Part 29 (1/2)

Bazarov merely shrugged his shoulders.

'No!' he said to Arkady the next day. I'm off from here to-morrow. I'm bored; I want to work, but I can't work here. I will come to your place again; I've left all my apparatus there too. In your house one can at any rate shut oneself up. While here my father repeats to me, ”My study is at your disposal--n.o.body shall interfere with you,” and all the time he himself is never a yard away. And I'm ashamed somehow to shut myself away from him. It's the same thing too with mother. I hear her sighing the other side of the wall, and if one goes in to her, one's nothing to say to her.'

'She will be very much grieved,' observed Arkady, 'and so will he.'

'I shall come back again to them.'

'When?'

'Why, when on my way to Petersburg.'

'I feel sorry for your mother particularly.'

'Why's that? Has she won your heart with strawberries, or what?'

Arkady dropped his eyes. 'You don't understand your mother, Yevgeny.

She's not only a very good woman, she's very clever really. This morning she talked to me for half-an-hour, and so sensibly, interestingly.'

'I suppose she was expatiating upon me all the while?'

'We didn't talk only about you.'

'Perhaps; lookers-on see most. If a woman can keep up half-an-hour's conversation, it's always a hopeful sign. But I'm going, all the same.'

'It won't be very easy for you to break it to them. They are always making plans for what we are to do in a fortnight's time.'

'No; it won't be easy. Some demon drove me to tease my father to-day; he had one of his rent-paying peasants flogged the other day, and quite right too--yes, yes, you needn't look at me in such horror--he did quite right, because he's an awful thief and drunkard; only my father had no idea that I, as they say, was cognisant of the facts. He was greatly perturbed, and now I shall have to upset him more than ever....

Never mind! Never say die! He'll get over it!'

Bazarov said, 'Never mind'; but the whole day pa.s.sed before he could make up his mind to inform Va.s.sily Ivanovitch of his intentions. At last, when he was just saying good-night to him in the study, he observed, with a feigned yawn--

'Oh ... I was almost forgetting to tell you.... Send to Fedot's for our horses to-morrow.'

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch was dumbfounded. 'Is Mr. Kirsanov leaving us, then?'

'Yes; and I'm going with him.'

Va.s.sily Ivanovitch positively reeled. 'You are going?'

'Yes ... I must. Make the arrangements about the horses, please.'

'Very good....' faltered the old man; 'to Fedot's ... very good ...

only ... only.... How is it?'

'I must go to stay with him for a little time. I will come back again later.'

'Ah! For a little time ... very good.' Va.s.sily Ivanovitch drew out his handkerchief, and, blowing his nose, doubled up almost to the ground.

'Well ... everything shall be done. I had thought you were to be with us ... a little longer. Three days.... After three years, it's rather little; rather little, Yevgeny!'