Fathers and Children Part 23

'I'm going to my father's to-morrow,' said Bazarov.

Arkady raised himself and leaned on his elbow. He felt both surprised, and for some reason or other pleased. 'Ah!' he commented, 'and is that why you're sad?'

Bazarov yawned. 'You'll get old if you know too much.'

'And Anna Sergyevna?' persisted Arkady.

'What about Anna Sergyevna?'

'I mean, will she let you go?'

'I'm not her paid man.'

Arkady grew thoughtful, while Bazarov lay down and turned with his face to the wall.

Some minutes went by in silence. 'Yevgeny?' cried Arkady suddenly.

'Well?'

'I will leave with you to-morrow too.'

Bazarov made no answer.

'Only I will go home,' continued Arkady. 'We will go together as far as Hohlovsky, and there you can get horses at Fedot's. I should be delighted to make the acquaintance of your people, but I'm afraid of being in their way and yours. You are coming to us again later, of course?'

'I've left all my things with you,' Bazarov said, without turning round.

'Why doesn't he ask me why I am going, and just as suddenly as he?'

thought Arkady. 'In reality, why am I going, and why is he going?' he pursued his reflections. He could find no satisfactory answer to his own question, though his heart was filled with some bitter feeling. He felt it would be hard to part from this life to which he had grown so accustomed; but for him to remain alone would be rather odd. 'Something has pa.s.sed between them,' he reasoned to himself; 'what good would it be for me to hang on after he's gone? She's utterly sick of me; I'm losing the last that remained to me.' He began to imagine Anna Sergyevna to himself, then other features gradually eclipsed the lovely image of the young widow.

'I'm sorry to lose Katya too!' Arkady whispered to his pillow, on which a tear had already fallen.... All at once he shook back his hair and said aloud--

'What the devil made that fool of a Sitnikov turn up here?'

Bazarov at first stirred a little in his bed, then he uttered the following rejoinder: 'You're still a fool, my boy, I see. Sitnikovs are indispensable to us. I--do you understand? I need dolts like him. It's not for the G.o.ds to bake bricks, in fact!'...

'Oho!' Arkady thought to himself, and then in a flash all the fathomless depths of Bazarov's conceit dawned upon him. 'Are you and I G.o.ds then? at least, you're a G.o.d; am not I a dolt then?'

'Yes,' repeated Bazarov; 'you're still a fool.'

Madame Odintsov expressed no special surprise when Arkady told her the next day that he was going with Bazarov; she seemed tired and absorbed.

Katya looked at him silently and seriously; the princess went so far as to cross herself under her shawl so that he could not help noticing it.

Sitnikov, on the other hand, was completely disconcerted. He had only just come in to lunch in a new and fas.h.i.+onable get-up, not on this occasion of a Slavophil cut; the evening before he had astonished the man told off to wait on him by the amount of linen he had brought with him, and now all of a sudden his comrades were deserting him! He took a few tiny steps, doubled back like a hunted hare at the edge of a copse, and abruptly, almost with dismay, almost with a wail, announced that he proposed going too. Madame Odintsov did not attempt to detain him.

'I have a very comfortable carriage,' added the luckless young man, turning to Arkady; 'I can take you, while Yevgeny Va.s.silyitch can take your coach, so it will be even more convenient.'

'But, really, it's not at all in your way, and it's a long way to my place.'

'That's nothing, nothing; I've plenty of time; besides, I have business in that direction.'

'Gin-selling?' asked Arkady, rather too contemptuously.

But Sitnikov was reduced to such desperation that he did not even laugh as usual. 'I a.s.sure you, my carriage is exceedingly comfortable,' he muttered; 'and there will be room for all.'

'Don't wound Monsieur Sitnikov by a refusal,' commented Anna Sergyevna.

Arkady glanced at her, and bowed his head significantly.

The visitors started off after lunch. As she said good-bye to Bazarov, Madame Odintsov held out her hand to him, and said, 'We shall meet again, shan't we?'

'As you command,' answered Bazarov.

'In that case, we shall.'

Arkady was the first to descend the steps; he got into Sitnikov's carriage. A steward tucked him in respectfully, but he could have killed him with pleasure, or have burst into tears.

Bazarov took his seat in the coach. When they reached Hohlovsky, Arkady waited till Fedot, the keeper of the posting-station, had put in the horses, and going up to the coach, he said, with his old smile, to Bazarov, 'Yevgeny, take me with you; I want to come to you.'

'Get in,' Bazarov brought out through his teeth.

Sitnikov, who had been walking to and fro round the wheels of his carriage, whistling briskly, could only gape when he heard these words; while Arkady coolly pulled his luggage out of the carriage, took his seat beside Bazarov, and bowing politely to his former fellow-traveller, he called, 'Whip up!' The coach rolled away, and was soon out of sight.... Sitnikov, utterly confused, looked at his coachman, but the latter was flicking his whip about the tail of the off horse. Then Sitnikov jumped into the carriage, and growling at two pa.s.sing peasants, 'Put on your caps, idiots!' he drove to the town, where he arrived very late, and where, next day, at Madame Kuks.h.i.+n's, he dealt very severely with two 'disgusting stuck-up churls.'

When he was seated in the coach by Bazarov, Arkady pressed his hand warmly, and for a long while he said nothing. It seemed as though Bazarov understood and appreciated both the pressure and the silence.

He had not slept all the previous night, and had not smoked, and had eaten scarcely anything for several days. His profile, already thinner, stood out darkly and sharply under his cap, which was pulled down to his eyebrows.

'Well, brother,' he said at last, 'give us a cigarette. But look, I say, is my tongue yellow?'

'Yes, it is,' answered Arkady.

'Hm ... and the cigarette's tasteless. The machine's out of gear.'

'You look changed lately certainly,' observed Arkady.

'It's nothing! we shall soon be all right. One thing's a bother--my mother's so tender-hearted; if you don't grow as round as a tub, and eat ten times a day, she's quite upset. My father's all right, he's known all sorts of ups and downs himself. No, I can't smoke,' he added, and he flung the cigarette into the dust of the road.

'Do you think it's twenty miles?' asked Arkady.

'Yes. But ask this sage here.' He indicated the peasant sitting on the box, a labourer of Fedot's.

But the sage only answered, 'Who's to know--miles hereabout aren't measured,' and went on swearing in an undertone at the shaft horse for 'kicking with her head-piece,' that is, shaking with her head down.

'Yes, yes,' began Bazarov; 'it's a lesson to you, my young friend, an instructive example. G.o.d knows, what rot it is? Every man hangs on a thread, the abyss may open under his feet any minute, and yet he must go and invent all sorts of discomforts for himself, and spoil his life.'

'What are you alluding to?' asked Arkady.

'I'm not alluding to anything; I'm saying straight out that we've both behaved like fools. What's the use of talking about it! Still, I've noticed in hospital practice, the man who's furious at his illness--he's sure to get over it.'

'I don't quite understand you,' observed Arkady; 'I should have thought you had nothing to complain of.'