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 buttons, the servant of Pavel
Petrovitch Kirsanov. Without speaking, he opened the door of the
carriage, and unbuttoned the apron 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 brass buttons, 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
Vassilyitch?'
'No, thanks; I don't care about it. Only give orders for my little box
to be taken there, and this garment, too,' he added, taking off his
frieze overcoat.
'Certainly. Prokofitch, take the gentleman's coat.' (Prokofitch, with
an air of perplexity, picked up Bazarov's 'garment' in both hands, and
holding it high above his head, retreated on tiptoe.) 'And you, Arkady,
are you going to your room for a minute?'
'Yes, I must wash,' answered Arkady, and was just moving towards the
door, but at that instant there came into the drawing-room a man of
medium height, dressed in a dark English suit, a fashionable low
cravat, and kid shoes, Pavel Petrovitch Kirsanov. He looked about
forty-five: his close-cropped, grey hair shone with a dark lustre, like
new silver; his face, yellow but free from wrinkles, was exceptionally
regular and pure in line, as though carved by a light and delicate
chisel, and showed traces of remarkable beauty; specially fine were his
clear, black, almond-shaped eyes. The whole person of Arkady's uncle,
with its aristocratic elegance, had preserved the gracefulness of youth
and that air of striving upwards, away from earth, which for the most
part is lost after the twenties are past.
Pavel Petrovitch took out of his trouser pocket his exquisite hand with
its long tapering pink nails, a hand which seemed still more exquisite
from the snowy whiteness of the cuff, buttoned with a single, big opal,
and gave it to his nephew. After a preliminary handshake in the
European style, he kissed him thrice after the Russian fashion, that is
to say, he touched his cheek three times with his perfumed moustaches,
and said, 'Welcome.'
Nikolai Petrovitch presented him to Bazarov; Pavel Petrovitch greeted
him with a slight inclination of his supple figure, and a slight smile,
but he did not give him his hand, and even put it back into his pocket.
'I had begun to think you were not coming to-day,' he began in a
musical voice, with a genial swing and shrug of the shoulders, as he
showed his splendid white teeth. 'Did anything happen on the road.'
'Nothing happened,' answered Arkady; 'we were rather slow. But we're as
hungry as wolves now. Hurry up Prokofitch, dad; and I'll be back
directly.'
'Stay, I'm coming with you,' cried Bazarov, pulling himself up suddenly
from the sofa. Both the young men went out.
'Who is he?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.
'A friend of Arkasha's; according to him, a very clever fellow.'
'Is he going to stay with us?'
'Yes.'
'That unkempt creature?'
'Why, yes.'
Pavel Petrovitch drummed with his finger tips on the table. 'I fancy
Arkady _s'est dégourdi_,' he remarked. 'I'm glad he has come back.'
At supper there was little conversation. Bazarov especially said
nothing, but he ate a great deal. Nikolai Petrovitch related various
incidents in what he called his career as a farmer, talked about the
impending government measures, about committees, deputations, the
necessity of introducing machinery, etc. Pavel Petrovitch paced slowly
up and down the dining-room (he never ate supper), sometimes sipping at
a wineglass of red wine, and less often uttering some remark or rather
exclamation, of the nature of 'Ah! aha! hm!' Arkady told some news from
Petersburg, but he was conscious of a little awkwardness, that
awkwardness, which usually overtakes a youth when he has just ceased to
be a child, and has come back to a place where they are accustomed to
regard him and treat him as a child. He made his sentences quite
unnecessarily long, avoided the word 'daddy,' and even sometimes
replaced it by the word 'father,' mumbled, it is true, between his
teeth; with an exaggerated carelessness he poured into his glass far
more wine than he really wanted, and drank it all off. Prokofitch did
not take his eyes off him, and kept chewing his lips. After supper they
all separated at once.
'Your uncle's a queer fish,' Bazarov said to Arkady, as he sat in his
dressing-gown by his bedside, smoking a short pipe. 'Only fancy such
style in the country! His nails, his nails--you ought to send them to
an exhibition!'
'Why of course, you don't know,' replied Arkady. 'He was a great swell
in his own day, you know. I will tell you his story one day. He was
very handsome, you know, used to turn all the women's heads.'
'Oh, that's it, is it? So he keeps it up in memory of the past. It's a
pity there's no one for him to fascinate here though. I kept staring at
his exquisite collars. They're like marble, and his chin's shaved
simply to perfection. Come, Arkady Nikolaitch, isn't that ridiculous?'
'Perhaps it is; but he's a splendid man, really.'
'An antique survival! But your father's a capital fellow. He wastes his
time reading poetry, and doesn't know much about farming, but he's a
good-hearted fellow.'
'My father's a man in a thousand.'
'Did you notice how shy and nervous he is?'
Arkady shook his head as though he himself were not shy and nervous.
'It's something astonishing,' pursued Bazarov, 'these old idealists,
they develop their nervous systems till they break down ... so balance
is lost. But good-night. In my room there's an English washstand, but
the door won't fasten. Anyway that ought to be encouraged--an English
washstand stands for progress!'
Bazarov went away, and a sense of great happiness came over Arkady.
Sweet it is to fall asleep in one's own home, in the familiar bed,
under the quilt worked by loving hands, perhaps a dear nurse's hands,
those kind, tender, untiring hands. Arkady remembered Yegorovna, and
sighed and wished her peace in heaven.... For himself he made no
prayer.
Both he and Bazarov were soon asleep, but others in the house were
awake long after. His son's return had agitated Nikolai Petrovitch. He
lay down in bed, but did not put out the candles, and his head propped
on his hand, he fell into long reveries. His brother was sitting long
after midnight in his study, in a wide armchair before the fireplace,
on which there smouldered some faintly glowing embers. Pavel Petrovitch
was not undressed, only some red Chinese slippers had replaced the kid
shoes on his feet. He held in his hand the last number of _Galignani_,
but he was not reading; he gazed fixedly into the grate, where a bluish
flame flickered, dying down, then flaring up again.... God knows where
his thoughts were rambling, but they were not rambling in the past
only; the expression of his face was concentrated and surly, which is
not the way when a man is absorbed solely in recollections. In a small
back room there sat, on a large chest, a young woman in a blue dressing
jacket with a white kerchief thrown over her dark hair, Fenitchka. She
was half listening, half dozing, and often looked across towards the
open door through which a child's cradle was visible, and the regular
breathing of a sleeping baby could be heard.