Bab Bab 3 · 第3章

"To think that you are now a graduate and home again!" said Nikolai

Petrovitch as he tapped Arkady on the knee, and then on the shoulder.

"There now, there now!"

"And how is Uncle? Is he quite well?" asked Arkady--the reason for the

question being that though he felt filled with a genuine, an almost

childish delight at his return, he also felt conscious of an instinct

that the conversation were best diverted from the emotional to the

prosaic.

"Yes, your uncle is quite well. As a matter of fact, he also had

arranged to come and meet you, but at the last moment changed his mind."

"Did you have very long to wait?" continued Arkady.

"About five hours."

"Dearest Papa!" cried Arkady as, leaning over towards his father, he

imprinted upon his cheek a fervent kiss. Nikolai Petrovitch smiled

quietly.

"I have got a splendid horse for you," he next remarked. "Presently you

shall see him. Also, your room has been entirely repapered."

"And have you a room for Bazarov as well?"

"One shall be found for him."

"Oh--and pray humour him in every way you can. I could not express to

you how much I value his friendship."

"But you have not known him very long, have you?"

"No--not very long."

"I thought not, for I do not remember to have seen him in St.

Petersburg last winter. In what does he most interest himself?"

"Principally in natural science. But, to tell the truth, he knows

practically _everything_, and is to become a doctor next year."

"Oh! So he is in the Medical Faculty?" Nikolai Petrovitch remarked;

after which there was silence for a moment.

"Peter," went on Nikolai, pointing with his hand, "are not those

peasants there some of our own?"

Peter glanced in the direction indicated, and saw a few waggons

proceeding along a narrow by-road. The teams were bridleless, and in

each waggon were seated some two or three _muzhiks_ with their blouses

unbuttoned.

"Yes, they are some of our own," Peter responded.

"Then whither can they be going? To the town?"

"Yes--or to the tavern." This last was added contemptuously, and with

a wink to the coachman that was designed to enlist that functionary's

sympathy: but as the functionary in question was one of the old school

which takes no share in the modern movement, he stirred not a muscle of

his face.

"This year my peasants have been giving me a good deal of trouble,"

Nikolai Petrovitch continued to his son. "Persistently do they refuse

to pay their tithes. What ought to be done with them?"

"And do you find your hired workmen satisfactory?"

"Not altogether," muttered Nikolai Petrovitch. "You see, they have

become spoilt, more's the pity! Any real energy seems quite to have

left them, and they not only ruin my implements, but also leave the

land untilled. Does estate-management interest you?"

"The thing we most lack here is shade," remarked Arkady in evasion of

the question.

"Ah, but I have had an awning added to the north balcony, so that we

can take our meals in the open air."

"But that will give the place rather the look of a villa, will it not?

Things of that sort never prove effectual. But oh, the air here! How

good it smells! Yes, in my opinion, things never smell elsewhere as

they do here. And oh, the sky!"

Suddenly Arkady stopped, threw a glance of apprehension in the

direction of the _tarantass_, and relapsed into silence.

"I quite agree with you," replied Nikolai Petrovitch. "You see, the

reason is that you were born here, and that therefore the place is

bound to have for you a special significance."

"But no significance can attach to the place of a man's birth, Papa."

"Indeed?"

"Oh no. None whatsoever."

Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at the speaker, and for fully half a verst

let the vehicle proceed without the conversation between them being

renewed. At length Nikolai Petrovitch observed:

"I cannot remember whether I wrote to tell you that your old nurse,

Egorovna, is dead."

"Dead? Oh, the poor old woman! But Prokofitch--is _he_ still alive?"

"He is so, and in no way changed--that is to say, he grumbles as much

as ever. In fact, you will find that no _really_ important alterations

have taken place at Marino."

"And have you the same steward as before?"

"No; I have appointed a fresh one, for I came to the conclusion that

I could not have any freed serfs about the place. That is to say,

I did not feel as though I could trust such fellows with posts of

responsibility." Arkady indicated Peter with his eyes, and Nikolai

Petrovitch therefore subdued his voice a little. "He? Oh, _il est

libre, en effet_. You see, he is my valet. But as regards a steward,

I have appointed a _miestchanin_,[1] at a salary of 250 roubles a

year, and he seems at least capable. But"--and here Nikolai Petrovitch

rubbed his forehead, which gesture with him always implied inward

agitation--"I ought to say that, though I have told you that you will

find no alterations of importance at Marino, the statement is not

strictly true, seeing that it is my duty to warn you that, that----"

Nikolai Petrovitch hesitated again--then added in French: "Perhaps by a

stern moralist my frankness might be considered misplaced; yet I will

not conceal from you, nor can you fail to be aware, that always I have

had ideas of my own on the subject of the relations which ought to

subsist between a father and his son. At the same time, this is not to

say that you have not the right to _judge_ me. Rather, it is that at my

age----Well, to put matters bluntly, the girl whom you will have heard

me speak of----"

"You mean Thenichka?" said Arkady.

Nikolai Petrovitch's face went red.

"Do not speak of her so loudly," he advised. "Yes, _she_ is living with

us. I took her in because two of our smaller rooms were available. But

of course the arrangement must be changed."

"Why must it, Papa?"

"Because this friend of yours is coming, and also because--well, it

might make things awkward."

"Do not disturb yourself on Bazarov's account. He is altogether

superior to such things."

"Yes, so you say; but the mischief lies in the fact that the wing is so

small."

"Papa, Papa!" protested Arkady. "Almost one would think that you

considered yourself to blame for something; whereas you have _nothing_

to reproach yourself with."

"Ah, but I have," responded Nikolai Petrovitch. His face had turned

redder than ever.

"No, you have _not_, Papa," repeated Arkady with a loving smile, while

adding to himself with a feeling of indulgent tenderness for his good,

kind father, as well as with a certain sense of "superiority": "Why is

he making these excuses?"

"I beg of you to say no more," he continued with an involuntary feeling

of exultation in being "grown up" and "emancipated." As he did so

Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at him from under the fingers of the hand

which was still rubbing his brows. At the same moment something seemed

to give his heart a stab. Mentally, as before, he blamed himself.

"Here our fields begin," he observed after a pause.

"I see," rejoined Arkady. "And that is our forest in front, I suppose?"

"It is so. Only, only--I have sold it, and this year it is to be

removed."

"Why have you sold it?"

"Because I needed the money. Moreover, the land which it occupies must

go to the peasants."

"What? To the peasants who pay you no tithes?"

"Possibly. But some day they will pay me."

"I regret the forest's loss," said Arkady, and then resumed his

contemplation of the landscape.

The scenery which the party were traversing could not have been called

picturesque, for, with slight undulations, only fields, fields, and

again fields, stretched to the very horizon. True, a few patches of

copse were visible, but the ditches, with their borderings of low,

sparse brushwood, recalled the antique land-measurement of Katherine's

day. Also, streams ran pent between abruptly sloping banks, hamlets

with dwarfed huts (of which the blackened roofs were, for the most

part, cracked in half) stood cheek by jowl with crazy grinding-byres

of plaited willow, empty threshing-floors had their gates sagging,

and from churches of wood or of brick which stood amid dilapidated

graveyards the stucco was peeling, and the crosses were threatening at

any moment to fall. As he gazed at the scene Arkady's heart contracted.

Moreover, the peasants encountered on the road looked ragged, and were

riding sorry nags, while the laburnum trees which stood ranged like

miserable beggars by the roadside had their bark hanging in strips,

and their boughs shattered. Lastly, the lean, mud-encrusted cows which

could be seen hungrily cropping the herbage in the ditches were so

"staring" of coat that the animals might just have been rescued from

the talons of some terrible, death-dealing monster; and as one gazed at

those weak, pitiful beasts, almost one could fancy that one saw uprisen

from amid the beauty of spring, the pale phantoms of Winter--its storms

and its frost and its snow.

"Evidently this is not a rich district," reflected Arkady. "Rather,

it is a district which gives one the impression neither of abundance

nor of hard work. Yet can it be left as it is? No! Education is what

we need. But how is that education to be administered, or, for that

matter, to be introduced?"

Thus Arkady. Yet, even as the thought passed through his mind, Spring

seemed once more to regain possession of her kingdom, and everything

around him grew golden-green, and trees, shrubs, and herbage started

to wave and glimmer under the soft, warm breath of the vernal zephyrs,

and larks took to pouring out their souls in endless, ringing strains,

and siskins, circling high over sunken ponds, uttered their cry, then

skimmed the hillocks in silence, and handsome black rooks stalked

among the tender green of the short corn-shoots, or settled among the

pale-white, smokelike ripples of the young rye, whence at intervals

they protruded their heads.

Arkady gazed and gazed; and gradually, as he did so, his late thoughts

grew dimmer and disappeared, and, throwing off his travelling-cloak,

he peered so joyously, with such a boyish air, into his father's face

that Nikolai Petrovitch bestowed upon him yet another embrace.

"We have but little further to go now," he remarked. "In fact, when

once we have topped that rise the house will come into view. And what

a time we are going to have together, Arkasha! For you will be able

to help me with the estate (if you care to, that is to say?), and you

and I will draw nearer to one another, and make one another's better

acquaintance."

"We will!" cried Arkady. "And what splendid weather for us both!"

"Yes; specially for your home-coming is spring in all its glory. Yet I

am not sure that I do not agree with Pushkin where he says, in _Eugène

Onegin_:

/$

"How sad to me is your coming,

O spring, spring, season of love!"

$/

"Arkady," shouted Bazarov from the _tarantass_, "please send me a match

or two, for I have nothing to light my pipe with."

Instantly Nikolai Petrovitch ceased quoting poetry, and Arkady (who

had listened with considerable surprise, though also with a certain

measure of sympathy, to his father) hastened to produce from his pocket

a silver matchbox, and to dispatch the same by the hand of Peter.

"In return, would you care to have a cigar?" called Bazarov.

"I should," replied Arkady.

The result was that when Peter returned to the _koliaska_ he handed

Arkady not only the matchbox, but also a fat black cigar. This Arkady

lit at leisure, and then proceeded to diffuse around him so strong and

acrid an odour of tobacco that Nikolai Petrovitch (a non-smoker from

birth) found himself forced to avert his nose (though he did this

covertly, for fear of offending his son).

A quarter of an hour later the vehicles drew up at the steps of a new

wooden mansion, painted grey, and roofed with red sheet-iron. The

mansion was Marino, or Novaia Sloboda, or, to quote the peasants' name,

"Bobili Chutor."

[1] A member of the trading or shopkeeping class.