Fathers and Children Part 17

'Our grand-d.u.c.h.esses don't talk Russian like that,' remarked Arkady.

'She's seen ups and downs, my dear boy; she's known what it is to be hard up!'

'Any way, she's charming,' observed Arkady.

'What a magnificent body!' pursued Bazarov. 'Shouldn't I like to see it on the dissecting-table.'

'Hush, for mercy's sake, Yevgeny! that's beyond everything.'

'Well, don't get angry, you baby. I meant it's first-rate. We must go to stay with her.'

'When?'

'Well, why not the day after to-morrow. What is there to do here? Drink champagne with Kukshina. Listen to your cousin, the Liberal dignitary?... Let's be off the day after to-morrow. By the way, too--my father's little place is not far from there. This Nikolskoe's on the S---- road, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'Optime, why hesitate? leave that to fools and prigs! I say, what a splendid body!'

Three days later the two friends were driving along the road to Nikolskoe. The day was bright, and not too hot, and the sleek posting-horses trotted smartly along, switching their tied and plaited tails. Arkady looked at the road, and not knowing why, he smiled.

'Congratulate me,' cried Bazarov suddenly, 'to-day's the 22nd of June, my guardian angel's day. Let's see how he will watch over me. To-day they expect me home,' he added, dropping his voice.... 'Well, they can go on expecting.... What does it matter!'

CHAPTER XVI

The country-house in which Anna Sergyevna lived stood on an exposed hill at no great distance from a yellow stone church with a green roof, white columns, and a fresco over the princ.i.p.al entrance representing the 'Resurrection of Christ' in the 'Italian' style. Sprawling in the foreground of the picture was a swarthy warrior in a helmet, specially conspicuous for his rotund contours. Behind the church a long village stretched in two rows, with chimneys peeping out here and there above the thatched roofs. The manor-house was built in the same style as the church, the style known among us as that of Alexander; the house too was painted yellow, and had a green roof, and white columns, and a pediment with an escutcheon on it. The architect had designed both buildings with the approval of the deceased Odintsov, who could not endure--as he expressed it--idle and arbitrary innovations. The house was enclosed on both sides by the dark trees of an old garden; an avenue of lopped pines led up to the entrance.

Our friends were met in the hall by two tall footmen in livery; one of them at once ran for the steward. The steward, a stout man in a black dress coat, promptly appeared and led the visitors by a staircase covered with rugs to a special room, in which two bedsteads were already prepared for them with all necessaries for the toilet. It was clear that order reigned supreme in the house; everything was clean, everywhere there was a peculiar delicate fragrance, just as there is in the reception rooms of ministers.

'Anna Sergyevna asks you to come to her in half-an-hour,' the steward announced; 'will there be orders to give meanwhile?'

'No orders,' answered Bazarov; 'perhaps you will be so good as to trouble yourself to bring me a gla.s.s of vodka.'

'Yes, sir,' said the steward, looking in some perplexity, and he withdrew, his boots creaking as he walked.

'What _grand genre_!' remarked Bazarov. 'That's what it's called in your set, isn't it? She's a grand-d.u.c.h.ess, and that's all about it.'

'A nice grand-d.u.c.h.ess,' retorted Arkady, 'at the very first meeting she invited such great aristocrats as you and me to stay with her.'

'Especially me, a future doctor, and a doctor's son, and a village s.e.xton's grandson.... You know, I suppose, I'm the grandson of a s.e.xton? Like the great Speransky,' added Bazarov after a brief pause, contracting his lips. 'At any rate she likes to be comfortable; oh, doesn't she, this lady! Oughtn't we to put on evening dress?'

Arkady only shrugged his shoulders ... but he too was conscious of a little nervousness.

Half-an-hour later Bazarov and Arkady went together into the drawing-room. It was a large lofty room, furnished rather luxuriously but without particularly good taste. Heavy expensive furniture stood in the ordinary stiff arrangement along the walls, which were covered with cinnamon-coloured paper with gold flowers on it; Odintsov had ordered the furniture from Moscow through a friend and agent of his, a spirit merchant. Over a sofa in the centre of one wall hung a portrait of a faded light-haired man--and it seemed to look with displeasure at the visitors. 'It must be the late lamented,' Bazarov whispered to Arkady, and turning up his nose, he added, 'Hadn't we better bolt ...?' But at that instant the lady of the house entered. She wore a light barege dress; her hair smoothly combed back behind her ears gave a girlish expression to her pure and fresh face.

'Thank you for keeping your promise,' she began. 'You must stay a little while with me; it's really not bad here. I will introduce you to my sister; she plays the piano well. That is a matter of indifference to you, Monsieur Bazarov; but you, I think, Monsieur Kirsanov, are fond of music. Besides my sister I have an old aunt living with me, and one of our neighbours comes in sometimes to play cards; that makes up all our circle. And now let us sit down.'

Madame Odintsov delivered all this little speech with peculiar precision, as though she had learned it by heart; then she turned to Arkady. It appeared that her mother had known Arkady's mother, and had even been her confidante in her love for Nikolai Petrovitch. Arkady began talking with great warmth of his dead mother; while Bazarov fell to turning over alb.u.ms. 'What a tame cat I'm getting!' he was thinking to himself.

A beautiful greyhound with a blue collar on, ran into the drawing-room, tapping on the floor with his paws, and after him entered a girl of eighteen, black-haired and dark-skinned, with a rather round but pleasing face, and small dark eyes. In her hands she held a basket filled with flowers.

'This is my Katya,' said Madame Odintsov, indicating her with a motion of her head. Katya made a slight curtsey, placed herself beside her sister, and began picking out flowers. The greyhound, whose name was Fifi, went up to both of the visitors, in turn wagging his tail, and thrusting his cold nose into their hands.

'Did you pick all that yourself?' asked Madame Odintsov.

'Yes,' answered Katya.

'Is auntie coming to tea?'

'Yes.'

When Katya spoke, she had a very charming smile, sweet, timid, and candid, and looked up from under her eyebrows with a sort of humorous severity. Everything about her was still young and undeveloped; the voice, and the bloom on her whole face, and the rosy hands, with white palms, and the rather narrow shoulders.... She was constantly blushing and getting out of breath.

Madame Odintsov turned to Bazarov. 'You are looking at pictures from politeness, Yevgeny Va.s.silyitch,' she began. That does not interest you. You had better come nearer to us, and let us have a discussion about something.'

Bazarov went closer. 'What subject have you decided upon for discussion?' he said.

'What you like. I warn you, I am dreadfully argumentative.'

'You?'

'Yes. That seems to surprise you. Why?'

'Because, as far as I can judge, you have a calm, cool character, and one must be impulsive to be argumentative.'

'How can you have had time to understand me so soon? In the first place, I am impatient and obstinate--you should ask Katya; and secondly, I am very easily carried away.'

Bazarov looked at Anna Sergyevna. 'Perhaps; you must know best. And so you are inclined for a discussion--by all means. I was looking through the views of the Saxon mountains in your alb.u.m, and you remarked that that couldn't interest me. You said so, because you suppose me to have no feeling for art, and as a fact I haven't any; but these views might be interesting to me from a geological standpoint, for the formation of the mountains, for instance.'

'Excuse me; but as a geologist, you would sooner have recourse to a book, to a special work on the subject, and not to a drawing.'

'The drawing shows me at a glance what would be spread over ten pages in a book.'

Anna Sergyevna was silent for a little.

'And so you haven't the least artistic feeling?' she observed, putting her elbow on the table, and by that very action bringing her face nearer to Bazarov. 'How can you get on without it?'

'Why, what is it wanted for, may I ask?'

'Well, at least to enable one to study and understand men.'

Bazarov smiled. 'In the first place, experience of life does that; and in the second, I a.s.sure you, studying separate individuals is not worth the trouble. All people are like one another, in soul as in body; each of us has brain, spleen, heart, and lungs made alike; and the so-called moral qualities are the same in all; the slight variations are of no importance. A single human specimen is sufficient to judge of all by.

People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studying each individual birch-tree.'