“So here you are, a graduate at last — and home again,” said Nikolai Petrovich, touching1 Arkady now on the shoulder, now on the knee. “At last!”
“And how is uncle? Is he well?” asked Arkady, who in spite of the genuine, almost childish joy which filled him, wanted as soon as possible to turn the conversation from an emotional to a more commonplace level.
“Quite well. He wanted to come with me to meet you, but for some reason he changed his mind.”
“And did you have a long wait for me?” asked Arkady.
“Oh, about five hours.”
“You dear old daddy!”
Arkady turned round briskly to his father and gave him a resounding2 kiss on the cheek. Nikolai Petrovich laughed quietly.
“I’ve got a splendid horse for you,” he began. “You will see for yourself. And your room has been freshly papered.”
“And is there a room ready for Bazarov?”
“We will find one all right.”
“Please, Daddy, be kind to him. I can’t tell you how much I value his friendship.”
“You met him only recently?”
“Quite recently.”
“That’s how I didn’t see him last winter. What is he studying?”
“His chief subject is — natural science. But he knows everything. Next year he wants to take his doctor’s degree.”
“Ah! he’s in the medical faculty,” remarked Nikolai Petrovich, and fell silent. “Pyotr,” he went on, stretching out his hand, “aren’t those our peasants driving along?”
Pyotr looked aside to where his master was pointing. A few carts, drawn3 by unbridled horses, were rolling rapidly along a narrow side-track. In each cart were seated one or two peasants in unbuttoned sheepskin coats.
“Just so, sir,” replied Pyotr.
“Where are they going — to the town?”
“To the town, I suppose — to the pub,” Pyotr added contemptuously, and half turned towards the coachman as if including him in the reproach. But the latter did not turn a hair; he was a man of the old type and did not share the latest views of the younger generation.
“The peasants have given me a lot of trouble this year,” went on Nikolai Petrovich, turning to his son. “They won’t pay their rent. What is one to do?”
“And are you satisfied with your hired laborers4?”
“Yes,” said Nikolai Petrovich between his teeth. “But they’re being set against me, that’s the worst of it, and they don’t really work properly; they spoil the tools. However, they’ve managed to plough the land. We shall manage somehow — there will be enough flour to go round. Are you starting to be interested in agriculture?”
“What a pity you have no shade,” remarked Arkady, without answering the last question.
“I have had a big awning5 put up on the north side over the veranda,” said Nikolai Petrovich; “now we can even have dinner in the open air.”
“Won’t it be rather too like a summer villa6? . . . But that’s a minor7 matter. What air there is here! How wonderful it smells. Really it seems to me no air in the world is so sweetly scented8 as here! And the sky too . . .” Arkady suddenly stopped, cast a quick look behind him and did not finish his sentence.
“Naturally,” observed Nikolai Petrovich, “you were born here, so everything is bound to strike you with a special — ”
“Really, Daddy, it makes absolutely no difference where a person is born.”
“Still — ”
“No, it makes no difference at all.”
Nikolai Petrovich glanced sideways at his son, and the carriage went on half a mile farther before their conversation was renewed.
“I forget if I wrote to you,” began Nikolai Petrovich, “that your old nurse Yegorovna has died.”
“Really? Poor old woman! And is Prokovich still alive?”
“Yes, and not changed a bit. He grumbles9 as much as ever. Indeed, you won’t find many changes at Maryino.”
“Have you still the same bailiff?”
“Well, I have made a change there. I decided10 it was better not to keep around me any freed serfs who had been house servants; at least not to entrust11 them with any responsible jobs.” Arkady glanced towards Pyotr.“Il est libre en effet,” said Nikolai Petrovich in an undertone, “but as you see, he’s only a valet. My new bailiff is a townsman — he seems fairly efficient. I pay him 250 rubles a year. But,” added Nikolai Petrovich, rubbing his forehead and eyebrows12 with his hand (which was always with him a sign of embarrassment), “I told you just now you would find no changes at Maryino, . . . That’s not quite true . . . I think it my duty to tell you in advance, though . . . .”
He hesitated for a moment and then went on in French.
“A severe moralist would consider my frankness improper13, but in the first place I can’t conceal14 it, and then, as you know, I have always had my own particular principles about relations between father and son. Of course you have a right to blame me. At my age . . . To cut a long story short, that — that girl about whom you’ve probably heard . . . .”
“Fenichka?” inquired Arkady casually15.
Nikolai Petrovich blushed.
“Don’t mention her name so loudly, please . . . Well, yes . . . she lives with me now. I have installed her in the house . . . there were two small rooms available. Of course, all that can be altered.”
“But why, Daddy; what for?’
“Your friend will be staying with us . . . it will be awkward.”
“Please don’t worry about Bazarov. He’s above all that.”
“Well, but you too,” added Nikolai Petrovich. “Unfortunately the little side-wing is in such a bad state.”
“For goodness’ sake, Daddy,” interposed Arkady. “You needn’t apologize. Are you ashamed?”
“Of course, I ought to be ashamed,” answered Nikolai Petrovich, turning redder and redder.
“Enough of that, Daddy, please don’t . . .” Arkady smiled affectionately. “What a thing to apologize for,” he thought to himself, and his heart was filled with a feeling of indulgent tenderness for his kind, soft-hearted father, mixed with a sense of secret superiority. “Please stop that,” he repeated once more, instinctively16 enjoying the awareness17 of his own more emancipated18 outlook.
Nikolai Petrovich looked at his son through the fingers of the hand with which he was again rubbing his forehead, and a pang19 seized his heart . . . but he immediately reproached himself for it.
“Here are our own meadows at last,” he remarked after a long silence.
“And that is our forest over there, isn’t it?” asked Arkady.
“Yes. But I have sold it. This year they will cut it down for timber.”
“Why did you sell it?”
“We need the money; besides, that land will be taken over by the peasants.”
“Who don’t pay their rent?”
“That’s their affair; anyhow they will pay it some day.”
“It’s a pity about the forest,” said Arkady, and began to look around him.
The country through which they were driving could not possibly be called picturesque20. Field after field stretched right up to the horizon, now gently sloping upwards21, then slanting22 down again; in some places woods were visible and winding23 ravines, planted with low scrubby bushes, vividly24 reminiscent of the way in which they were represented on the old maps of Catherine’s times. They passed by little streams with hollow banks and ponds with narrow dams, small villages with low huts under dark and often crumbling25 roofs, and crooked26 barns with walls woven out of dry twigs27 and with gaping28 doorways29 opening on to neglected threshing floors; and churches, some brick-built with the stucco covering peeling off in patches, others built of wood, near crosses fallen crooked in the overgrown graveyards30. Gradually Arkady’s heart began to sink. As if to complete the picture, the peasants whom they met were all in rags and mounted on the most wretched-looking little horses; the willows31, with their broken branches and trunks stripped of bark, stood like tattered32 beggars along the roadside; lean and shaggy cows, pinched with hunger, were greedily tearing up grass along the ditches. They looked as if they had just been snatched out of the clutches of some terrifying murderous monster; and the pitiful sight of these emaciated33 animals in the setting of that gorgeous spring day conjured34 up, like a white ghost, the vision of interminable joyless winter with its storms, frosts and snows . . . “No,” thought Arkady, “this country is far from rich, and the people seem neither contented35 nor industrious36; we just can’t let things go on like this; reforms are indispensable . . . but how are we to execute them, how should we begin?”
Such were Arkady’s thoughts . . . but even while he was thinking, the spring regained37 its sway. All around lay a sea of golden green — everything, trees, bushes and grass, vibrated and stirred in gentle waves under the breath of the warm breeze; from every side the larks38 were pouring out their loud continuous trills; the plovers39 were calling as they glided40 over the low-lying meadows or noiselessly ran over the tufts of grass; the crows strutted41 about in the low spring corn, looking picturesquely42 black against its tender green; they disappeared in the already whitening rye, only from time to time their heads peeped out from among its misty43 waves. Arkady gazed and gazed and his thoughts grew slowly fainter and died away . . . He flung off his overcoat and turned round with such a bright boyish look that his father hugged him once again.
“We’re not far away now,” remarked Nikolai Petrovich. “As soon as we get to the top of this hill the house will be in sight. We shall have a fine life together, Arkasha; you will help me to farm the land, if only it doesn’t bore you. We must draw close to each other now and get to know each other better, mustn’t we?”
“Of course,” murmured Arkady. “But what a wonderful day it is!”
“To welcome you home, my dear one. Yes, this is spring in all its glory. Though I agree with Pushkin — do you remember, in Evgeny Onegin,
“‘To me how sad your coming is,
Spring, spring, sweet time of love!
What — ’”
“Arkady,” shouted Bazarov’s voice from the tarantass, “give me a match. I’ve got nothing to light my pipe with.”
Nikolai Petrovich fell silent, while Arkady, who had been listening to him with some surprise but not without sympathy, hurriedly pulled a silver matchbox out of his pocket and told Pyotr to take it over to Bazarov.
“Do you want a cigar?” shouted Bazarov again.
“Thanks,” answered Arkady.
Pyotr came back to the carriage and handed him, together with the matchbox, a thick black cigar, which Arkady started to smoke at once, spreading around him such a strong and acrid44 smell of cheap tobacco that Nikolai Petrovich, who had never been a smoker45, was forced to turn away his head, which he did unobtrusively, to avoid hurting his son’s feelings.
A quarter of an hour later both carriages drew up in front of the porch of a new wooden house, painted grey, with a red iron roof. This was Maryino, also known as New Hamlet, or as the peasants had nicknamed it, Landless Farm.
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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resounding
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| adj. 响亮的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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awning
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| n.遮阳篷；雨篷 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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grumbles
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| 抱怨( grumble的第三人称单数 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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entrust
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| v.信赖，信托，交托 | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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emancipated
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| adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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crumbling
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| adj.摇摇欲坠的 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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twigs
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| 细枝，嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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gaping
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| adj.口的；张口的；敞口的；多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 )；张开，张大 | |
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29
doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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30
graveyards
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| 墓地( graveyard的名词复数 )； 垃圾场； 废物堆积处； 收容所 | |
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willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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emaciated
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| adj.衰弱的，消瘦的 | |
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conjured
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| 用魔术变出( conjure的过去式和过去分词 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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regained
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| 复得( regain的过去式和过去分词 )； 赢回； 重回； 复至某地 | |
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larks
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| n.百灵科鸟（尤指云雀）( lark的名词复数 )；一大早就起床；鸡鸣即起；（因太费力而不想干时说）算了v.百灵科鸟（尤指云雀）( lark的第三人称单数 )；一大早就起床；鸡鸣即起；（因太费力而不想干时说）算了 | |
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plovers
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| n.珩，珩科鸟（如凤头麦鸡）( plover的名词复数 ) | |
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40
glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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41
strutted
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| 趾高气扬地走，高视阔步( strut的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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42
picturesquely
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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acrid
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| adj.辛辣的，尖刻的，刻薄的 | |
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smoker
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| n.吸烟者，吸烟车厢，吸烟室 | |
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