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

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СКАЧАТЬ Petrovitch was still a lonely bachelor, and, moreover, entering upon that dim, murky period when regrets come to resemble hopes, and hopes are beginning to resemble regrets, and youth is fled, and old age is fast approaching. To Paul Petrovitch that period was particularly painful, in that, in losing his past, he had lost his all.

      "'I shall not invite you to come to Marino,' were Nikolai Petrovitch's words to his brother. 'Even when my wife was alive, you found the place tedious; and now it would kill you.'

      "'Ah, but in those days I was young and foolish and full of vanity,' replied Paul Petrovitch. 'Even though I may not have grown wiser, at least am I quieter. So, if you should be willing, I will gladly come and make your place my permanent home.'

      "For answer Nikolai Petrovitch embraced him; and though a year and a half elapsed before Paul Petrovitch decided to carry out his intention, once settled on the estate, he has never left it—no, not even during the three winters spent by Nikolai Petrovitch with his son in St. Petersburg. Meanwhile he has taken to reading books—more especially English books, and, in general, to ordering his life on the English pattern. Rarely, also, does he call upon his neighbours, but confines his excursions, for the most part, to attending election meetings, where, as a rule, he holds his tongue, but occasionally amuses himself by angering and alarming the older generation of landowners with Liberal sallies. From the representatives of the younger generation he holds entirely aloof. Yet both parties, though they reckon him haughty, accord him respect. They do so because of his refined, aristocratic manners, and of what they have heard concerning his former conquests, and of the fact that he dresses with exquisite taste, that he always occupies the best suites in the best hotels, that he dines sumptuously every day, that once he took dinner with the Duke of Wellington at the Court of Louis Philippe, that invariably he takes about with him a silver nécessaire and a travelling bath, that he diffuses rare and agreeable perfumes, that he is a first-rate and universally successful whist-player, and that his honour is irreproachable. The ladies too look upon him as a man of charming melancholy: but with their sex he has long ceased to have anything to do.

      "You see, then, Evgenii," wound up Arkady, "that you have judged my uncle very unfairly. Moreover, I have omitted to say that several times he has saved my father from ruin by making over to him the whole of his money (for they do not share the estate), and that he is always ready to help any one, and, in particular, that he stands up stoutly for the peasants, even though, when speaking to them, he pulls a wry face, and, before beginning the interview, scents himself well with eau-de-Cologne."

      "We all know what nerves like his mean," remarked Bazarov.

      "Perhaps so. Yet his heart is in the right place; nor is he in any way a fool. To myself especially has he given much useful advice, especially on the subject of women."

      "Ah, ha! 'Scalded with milk, one blows to cool another's water.' That is a truism."

      "Finally, and to put matters shortly," resumed Arkady, "he is a man desperately unhappy, not one who ought to be despised."

      "Who is despising him?" exclaimed Bazarov. "All that I say is that a man who has staked his whole upon a woman's love, and, on losing the throw, has turned crusty, and let himself drift to such an extent as to become good for nothing—I say that such a man is not a man, a male creature at all. He is unhappy, you say; and certainly you know him better than I do; but it is clear also that he has not yet cleansed himself of the fool. In other words, certain am I that, just because he occasionally reads Galignani, and because, once a month, he saves a peasant from distress for debt, he believes himself really to be a man of action."

      "But think of his upbringing!" expostulated Arkady. "Think of the period in which he has lived his life!"

      "His upbringing?" retorted Bazarov. "Why, a man ought to bring himself up, even as I had to do. And with regard to his period, why should I, or any other man, be dependent upon periods? Rather, we ought to make periods dependent upon us. No, no, friend! Sensuality and frivolity it is that are at fault. For of what do the so-called mysterious relations between a man and a woman consist? As physiologists, we know precisely of what they consist. And take the anatomy of the eye. What in it justifies the guesswork whereof you speak? Such talk is so much Romanticism and nonsense and unsoundness and artificiality. Let us go and inspect that beetle."

      And the two friends departed to Bazarov's room, where he had already succeeded in creating a medical-surgical atmosphere which consorted well with the smell of cheap tobacco.

      VIII

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      At his brother's interview with the steward (the latter was a tall, thin man of shifty eyes who to every remark of Nikolai's replied in an unctuous, mellifluous voice: "Very well, if so it please you") Paul Petrovitch did not long remain present. Recently the system of estate-management had been reorganised on a new footing, and was creaking as loudly as an ungreased cartwheel or furniture which has been fashioned of unseasoned wood. For the same reason, though never actually giving way to melancholy, Nikolai Petrovitch often indulged in moodiness and sighing, for the reason that it was clear that his affairs would never prosper without money, and that the bulk of the latter had disappeared. As for Arkady's statement that frequently Paul Petrovitch had come to his brother's assistance, it had been perfectly true, for on more than one occasion had Paul been moved by the sight of his brother's perplexity to walk slowly to the window, to plunge a hand into his pocket, to mutter, "Mais je puis vous donner de l'argent," and, lastly, to suit the action to the word. But on the day of which we are speaking Paul had no spare cash himself; wherefore he preferred to remove himself elsewhere, and the more so in that the minutiæ of estate-management wearied him, and that he felt certain that, though powerless to suggest a better way of doing business than the present one, he knew at least that Nikolai's was at fault.

      "He is not sufficiently practical," would be his reflection. "He lets these fellows cheat him right and left."

      On the other hand, Nikolai had a high opinion of Paul's practicality, and always sought his advice.

      "I am a weak, easy-going fellow," he would say, "and have spent the whole of my life in retirement; whereas you cannot have lived in the world for nothing—you know it well, and have the eye of an eagle."

      To this Paul Petrovitch would make no reply: he would merely turn away without attempting to undeceive his brother.

      After leaving Nikolai Petrovitch's study, Paul traversed the corridor which separated the front portion of the house from the rear, and, on reaching a low doorway, halted in seeming indecision, tugged at his moustache for a moment, then tapped with his knuckles upon the panels.

      "Who is there?" replied Thenichka from within. "Pray enter."

      "It is I," said Paul Petrovitch as he opened the door.

      Springing from the chair on which she had been seated with her baby, she handed the latter to the nurse-girl (who at once bore it from the room), and hastened to rearrange her bodice.

      "Pardon me for having disturbed you," said Paul Petrovitch without looking at her, "but my object in coming here is to ask you (for I understand that you are sending in to the town to-day) if you would procure me a little green tea for my own personal use."

      "I will," replied Thenichka. "How much ought I to have ordered?"

      "I think that half a pound will suffice. But what a change!" he went on glancing around the room with an eye which included also in its purview Thenichka's features. "It is those curtains СКАЧАТЬ