Fathers and Children Part 3

'Really? Poor thing! Is Prokofitch still living?'

'Yes, and not a bit changed. As grumbling as ever. In fact, you won't find many changes at Maryino.'

'Have you still the same bailiff?'

'Well, to be sure there is a change there. I decided not to keep about me any freed serfs, who have been house servants, or, at least, not to intrust them with duties of any responsibility.' (Arkady glanced towards Piotr.) '_Il est libre, en effet_,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch in an undertone; 'but, you see, he's only a valet. Now I have a bailiff, a townsman; he seems a practical fellow. I pay him two hundred and fifty roubles a year. But,' added Nikolai Petrovitch, rubbing his forehead and eyebrows with his hand, which was always an indication with him of inward embarra.s.sment, 'I told you just now that you would not find changes at Maryino.... That's not quite correct. I think it my duty to prepare you, though....'

He hesitated for an instant, and then went on in French.

'A severe moralist would regard my openness, as improper; but, in the first place, it can't be concealed, and secondly, you are aware I have always had peculiar ideas as regards the relation of father and son.

Though, of course, you would be right in blaming me. At my age.... In short ... that ... that girl, about whom you have probably heard already ...'

'Fenitchka?' asked Arkady easily.

Nikolai Petrovitch blushed. 'Don't mention her name aloud, please....

Well ... she is living with me now. I have installed her in the house ... there were two little rooms there. But that can all be changed.'

'Goodness, daddy, what for?'

'Your friend is going to stay with us ... it would be awkward ...'

'Please don't be uneasy on Bazarov's account. He's above all that.'

'Well, but you too,' added Nikolai Petrovitch. 'The little lodge is so horrid--that's the worst of it.'

'Goodness, dad,' interposed Arkady, 'it's as if you were apologising; I wonder you're not ashamed.'

'Of course, I ought to be ashamed,' answered Nikolai Petrovitch, flushing more and more.

'Nonsense, dad, nonsense; please don't!' Arkady smiled affectionately.

'What a thing to apologise for!' he thought to himself, and his heart was filled with a feeling of condescending tenderness for his kind, soft-hearted father, mixed with a sense of secret superiority. 'Please, stop,' he repeated once more, instinctively revelling in a consciousness of his own advanced and emanc.i.p.ated condition.

Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at him from under the fingers of the hand with which he was still rubbing his forehead, and there was a pang in his heart.... But at once he blamed himself for it.

'Here are our meadows at last,' he said after a long silence.

'And that in front is our forest, isn't it?' asked Arkady.

'Yes. Only I have sold the timber. This year they will cut it down.'

'Why did you sell it?'

'The money was needed; besides, that land is to go to the peasants.'

'Who don't pay you their rent?'

'That's their affair; besides, they will pay it some day.'

'I am sorry about the forest,' observed Arkady, and he began to look about him.

The country through which they were driving could not be called picturesque. Fields upon fields stretched all along to the very horizon, now sloping gently upwards, then dropping down again; in some places woods were to be seen, and winding ravines, planted with low, scanty bushes, recalling vividly the representation of them on the old-fashioned maps of the times of Catherine. They came upon little streams too with hollow banks; and tiny lakes with narrow d.y.k.es; and little villages, with low hovels under dark and often tumble-down roofs, and slanting barns with walls woven of brushwood and gaping doorways beside neglected threshing-floors; and churches, some brick-built, with stucco peeling off in patches, others wooden, with crosses fallen askew, and overgrown grave-yards. Slowly Arkady's heart sunk. To complete the picture, the peasants they met were all in tatters and on the sorriest little nags; the willows, with their trunks stripped of bark, and broken branches, stood like ragged beggars along the roadside; cows lean and s.h.a.ggy and looking pinched up by hunger, were greedily tearing at the gra.s.s along the ditches. They looked as though they had just been s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the murderous clutches of some threatening monster; and the piteous state of the weak, starved beasts in the midst of the lovely spring day, called up, like a white phantom, the endless, comfortless winter with its storms, and frosts, and snows.... 'No,' thought Arkady, 'this is not a rich country; it does not impress one by plenty or industry; it can't, it can't go on like this, reforms are absolutely necessary ... but how is one to carry them out, how is one to begin?'

Such were Arkady's reflections; ... but even as he reflected, the spring regained its sway. All around was golden green, all--trees, bushes, gra.s.s--shone and stirred gently in wide waves under the soft breath of the warm wind; from all sides flooded the endless trilling music of the larks; the peewits were calling as they hovered over the low-lying meadows, or noiselessly ran over the tussocks of gra.s.s; the rooks strutted among the half-grown short spring-corn, standing out black against its tender green; they disappeared in the already whitening rye, only from time to time their heads peeped out amid its grey waves. Arkady gazed and gazed, and his reflections grew slowly fainter and pa.s.sed away.... He flung off his cloak and turned to his father, with a face so bright and boyish, that the latter gave him another hug.

'We're not far off now,' remarked Nikolai Petrovitch; 'we have only to get up this hill, and the house will be in sight. We shall get on together splendidly, Arkasha; you shall help me in farming the estate, if only it isn't a bore to you. We must draw close to one another now, and learn to know each other thoroughly, mustn't we!'

'Of course,' said Arkady; 'but what an exquisite day it is to-day!'

'To welcome you, my dear boy. Yes, it's spring in its full loveliness.

Though I agree with Pushkin--do you remember in Yevgeny Onyegin--

'To me how sad thy coming is, Spring, spring, sweet time of love!

What ...'

'Arkady!' called Bazarov's voice from the coach, 'send me a match; I've nothing to light my pipe with.'

Nikolai Petrovitch stopped, while Arkady, who had begun listening to him with some surprise, though with sympathy too, made haste to pull a silver matchbox out of his pocket, and sent it to Bazarov by Piotr.

'Will you have a cigar?' shouted Bazarov again.

'Thanks,' answered Arkady.

Piotr returned to the carriage, and handed him with the match-box a thick black cigar, which Arkady began to smoke promptly, diffusing about him such a strong and pungent odour of cheap tobacco, that Nikolai Petrovitch, who had never been a smoker from his youth up, was forced to turn away his head, as imperceptibly as he could for fear of wounding his son.

A quarter of an hour later, the two carriages drew up before the steps of a new wooden house, painted grey, with a red iron roof. This was Maryino, also known as New-Wick, or, as the peasants had nicknamed it, Poverty Farm.

CHAPTER IV

No crowd of house-serfs ran out on to the steps to meet the gentlemen; a little girl of twelve years old made her appearance alone. After her there came out of the house a young lad, very like Piotr, dressed in a coat of grey livery, with white armorial b.u.t.tons, the servant of Pavel Petrovitch Kirsanov. Without speaking, he opened the door of the carriage, and unb.u.t.toned the ap.r.o.n of the coach. Nikolai Petrovitch with his son and Bazarov walked through a dark and almost empty hall, from behind the door of which they caught a glimpse of a young woman's face, into a drawing-room furnished in the most modern style.

'Here we are at home,' said Nikolai Petrovitch, taking off his cap, and shaking back his hair. 'That's the great thing; now we must have supper and rest.'

'A meal would not come amiss, certainly,' observed Bazarov, stretching, and he dropped on to a sofa.

'Yes, yes, let us have supper, supper directly.' Nikolai Petrovitch with no apparent reason stamped his foot. 'And here just at the right moment comes Prokofitch.'

A man about sixty entered, white-haired, thin, and swarthy, in a cinnamon-coloured dress-coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and a pink neckerchief. He smirked, went up to kiss Arkady's hand, and bowing to the guest retreated to the door, and put his hands behind him.

'Here he is, Prokofitch,' began Nikolai Petrovitch; 'he's come back to us at last.... Well, how do you think him looking?'

'As well as could be,' said the old man, and was grinning again, but he quickly knitted his bushy brows. 'You wish supper to be served?' he said impressively.

'Yes, yes, please. But won't you like to go to your room first, Yevgeny Va.s.silyitch?'