Fathers and Children Part 28

'Oh, my friend, Arkady Nikolaitch!' cried Bazarov, 'one thing I entreat of you; no fine talk.'

'I talk as best I can.... And, I declare, its perfect despotism. An idea came into my head; why shouldn't I utter it?'

'Yes; and why shouldn't I utter my ideas? I think that fine talk's positively indecent.'

'And what is decent? Abuse?'

'Ha! ha! you really do intend, I see, to walk in your uncle's footsteps. How pleased that worthy imbecile would have been if he had heard you!'

'What did you call Pavel Petrovitch?'

'I called him, very justly, an imbecile.'

'But this is unbearable!' cried Arkady.

'Aha! family feeling spoke there,' Bazarov commented coolly. 'I've noticed how obstinately it sticks to people. A man's ready to give up everything and break with every prejudice; but to admit that his brother, for instance, who steals handkerchiefs, is a thief--that's too much for him. And when one comes to think of it: my brother, mine--and no genius ... that's an idea no one can swallow.'

'It was a simple sense of justice spoke in me and not in the least family feeling,' retorted Arkady pa.s.sionately. 'But since that's a sense you don't understand, since you haven't that sensation, you can't judge of it.'

'In other words, Arkady Kirsanov is too exalted for my comprehension. I bow down before him and say no more.'

'Don't, please, Yevgeny; we shall really quarrel at last.'

'Ah, Arkady! do me a kindness. I entreat you, let us quarrel for once in earnest....'

'But then perhaps we should end by ...'

'Fighting?' put in Bazarov. 'Well? Here, on the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men, it wouldn't matter. But you'd be no match for me. I'll have you by the throat in a minute.'

Bazarov spread out his long, cruel fingers.... Arkady turned round and prepared, as though in jest, to resist.... But his friend's face struck him as so vindictive--there was such menace in grim earnest in the smile that distorted his lips, and in his glittering eyes, that he felt instinctively afraid.

'Ah! so this is where you have got to!' the voice of Va.s.sily Ivanovitch was heard saying at that instant, and the old army-doctor appeared before the young men, garbed in a home-made linen pea-jacket, with a straw hat, also home-made, on his head. 'I've been looking everywhere for you.... Well, you've picked out a capital place, and you're excellently employed. Lying on the "earth, gazing up to heaven." Do you know, there's a special significance in that?'

'I never gaze up to heaven except when I want to sneeze,' growled Bazarov, and turning to Arkady he added in an undertone. 'Pity he interrupted us.'

'Come, hush!' whispered Arkady, and he secretly squeezed his friend's hand. But no friendship can long stand such shocks.

'I look at you, my youthful friends,' Va.s.sily Ivanovitch was saying meantime, shaking his head, and leaning his folded arms on a rather cunningly bent stick of his own carving, with a Turk's figure for a top,--'I look, and I cannot refrain from admiration. You have so much strength, such youth and bloom, such abilities, such talents!

Positively, a Castor and Pollux!'

'Get along with you--going off into mythology!' commented Bazarov. 'You can see at once that he was a great Latinist in his day! Why, I seem to remember, you gained the silver medal for Latin prose--didn't you?'

'The Dioscuri, the Dioscuri!' repeated Va.s.sily Ivanovitch.

'Come, shut up, father; don't show off.'

'Once in a way it's surely permissible,' murmured the old man.

'However, I have not been seeking for you, gentlemen, to pay you compliments; but with the object, in the first place, of announcing to you that we shall soon be dining; and secondly, I wanted to prepare you, Yevgeny.... You are a sensible man, you know the world, and you know what women are, and consequently you will excuse.... Your mother wished to have a Te Deum sung on the occasion of your arrival. You must not imagine that I am inviting you to attend this thanksgiving--it is over indeed now; but Father Alexey ...'

'The village parson?'

'Well, yes, the priest; he ... is to dine ... with us.... I did not antic.i.p.ate this, and did not even approve of it ... but it somehow came about ... he did not understand me.... And, well ... Arina Vlasyevna ... Besides, he's a worthy, reasonable man.'

'He won't eat my share at dinner, I suppose?' queried Bazarov.

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch laughed. 'How you talk!'

'Well, that's all I ask. I'm ready to sit down to table with any man.'

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch set his hat straight. 'I was certain before I spoke,' he said, 'that you were above any kind of prejudice. Here am I, an old man at sixty-two, and I have none.' (Va.s.sily Ivanovitch did not dare to confess that he had himself desired the thanksgiving service.

He was no less religious than his wife.) 'And Father Alexey very much wanted to make your acquaintance. You will like him, you'll see. He's no objection even to cards, and he sometimes--but this is between ourselves ... positively smokes a pipe.'

'All right. We'll have a round of whist after dinner, and I'll clean him out.'

'He! he! he! We shall see! That remains to be seen.'

'I know you're an old hand,' said Bazarov, with a peculiar emphasis.

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch's bronzed cheeks were suffused with an uneasy flush.

'For shame, Yevgeny.... Let bygones be bygones. Well, I'm ready to acknowledge before this gentleman I had that pa.s.sion in my youth; and I have paid for it too! How hot it is, though! Let me sit down with you.

I shan't be in your way, I hope?'

'Oh, not at all,' answered Arkady.

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch lowered himself, sighing, into the hay. 'Your present quarters remind me, my dear sirs,' he began, 'of my military bivouacking existence, the ambulance halts, somewhere like this under a haystack, and even for that we were thankful.' He sighed. 'I had many, many experiences in my life. For example, if you will allow me, I will tell you a curious episode of the plague in Bessarabia.'

'For which you got the Vladimir cross?' put in Bazarov. 'We know, we know.... By the way, why is it you're not wearing it?'

'Why, I told you that I have no prejudices,' muttered Va.s.sily Ivanovitch (he had only the evening before had the red ribbon unpicked off his coat), and he proceeded to relate the episode of the plague.

'Why, he's fallen asleep,' he whispered all at once to Arkady, pointing to Yevgeny, and winking good-naturedly. 'Yevgeny! get up,' he went on aloud. 'Let's go in to dinner.'

Father Alexey, a good-looking stout man with thick, carefully-combed hair, with an embroidered girdle round his lilac silk ca.s.sock, appeared to be a man of much tact and adaptability. He made haste to be the first to offer his hand to Arkady and Bazarov, as though understanding beforehand that they did not want his blessing, and he behaved himself in general without constraint. He neither derogated from his own dignity, nor gave offence to others; he vouchsafed a pa.s.sing smile at the seminary Latin, and stood up for his bishop; drank two small gla.s.ses of wine, but refused a third; accepted a cigar from Arkady, but did not proceed to smoke it, saying he would take it home with him. The only thing not quite agreeable about him was a way he had of constantly raising his hand with care and deliberation to catch the flies on his face, sometimes succeeding in smashing them. He took his seat at the green table, expressing his satisfaction at so doing in measured terms, and ended by winning from Bazarov two roubles and a half in paper money; they had no idea of even reckoning in silver in the house of Arina Vlasyevna.... She was sitting, as before, near her son (she did not play cards), her cheek, as before, propped on her little fist; she only got up to order some new dainty to be served. She was afraid to caress Bazarov, and he gave her no encouragement, he did not invite her caresses; and besides, Va.s.sily Ivanovitch had advised her not to 'worry' him too much. 'Young men are not fond of that sort of thing,'

he declared to her. (It's needless to say what the dinner was like that day; Timofeitch in person had galloped off at early dawn for beef; the bailiff had gone off in another direction for turbot, gremille, and crayfish; for mushrooms alone forty-two farthings had been paid the peasant women in copper); but Arina Vlasyevna's eyes, bent steadfastly on Bazarov, did not express only devotion and tenderness; in them was to be seen sorrow also, mingled with awe and curiosity; there was to be seen too a sort of humble reproachfulness.

Bazarov, however, was not in a humour to a.n.a.lyse the exact expression of his mother's eyes; he seldom turned to her, and then only with some short question. Once he asked her for her hand 'for luck'; she gently laid her soft, little hand on his rough, broad palm.

'Well,' she asked, after waiting a little, 'has it been any use?'

'Worse luck than ever,' he answered, with a careless laugh.

'He plays too rashly,' p.r.o.nounced Father Alexey, as it were compa.s.sionately, and he stroked his beard.

'Napoleon's rule, good Father, Napoleon's rule,' put in Va.s.sily Ivanovitch, leading an ace.

'It brought him to St. Helena, though,' observed Father Alexey, as he trumped the ace.

'Wouldn't you like some currant tea, Enyusha?' inquired Arina Vlasyevna.