Kitabı oku: «Fathers and Sons», sayfa 10

XVIII

When Madame Odintsov entered the breakfast-room next morning, Bazarov had been sitting over his cup for a considerable time. He glanced sharply at her as she opened the door, and she turned in his direction as inevitably as though he had signed to her to do so. Somehow her face looked pale, and it was not long before she returned to her boudoir, whence she issued again only at luncheon time. Since dawn the weather had been too rainy to admit of outdoor expeditions, and therefore the party adjourned to the drawing-room, where Arkady began to read aloud the latest number of some journal, while the Princess manifested her usual surprise at his conduct (as though it had been conduct of an indecent nature!), and fixed upon him a gaze which, though one of lasting malignancy, proved also to be one of which he took not the slightest notice.

"Pray come to my boudoir, Evgenii Vasilitch," said Anna Sergievna. "I have something to ask you. I think that last night you mentioned some textbook or another?"

Rising, she moved towards the door, whilst the Princess stared around the room as much as to say: "Dear, dear! This does surprise me!" Then she brought her eyes back to Arkady, who, raising his voice, and bending towards Katia (by whose side he was sitting), continued his reading as before.

Meanwhile Madame Odintsov walked hurriedly to her boudoir, and Bazarov followed with his eyes fixed upon the floor, and his ears open to no sound but the faint rustling of a silk dress. Arrived at her destination, Madame seated herself in the chair which she had occupied overnight, and Bazarov also took a seat where he had sat on the occasion in question.

"What is the title of the book?" she asked after a brief pause.

"Notions Générales, by Pelouse and Frémy. I can also recommend Ganot's Traité Élémentaire de Physique Expérimentale, which is more detailed in its plates than the other work, and, in general, is – "

But Madame Odintsov held up her hand.

"Pardon me," she interrupted. "I have not brought you here to discuss textbooks. I have brought you here to renew our conversation of last night, at the point where you left the room so abruptly. I hope that I shall not weary you?"

"I am entirely at your service. What was it we were discussing?"

She glanced at him.

"Happiness, I think," she said. "In fact, I was speaking to you of myself. The reason why I mention happiness is the following. Why is it that when one is enjoying, say, a piece of music, or a beautiful summer evening, or a conversation with a sympathetic companion, the occasion seems rather a hint at an infinite felicity existent elsewhere than a real felicity actually being experienced? Perhaps, however, you have never encountered such a phenomenon?"

"'Where we are not, there do we wish to be,' – you know the proverb. Last night you said that you are dissatisfied. Such a thought never enters into my head."

"Is it that such thoughts seem to you ridiculous?"

"No – rather, that they never occur to me."

"Indeed? Well, to know what your thoughts are is a thing which I greatly wish to attain."

"I do not understand you."

"Then listen. For a long time past I have been wishing to have this out with you. Do not tell me – you yourself know that it is useless to do so – that you are a man apart. As a matter of fact, you are a man still young, with all your life before you. I wish to know for what you are preparing, and what future awaits you, and what is the goal which you are seeking to reach, and whither you are travelling, and what you have in your mind – in short, who and what you are."

"I am surprised! Already you know that I dabble in natural science; while, as regards my future – "

"Yes? As regards your future?"

"I have told you that I purpose to become a district physician."

Anna Sergievna waved her hand impatiently.

"Why tell me that, when you yourself do not believe it? It is for Arkady to return me such answers, not you."

"And is Arkady in any way – ?"

"Wait. Do you mean to tell me that such a modest rôle will really satisfy you, when you yourself have asserted that the science of medicine does not exist? No, no! You have given me that answer for the reason that you desire to keep me at arm's length, that you have no faith in me. Then let me tell you that I am capable of understanding you, that I too have known poverty and ambition, that I too have had my experiences."

"I daresay: yet pardon me when I intimate that I am not accustomed to bare my soul. Moreover, there is fixed between you and me such a gulf that – "

"A gulf? Do you again say that I am an aristocrat? Come, come, Evgenii Vasilitch! Have I not already told you that I – ?"

"Can it avail anything to discuss the future when, for the most part, our futures are wholly independent of ourselves? Should the occasion arise to be up and doing, well and good: but, should the occasion not arise, at least let us leave ourselves room for thankfulness that we did not waste time in useless chatter."

"What? You call a friendly talk 'useless chatter'? Then do you deem me, as a woman, unworthy of your confidence, or do you despise all women?"

"You I do not despise: and that you know full well."

"I know nothing of the kind. Of course I can understand your reluctance to speak of your future career; but as to what is taking place within you at the present moment – "

"'Taking place within me at the present moment'?" Bazarov exclaimed. "One would think I was a state or a community! Nor is it a process which interests me; while, in addition, a man cannot always put into words 'what is taking place within him.'"

"I do not see it. Why should you hesitate to express what may be in your soul?"

"Could you do as much?" asked Bazarov.

"I could," came the reply after a brief hesitation.

Bazarov bowed in an ironical manner.

"Then you have the advantage of me," he said.

Her glance quickened into a note of interrogation.

"Very well," she said. "Yet I will venture to say that you and I have not met in vain, and that we shall always remain good friends. Moreover, I feel certain that in time your secretiveness and reserve will disappear."

"Then have you noticed in me much such 'secretiveness and reserve'?"

"I have."

Bazarov rose, and moved towards the window.

"Do you really want to know the cause of that 'secretiveness, and reserve'?" he asked. "Do you really want to know 'what is taking place within' me?"

"I do," she replied. Yet even as she spoke she felt run through her a tinge of apprehension for which she could not account.

"And you will not be angry with me if I tell you?"

"No."

"No?"

He approached her and halted behind her.

"Learn, then," he said, "that I love you with a blind, insensate passion. You have forced it from me at last!"

She stretched out her arms before her, while Bazarov, turning, pressed his forehead against the window-pane. His breath caught in his throat, and his whole body was quivering. Yet this was not the agitation born of the diffidence of youth, nor was it the awe inspired by a first confession of love. Rather, it was the beating of a strong and terrible emotion which resembled madness and was, perhaps, akin to it. As for Madame Odintsov, a great horror had come over her – also a great feeling of compassion for him.

"Evgenii Vasilitch!" she cried. In the words there rang an involuntary note of tenderness.

Wheeling about, he devoured her with his glance. Then he seized her hands in his, and pressed her to his bosom.

She did not free herself at once. Only after a moment did she withdraw to a corner, and stand looking at him. He rushed towards her again, but she whispered in hurried alarm:

"You have mistaken me!"

Had he taken another step, she would have screamed.

Biting his lips, he left the room.

Half an hour later her maid brought her a note. It consisted of a single line only, and said: "Must I depart to-day, or may I remain until to-morrow?"

To it Anna Sergievna replied: "Why depart? I have failed to understand you, and you have failed to understand me – that is all."

But mentally she added: "Rather, I have failed to understand myself."

Until dinner time she remained secluded, and spent the hours in pacing her room with her hands clasped behind her. Occasionally she would halt before the window-panes or a mirror, to draw a handkerchief across a spot on her neck which seemed to be burning like fire. And every time that she did so she asked herself what had led her to force Bazarov's confidence; also, whether or not she had had any suspicion that such a thing might result.

"Yes, I am to blame," she finally decided. "Yet I could not have foreseen the whole dénouement."

Then she recalled Bazarov's almost animal face as he rushed to seize her in his arms. And at the thought she blushed.

"Or is it that – ?" Here she stopped, and shook back her curls. The reason was that she had seen herself in a mirror, and, as in a flash, had learnt from that image of a head thrown back, with a mysterious smile lurking between a pair of half-parted lips and in a pair of half-closed eyes, something which confounded her.

"No, no! Again no!" she cried. "Only God knows what might come of it. Such things are not to be played with. Freedom from worry is the chief thing in the world."

Nor had her sangfroid really been shattered. Rather, she was a little agitated – so little that, when, for some unknown reason, she shed a tear or two, those tears owed their origin not to any deep emotion, to the fact that she was wounded, but to a sense of having involuntarily been at fault in permitting certain vague yearnings – a certain consciousness of the transience of life, a certain desire for novelty – to urge her towards the boundary line. And over that boundary line she had peeped. And in front of her she had beheld, not an abyss, but a waste, a sheer ugliness.

XIX

In spite of her self-command, in spite of her superiority to convention, Madame Odintsov could not but feel a little uncomfortable when she entered the dining-room for the evening meal. Nevertheless the meal passed off without incident, and after it Porphyri Platonitch came in, and related various anecdotes on the strength of a recent visit to the neighbouring town – among other things, a story to the effect that Governor "Bardeloue" had commanded his whole staff of officials to wear spurs, in order that, if need be, he could dispatch them on their errands on horseback! Meanwhile, Arkady talked in an undertone to Katia, and also paid diplomatic attention to the Princess; while Bazarov maintained such an obstinate, gloomy silence that Madame, glancing at him (as she did twice, and openly, not covertly), thought to herself, as she scanned his stern, forbidding face, downcast eyes, and all-pervading expression of rigid contempt: "No, no! Again, no!"

Dinner over, she conducted her guests into the garden, and, perceiving that Bazarov desired a word with her, walked aside a little, halted, and waited for him. Approaching with his eyes on the ground, he said in a dull way:

"I must beg your pardon, Anna Sergievna. Surely you must be feeling extremely angry with me?"

"No, not angry so much as grieved," she replied.

"So much the worse! But I have received sufficient punishment, have I not? My position now (I am sure that you will agree with me) is a very awkward one. True, you wrote in your message: 'Why need you depart?' but I cannot and will not remain. By to-morrow, therefore, I shall have departed."

"But why need you, need you – ?"

"Why need I depart?"

"No, I was going to have said something quite different."

"We cannot recover the past," he continued, "and it was only a question of time before this should happen. I know only of one condition under which I could remain. And that condition is never likely to arise. For (pardon my presumption) I suppose you neither love me now nor could ever do so?"

With the words there came a flash from under his dark brows.

She did not reply. Through her brain there flitted only the one thought: "I am afraid of this man!"

"Farewell," he continued, as though he had divined that thought. Then he moved away towards the house.

Entering the house a little later, Anna Sergievna called to Katia, and took the girl by the arm: nor throughout the rest of the evening did she once part from her. Also, instead of joining in a game of cards, she sat uttering laugh after laugh of a nature which ill consorted with her blanched and careworn face. Gazing at her perplexedly, as a young man will do, Arkady kept asking himself the question: "What can this mean?" As for Bazarov, he locked himself in his room, and only appeared to join the rest at tea. When he did so, Anna Sergievna yearned to say something kind to him, but could think of no words for the purpose. To her dilemma, however, an unexpected incident put an end. This was the entry of the butler to announce Sitnikov!

To describe the craven fashion in which the young Progressive entered the room would be impossible. Although, with characteristic importunity, he had decided to repair to the residence of a lady with whom he was barely acquainted, and who had not accorded him an invitation (his pretext for such presumption being that, according to information received, she happened to be entertaining guests who were both intellectual and "very intimate" with himself), he had since felt his courage ebb to the marrow of his bones, and now, instead of proffering all the excuses and compliments which he had prepared in advance, blurted out some ridiculous story to the effect that Evdoksia Kukshin had sent him to inquire after the health of Anna Sergievna, and that Arkady Nikolaievitch had always spoken of him in terms of the highest respect. But at this point he began to stammer, and so lost his head as to sit down upon his own hat! No one bade him depart, however, and Anna Sergievna even went so far as to present him to her aunt and sister. Accordingly it was not long before he recovered his equanimity, and shone forth with his accustomed brilliancy. Often the appearance of the paltry represents a convenient phenomenon in life, since it relaxes over-taut strings, and sobers natures prone to conceit and self-assurance by reminding them of their kinship with the newcomer. Thus Sitnikov's arrival caused everything to become duller and a trifle more futile, but also rendered things simpler, and enabled the company to partake of supper with a better appetite, and to part for the night half an hour earlier than usual.

"Let me recall to you some words of your own," said Arkady when he had got into bed, and Bazarov was still undressing. "I refer to the words: 'Why are you down-hearted? Have you just fulfilled a sacred duty?'"

Between the two there had become established those half-quizzical relations which are always a sign of tacit distrust and a smouldering grudge.

"To-morrow I intend to set out for my father's place," remarked Bazarov, in disregard of what Arkady had said.

The latter raised himself on his elbow. Though surprised, he also, for some reason, felt glad.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "Then that is why you are down-hearted?"

Bazarov yawned.

"When you are come to be a little older," he replied, "you will know more."

"And what of Anna Sergievna?" continued Arkady.

"Well? What of her?"

"Is it likely that she will let you go?"

"I am not her hireling."

Arkady relapsed into thought, and Bazarov sought his bed, and turned his face to the wall.

For a few moments silence reigned.

"Evgenii," said Arkady suddenly.

"Yes?"

"I too intend to leave to-morrow."

Bazarov made no reply.

"True, I shall be returning to Marino," continued Arkady, "but we might bear one another company as far as Khokhlovskïe Viselki, and there you could hire horses of Thedot. Of course, I should have been delighted to make your family's acquaintance, but, were I to accompany you, I might act as a source of constraint upon them and yourself alike. You must pay us another visit at Marino later."

"I will. As a matter of fact, I have left some of my things there." Bazarov still had his face turned to the wall.

"Why does he not ask me the reason of my departure – a departure as sudden as his?" reflected Arkady. "Why is either of us departing, for that matter?"

As he continued to reflect he realised that, while unable to return a satisfactory answer to the question propounded, he seemed to have got a heartache somehow, to be feeling that he would find it hard to part with the life at Nikolsköe to which he was grown so accustomed. Yet he could not remain there alone. That would be worse still.

"Between him and her there is something in the wind," he reflected. "That being so, what would my sticking here avail after he had gone? I should weary Anna Sergievna, and lose my last chance of pleasing her."

Then he began to draw a mental picture of the lady whom he had just named: until there cut across the fair presentment of the young widow another set of features.

"Katia too I shall miss," he whispered to his pillow (which had already received one of his tears). At length, raising his curly poll, he exclaimed:

"What, in the devil's name, brought that idiot Sitnikov here?"

He heard Bazarov stir under the bedclothes, then remark:

"You yourself are an idiot. We need the Sitnikovs of this world. Such donkeys are absolutely necessary to us, to me. The gods ought not to have to bake pots."

"Ah!" reflected Arkady. For, as in a flash, there had become revealed to him the bottomless profundity of Bazarov's conceit.

"Then you and I are the gods?" he said aloud. "Or are you a god, and I a donkey?"

"You are," came the gruff reply. "As yet, at all events, you are."

No particular astonishment was evinced by Madame Odintsov when, on the following day, Arkady informed her that it was his intention to accompany Bazarov. Rather, she looked distraught and weary. Katia glanced at him gravely and in silence, and the Princess went so far as to cross herself under her shawl – a precaution against the young men observing the gesture. Sitnikov too was dumbfounded at having just entered the breakfast-room in a new and most elegant suit (this time not of "Slavophil" cut, not to mention the fact that he had also had the pleasure of amazing his temporary valet with the multitude of his shirts), only to find himself confronted with the prospect of being deserted by his comrades! He shuffled and wriggled like a hare driven to the edge of a covert, and blurted out, almost in panic-stricken fashion, that he too had a great mind to depart. Nor did Madame Odintsov make any great effort to dissuade him.

"I have an exceedingly comfortable koliaska," the unfortunate young man said to Arkady, "and I could give you a lift in it, and leave Evgenii Vasilitch to use your tarantass, which would suit him better than the koliaska."

"But I should not like to take you so far out of your way, for the distance to my home is considerable."

"That would not matter, that would not matter. I have plenty of time to spare, and also some business to do in that direction."

"What? Leasehold business again?" inquired Arkady disparagingly. But Sitnikov was so distraught that he forbore to giggle in his usual fashion.

"I can guarantee that the koliaska is comfortable," he repeated. "Indeed, it could hold all three of us."

"Do not vex Monsieur Sitnikov by refusing," put in Madame Odintsov.

So, with a meaning glance at her, Arkady nodded assent to Sitnikov.

Breakfast over, the guests departed. Anna Sergievna offered Bazarov her hand.

"I hope we shall meet again?" she said.

"Only if you wish it," he replied.

"Then we shall meet again."

The first to issue upon the verandah and enter Sitnikov's koliaska was Arkady. The butler assisted him obsequiously, although Arkady could with equal readiness have struck the man or burst into tears. As for Bazarov, he took possession of the tarantass.

Khokhlovskïe Viselki reached, Arkady waited until Thedot, the local posting-master, had harnessed fresh horses, and then, approaching the tarantass, said to Bazarov with his old smile:

"Evgenii, take me with you. I should like to come to your place, after all."

"Get in, then," muttered Bazarov.

This made Sitnikov, who had been walking up and down beside his conveyance, and whistling, fairly gasp. Nevertheless the heartless Arkady removed his luggage from the koliaska, seated himself beside Bazarov, and, according his late fellow-traveller a courteous bow, shouted: "Right away!" The tarantass started, and soon was lost to view. Much taken aback, Sitnikov gazed at his coachman. But the latter was flicking the flanks of the trace horse with his whip, and therefore Sitnikov had no choice but to leap into the vehicle, to shout to a couple of peasants: "Off with your caps, you rascals!" and be driven to the town, whither he arrived at a late hour, and where, on the following day, he declared to Madame Kukshin that he had had enough of "those odious churls and upstarts."

On Arkady seating himself beside Bazarov in the tarantass, he pressed his hand, and Bazarov seemed to divine the meaning of the silent hand-clasp, and to appreciate it. During the previous night the elder man had never once closed his eyes. Also, for several days past he had neither smoked a cigar nor eaten more than the merest scrap of food. Indeed, as he sat in the tarantass, his fine-drawn profile, under the overshadowing cap, looked sharper and grimmer than ever.

"Give me a cigar, will you?" he said. "Also, pray look at my tongue, and tell me if it has a bilious appearance."

"Yes, it has," replied Arkady.

"I thought so, for this cigar seems tasteless. Moreover, the infernal thing has come unrolled."

"You have changed a good deal of late?" hazarded Arkady.

"I daresay. But I shall be myself again, soon. The only thing now troubling me is the fact that my mother is so good-naturedly fussy. Should one's paunch not be projecting, or should one not eat at least ten meals a day, she relapses into despair. My father, of course, is different, for he has been all over the world, and knows what is what. This cigar is simply unsmokable." And Bazarov consigned it to the dust of the roadway.

"The distance to your place is twenty-five versts, I suppose?" queried Arkady.

"It is so. But inquire of that sage there." And Bazarov pointed to the peasant (an employé of Thedot's) who was seated on the box.

The "sage" in question replied that he "could not say exactly," since the verst-posts in those parts had not been measured out; after which he went on to swear at the shaft horse for "kicking" its "jowl about" – that is to say, jerking its head up and down.

"Aye, aye," commented Bazarov. "Take warning from me, my young friend. An instructive example sits before you – an example of the vanity of this world. By a single thread does the destiny of every man hang, and at any moment there may open before him an abyss into which he and his may plunge. For always he is laying up for himself misfortune."

"At what are you hinting?" asked Arkady.

"At nothing. I am merely saying outright that you and I have behaved very foolishly. However, why talk of it? I have noticed that in surgical operations it is the patient who fights against his hurt who soonest gets well."

"I do not understand you," Arkady said. "So far as I can see, you have nothing whatsoever to complain of."

"You cannot understand me? Well, mark this: that you had far better go and break stones by the roadside than allow a woman to obtain even the least hold over you. Such a thing is sheer" (he nearly said "Romanticism," but changed his mind) "rubbish."

"Perhaps you do not believe me?" he went on. "Nevertheless, I tell you that, though you and I have been cultivating feminine society, and enjoying it, the sense of relief when such society is abandoned is like taking a cold bath on a summer's day. Never ought a man to touch such follies. Always he ought, as the excellent Spanish saying has it, 'to remain as the beasts of the field.' Look here," he added to the peasant on the box. "Do you, my man of wisdom, possess a wife?"

The peasant turned a portion of a flat, near-sighted visage in the friends' direction.

"A wife?" he repeated. "Yes, I do. Why shouldn't I?"

"Never mind that. Do you ever beat her?"

"My wife? Sometimes. But never without good cause."

"Excellent! And does she ever beat you?"

The peasant gave his reins a jerk.

"What a thing, barin!" he exclaimed. "Surely you must be joking?" Evidently the question had offended him.

"You hear that, Arkady Nikolaievitch?" said Bazarov. "You and I have been similarly beaten. That is what comes of being gentry."

Arkady laughed in spite of himself, but Bazarov turned away, and did not speak again until the end of the journey.

To Arkady the twenty-five versts seemed like fifty; but at length there came into view, on the slope of a low hill, the homestead of the manor where Bazarov's parents resided. On one side of it, amid a clump of young birch trees, there could be seen the servants' quarters under their thatched roofs; while at the door of the nearest hut a couple of fur-capped peasants were engaged in a contest of mutual abuse.

"You are an old pig!" one of them said to the other. "And that is worse than being a young one."

"Your wife is a witch," retorted the other.

"From the lack of restraint in their bearing," commented Bazarov, "as well as from the playfulness of their terms of speech, you will gather that my father's peasantry are not downtrodden. But here is my father himself. I can see him stepping out on to the verandah. He will have heard the sound of our collar-bells. Yes, it is he! I recognise his figure. But how grey he looks, poor old fellow!"