'So here you are, a graduate at last, and come home again,' said
Nikolai Petrovitch, touching Arkady now on the shoulder, now on the
knee. 'At last!'
'And how is uncle? quite well?' asked Arkady, who, in spite of the
genuine, almost childish delight filling his heart, wanted as soon as
possible to turn the conversation from the emotional into a commonplace
channel.
'Quite well. He was thinking of coming with me to meet you, but for
some reason or other he gave up the idea.'
'And how long have you been waiting for me?' inquired Arkady.
'Oh, about five hours.'
'Dear old dad!'
Arkady turned round quickly to his father, and gave him a sounding kiss
on the cheek. Nikolai Petrovitch gave vent to a low chuckle.
'I have got such a capital horse for you!' he began. 'You will see. And
your room has been fresh papered.'
'And is there a room for Bazarov?'
'We will find one for him too.'
'Please, dad, make much of him. I can't tell you how I prize his
friendship.'
'Have you made friends with him lately?'
'Yes, quite lately.'
'Ah, that's how it is I did not see him last winter. What does he
study?'
'His chief subject is natural science. But he knows everything. Next
year he wants to take his doctor's degree.'
'Ah! he's in the medical faculty,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch, and he
was silent for a little. 'Piotr,' he went on, stretching out his hand,
'aren't those our peasants driving along?'
Piotr looked where his master was pointing. Some carts harnessed with
unbridled horses were moving rapidly along a narrow by-road. In each
cart there were one or two peasants in sheepskin coats, unbuttoned.
'Yes, sir,' replied Piotr.
'Where are they going,--to the town?'
'To the town, I suppose. To the gin-shop,' he added contemptuously,
turning slightly towards the coachman, as though he would appeal to
him. But the latter did not stir a muscle; he was a man of the old
stamp, and did not share the modern views of the younger generation.
'I have had a lot of bother with the peasants this year,' pursued
Nikolai Petrovitch, turning to his son. 'They won't pay their rent.
What is one to do?'
'But do you like your hired labourers?'
'Yes,' said Nikolai Petrovitch between his teeth. 'They're being set
against me, that's the mischief; and they don't do their best. They
spoil the tools. But they have tilled the land pretty fairly. When
things have settled down a bit, it will be all right. Do you take an
interest in farming now?'
'You've no shade; that's a pity,' remarked Arkady, without answering
the last question.
'I have had a great awning put up on the north side over the balcony,'
observed Nikolai Petrovitch; 'now we can have dinner even in the open
air.'
'It'll be rather too like a summer villa.... Still, that's all
nonsense. What air though here! How delicious it smells! Really I fancy
there's nowhere such fragrance in the world as in the meadows here! And
the sky too.'
Arkady suddenly stopped short, cast a stealthy look behind him, and
said no more.
'Of course,' observed Nikolai Petrovitch, 'you were born here, and so
everything is bound to strike you in a special----'
'Come, dad, that makes no difference where a man is born.'
'Still----'
'No; it makes absolutely no difference.'
Nikolai Petrovitch gave a sidelong glance at his son, and the carriage
went on a half-a-mile further before the conversation was renewed
between them.
'I don't recollect whether I wrote to you,' began Nikolai Petrovitch,
'your old nurse, Yegorovna, is dead.'
'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 embarrassment, '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 emancipated 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 dykes; 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 shaggy and looking pinched up by hunger,
were greedily tearing at the grass along the ditches. They looked as
though they had just been snatched 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, grass--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 grass; 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 passed 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.