Fathers and Children Part 12

'Don't be uneasy,' he said; 'I shall not forget myself, just through that sense of dignity which is made fun of so mercilessly by our friend--our friend, the doctor. Let me ask,' he resumed, turning again to Bazarov; 'you suppose, possibly, that your doctrine is a novelty?

That is quite a mistake. The materialism you advocate has been more than once in vogue already, and has always proved insufficient ...'

'A foreign word again!' broke in Bazarov. He was beginning to feel vicious, and his face a.s.sumed a peculiar coa.r.s.e coppery hue. 'In the first place, we advocate nothing; that's not our way.'

'What do you do, then?'

'I'll tell you what we do. Not long ago we used to say that our officials took bribes, that we had no roads, no commerce, no real justice ...'

'Oh, I see, you are reformers--that's what that's called, I fancy. I too should agree to many of your reforms, but ...'

'Then we suspected that talk, perpetual talk, and nothing but talk, about our social diseases, was not worth while, that it all led to nothing but superficiality and pedantry; we saw that our leading men, so-called advanced people and reformers, are no good; that we busy ourselves over foolery, talk rubbish about art, unconscious creativeness, parliamentarism, trial by jury, and the deuce knows what all; while, all the while, it's a question of getting bread to eat, while we're stifling under the grossest superst.i.tion, while all our enterprises come to grief, simply because there aren't honest men enough to carry them on, while the very emanc.i.p.ation our Government's busy upon will hardly come to any good, because peasants are glad to rob even themselves to get drunk at the gin-shop.'

'Yes,' interposed Pavel Petrovitch, 'yes; you were convinced of all this, and decided not to undertake anything seriously, yourselves.'

'We decided not to undertake anything,' repeated Bazarov grimly. He suddenly felt vexed with himself for having, without reason, been so expansive before this gentleman.

'But to confine yourselves to abuse?'

'To confine ourselves to abuse.'

'And that is called nihilism?'

'And that's called nihilism,' Bazarov repeated again, this time with peculiar rudeness.

Pavel Petrovitch puckered up his face a little. 'So that's it!' he observed in a strangely composed voice. 'Nihilism is to cure all our woes, and you, you are our heroes and saviours. But why do you abuse others, those reformers even? Don't you do as much talking as every one else?'

'Whatever faults we have, we do not err in that way,' Bazarov muttered between his teeth.

'What, then? Do you act, or what? Are you preparing for action?'

Bazarov made no answer. Something like a tremor pa.s.sed over Pavel Petrovitch, but he at once regained control of himself.

'Hm! ... Action, destruction ...' he went on. 'But how destroy without even knowing why?'

'We shall destroy, because we are a force,' observed Arkady.

Pavel Petrovitch looked at his nephew and laughed.

'Yes, a force is not to be called to account,' said Arkady, drawing himself up.

'Unhappy boy!' wailed Pavel Petrovitch, he was positively incapable of maintaining his firm demeanour any longer. 'If you could only realise what it is you are doing for your country. No; it's enough to try the patience of an angel! Force! There's force in the savage Kalmuck, in the Mongolian; but what is it to us? What is precious to us is civilisation; yes, yes, sir, its fruits are precious to us. And don't tell me those fruits are worthless; the poorest dauber, _un barbouilleur_, the man who plays dance music for five farthings an evening, is of more use than you, because they are the representatives of civilisation, and not of brute Mongolian force! You fancy yourselves advanced people, and all the while you are only fit for the Kalmuck's hovel! Force! And recollect, you forcible gentlemen, that you're only four men and a half, and the others are millions, who won't let you trample their sacred traditions under foot, who will crush you and walk over you!'

'If we're crushed, serve us right,' observed Bazarov. 'But that's an open question. We are not so few as you suppose.'

'What? You seriously suppose you will come to terms with a whole people?'

'All Moscow was burnt down, you know, by a farthing dip,' answered Bazarov.

'Yes, yes. First a pride almost Satanic, then ridicule--that, that's what it is attracts the young, that's what gains an ascendancy over the inexperienced hearts of boys! Here's one of them sitting beside you, ready to worship the ground under your feet. Look at him! (Arkady turned away and frowned.) And this plague has spread far already. I have been told that in Rome our artists never set foot in the Vatican.

Raphael they regard as almost a fool, because, if you please, he's an authority; while they're all the while most disgustingly sterile and unsuccessful, men whose imagination does not soar beyond 'Girls at a Fountain,' however they try! And the girls even out of drawing. They are fine fellows to your mind, are they not?'

'To my mind,' retorted Bazarov, 'Raphael's not worth a bra.s.s farthing; and they're no better than he.'

'Bravo! bravo! Listen, Arkady ... that's how young men of to-day ought to express themselves! And if you come to think of it, how could they fail to follow you! In old days, young men had to study; they didn't want to be called dunces, so they had to work hard whether they liked it or not. But now, they need only say, "Everything in the world is foolery!" and the trick's done. Young men are delighted. And, to be sure, they were simply geese before, and now they have suddenly turned nihilists.'

'Your praiseworthy sense of personal dignity has given way,' remarked Bazarov phlegmatically, while Arkady was hot all over, and his eyes were flashing. 'Our argument has gone too far; it's better to cut it short, I think. I shall be quite ready to agree with you,' he added, getting up, 'when you bring forward a single inst.i.tution in our present mode of life, in family or in social life, which does not call for complete and unqualified destruction.'

'I will bring forward millions of such inst.i.tutions,' cried Pavel Petrovitch--'millions! Well--the Mir, for instance.'

A cold smile curved Bazarov's lips. 'Well, as regards the Mir,' he commented; 'you had better talk to your brother. He has seen by now, I should fancy, what sort of thing the Mir is in fact--its common guarantee, its sobriety, and other features of the kind.'

'The family, then, the family as it exists among our peasants!' cried Pavel Petrovitch.

'And that subject, too, I imagine, it will be better for yourselves not to go into in detail. Don't you realise all the advantages of the head of the family choosing his daughters-in-law? Take my advice, Pavel Petrovitch, allow yourself two days to think about it; you're not likely to find anything on the spot. Go through all our cla.s.ses, and think well over each, while I and Arkady will ...'

'Will go on turning everything into ridicule,' broke in Pavel Petrovitch.

'No, will go on dissecting frogs. Come, Arkady; good-bye for the present, gentlemen!'

The two friends walked off. The brothers were left alone, and at first they only looked at one another.

'So that,' began Pavel Petrovitch, 'so that's what our young men of this generation are! They are like that--our successors!'

'Our successors!' repeated Nikolai Petrovitch, with a dejected smile.

He had been sitting on thorns, all through the argument, and had done nothing but glance stealthily, with a sore heart, at Arkady. 'Do you know what I was reminded of, brother? I once had a dispute with our poor mother; she stormed, and wouldn't listen to me. At last I said to her, "Of course, you can't understand me; we belong," I said, "to two different generations." She was dreadfully offended, while I thought, "There's no help for it. It's a bitter pill, but she has to swallow it." You see, now, our turn has come, and our successors can say to us, "You are not of our generation; swallow your pill."'

'You are beyond everything in your generosity and modesty,' replied Pavel Petrovitch. 'I'm convinced, on the contrary, that you and I are far more in the right than these young gentlemen, though we do perhaps express ourselves in old-fashioned language, _vieilli_, and have not the same insolent conceit.... And the swagger of the young men nowadays! You ask one, "Do you take red wine or white?" "It is my custom to prefer red!" he answers in a deep ba.s.s, with a face as solemn as if the whole universe had its eyes on him at that instant....'

'Do you care for any more tea?' asked Fenitchka, putting her head in at the door; she had not been able to make up her mind to come into the drawing-room while there was the sound of voices in dispute there.

'No, you can tell them to take the samovar,' answered Nikolai Petrovitch, and he got up to meet her. Pavel Petrovitch said '_bon soir_' to him abruptly, and went away to his study.

CHAPTER XI

Half an hour later Nikolai Petrovitch went into the garden to his favourite arbour. He was overtaken by melancholy thoughts. For the first time he realised clearly the distance between him and his son; he foresaw that every day it would grow wider and wider. In vain, then, had he spent whole days sometimes in the winter at Petersburg over the newest books; in vain had he listened to the talk of the young men; in vain had he rejoiced when he succeeded in putting in his word too in their heated discussions. 'My brother says we are right,' he thought, 'and apart from all vanity, I do think myself that they are further from the truth than we are, though at the same time I feel there is something behind them we have not got, some superiority over us.... Is it youth? No; not only youth. Doesn't their superiority consist in there being fewer traces of the slaveowner in them than in us?'

Nikolai Petrovitch's head sank despondently, and he pa.s.sed his hand over his face.

'But to renounce poetry?' he thought again; 'to have no feeling for art, for nature ...'

And he looked round, as though trying to understand how it was possible to have no feeling for nature. It was already evening; the sun was hidden behind a small copse of aspens which lay a quarter of a mile from the garden; its shadow stretched indefinitely across the still fields. A peasant on a white nag went at a trot along the dark, narrow path close beside the copse; his whole figure was clearly visible even to the patch on his shoulder, in spite of his being in the shade; the horse's hoofs flew along bravely. The sun's rays from the farther side fell full on the copse, and piercing through its thickets, threw such a warm light on the aspen trunks that they looked like pines, and their leaves were almost a dark blue, while above them rose a pale blue sky, faintly tinged by the glow of sunset. The swallows flew high; the wind had quite died away, belated bees hummed slowly and drowsily among the lilac blossom; a swarm of midges hung like a cloud over a solitary branch which stood out against the sky. 'How beautiful, my G.o.d!'

thought Nikolai Petrovitch, and his favourite verses were almost on his lips; he remembered Arkady's _Stoff und Kraft_--and was silent, but still he sat there, still he gave himself up to the sorrowful consolation of solitary thought. He was fond of dreaming; his country life had developed the tendency in him. How short a time ago, he had been dreaming like this, waiting for his son at the posting station, and what a change already since that day; their relations that were then undefined, were defined now--and how defined! Again his dead wife came back to his imagination, but not as he had known her for many years, not as the good domestic housewife, but as a young girl with a slim figure, innocently inquiring eyes, and a tight twist of hair on her childish neck. He remembered how he had seen her for the first time. He was still a student then. He had met her on the staircase of his lodgings, and, jostling by accident against her, he tried to apologise, and could only mutter, '_Pardon, monsieur_,' while she bowed, smiled, and suddenly seemed frightened, and ran away, though at the bend of the staircase she had glanced rapidly at him, a.s.sumed a serious air, and blushed. Afterwards, the first timid visits, the half-words, the half-smiles, and embarra.s.sment; and melancholy, and yearnings, and at last that breathing rapture.... Where had it all vanished? She had been his wife, he had been happy as few on earth are happy.... 'But,' he mused, 'these sweet first moments, why could one not live an eternal, undying life in them?'

He did not try to make his thought clear to himself; but he felt that he longed to keep that blissful time by something stronger than memory; he longed to feel his Marya near him again to have the sense of her warmth and breathing, and already he could fancy that over him....