Fathers and Sons

alf 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.