Fathers and Sons

"'Ah, but in those days I was young and foolish and full of vanity,' replied Paul Petrovitch. 'Even though I may not have grown wiser, at least am I quieter. So, if you should be willing, I will gladly come and make your place my permanent home.'

"For answer Nikolai Petrovitch embraced him; and though a year and a half elapsed before Paul Petrovitch decided to carry out his intention, once settled on the estate, he has never left it – no, not even during the three winters spent by Nikolai Petrovitch with his son in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile he has taken to reading books – more especially English books, and, in general, to ordering his life on the English pattern. Rarely, also, does he call upon his neighbours, but confines his excursions, for the most part, to attending election meetings, where, as a rule, he holds his tongue, but occasionally amuses himself by angering and alarming the older generation of landowners with Liberal sallies. From the representatives of the younger generation he holds entirely aloof. Yet both parties, though they reckon him haughty, accord him respect. They do so because of his refined, aristocratic manners, and of what they have heard concerning his former conquests, and of the fact that he dresses with exquisite taste, that he always occupies the best suites in the best hotels, that he dines sumptuously every day, that once he took dinner with the Duke of Wellington at the Court of Louis Philippe, that invariably he takes about with him a silver nécessaire and a travelling bath, that he diffuses rare and agreeable perfumes, that he is a first-rate and universally successful whist-player, and that his honour is irreproachable. The ladies too look upon him as a man of charming melancholy: but with their sex he has long ceased to have anything to do.

"You see, then, Evgenii," wound up Arkady, "that you have judged my uncle very unfairly. Moreover, I have omitted to say that several times he has saved my father from ruin by making over to him the whole of his money (for they do not share the estate), and that he is always ready to help any one, and, in particular, that he stands up stoutly for the peasants, even though, when speaking to them, he pulls a wry face, and, before beginning the interview, scents himself well with eau-de-Cologne."

"We all know what nerves like his mean," remarked Bazarov.

"Perhaps so. Yet his heart is in the right place; nor is he in any way a fool. To myself especially has he given much useful advice, especially on the subject of women."

"Ah, ha! 'Scalded with milk, one blows to cool another's water.' That is a truism."

"Finally, and to put matters shortly," resumed Arkady, "he is a man desperately unhappy, not one who ought to be despised."

"Who is despising him?" exclaimed Bazarov. "All that I say is that a man who has staked his whole upon a woman's love, and, on losing the throw, has turned crusty, and let himself drift to such an extent as to become good for nothing – I say that such a man is not a man, a male creature at all. He is unhappy, you say; and certainly you know him better than I do; but it is clear also that he has not yet cleansed himself of the fool. In other words, certain am I that, just because he occasionally reads Galignani, and because, once a month, he saves a peasant from distress for debt, he believes himself really to be a man of action."

"But think of his upbringing!" expostulated Arkady. "Think of the period in which he has lived his life!"

"His upbringing?" retorted Bazarov. "Why, a man ought to bring himself up, even as I had to do. And with regard to his period, why should I, or any other man, be dependent upon periods? Rather, we ought to make periods dependent upon us. No, no, friend! Sensuality and frivolity it is that are at fault. For of what do the so-called mysterious relations between a man and a woman consist? As physiologists, we know precisely of what they consist. And take the anatomy of the eye. What in it justifies the guesswork whereof you speak? Such talk is so much Romanticism and nonsense and unsoundness and artificiality. Let us go and inspect that beetle."

And the two friends departed to Bazarov's room, where he had already succeeded in creating a medical-surgical atmosphere which consorted well with the smell of cheap tobacco.

VIII

At his brother's interview with the steward (the latter was a tall, thin man of shifty eyes who to every remark of Nikolai's replied in an unctuous, mellifluous voice: "Very well, if so it please you") Paul Petrovitch did not long remain present. Recently the system of estate-management had been reorganised on a new footing, and was creaking as loudly as an ungreased cartwheel or furniture which has been fashioned of unseasoned wood. For the same reason, though never actually giving way to melancholy, Nikolai Petrovitch often indulged in moodiness and sighing, for the reason that it was clear that his affairs would never prosper without money, and that the bulk of the latter had disappeared. As for Arkady's statement that frequently Paul Petrovitch had come to his brother's assistance, it had been perfectly true, for on more than one occasion had Paul been moved by the sight of his brother's perplexity to walk slowly to the window, to plunge a hand into his pocket, to mutter, "Mais je puis vous donner de l'argent," and, lastly, to suit the action to the word. But on the day of which we are speaking Paul had no spare cash himself; wherefore he preferred to remove himself elsewhere, and the more so in that the minutiæ of estate-management wearied him, and that he felt certain that, though powerless to suggest a better way of doing business than the present one, he knew at least that Nikolai's was at fault.

"He is not sufficiently practical," would be his reflection. "He lets these fellows cheat him right and left."

On the other hand, Nikolai had a high opinion of Paul's practicality, and always sought his advice.

"I am a weak, easy-going fellow," he would say, "and have spent the whole of my life in retirement; whereas you cannot have lived in the world for nothing – you know it well, and have the eye of an eagle."

To this Paul Petrovitch would make no reply: he would merely turn away without attempting to undeceive his brother.

After leaving Nikolai Petrovitch's study, Paul traversed the corridor which separated the front portion of the house from the rear, and, on reaching a low doorway, halted in seeming indecision, tugged at his moustache for a moment, then tapped with his knuckles upon the panels.

"Who is there?" replied Thenichka from within. "Pray enter."

"It is I," said Paul Petrovitch as he opened the door.

Springing from the chair on which she had been seated with her baby, she handed the latter to the nurse-girl (who at once bore it from the room), and hastened to rearrange her bodice.

"Pardon me for having disturbed you," said Paul Petrovitch without looking at her, "but my object in coming here is to ask you (for I understand that you are sending in to the town to-day) if you would procure me a little green tea for my own personal use."

"I will," replied Thenichka. "How much ought I to have ordered?"

"I think that half a pound will suffice. But what a change!" he went on glancing around the room with an eye which included also in its purview Thenichka's features. "It is those curtains that I am referring to," he explained on seeing that she had failed to grasp his meaning.

"Yes – those curtains. They were given me by Nikolai Petrovitch himself, and have been hung a long while."

"But it is a long time, remember, since last I paid you a visit. The room looks indeed comfortable, does it not?"

"Yes, thanks to Nikolai Petrovitch's kindness," whispered Thenichka.

"And you find things better here than in the wing?" continued Paul Petrovitch politely – also, without the least shadow of a smile.

"I do."

"And who is lodged in the wing in your place?"

"The laundry women."

"Ah!"

Paul Petrovitch relapsed into silence, while Thenichka thought to herself: "I suppose he will go presently." So far from doing so, however, he remained where he was, and she had to continue standing in front of him with her fingers nervelessly locking and unlocking themselves.

"Why have you had the little one taken away?" at length he inquired. "I love children. Pray show him to me."

Thenichka reddened with confusion and pleasure; and that though Paul Petrovitch was accustomed to make her nervous, so seldom did he address her.

"Duniasha!" she cried (Duniasha she addressed, as she did every one in the house, in the second person plural[10 - Used, as in French, in formal speech or that of a person addressing a social superior.]). "Bring Mitia here, and be quick about it! But first put on his clothes." With that she moved towards the door.

"Never mind, never mind," said Paul Petrovitch.

"But I shall soon be back." And she disappeared.

Left alone, Paul looked about him with keen attention. The small, low room in which he was waiting was clean and comfortable, and redolent of balm, camomile, and furniture polish. Against the walls stood straight-backed, lyre-shaped chairs which the late General had purchased during the period of the Polish campaign; in one corner stood a bedstead under a muslin coverlet, with, flanking it, a large, iron-clamped, convex-lidded chest; in the opposite corner burnt a lamp before a massive, smoke-blackened ikon of Saint Nikolai the Miracle Worker – the Saint's halo suspended by a red riband, and a tiny china egg resting on his breast; on the window-sills were ranged some carefully sealed jars of last year's jam, which filtered the light to green, and of which the parchment covers were inscribed, in Thenichka's large handwriting, "Gooseberry" – a jam of which Nikolai Petrovitch was particularly fond; from the ceiling hung, by a long cord, a cage containing a short-tailed siskin which kept up such a perpetual twittering and hopping that its cage rocked to and fro as it sang, and stray hemp seeds came pattering lightly to the floor; on the wall space above a small chest of drawers hung a few poorly executed photographs of Nikolai Petrovitch in various attitudes (the work of a travelling photographer); alongside these photographs hung a very unsuccessful one of Thenichka herself, since it revealed nothing but an eyeless face peering painfully from a dark frame; and, lastly, above the portrait of Thenichka hung a picture of Ermolov in a big cloak and a portentous frown – the latter directed principally towards a distant mountain range of the Caucasus, while over the forehead of the portrait dangled a silken pincushion in the shape of a shoe.

For five minutes or so there came from the adjoining room a sound as of rustling and whispering. From the chest of drawers Paul Petrovitch took up a greasy, dog's-eared volume of Masalsky's The Strielitsi, and turned over a few of its pages. Suddenly the door opened, and Thenichka entered with Mitia, whom she had now vested in a red robe and beaded collar, while his little head had been brushed, and also his face washed. Though he was breathing stertorously, and wriggling his whole body about, and twitching his tiny arms after the manner of all healthy children, the dainty robe had had its effect, and his face was puckered with delight. Also, Thenichka had tidied her own hair, and rearranged her bodice – well enough though she would have done as she was. For, in all the world, is there a more entrancing spectacle than that of a young, handsome mother with, in her arms, a healthy child?

"What a little beauty!" Paul Petrovitch exclaimed indulgently as he tickled Mitia's double chin with the tip of his forefinger. The baby fixed its eyes upon the siskin, and smiled.

"This is Uncle," said Thenichka as she bent over the boy and gave him a gentle shake. For fumigating purposes Duniasha deposited upon the window-sill a lighted candle, and, beneath it, a two-kopeck piece.

"How old is he?" asked Paul Petrovitch.

"Six months. On the eleventh of this month he will be seven."

"No, eight, will he not, Theodosia Nikolaievna?" timidly corrected Duniasha.

"No, seven."

Here the infant crowed, fixed his eyes upon the chest in the corner, and suddenly closed his five tiny fingers upon his mother's mouth and nose.

"The little rascal!" she said, without, however, freeing her features from his grasp.

"He is very like my brother," commented Paul Petrovitch.

"Whom else should he be like?" she thought.