear sir: and the human personality requires to be as firm as a rock, in that there rests upon it the entire structure of society. For example, I know that you ridicule my customs, my dress, my fastidious tastes. Yet do those very things proceed from that sense of duty—yes, of duty, I repeat—to which I have just alluded. In other words, I may live in the depths of the country, yet I do not let myself go. For I respect in myself the man."
"Allow me, Paul Petrovitch," said Bazarov. "You say that you respect yourself. Very good. Yet you can sit there with your hands folded! How willthatbenefit thebien public, seeing that inaction would scarcely seem to argue self-respect?"
Paul Petrovitch blanched a little.
"That is another question altogether," he said. "However, I do not feel called upon to explain the reason why I sit with my hands folded (according to your own estimable term). It will suffice merely to remark that in the aristocratic idea there is contained aprinciple, and that nowadays men who live without principles are as destitute of morality as they are of moral substance. The same thing did I say to Arkady on the day after his arrival, and I say it now to you. You agree with me, Nikolai, do you not?"
Nikolai Petrovitch nodded assent, while Bazarov exclaimed:
"The aristocratic idea, forsooth! Liberalism, progress, principles! Why, have you ever considered the vanity of those terms? The Russian of to-day does not need them."
"Then what, in your opinion, does he need? To listen to you, one would suppose that we stood wholly divorced from humanity and humanity's laws; whereas, pardon me, the logic of history demands——"
"What has that logic to do with us? We can get on quite well without it."
"How can we do so?"
"Even as I have said. When you want to put a piece of bread into your mouth do you need logic for the purpose? What have these abstractions to do with ourselves?"
Paul Petrovitch waved his hand in disgust.
"I cannot understand you," he said. "You seem to me to be insulting the Russian people. How you or any one else can decline to recognise principles and precepts is a thing which passes my comprehension. For what other basis for action in life have we got?"
Arkady put in a word.
"Both I and Bazarov have told you," he said, "that we recognise no authority of any sort."
"Rather, that we recognise no basis for action save the useful," corrected Bazarov. "At present the course most useful is denial. Therefore we deny."
"Deny everything?"
"Deny everything."
"What? Both poetry and art and—I find it hard to express it?——"
"I repeat,everything," said Bazarov with an ineffable expression ofinsouciance.
Paul Petrovitch stared. He had not quite expected this. For his part, Arkady reddened with pleasure.
"Allow me," interposed Nikolai Petrovitch. "You say that you deny everything—rather, that you would consign everything to destruction. But also you ought to construct."
"That is not our business," said Bazarov. "First must the site be cleared."
"Yes; for the present condition of the people demands it," affirmed Arkady. "And that demand we are bound to fulfil, seeing that no one has the right merely to devote himself to the satisfaction of his own personal egotism."
With this last Bazarov did not seem altogether pleased, since the phrase smacked too much of philosophy—rather, of "Romanticism," as Bazarov termed that science; but he did not trouble to confute his pupil.
"No, no!" Paul Petrovitch exclaimed with sudden heat. "Icannotbelieve that gentlemen of your type possess sufficient knowledge of the people to be rightful representatives of its demands and aspirations. For the Russian people is not what you think it to be. It holds traditions sacred, and is patriarchal, and cannot live without faith."
"I will not dispute that," observed Bazarov. "Nay, I will even agree that you are right."
"And, granting that I am right——"
"You have proved nothing."
"Yes, proved nothing," echoed Arkady with the assurance of a chess-player who, having foreseen a dangerous move on the part of his opponent, awaits the attack with expert composure.
"But how have I proved nothing?" muttered Paul Petrovitch, rather taken aback. "Do you mean to say that you are opposed to, not in favour of, the people?"
"Good gracious! Do not the common folk believe, when it thunders, that the Prophet Elijah is going up to Heaven in his chariot? You and I do not agree with that? The point is that the people is Russian, and that I am the same."
"Not after what you have just said! Henceforth must I decline to recognise you as any countryman of mine."
With a sort of indolenthauteurBazarov replied:
"With his own hand did my grandfather guide the plough. Ask, therefore, of your favourite peasant which of us two—you or myself—he rates most truly as his countryman. Why, you do not know even how to speak to him!"
"And you, while speaking to him, despise him."
"Should he merit contempt, yes. Reprobate, therefore, my views as much as you like, but who told you that they have come to me fortuitously rather than been derived from the very national spirit of which you are so ardent an upholder?"
"Phaugh! We need you Nihilists, do we not?"
"Not ours is it to decide the need or otherwise, seeing that even a man like yourself considers that he has a use."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" interposed Nikolai Petrovitch as he rose to his feet. "I beg of you to indulge in no personalities!"
Paul Petrovitch smiled. Then, laying his hand upon his brother's shoulder, he forced him to resume his seat.
"Do not be alarmed," he said. "That very sense of dignity at which this gentleman pokes such bitter fun will keep me from forgetting myself."
And he turned to Bazarov again.
"Do you suppose your doctrine to be a new one?" he continued. "If so, you are wasting your time. More than once has the Materialism which you preach been mooted; and each time it has been proved bankrupt."
"Another foreign term!" muttered Bazarov. He was now beginning to lose his temper, and his face had turned a dull, copperish tint. "In the first place, we Nihilists preach nothing at all. For to preach is not our custom."
"What, then, is your custom?"
"To proclaim facts such as that our civil servants accept bribes, that we lack highways, commerce, and a single upright judge, and that——"
"Of course, of course! In other words, you and yours are to act as our 'censors' (I believe that to be the correct term?). Well, I agree with many of your censures, but——"
"Other tenets which we hold are that to chatter, and to do nothing but chatter, concerning our differences is not worth the trouble, seeing that it is a pursuit which merely leads to pettiness and doctrinairism; that beyond question are our so-called leaders and censors not worth their salt, seeing that they engage in sheer futilities, and waste their breath on discussions on art and still life and Parliamentarism and legal points and the devil only knows what, when all the time it is the bread of subsistence alone that matters, and we are being stifled with gross superstition, and all our commercial enterprises are failing for want of honest directors, and the freedom of which the Government is for ever prating is destined never to become a reality, for the reason that, so long as the Russian peasant is allowed to go and drink himself to death in a dram-shop, he is ready to submit to any sort of despoilment."
"You have decided, then, you feel conscious, that your truemétieris to apply yourselves seriously to nothing?"
"Even so," came the sullen reply, for Bazarov had suddenly become vexed with himself for having exposed his mind with such completeness to thisbarin.
"You have decided merely to deny everything?"
"We have decided merely to deny everything."
"And that you call Nihilism?"
"That we call Nihilism." In Bazarov's repetition of Paul Petrovitch's words there echoed, this time, a note of pride.
Paul Petrovitch knit his brows.
"So, so!" he said in a voice that was curiously calm. "Nihilism is designed to combat our every ill, and you alone are to act as our saviours and our heroes! Well, well! But in what consider you yourselves and your censorious friends to excel the rest of us? For you chatter as much as does every one else."
"No, no!" muttered Bazarov. "At least we are not guilty ofthat, however we may err in other ways."
"You do things, then? At all events, you are preparing to do things?"
Bazarov did not reply, although, in his excitement, Paul Petrovitch had started up and then quickly recovered his self-command.
"H'm!" continued Paul Petrovitch. "With you to act is to demolish. But how is such demolition to benefit when you do not even know its purpose?"
"We demolish because we are a force," interposed Arkady.
Paul Petrovitch stared—then smiled.
"And a force need render account to no one," added Arkady with a self-conscious straightening of his form.
"Fool!" gasped Paul Petrovitch. Evidently he could contain himself no longer. "Have you ever consideredwhatyou are maintaining with your miserable creed? Even an angel would lose patience! 'A force,' forsooth! You might as well say that the wild Kalmuck, or the barbaric Mongol, represents a force. What boots such a force? Civilisation and its fruits are what we value. And do not tell me that those fruits are to be overlooked, seeing that even the meanestbarbouilleur,[3]the meanest piano-player who ever earned five kopecks a night, is of more use to society than you. For men of that kind at least stand for culture rather than for some rude, Mongolian propelling-power. Yes, you may look upon yourselves as 'the coming race,' yet you are fit but to sit in a Kalmuck shanty. 'A force,' forsooth! Good and 'forceful' sirs, I beg to tell you that you number but four men and a boy, whereas those others number millions, and are folk of the kind who will not permit such asyouto trample upon their sacred beliefs, but will first trample upon your worthy selves."
"Let them trample upon us," retorted Bazarov. "We are more in number than you think."
"What? You really believe that you will succeed in inoculating the nation as a whole?"
"From a little candle," replied Bazarov, "there arose, as you know, the conflagration of Moscow."[4]
"A pride almost Satanic in its nature, and then banter! And thus you would seek to attract our youth,thusyou would attempt to win the inexperienced hearts of our boys! For sitting beside you is one of those very boys, and he is absolutely worshipping you!" (Upon this Arkady knit his brows, and averted his head a little.) "Yes, the canker has spread far already. For instance, they tell me that in Rome our artists decline to enter the Vatican, and look upon Raphael as next-door to a fool, just because he is an 'authority'! Yet those very artists are themselves so barren and impotent that their fancy cannot rise above 'Girls at Fountains,' and so forth, villainously executed! And such artists you account fine fellows, I presume?"
"Like those artists," said Bazarov, "I consider Raphael to be worth not a copper groat. And as for the artists themselves, I appraise them at about a similar sum."
"Bravo, bravo!" cried Paul Petrovitch. "Listen, O Arkady—listen to the way in which the young men of the present day ought to express themselves! Surely our youth will now rally to your side? For once upon a time they had to go to school, since they did not like to be taken for dunces, and therefore worked at their studies; but now they have but to say: 'Everything in the world is rubbish,' and, behold! the trick is done. They consider that delightful—and naturally! In other words, the blockheads of former days are become the Nihilists of the present."
"Your self-sufficiency—I mean, your self-respect—is carrying you away," Bazarov remarked nonchalantly (as for Arkady, his eyes had flashed, and his whole form was quivering with indignation). "But our dispute has gone far enough. Let us end it. Whenever you may feel that you can point out to me a single institution in our family or our public life which does not call for complete and unsparing rejection, I shall be pleased to accept your view."
"Of institutions of that kind I could cite you millions," exclaimed Paul Petrovitch. "For example, take the village commune."
Bazarov's lips twisted themselves into a contemptuous smile.
"The village commune," said he, "is a subject which you would do better to discuss with your brother, since he is learning by experience the meaning of that commune, and of its circular guarantee, and of its enforced sobriety and other contrivances."
"Take the family, then—yes, take the family, since at least among the peasantry it is still a surviving institution."
"And that question, too, I should imagine were best not dissected by you in detail. But see here, Paul Petrovitch. Allow yourself a minimum of two days to think over these things (you will need quite that amount of time to do so); and cite to yourself in succession our various social conditions, and give them your best attention. Meanwhile Arkady and myself will go and——"
"Go and make sport of everything, I presume?"
"No, go and dissect frogs. Come, Arkady!Au revoir, gentlemen."
And the two friends departed. Left alone, the brothers looked at one another.
"So," at last said Paul Petrovitch, "you see the young men of the day—you see our successors!"
"Our successors—yes," re-echoed Nikolai Petrovitch despondently. Throughout the conversation he had been sitting simply on pins and needles; throughout it he had dared do no more than throw an occasional pained glance at Arkady. "My brother, there came to me just now a curious reminiscence. It was of a quarrel which once I had with my mother. During the contest she raised a great outcry, and refused to listen to a single word I said; until at length I told her that for her to understand me was impossible, seeing that she and I came of different generations. Of course this angered her yet more, but I thought to myself: 'What else could I do? The pill must have been a bitter one, but it was necessary that she should swallow it.' And nowourturn is come; now is it forusto be told by our heirs that we come of a different generation from theirs, and must kindly swallow the pill."
"You are too magnanimous and retiring," expostulated Paul Petrovitch. "For my part, I feel sure that we are more in the right than these two youngsters, even though we may express ourselves in old-fashioned terms, and lack their daring self-sufficiency. Indeed, what a puffed-up crowd is the youth of to-day! Should you ask one of them whether he will take white wine or red, he will reply, in a bass voice, and with a face as though the whole universe were looking at him: 'Red is my customary rule.'"
"Should you like some more tea?" interrupted Thenichka, who had been peeping through the doorway, but had not dared to enter during the progress of the dispute.
"No," was Nikolai Petrovitch's reply as he rose to meet her. "So you can order thesamovarto be removed."
Meanwhile, with a brief "Bon soir," Paul Petrovitch betook himself to his study.
[1]Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899), German physician and materialist philosopher.
[1]Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899), German physician and materialist philosopher.
[2]i.e.the census-taking of the serf population.
[2]i.e.the census-taking of the serf population.
[3]Scribbler.
[3]Scribbler.
[4]In 1812.
[4]In 1812.
Half an hour later Nikolai Petrovitch sought his favourite arbour. Despondent thoughts were thronging through his brain, for the rift between himself and his son was only too evident. Also, he knew that that rift would widen from day to day. For nothing had he spent whole days, during those winters in St. Petersburg, in the perusal of modern works! For nothing had he listened to the young men's discourses! For nothing had he been delighted when he had been able to interpolate a word into their tempestuous debates!
"My brother says that we are more in the right than they," he reflected. "And certainly I too can say without vanity that I believe these young fellows to stand at a greater distance from the truth than ourselves. Yet also I believe that they have in them something which we lack—something which gives them an advantage over us. What is that something? Is it youth? No, it is not youth alone. Is it that there hovers about them less of thebarinthan hovers about ourselves? Possibly!"
Bending his head, he passed his hand over his face.
"Yet to reject poetry!" he muttered. "To fail to sympathise with art and nature!"
And he gazed around as though he were trying to understand how any one could be out of sympathy with the natural world. Evening was just closing in, and the sun sinking behind a small aspen copse which, situated half a verst from the garden, was trailing long shadows over the motionless fields. Along the narrow, dark track beside the copse a peasant on a white pony was trotting; and though the pair were overshadowed by the trees, the rider was as clearly visible, even to a patch on his shoulder, as the twinkling legs of his steed. Piercing the tangled aspens, the sun's beams were bathing the trunks in so brilliant a glow that trunks and beams were one bright mass, and only the foliage on the boughs above formed a dusky blur against the lighter tints of the flame-coloured sky. Overhead bats were whirling; the wind had sunk to rest; a few late-homing bees were buzzing somnolently, sluggishly amid the lilac blossoms; and a pillared swarm of gnats was dancing over a projecting bough.
"O God, how fair!" was Nikolai's involuntary thought as his lips breathed a favourite couplet.
Suddenly he remembered Arkady andStoff und Kraft; and though he continued to sit where he was, he quoted poetry no more, but surrendered his mind wholly to the play of his lonely, irregular, mournful thoughts. At all times he was a man fond of dreaming; and to this tendency his life in the country had added confirmation. To think of what only a short while ago he had been dreaming as he waited for his son on the post-house verandah! For since that hour a change had come about, and in the vague relations between himself and his son there had dawned a more definite phase. Next, he saw before him his dead wife. Yet he saw her, not as she had appeared to him during the later years of her life—that is to say, as a kindly, thriftychâtelaine—but as a young girl slim of figure and innocently inquiring of eye. Yes, there flitted before his vision a picture only of neatly plaited tresses falling over a childish neck. And he thought of his first meeting with her when, as a student, he had encountered her on the staircase leading to his suite of rooms. He remembered how, having accidentally brushed against her, he had stopped to apologise, but had only succeeded in muttering "Pardon,monsieur"; where-upon she had bowed, and smiled, and fled as in sudden alarm—but only to turn, the next moment, at the bend of the staircase, to look swiftly back, and then, as swiftly, to blush, and assume a more demure demeanour. Ah, those first timid meetings, those half-spoken words, those bashful smiles, those alternate fits of rapture and despair, that courtship that was destined to be crowned with swooning joy! Whither was it all fled? True, she had become his wife, and had conferred upon him such happiness as falls to the lot of few men on earth; but ever the thought recurred to him, and recurred again: "Why could those days of sweetness not have lasted for ever, so that we might have lived a life which should never have known death?"
He made no attempt to co-ordinate his thoughts. The predominant feeling in his mind was that he would give worlds to be able to connect himself with those blessed days by something stronger than the mere power of memory. He wanted to feel his Maria near him once more, to scent her dear breath. A curious mood had him in its grip.
"Nikolai Petrovitch!" came the voice of Thenichka from a spot somewhere in the vicinity. "Where are you?"
As he heard the call, a feeling that was neither vexation nor shame passed over him. No comparison between his dead wife and Thenichka was possible, yet he gave a start, and felt a passing regret that Thenichka had seizedthatmoment to seek him. For in some way did the sound of her voice bring back to him his grey hairs, his old age, all that constituted the present. So for an instant the enchanted world which he had just entered, and which he had just seen emerge from the misty waves of the past, quivered—then disappeared.
"I am here, Thenichka," he called. "Please go away. I will come presently."
"Another reminder that I am abarin," he reflected.
Thenichka retired, and suddenly he became aware of the fact that since the moment when he had sunk into a reverie nightfall had come. Yes, all around him there lay a motionless obscurity, with, gleaming amid it, as a small, pale blur, Thenichka's face. Rising, he started to return to the house, but his unstrung nerves could not calm themselves, and, glancing now at the ground, now towards the heavens where there swarmed myriads of twinkling stars, he fell to pacing the garden. He continued this pacing until he was almost worn out; for still did the vague, despondent, insistent sense of agitation refuse to leave his breast. Could Bazarov have divined his thoughts, how the Nihilist would have laughed! And even Arkady would have condemned him. For from the eyes of Nikolai Petrovitch—from the eyes of a man of forty-four who was the proprietor of an estate and a household—there were welling slow, uncalled-for tears. This was a hundred times worse than the 'cello-playing!
And still he continued his pacing, for he could not make up his mind to enter the peaceful, inviting retreat which beckoned to him so cheerfully with its lighted windows, and to leave the darkness of the garden, to forego the touch of fresh air upon his face, to throw off his present mood of sadness and emotion.
At a turn in the path he encountered Paul Petrovitch.
"What is the matter with you?" Paul inquired. "You are looking as white as a ghost. Are you ill? Why not go to bed?"
Nikolai Petrovitch explained to him in a few words his frame of mind—then moved towards the house. Paul Petrovitch sauntered down towards the other end of the garden, and ever and anon, as he did so, indulged in wrapt contemplation of the heavens. Yet, save for the reflection of the starlight, there was nothing to be seen in his dark, handsome eyes; for he had not been born a Romanticist, and his drily fastidious, passionate, Frenchified, misanthropic soul was incapable of castle-building.
"I tell you what," Bazarov said to Arkady the same night. "A splendid idea has come into my head. You know that to-day your father said that a certain eminent relation had sent him an invitation which he had no intention of accepting. Well, how would it be if you and I were to accept it, seeing that you too have been included in the honour? The weather has turned beautiful, and we might drive over and look at the town, and thus, incidentally, secure a few days' uninterrupted talk together."
"Should you then return here?"
"No. I should go on to my father's. You see, he lives thirty versts away only, and it is a long time since last I saw either him or my mother. Moreover, the old folk deserve to be humoured a little, seeing that they have been very good to me—especially my father—and that I am their only son."
"And shall you stay long?"
"No. Staying in that place is dull work."
"Then pay us a second visit on your way back?"
"I will if possible. We will go, then, eh?"
"At your pleasure," Arkady replied with a show of indifference. But, as a matter of fact, he was delighted with Bazarov's proposal; and only the thought that he must keep up his "Nihilism" prevented him from manifesting his feelings.
So, the next day, the pair set out for the town of ——; while with one consent the youth of Marino broke into lamentations over their going, and Duniasha even went so far as to weep. Only their elders breathed more freely.
The town of ——, whither our friends now proceeded, lay under the dominion of one of those young, progressive, despotic provincial governors who afflict Russia in an unending sequence. As early as the first year of his rule this particular potentate had succeeded in quarrelling, not only with the President of the Provincial Council (who was a retired staff officer, a horse breeder, and an agriculturist), but also with his whole gubernatorial staff oftchinovniks: with the result that at the time of our story the commotion therefrom had attained a pitch which had just necessitated the sending down of a commissary empowered to hold an investigation. The Government's choice for this purpose had fallen upon Matvei Ilyitch Koliazin, the son of the Koliazin who had once acted as guardian to the brothers Kirsanov, and a man of the younger school—that is to say, a man who, though a little over forty, still aimed at attaining the dignity of a statesman, and having a breast covered with stars (including at least one of a foreign minor order), and who, also like the Governor whom he had come to examine, was accounted a Progressive, and held a high opinion of himself. Yet never did Matvei allow his boundless vanity to prevent him from affecting a stereotyped air of simplicity and good humour, or from listening indulgently to anything that might be said to him, or from cultivating so pleasant a laugh that everywhere he contrived to pass for "not a bad sort of a fellow." True, he could on important occasions (if I may quote the trite saying) "make dust fly" ("Energy is indispensable for a State worker," was a frequent saw of his—"L'énergie est la première qualité d'un homme d'état"); yet almost invariably did he end by being set down as a fool, whiletchinovniksof more experience rode roughshod over him. Amongst other things, he had a custom of expressing a great respect for Guizot,[1]and also of striving to convince every one that he (Koliazin) was not one of "your men of routine, your retired bureaucrats," but, rather, a man who noted "every new and more important phenomenon of our social life." In fact, such phrases he had at his finger ends, and also he studied (though with a sort of careless pomposity only) the development of contemporary literature. Lastly, it not seldom befell that, on meeting a street procession of students, he would, though maturer of years than the majority of its members, add himself to its ranks. In short, only his circumstances and his epoch caused Matvei Ilyitch in any way to differ from those officials of the Alexandrine period who, before setting out to attend a reception at Madame Svietchin's[2](then resident in St. Petersburg), would read a few pages of Condillac's[3]works. Yet, though an adroit courtier, Matvei was a mere glittering fraud, since, save that he knew how to hold his own against all comers (though, certainly, that is a great achievement in life), he was, in all matters of State, a complete stranger to common sense.
On the present occasion he welcomed Arkady with all thebonhomie, all the jocosity, of an "enlightened" bigwig. Nevertheless his face fell a little when he learned that the other relatives whom he had invited had preferred remaining in the country. "Your father always was a queer fish," he remarked as he parted the tails of a velvet "cutaway." And, having said this, he turned to a youngtchinovnikin a tightly buttoned uniform, and asked him irritably what he wanted; at which onslaught the youngtchinovnik(whose lips looked as though a confirmed habit of keeping their own counsel had gummed them permanently together) straightened himself with a sharp, apprehensive look at his superior. But, once Matvei had effected this "settling" of his subordinate, the great man paid the little one no further attention.
In passing, I may observe that to most of our bigwigs is this species of "settling" very dear, and that many are the expedients resorted to for its achievement. Particularly is the following method "quite a favourite," as the English say—in other words, much in request. Suddenly a given bigwig will cease to be able to grasp with his intelligence even the simplest sentence, and assume an air of abysmal density. For example, he will inquire what the day of the week may be, and be told (with great and stammering deference) that the day is, say, Friday.
"What?" will roar the bigwig with an air of being forced to strain his ears to the utmost. "Eh? what do you say?"
"I-It is F-Friday, your E-E-Excellency."
"Eh, what? Friday? What mean you by Friday?"
"Y-Your Excellency, F-Friday is, is—F-F-Friday is a day in the week."
"Come, come! You need not have taken so much time to tell methat."
Matvei Ilyitch was just such a bigwig, although he called himself a Liberal.
"My good fellow," he now continued to Arkady, "I should advise you to go and leave your card upon the Governor. Of course you understand that my reason for counselling you to adopt this procedure is, not that I in any way hold with any bygone ideas about kow-towing to authority, but, rather, because the Governor is a good fellow, and I know that you would like to see a little society. For you too are not a bear, I hope? No? Well, the Governor is giving a grand ball the day after to-morrow."
"And shall you be there?" asked Arkady.
"I shall, of course, receive tickets for it," replied Matvei Ilyitch with an assumed air of regret. "You dance, I presume?"
"I do—though very badly."
"Never mind, never mind. There exists here plenty of good society, and it would never do for a young fellow like yourself to be a non-dancer. Again I say this, not because I in any way revere antiquated notions, nor yet because I think that intellect ought to go kicking its heels about, but because Byronism has become absurd—il a fait son temps."
"But I belong to neither the Byronists nor——"
"Well, well! I will introduce you to some of our ladies—I myself will take you under my wing." And Matvei Ilyitch smiled in a self-satisfied way. "In fact, you shall have a gay time here."
At this point a servant entered to announce the President of the Provincial Treasury. The latter, a mild-eyed veteran with wrinkles around his lips and a great love for nature, was accustomed to remark on summer days that "of every little flower each little bee is now taking its toll." So Arkady seized the occasion to depart.
He found Bazarov at the hotel where the pair were putting up, and had great difficulty in persuading him to join in the projected call upon the Governor.
"Well, well!" eventually said Bazarov. "I have laid a hand upon the tow-rope, so it ill becomes me to complain of its weight. As we are here to inspect the local lions, let us inspect them."
To the young men the Governor accorded a civil enough welcome, but neither bade them be seated nor set the example himself. A man in a perpetual hurry and ferment, he, on rising in the morning, was accustomed to don a tight uniform and stiff collar, and then to give himself up to such an orgy of orders-giving that he never finished a single meal. As the result, he was known throughout the province as "Bardeloue"—in reference, be it said, not to the great French preacher,[4]but toburda, fermented liquor. After inviting Arkady and Bazarov to the coming ball, the Governor, two minutes later, repeated the invitation as though he had never given it; while likewise he mistook the pair for brothers, and addressed them throughout as "the MessieursKaiserov."
Subsequently, as the pair were proceeding homewards, a man of small stature, and dressed in a "Slavophil" costume, leapt from a passingdrozhki, and, with a cry of "Evgenii Vasilitch!" flung himself upon Bazarov.
"Is that you, Herr Sitnikov?" remarked Bazarov without even checking his stride. "What chance brings you hither?"
"A pure accident," was the other's reply as, turning to thedrozhki, he signed to the coachman to follow at a foot's pace. "You see, I had business to do with my father, and he invited me to pay him a visit." Sitnikov hopped across a puddle. "Also, on learning of your arrival, I have been to call at your place." (True enough, on subsequently reaching the hotel, the two friends found awaiting them Sitnikov's visiting-card, with the corners turned down, and one side of it inscribed with his name in the French fashion, and the other with his name in Slavonic characters.)
"You are from the Governor's, I suppose?" continued the little man. "I sincerely hope not, however."
"Your hopes are vain."
"Then I too, alas, must pay him mydevoirs. But first introduce me to your friend."
"Sitnikov—Kirsanov," responded Bazarov without halting.
"Delighted!" minced Sitnikov as he stepped back, struck an attitude, and hurriedly doffed his super-elegant gloves. "I have heard much of you, Monsieur Kirsanov. I too am an old acquaintance—I might even say, an old pupil—of Evgenii Vasilitch's. Through him it was that I came by my spiritual regeneration."
Arkady glanced at Bazarov's "old pupil," and saw that he had small, dull, pleasant, nervous features; also that his narrow, sunken eyes expressed a great restlessness, and that his lips were parted in a perpetual smile of a wooden and ingratiating order.
"Do you know," Sitnikov continued, "when Evgenii Vasilitch first told me that we ought to ignore every species of authority I experienced a sense of rapture, I felt as though I had suddenly ripened. 'Ah,' I thought, 'at last have I found my man!' By the way, Evgenii Vasilitch, youmustcome and see a certain lady of my acquaintance—one who, beyond all others, is the person to understand you, and to look upon your coming as a red-letter event. Perhaps you have heard of her already?"
"No. Who is she?" asked Bazarov reluctantly.
"A Madame Kukshin—a Madame, I should say,EvdoksiaKukshin. And she is not merely a remarkable character and a woman of light and leading; she is also representative of theémancipée, in the best sense of the word. But look here. How would it be if all three of us were to go and see her? She lives only two steps away, and she would give us luncheon. You have not lunched already, I presume?"
"No, we have not."
"Then the arrangement would suit us all. By the way, she is independent, but a married woman."
"Good-looking?" queried Bazarov.
"N-No—one could not exactly say that."
"Then why ask us to go and see her?"
"Ah, ha! Youwillhave your jest, I see. But remember that she will stand us a bottle of champagne."
"The practicality of the man!"
Sitnikov gave a shrill giggle.
"Shall we go?" he added.
"I cannot decide."
Here Arkady put in a word.
"We have come to inspect the local people," he remarked, "so let us inspect them."
"True enough," seconded Sitnikov. "And, of course,youmust come, Monsieur Kirsanov. We could not go without you."
"What? Are all three of us to descend upon her?"
"What matter? She herself is an odd person."
"And you say that she will stand us a bottle of champagne."
"Yes; or even a bottle apiece," asserted Sitnikov. "I will go bail upon that."
"Go bail with what?"
"With my head."
"Your purse would have been better; but lead on."