Fathers and Children, Ivan Turgenev [best book reader .TXT] 📗

simple sense of justice spoke in me and not in the least family feeling,” retorted Arkady passionately. “But since that’s a sense you don’t understand, since you haven’t that sensation, you can’t judge of it.”

“In other words, Arkady Kirsanov is too exalted for my comprehension. I bow down before him and say no more.”

“Don’t, please, Yevgeny; we shall really quarrel at last.”

“Ah, Arkady! do me a kindness. I entreat you, let us quarrel for once in earnest.⁠ ⁠…”

“But then perhaps we should end by⁠ ⁠…”

“Fighting?” put in Bazarov. “Well? Here, on the hay, in these idyllic surroundings, far from the world and the eyes of men, it wouldn’t matter. But you’d be no match for me. I’ll have you by the throat in a minute.”

Bazarov spread out his long, cruel fingers.⁠ ⁠… Arkady turned round and prepared, as though in jest, to resist.⁠ ⁠… But his friend’s face struck him as so vindictive⁠—there was such menace in grim earnest in the smile that distorted his lips, and in his glittering eyes, that he felt instinctively afraid.

“Ah! so this is where you have got to!” the voice of Vassily Ivanovitch was heard saying at that instant, and the old army-doctor appeared before the young men, garbed in a homemade linen pea-jacket, with a straw hat, also homemade, on his head. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.⁠ ⁠… Well, you’ve picked out a capital place, and you’re excellently employed. Lying on the ‘earth, gazing up to heaven.’ Do you know, there’s a special significance in that?”

“I never gaze up to heaven except when I want to sneeze,” growled Bazarov, and turning to Arkady he added in an undertone. “Pity he interrupted us.”

“Come, hush!” whispered Arkady, and he secretly squeezed his friend’s hand. But no friendship can long stand such shocks.

“I look at you, my youthful friends,” Vassily Ivanovitch was saying meantime, shaking his head, and leaning his folded arms on a rather cunningly bent stick of his own carving, with a Turk’s figure for a top⁠—“I look, and I cannot refrain from admiration. You have so much strength, such youth and bloom, such abilities, such talents! Positively, a Castor and Pollux!”

“Get along with you⁠—going off into mythology!” commented Bazarov. “You can see at once that he was a great Latinist in his day! Why, I seem to remember, you gained the silver medal for Latin prose⁠—didn’t you?”

“The Dioscuri, the Dioscuri!” repeated Vassily Ivanovitch.

“Come, shut up, father; don’t show off.”

“Once in a way it’s surely permissible,” murmured the old man. “However, I have not been seeking for you, gentlemen, to pay you compliments; but with the object, in the first place, of announcing to you that we shall soon be dining; and secondly, I wanted to prepare you, Yevgeny.⁠ ⁠… You are a sensible man, you know the world, and you know what women are, and consequently you will excuse.⁠ ⁠… Your mother wished to have a Te Deum sung on the occasion of your arrival. You must not imagine that I am inviting you to attend this thanksgiving⁠—it is over indeed now; but Father Alexey⁠ ⁠…”

“The village parson?”

“Well, yes, the priest; he⁠ ⁠… is to dine⁠ ⁠… with us.⁠ ⁠… I did not anticipate this, and did not even approve of it⁠ ⁠… but it somehow came about⁠ ⁠… he did not understand me.⁠ ⁠… And, well⁠ ⁠… Arina Vlasyevna⁠ ⁠… Besides, he’s a worthy, reasonable man.”

“He won’t eat my share at dinner, I suppose?” queried Bazarov.

Vassily Ivanovitch laughed. “How you talk!”

“Well, that’s all I ask. I’m ready to sit down to table with any man.”

Vassily Ivanovitch set his hat straight. “I was certain before I spoke,” he said, “that you were above any kind of prejudice. Here am I, an old man at sixty-two, and I have none.” (Vassily Ivanovitch did not dare to confess that he had himself desired the thanksgiving service. He was no less religious than his wife.) “And Father Alexey very much wanted to make your acquaintance. You will like him, you’ll see. He’s no objection even to cards, and he sometimes⁠—but this is between ourselves⁠ ⁠… positively smokes a pipe.”

“All right. We’ll have a round of whist after dinner, and I’ll clean him out.”

“He! he! he! We shall see! That remains to be seen.”

“I know you’re an old hand,” said Bazarov, with a peculiar emphasis.

Vassily Ivanovitch’s bronzed cheeks were suffused with an uneasy flush.

“For shame, Yevgeny.⁠ ⁠… Let bygones be bygones. Well, I’m ready to acknowledge before this gentleman I had that passion in my youth; and I have paid for it too! How hot it is, though! Let me sit down with you. I shan’t be in your way, I hope?”

“Oh, not at all,” answered Arkady.

Vassily Ivanovitch lowered himself, sighing, into the hay. “Your present quarters remind me, my dear sirs,” he began, “of my military bivouacking existence, the ambulance halts, somewhere like this under a haystack, and even for that we were thankful.” He sighed. “I had many, many experiences in my life. For example, if you will allow me, I will tell you a curious episode of the plague in Bessarabia.”

“For which you got the Vladimir cross?” put in Bazarov. “We know, we know.⁠ ⁠… By the way, why is it you’re not wearing it?”

“Why, I told you that I have no prejudices,” muttered Vassily Ivanovitch (he had only the evening before had the red ribbon unpicked off his coat), and he proceeded to relate the episode of the plague. “Why, he’s fallen asleep,” he whispered all at once to Arkady, pointing to Yevgeny, and winking good-naturedly. “Yevgeny! get up,” he went on aloud. “Let’s go in to dinner.”

Father Alexey, a good-looking stout man with thick, carefully-combed hair, with an embroidered girdle round his lilac silk cassock, appeared to be a man of much tact and adaptability. He made haste to be the first to offer his hand to Arkady and Bazarov, as though understanding beforehand that they did not want his blessing, and he behaved himself in general without constraint. He neither derogated from his own dignity, nor gave offence to others; he vouchsafed a passing smile at the seminary Latin,