The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ have you sold it?"

      "Because I needed the money. Moreover, the land which it occupies must go to the peasants."

      "What? To the peasants who pay you no tithes?"

      "Possibly. But some day they will pay me."

      "I regret the forest's loss," said Arkady, and then resumed his contemplation of the landscape.

      The scenery which the party were traversing could not have been called picturesque, for, with slight undulations, only fields, fields, and again fields, stretched to the very horizon. True, a few patches of copse were visible, but the ditches, with their borderings of low, sparse brushwood, recalled the antique land-measurement of Katherine's day. Also, streams ran pent between abruptly sloping banks, hamlets with dwarfed huts (of which the blackened roofs were, for the most part, cracked in half) stood cheek by jowl with crazy grinding-byres of plaited willow, empty threshing-floors had their gates sagging, and from churches of wood or of brick which stood amid dilapidated graveyards the stucco was peeling, and the crosses were threatening at any moment to fall. As he gazed at the scene Arkady's heart contracted. Moreover, the peasants encountered on the road looked ragged, and were riding sorry nags, while the laburnum trees which stood ranged like miserable beggars by the roadside had their bark hanging in strips, and their boughs shattered. Lastly, the lean, mud-encrusted cows which could be seen hungrily cropping the herbage in the ditches were so "staring" of coat that the animals might just have been rescued from the talons of some terrible, death-dealing monster; and as one gazed at those weak, pitiful beasts, almost one could fancy that one saw uprisen from amid the beauty of spring, the pale phantoms of Winter—its storms and its frost and its snow.

      "Evidently this is not a rich district," reflected Arkady. "Rather, it is a district which gives one the impression neither of abundance nor of hard work. Yet can it be left as it is? No! Education is what we need. But how is that education to be administered, or, for that matter, to be introduced?"

      Thus Arkady. Yet, even as the thought passed through his mind, Spring seemed once more to regain possession of her kingdom, and everything around him grew golden-green, and trees, shrubs, and herbage started to wave and glimmer under the soft, warm breath of the vernal zephyrs, and larks took to pouring out their souls in endless, ringing strains, and siskins, circling high over sunken ponds, uttered their cry, then skimmed the hillocks in silence, and handsome black rooks stalked among the tender green of the short corn-shoots, or settled among the pale-white, smokelike ripples of the young rye, whence at intervals they protruded their heads.

      Arkady gazed and gazed; and gradually, as he did so, his late thoughts grew dimmer and disappeared, and, throwing off his travelling-cloak, he peered so joyously, with such a boyish air, into his father's face that Nikolai Petrovitch bestowed upon him yet another embrace.

      "We have but little further to go now," he remarked. "In fact, when once we have topped that rise the house will come into view. And what a time we are going to have together, Arkasha! For you will be able to help me with the estate (if you care to, that is to say?), and you and I will draw nearer to one another, and make one another's better acquaintance."

      "We will!" cried Arkady. "And what splendid weather for us both!"

      "Yes; specially for your home-coming is spring in all its glory. Yet I am not sure that I do not agree with Pushkin where he says, in Eugène Onegin:

      "How sad to me is your coming,

       O spring, spring, season of love!"

      "Arkady," shouted Bazarov from the tarantass, "please send me a match or two, for I have nothing to light my pipe with."

      Instantly Nikolai Petrovitch ceased quoting poetry, and Arkady (who had listened with considerable surprise, though also with a certain measure of sympathy, to his father) hastened to produce from his pocket a silver matchbox, and to dispatch the same by the hand of Peter.

      "In return, would you care to have a cigar?" called Bazarov.

      "I should," replied Arkady.

      The result was that when Peter returned to the koliaska he handed Arkady not only the matchbox, but also a fat black cigar. This Arkady lit at leisure, and then proceeded to diffuse around him so strong and acrid an odour of tobacco that Nikolai Petrovitch (a non-smoker from birth) found himself forced to avert his nose (though he did this covertly, for fear of offending his son).

      A quarter of an hour later the vehicles drew up at the steps of a new wooden mansion, painted grey, and roofed with red sheet-iron. The mansion was Marino, or Novaia Sloboda, or, to quote the peasants' name, "Bobili Chutor."

1 A member of the trading or shopkeeping class.

      IV

       Table of Contents

      There issued on to the verandah to greet the arrivals no throng of household serfs—only a solitary girl of twelve. Presently, however, she was joined by a young fellow much resembling Peter, but dressed in a grey livery coat to which embossed, silver-gilt buttons were attached. This was Paul Kirsanov's valet. In silence he opened the door of the koliaska, and unhooked the apron of the tarantass; whereupon the three gentlemen alighted, passed through a dark, bare hall (the face of a young woman peered at them for a moment from behind a door), and entered a drawing-room upholstered in the latest fashion.

      "So here we are at home again!" exclaimed Nikolai Petrovitch, taking off his cap, and shaking back his hair. "Let us have supper, and then for bed, bed!"

      "Yes, something to eat would undoubtedly be welcome," remarked Bazarov as, yawning, he seated himself upon a sofa.

      "Quite so; I will have supper served at once." Nikolai Petrovitch, for no apparent reason, tripped over his own feet. "And here comes Prokofitch," he added.

      As he spoke entered a man of about sixty who, white-haired, and of thin, swarthy features, was wearing a cinnamon-coloured tail-coat with brass buttons and a crimson collar. He smiled with delight as he approached and shook hands with Arkady. Then, with a bow to the guest, he retired to the doorway, and folded his hands behind his back.

      "So here is the young master, Prokofitch!" said Nikolai Petrovitch. "He is home at last. And how, think you, is he looking?"

      "Very well, very well," the old man said with another smile. The next moment, however, he knit his shaggy brows, and suggested: "Shall I lay the table?"

      "If you please, if you please." Nikolai Petrovitch turned to Bazarov.

      "Before supper," he said, "would you care to go to your room?"

      "I thank you, no. But please have my trunk conveyed thither, and also this wrap." And Bazarov divested himself of his cloak.

      "Certainly. Prokofitch, take the gentleman's cloak."

      The old butler received the garment gingerly, held it well away from him with both hands, and left the room on tiptoe.

      "And you, Arkady?" continued Nikolai Petrovitch. "Do you not wish to go to your room?"

      "Yes; for a wash I should be thankful," was Arkady's reply as he moved towards the door. At that moment it opened to admit a СКАЧАТЬ