"Undoubtedly."
"What for, pray?"
"I cannot endure you; to my idea your presence here is superfluous, I
despise you; and if that is not enough for you..."
Pavel Petrovitch's eyes glittered.... Bazaroff's, too, were flashing.
"Very good," he assented; "no need of further explanations. You've a
whim to try your chivalrous spirit upon me. I might refuse you this
pleasure, but--so be it!"
The details of the duel were arranged there and then, eight paces and
two shots each. The following morning they met at the place agreed upon,
and, having marked off the ground, they took up their stations. Bazaroff
watched Pavel Petrovitch take careful aim.... "He's aiming straight at
my nerves," he thought; "and doesn't he blink down it carefully, the
ruffian! Not an agreeable sensation, though! I'm going to look at his
watch-chain."
Something whizzed sharply by his ear, and at the same instant there was
the sound of a shot. Bazaroff, without taking aim, pressed the spring.
Pavel Petrovitch gave a slight start, and clutched at his thigh. A
stream of blood began to trickle down his white trousers. Bazaroff
became the doctor at once, and, flinging aside his pistol, fell on his
knees beside his late antagonist, and began with professional skill to
attend to his wound. At that moment Nicolai Petrovitch drove up.
"What does this mean?" he asked, rushing to the side of his brother.
"It is nothing," answered Pavel Petrovitch, faintly. "I had a little
dispute with Mr. Bazaroff, and I have had to pay for it a little. I am
the only person to blame in all this.... Mr. Bazaroff has behaved most
honourably."
After that incident Bazaroff's stay in the house any longer was an
impossibility. He left the same day, calling at Madame Odintsov's house
on his way home to see Arkady. He found his friend engaged to Katya and
in the seventh heaven of delight. Madame Odintsov would have had him
stay.
"Why should you not stay now?" she said. "Stay... it's exciting talking
to you... one seems walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one
feels timid, but one gains courage as one goes on. Do stay."
"Thanks for the suggestion," he retorted, "and for your flattering
opinion of my conversational talent. But I think I have already been
moving too long in a sphere which is not my own. Flying fishes can hold
out for a time in the air, but soon they must splash back into the
water; allow me, too, to paddle in my own element."
Madame Odintsov looked at Bazaroff. His pale face was twitching with a
bitter smile. "This man did love me!" she thought, and she felt pity for
him, and held out her hand to him with sympathy.
He, too, understood her. "No!" he said, stepping back a pace. "I am a
poor man, but I have never taken charity so far. Good-bye and good luck
to you."
"I am certain we are not seeing each other for the last time," she
declared, with an unconscious gesture.
"Anything may happen!" answered Bazaroff, and he bowed and went away.
_IV.--The Passing of Bazaroff_
Bazaroff's old parents were all the more overjoyed at their son's
arrival, as it was quite unexpected. His mother was greatly excited and
his father, touching his neck with his fingers, turned his head round as
though he were trying whether it were properly screwed on, and then, all
at once, he opened his wide mouth and went off into a perfectly
noiseless chuckle.
"I've come to you for six whole weeks, governor," Bazaroff said to him.
"I want to work, so please don't hinder me now."
But though his father and mother almost effaced themselves, scarcely
daring to ask him a question, even to discover what he would like for
dinner, the fever of work fell away. It was replaced by dreary boredom
or vague restlessness. He began to seek the society of his father and to
smoke with him in silence. Now and again he even assisted at some of the
medical operations which his father conducted as a charity. Once he
pulled a tooth out from a pedlar's head, and Vassily Ivanovitch never
ceased boasting about the extraordinary feat.
One day in a neighbouring village, the news was brought them that a
peasant had died of typhus. Three days later Bazaroff came into his
father's room and asked him if he had any caustic to burn a cut in his
finger.
"What sort of a cut? where is it?"
"Here, on my finger. I have been dissecting that peasant who died of
typhus fever."
Vassily Ivanovitch suddenly turned quite white. All that day he watched
his son's face stealthily. On the third day Bazaroff could not touch his
food.
"Have you no appetite? And your head?" he at last asked, timidly; "does
it ache?"
"Yes, of course it aches."
"Don't be angry, please," continued Vassily Ivanovitch. "Won't you let
me feel your pulse?"
Bazaroff got up. "I can tell you without feeling my pulse," he said. "I
am feverish."
"Has there been any shivering?"
"Yes, there's been shivering, too; I'll go and lie down."
Bazaroff did not get up again all day, and passed the whole night in
heavy, half-unconscious slumber. At one o'clock in the morning, opening
his eyes with an effort, he saw, by the light of a lamp, his father's
pale face bending over him, and told him to go away. The old man begged
his pardon, but he quickly came back on tiptoe, and, half hidden by the
cupboard door, he gazed persistently at his son. His wife did not go to
bed either, and, leaving the study door open a very little, she kept
coming up to it to listen "how Enyusha was breathing" and to look at
Vassily Ivanovitch. She could see nothing but his motionless bent back,
but even that afforded her some faint consolation.
In the morning Bazaroff spoke to his father in a slow, drowsy voice.
"Governor, I am in a bad way; I've got the infection, and in a few days
you will have to bury me."
Vassily Ivanovitch staggered back as if someone had aimed a blow at his
leg.
"God have mercy on you! What do you mean? You have only caught a cold.
I've sent for the doctor and you'll soon be cured."
"Come, that's humbug. I've got the typhus; you can see it in my arm. You
told me you'd sent for the doctor. You did that to comfort yourself...
comfort me, too; send a messenger to Madame Odintsov; she's a lady with
an estate... Do you know?" (Vassily Ivanovitch nodded.) "Yevgeny
Bazaroff, say, sends his greetings, and sends word he is dying. Will you
do that?"
"Yes, I will do it... But it is an impossible thing for you to die...
Think only! Where would divine justice be after that?"
"I know nothing about that; only you send the messenger."
He turned his face painfully to the wall, while Vassily Ivanovitch went
out of the study, and, struggling as far as his wife's bedroom, simply
dropped down on to his knees before the holy pictures.
"Pray, Arina, pray for us," he murmured. "Our son is dying."
Bazaroff got worse every hour. He was in the agonies of high fever. His
mother and father watched over him, combing his hair and giving him
gulps of tea. The old man was tormented by a special anguish. He wished
his son to take the sacrament, though, knowing his attitude towards
religion, he dared not ask him. At last he could keep back the words no
longer. As in a broken voice he begged his son to see a priest, a
strange look came over Bazaroff's face.
"I won't refuse if that can be any comfort to you, but I'll wait a
little."
There was the sound of carriage wheels outside. Vassily Ivanovitch
rushed to the door. A lady in a black veil and a black mantle,
accompanied by a little German doctor in spectacles, got out of the
carriage.
"I am Madame Odintsov," said the lady. "Your son is still living? I have
a doctor with me."
"Benefactress!" cried Vassily Ivanovitch, snatching her hand and placing
it convulsively to his lips. "Still living; my Yevgeny is living, and
now he will be saved! Wife! wife!... An angel from heaven has come to
us."
But when the doctor came out from examining his patient he breathed the
news that there was no hope, and Vassily Ivanovitch conducted Madame
Odintsov to his son's room. As she looked at Bazaroff she felt simply
dismayed, with a sort of cold and suffocating dismay; the thought that
she would not have felt like that if she had really loved him flashed
instantaneously through her brain.
"Thanks," said Bazaroff from the bed. "I did not expect this. It's a
deed of mercy. So we have seen each other again as you promised.... I
loved you! there was no sense in that even before, and less than ever
now. Love is a form, and my own form is already breaking up."
Madame Odintsov gave an involuntary shudder.
"Noble-hearted!" he whispered. "Oh, how young and fresh and pure... in
this loathsome room! Well, good-bye.... I thought I wouldn't die; I'd
break down so many things. I wouldn't die; why should I? There were
problems to solve, and I was a giant! And now all the problem for the
giant is how to die decently.... My father will tell you what a man
Russia is losing.... That's nonsense, but don't contradict the old man.
Whatever toy will comfort a child... you know. And be kind to mother.
People like them are not to be found in your great world.... I was
needed by Russia.... No, it's clear I wasn't needed. And who is needed?"
Bazaroff put his hand to his brow. Madame Odintsov bent down to him.
"Yevgeny Vassilyvitch, I am here...." He at once took his hand away and
raised himself.
"Good-bye," he said, with a sudden force, and his eyes gleamed with
their last light. "Good-bye.... Listen.... You know I didn't kiss you
then.... Breathe on the dying lamp, and let it go out...."
She put her lips on his forehead.
"Enough!" he murmured, and dropped back on to the pillow. "Now...
darkness...."
Madame Odintsov went softly out. "Well?" Vassily Ivanovitch asked her in
a whisper. "He has fallen asleep," she answered, hardly audible. But
Bazaroff was not fated to awaken. That night he breathed his last. A
universal lamentation arose in the house. Vassily Ivanovitch was seized
by a sudden frenzy.
"I said I should rebel," he shrieked hoarsely, his face inflamed and
distorted, shaking his fist in the air, as though threatening someone;
"and I rebel, I rebel!"
But his wife, all in tears, hung upon his neck, and both fell on their
faces together. "Side by side," said one of the servants afterwards,
"they drooped their poor heads like lambs at noonday...."
* * * * *
There is a little grave in the graveyard, surrounded by an iron railing;
two young fir-trees have been planted, one at each end. Yevgeny Bazaroff
is buried in this tomb. Often from the little village not far off two
quite feeble old people come to visit it--a husband and wife. At the
iron railing they fall down and remain on their knees, and long and
bitterly they weep and yearn and intently they gaze at the dumb stone
under which their son is lying.... Can it be that their prayers, their
tears are fruitless? Can it be that love, sacred, devoted love, is not
all-powerful?
Oh, no! however passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in
the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their
innocent eyes; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, that great peace
of "indifferent" nature; they tell us, too, of eternal reconciliation
and of life without end.
* * * * *