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

Nikolai Petrovitch stepped back a pace, and flung up his hands. “Do you say that, Pavel? you whom I have always regarded as the most determined opponent of such marriages! You say that? Don’t you know that it has simply been out of respect for you that I have not done what you so rightly call my duty?”

“You were wrong to respect me in that case,” Pavel Petrovitch responded, with a weary smile. “I begin to think Bazarov was right in accusing me of snobbishness. No dear brother, don’t let us worry ourselves about appearances and the world’s opinion any more; we are old folks and humble now; it’s time we laid aside vanity of all kinds. Let us, just as you say, do our duty; and mind, we shall get happiness that way into the bargain.”

Nikolai Petrovitch rushed to embrace his brother.

“You have opened my eyes completely!” he cried. “I was right in always declaring you the wisest and kindest-hearted fellow in the world, and now I see you are just as reasonable as you are noble-hearted.”

“Quietly, quietly,” Pavel Petrovitch interrupted him; “don’t hurt the leg of your reasonable brother, who at close upon fifty has been fighting a duel like an ensign. So, then, it’s a settled matter; Fenitchka is to be my⁠ ⁠… belle soeur.”

“My dearest Pavel! But what will Arkady say?”

“Arkady? he’ll be in ecstasies, you may depend upon it! Marriage is against his principles, but then the sentiment of equality in him will be gratified. And, after all, what sense have class distinctions au dix-neuvième siècle?”

“Ah, Pavel, Pavel! let me kiss you once more! Don’t be afraid, I’ll be careful.”

The brothers embraced each other.

“What do you think, should you not inform her of your intention now?” queried Pavel Petrovitch.

“Why be in a hurry?” responded Nikolai Petrovitch. “Has there been any conversation between you?”

“Conversation between us? Quelle idée!”

“Well, that is all right then. First of all, you must get well, and meanwhile there’s plenty of time. We must think it over well, and consider⁠ ⁠…”

“But your mind is made up, I suppose?”

“Of course, my mind is made up, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will leave you now; you must rest; any excitement is bad for you.⁠ ⁠… But we will talk it over again. Sleep well, dear heart, and God bless you!”

“What is he thanking me like that for?” thought Pavel Petrovitch, when he was left alone. “As though it did not depend on him! I will go away directly he is married, somewhere a long way off⁠—to Dresden or Florence, and will live there till I⁠—”

Pavel Petrovitch moistened his forehead with eau de cologne, and closed his eyes. His beautiful, emaciated head, the glaring daylight shining full upon it, lay on the white pillow like the head of a dead man.⁠ ⁠… And indeed he was a dead man.

At Nikolskoe Katya and Arkady were sitting in the garden on a turf seat in the shade of a tall ash tree; Fifi had placed himself on the ground near them, giving his slender body that graceful curve, which is known among dog-fanciers as “the hare bend.” Both Arkady and Katya were silent; he was holding a half-open book in his hands, while she was picking out of a basket the few crumbs of bread left in it, and throwing them to a small family of sparrows, who with the frightened impudence peculiar to them were hopping and chirping at her very feet. A faint breeze stirring in the ash leaves kept slowly moving pale-gold flecks of sunlight up and down over the path and Fifi’s tawny back; a patch of unbroken shade fell upon Arkady and Katya; only from time to time a bright streak gleamed on her hair. Both were silent, but the very way in which they were silent, in which they were sitting together, was expressive of confidential intimacy; each of them seemed not even to be thinking of his companion, while secretly rejoicing in his presence. Their faces, too, had changed since we saw them last; Arkady looked more tranquil, Katya brighter and more daring.

“Don’t you think,” began Arkady, “that the ash has been very well named in Russian yasen; no other tree is so lightly and brightly transparent (yasno) against the air as it is.”

Katya raised her eyes to look upward, and assented, “Yes”; while Arkady thought, “Well, she does not reproach me for talking finely.”

“I don’t like Heine,” said Katya, glancing towards the book which Arkady was holding in his hands, “either when he laughs or when he weeps; I like him when he’s thoughtful and melancholy.”

“And I like him when he laughs,” remarked Arkady.

“That’s the relics left in you of your old satirical tendencies.” (“Relics!” thought Arkady⁠—“if Bazarov had heard that?”) “Wait a little; we shall transform you.”

“Who will transform me? You?”

“Who?⁠—my sister; Porfiry Platonovitch, whom you’ve given up quarrelling with; auntie, whom you escorted to church the day before yesterday.”

“Well, I couldn’t refuse! And as for Anna Sergyevna, she agreed with Yevgeny in a great many things, you remember?”

“My sister was under his influence then, just as you were.”

“As I was? Do you discover, may I ask, that I’ve shaken off his influence now?”

Katya did not speak.

“I know,” pursued Arkady, “you never liked him.”

“I can have no opinion about him.”

“Do you know, Katerina Sergyevna, every time I hear that answer I disbelieve it.⁠ ⁠… There is no man that everyone of us could not have an opinion about! That’s simply a way of getting out of it.”

“Well, I’ll say, then, I don’t.⁠ ⁠… It’s not exactly that I don’t like him, but I feel that he’s of a different order from me, and I am different from him⁠ ⁠… and you too are different from him.”

“How’s that?”

“How can I tell you.⁠ ⁠… He’s a wild animal, and you and I are tame.”

“Am I tame too?”

Katya nodded.

Arkady scratched his ear. “Let me tell you,