Part 28 (1/2)
'Oh, my friend, Arkady Nikolaitch!' cried Bazarov, 'one thing I entreat of you; no fine talk.'
'I talk as best I can.... And, I declare, its perfect despotism. An idea came into my head; why shouldn't I utter it?'
'Yes; and why shouldn't I utter my ideas? I think that fine talk's positively indecent.'
'And what is decent? Abuse?'
'Ha! ha! you really do intend, I see, to walk in your uncle's footsteps. How pleased that worthy imbecile would have been if he had heard you!'
'What did you call Pavel Petrovitch?'
'I called him, very justly, an imbecile.'
'But this is unbearable!' cried Arkady.
'Aha! family feeling spoke there,' Bazarov commented coolly. 'I've noticed how obstinately it sticks to people. A man's ready to give up everything and break with every prejudice; but to admit that his brother, for instance, who steals handkerchiefs, is a thief--that's too much for him. And when one comes to think of it: my brother, mine--and no genius ... that's an idea no one can swallow.'
'It was a simple sense of justice spoke in me and not in the least family feeling,' retorted Arkady pa.s.sionately. '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 Va.s.sily Ivanovitch was heard saying at that instant, and the old army-doctor appeared before the young men, garbed in a home-made linen pea-jacket, with a straw hat, also home-made, 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, hus.h.!.+' whispered Arkady, and he secretly squeezed his friend's hand. But no friends.h.i.+p can long stand such shocks.
'I look at you, my youthful friends,' Va.s.sily 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 Va.s.sily 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?'