Fathers and Sons

"o think that you are now a graduate and home again!" said Nikolai
Petrovitch as he tapped Arkady on the knee, and then on the shoulder.
"There now, there now!"

"And how is Uncle? Is he quite well?" asked Arkady--the reason for the
question being that though he felt filled with a genuine, an almost
childish delight at his return, he also felt conscious of an instinct
that the conversation were best diverted from the emotional to the
prosaic.

"Yes, your uncle is quite well. As a matter of fact, he also had
arranged to come and meet you, but at the last moment changed his mind."

"Did you have very long to wait?" continued Arkady.

"About five hours."

"Dearest Papa!" cried Arkady as, leaning over towards his father, he
imprinted upon his cheek a fervent kiss. Nikolai Petrovitch smiled
quietly.

"I have got a splendid horse for you," he next remarked. "Presently you
shall see him. Also, your room has been entirely repapered."

"And have you a room for Bazarov as well?"

"One shall be found for him."

"Oh--and pray humour him in every way you can. I could not express to
you how much I value his friendship."

"But you have not known him very long, have you?"

"No--not very long."

"I thought not, for I do not remember to have seen him in St.
Petersburg last winter. In what does he most interest himself?"

"Principally in natural science. But, to tell the truth, he knows
practically everything, and is to become a doctor next year."

"Oh! So he is in the Medical Faculty?" Nikolai Petrovitch remarked;
after which there was silence for a moment.

"Peter," went on Nikolai, pointing with his hand, "are not those
peasants there some of our own?"

Peter glanced in the direction indicated, and saw a few waggons
proceeding along a narrow by-road. The teams were bridleless, and in
each waggon were seated some two or three muzhiks with their blouses
unbuttoned.

"Yes, they are some of our own," Peter responded.

"Then whither can they be going? To the town?"

"Yes--or to the tavern." This last was added contemptuously, and with
a wink to the coachman that was designed to enlist that functionary's
sympathy: but as the functionary in question was one of the old school
which takes no share in the modern movement, he stirred not a muscle of
his face.

"This year my peasants have been giving me a good deal of trouble,"
Nikolai Petrovitch continued to his son. "Persistently do they refuse
to pay their tithes. What ought to be done with them?"

"And do you find your hired workmen satisfactory?"

"Not altogether," muttered Nikolai Petrovitch. "You see, they have
become spoilt, more's the pity! Any real energy seems quite to have
left them, and they not only ruin my implements, but also leave the
land untilled. Does estate-management interest you?"

"The thing we most lack here is shade," remarked Arkady in evasion of
the question.

"Ah, but I have had an awning added to the north balcony, so that we
can take our meals in the open air."

"But that will give the place rather the look of a villa, will it not?
Things of that sort never prove effectual. But oh, the air here! How
good it smells! Yes, in my opinion, things never smell elsewhere as
they do here. And oh, the sky!"

Suddenly Arkady stopped, threw a glance of apprehension in the
direction of the tarantass, and relapsed into silence.

"I quite agree with you," replied Nikolai Petrovitch. "You see, the
reason is that you were born here, and that therefore the place is
bound to have for you a special significance."

"But no significance can attach to the place of a man's birth, Papa."

"Indeed?"

"Oh no. None whatsoever."

Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at the speaker, and for fully half a verst
let the vehicle proceed without the conversation between them being
renewed. At length Nikolai Petrovitch observed:

"I cannot remember whether I wrote to tell you that your old nurse,
Egorovna, is dead."

"Dead? Oh, the poor old woman! But Prokofitch--is he still alive?"

"He is so, and in no way changed--that is to say, he grumbles as much
as ever. In fact, you will find that no really important alterations
have taken place at Marino."

"And have you the same steward as before?"

"No; I have appointed a fresh one, for I came to the conclusion that
I could not have any freed serfs about the place. That is to say,
I did not feel as though I could trust such fellows with posts of
responsibility." Arkady indicated Peter with his eyes, and Nikolai
Petrovitch therefore subdued his voice a little. "He? Oh, il est
libre, en effet. You see, he is my valet. But as regards a steward,
I have appointed a miestchanin,[1] at a salary of 250 roubles a
year, and he seems at least capable. But"--and here Nikolai Petrovitch
rubbed his forehead, which gesture with him always implied inward
agitation--"I ought to say that, though I have told you that you will
find no alterations of importance at Marino, the statement is not
strictly true, seeing that it is my duty to warn you that, that----"
Nikolai Petrovitch hesitated again--then added in French: "Perhaps by a
stern moralist my frankness might be considered misplaced; yet I will
not conceal from you, nor can you fail to be aware, that always I have
had ideas of my own on the subject of the relations which ought to
subsist between a father and his son. At the same time, this is not to
say that you have not the right to judge me. Rather, it is that at my
age----Well, to put matters bluntly, the girl whom you will have heard
me speak of----"

"You mean Thenichka?" said Arkady.

Nikolai Petrovitch's face went red.

"Do not speak of her so loudly," he advised. "Yes, she is living with
us. I took her in because two of our smaller rooms were available. But
of course the arrangement must be changed."

"Why must it, Papa?"

"Because this friend of yours is coming, and also because--well, it
might make things awkward."

"Do not disturb yourself on Bazarov's account. He is altogether
superior to such things."

"Yes, so you say; but the mischief lies in the fact that the wing is so
small."

"Papa, Papa!" protested Arkady. "Almost one would think that you
considered yourself to blame for something; whereas you have nothing
to reproach yourself with."

"Ah, but I have," responded Nikolai Petrovitch. His face had turned
redder than ever.

"No, you have not, Papa," repeated Arkady with a loving smile, while
adding to himself with a feeling of indulgent tenderness for his good,
kind father, as well as with a certain sense of "superiority": "Why is
he making these excuses?"

"I beg of you to say no more," he continued with an involuntary feeling
of exultation in being "grown up" and "emancipated." As he did so
Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at him from under the fingers of the hand
which was still rubbing his brows. At the same moment something seemed
to give his heart a stab. Mentally, as before, he blamed himself.

"Here our fields begin," he observed after a pause.

"I see," rejoined Arkady. "And that is our forest in front, I suppose?"

"It is so. Only, only--I have sold it, and this year it is to be
removed."

"Why have you sold it?"

"Because I needed the money. Moreover, the land which it occupies must
go to the peasants."

"What? To the peasants who pay you no tithes?"

"Possibly. But some day they will pay me."

"I regret the forest's loss," said Arkady, and then resumed his
contemplation of the landscape.

The scenery which the party were traversing could not have been called
picturesque, for, with slight undulations, only fields, fields, and
again fields, stretched to the very horizon. True, a few patches of
copse were visible, but the ditches, with their borderings of low,
sparse brushwood, recalled the antique land-measurement of Katherine's
day. Also, streams ran pent between abruptly sloping banks, hamlets
with dwarfed huts (of which the blackened roofs were, for the most
part, cracked in half) stood cheek by jowl with crazy grinding-byres
of plaited willow, empty threshing-floors had their gates sagging,
and from churches of wood or of brick which stood amid dilapidated
graveyards the stucco was peeling, and the crosses were threatening at
any moment to fall. As he gazed at the scene Arkady's heart contracted.
Moreover, the peasants encountered on the road looked ragged, and were
riding sorry nags, while the laburnum trees which stood ranged like
miserable beggars by the roadside had their bark hanging in strips,
and their boughs shattered. Lastly, the lean, mud-encrusted cows which
could be seen hungrily cropping the herbage in the ditches were so
"staring" of coat that the animals might just have been rescued from
the talons of some terrible, death-dealing monster; and as one gazed at
those weak, pitiful beasts, almost one could fancy that one saw uprisen
from amid the beauty of spring, the pale phantoms of Winter--its storms
and its frost and its snow.

"Evidently this is not a rich district," reflected Arkady. "Rather,
it is a district which gives one the impression neither of abundance
nor of hard work. Yet can it be left as it is? No! Education is what
we need. But how is that education to be administered, or, for that
matter, to be introduced?"

Thus Arkady. Yet, even as the thought passed through his mind, Spring
seemed once more to regain possession of her kingdom, and everything
around him grew golden-green, and trees, shrubs, and herbage started
to wave and glimmer under the soft, warm breath of the vernal zephyrs,
and larks took to pouring out their souls in endless, ringing strains,
and siskins, circling high over sunken ponds, uttered their cry, then
skimmed the hillocks in silence, and handsome black rooks stalked
among the tender green of the short corn-shoots, or settled among the
pale-white, smokelike ripples of the young rye, whence at intervals
they protruded their heads.

Arkady gazed and gazed; and gradually, as he did so, his late thoughts
grew dimmer and disappeared, and, throwing off his travelling-cloak,
he peered so joyously, with such a boyish air, into his father's face
that Nikolai Petrovitch bestowed upon him yet another embrace.

"We have but little further to go now," he remarked. "In fact, when
once we have topped that rise the house will come into view. And what
a time we are going to have together, Arkasha! For you will be able
to help me with the estate (if you care to, that is to say?), and you
and I will draw nearer to one another, and make one another's better
acquaintance."

"We will!" cried Arkady. "And what splendid weather for us both!"

"Yes; specially for your home-coming is spring in all its glory. Yet I
am not sure that I do not agree with Pushkin where he says, in Eugène
Onegin:

/$
"How sad to me is your coming,
O spring, spring, season of love!"
$/

"Arkady," shouted Bazarov from the tarantass, "please send me a match
or two, for I have nothing to light my pipe with."

Instantly Nikolai Petrovitch ceased quoting poetry, and Arkady (who
had listened with considerable surprise, though also with a certain
measure of sympathy, to his father) hastened to produce from his pocket
a silver matchbox, and to dispatch the same by the hand of Peter.

"In return, would you care to have a cigar?" called Bazarov.

"I should," replied Arkady.

The result was that when Peter returned to the koliaska he handed
Arkady not only the matchbox, but also a fat black cigar. This Arkady
lit at leisure, and then proceeded to diffuse around him so strong and
acrid an odour of tobacco that Nikolai Petrovitch (a non-smoker from
birth) found himself forced to avert his nose (though he did this
covertly, for fear of offending his son).

A quarter of an hour later the vehicles drew up at the steps of a new
wooden mansion, painted grey, and roofed with red sheet-iron. The
mansion was Marino, or Novaia Sloboda, or, to quote the peasants' name,
"Bobili Chutor."

[1] A member of the trading or shopkeeping class.