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

but he actually was dull and longed to get away. He tried going long walks till he was tired, but that was no use. In conversation with his father one day, he found out that Nikolai Petrovitch had in his possession rather interesting letters, written by Madame Odintsov’s mother to his wife, and he gave him no rest till he got hold of the letters, for which Nikolai Petrovitch had to rummage in twenty drawers and boxes. Having gained possession of these half-crumbling papers, Arkady felt, as it were, soothed, just as though he had caught a glimpse of the goal towards which he ought now to go. “I mean that for both of you,” he was constantly whispering⁠—she had added that herself! “I’ll go, I’ll go, hang it all!” But he recalled the last visit, the cold reception, and his former embarrassment, and timidity got the better of him. The “go-ahead” feeling of youth, the secret desire to try his luck, to prove his powers in solitude, without the protection of anyone whatever, gained the day at last. Before ten days had passed after his return to Maryino, on the pretext of studying the working of the Sunday schools, he galloped off to the town again, and from there to Nikolskoe. Urging the driver on without intermission, he flew along, like a young officer riding to battle; and he felt both frightened and lighthearted, and was breathless with impatience. “The great thing is⁠—one mustn’t think,” he kept repeating to himself. His driver happened to be a lad of spirit; he halted before every public house, saying, “A drink or not a drink?” but, to make up for it, when he had drunk he did not spare his horses. At last the lofty roof of the familiar house came in sight.⁠ ⁠… “What am I to do?” flashed through Arkady’s head. “Well, there’s no turning back now!” The three horses galloped in unison; the driver whooped and whistled at them. And now the bridge was groaning under the hoofs and wheels, and now the avenue of lopped pines seemed running to meet them.⁠ ⁠… There was a glimpse of a woman’s pink dress against the dark green, a young face from under the light fringe of a parasol.⁠ ⁠… He recognised Katya, and she recognised him. Arkady told the driver to stop the galloping horses, leaped out of the carriage, and went up to her. “It’s you!” she cried, gradually flushing all over; “let us go to my sister, she’s here in the garden; she will be pleased to see you.”

Katya led Arkady into the garden. His meeting with her struck him as a particularly happy omen; he was delighted to see her, as though she were of his own kindred. Everything had happened so splendidly; no steward, no formal announcement. At a turn in the path he caught sight of Anna Sergyevna. She was standing with her back to him. Hearing footsteps, she turned slowly round.

Arkady felt confused again, but the first words she uttered soothed him at once. “Welcome back, runaway!” she said in her even, caressing voice, and came to meet him, smiling and frowning to keep the sun and wind out of her eyes. “Where did you pick him up, Katya?”

“I have brought you something, Anna Sergyevna,” he began, “which you certainly don’t expect.”

“You have brought yourself; that’s better than anything.”

XXIII

Having seen Arkady off with ironical compassion, and given him to understand that he was not in the least deceived as to the real object of his journey, Bazarov shut himself up in complete solitude; he was overtaken by a fever for work. He did not dispute now with Pavel Petrovitch, especially as the latter assumed an excessively aristocratic demeanour in his presence, and expressed his opinions more in inarticulate sounds than in words. Only on one occasion Pavel Petrovitch fell into a controversy with the nihilist on the subject of the question then much discussed of the rights of the nobles of the Baltic province; but suddenly he stopped of his own accord, remarking with chilly politeness, “However, we cannot understand one another; I, at least, have not the honour of understanding you.”

“I should think not!” cried Bazarov. “A man’s capable of understanding anything⁠—how the aether vibrates, and what’s going on in the sun⁠—but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he’s incapable of understanding.”

“What, is that an epigram?” observed Pavel Petrovitch inquiringly, and he walked away.

However, he sometimes asked permission to be present at Bazarov’s experiments, and once even placed his perfumed face, washed with the very best soap, near the microscope to see how a transparent infusoria swallowed a green speck, and busily munched it with two very rapid sort of clappers which were in its throat. Nikolai Petrovitch visited Bazarov much oftener than his brother; he would have come every day, as he expressed it, to “study,” if his worries on the farm had not taken off his attention. He did not hinder the young man in his scientific researches; he used to sit down somewhere in a corner of the room and look on attentively, occasionally permitting himself a discreet question. During dinner and suppertime he used to try to turn the conversation upon physics, geology, or chemistry, seeing that all other topics, even agriculture, to say nothing of politics, might lead, if not to collisions, at least to mutual unpleasantness. Nikolai Petrovitch surmised that his brother’s dislike for Bazarov was no less. An unimportant incident, among many others, confirmed his surmises. The cholera began to make its appearance in some places in the neighbourhood, and even “carried off” two persons from Maryino itself. In the night Pavel Petrovitch happened to have rather severe symptoms. He was in pain till the morning, but did not have recourse to Bazarov’s skill. And when he met him the following day, in reply to his question, “Why he had not sent for him?” answered, still quite