Chương Chương 11 · 第11章

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 the _barin_ than 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 and _Stoff 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, thrifty

_châtelaine_--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 seized _that_ moment 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 a _barin_," 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.