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

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СКАЧАТЬ and Duniasha were astonished at the fact that it made no resistance, showed no fear.

      "I see," he continued. "Well, everything is going right with him, and he will have plenty of teeth. Nevertheless, should he in any way ail, please let me know. Are you yourself well?"

      "Yes, thank God!"

      "'Thank God,' say I too, for health on the part of the mother is the chief point of all. And you?" he added, turning to Duniasha. The latter, ultra-prim of demeanour in the drawing-room, and ultra-frivolous of behaviour in the kitchen, answered with a giggle.

      "Well, you look all right. Here! Take your hero back again."

      He replaced the baby in Thenichka's arms.

      "How quiet he has been with you!" she exclaimed under her breath.

      "Always children are quiet with me," he remarked. "You see, I know how to handle them."

      "And they know when people are fond of them," put in Duniasha.

      "True," assented Thenichka. "Though it is seldom that Mitia will go to any one's arms but mine."

      "Would he come to me?" ventured Arkady, who, until now standing in the background, at this moment came forward towards the arbour. But on his attempting to wheedle Mitia to his arms, the infant threw back its head, and started to cry—a circumstance which greatly perturbed Thenichka.

      "Another time—when he has come to be more used to me," said Arkady indulgently. And the two friends departed.

      "What is her name?" asked Bazarov.

      "Thenichka—Theodosia," replied Arkady.

      "And her patronymic?"

      "Nikolaievna."

      "Bene! What I like about her is her total absence of shyness. True, that is a trait which some might have condemned in her, but I say, 'What rubbish!' For why need she be bashful? She is a mother, and therefore justified."

      "I agree," said Arkady. "And my father——"

      "Also is justified," concluded Bazarov.

      "No, I do not agree in that respect."

      "You do not altogether welcome a superfluous heir?"

      "For shame, Evgenii!" cried Arkady heatedly. "How can you impute such motives? What I mean is that my father is not justified from one point of view. That is to say, he ought to marry her."

      "Oh, ho!" said Bazarov quietly. "How high and mighty we are getting! So you still attribute importance to the marriage rite? This I should not have expected of you."

      For some paces the friends walked on in silence. Then Bazarov continued:

      "I have been inspecting your father's establishment. The cattle look poor, the horses seem broken-down, the buildings have a tipsy air, the workmen manifest a tendency to loaf, and I cannot yet determine whether the new steward is a fool or a rogue."

      "You are censorious to-day?"

      "I am; and the reason is that these good peasants are cheating your father—exemplifying the proverb that 'The Russian muzhik will break even the back of God.'"

      "Soon I shall have to agree with my uncle in his opinion that you think but poorly of Russia."

      "Rubbish! The Russian's very best point is that he holds a poor opinion of himself. Two and two make four. Nothing but that matters."

      "And is nature also rubbish?" queried Arkady with a musing glance at the mottled fields where they lay basking in the soft, kindly rays of the morning sun.

      "Nature is rubbish—at least in the sense in which you understand her. She is not a church, but a workshop wherein man is the labourer."

      At this moment there came wafted to their ears the long-drawn strains of a violoncello, on which a sensitive, but inexperienced, hand was playing Schubert's Erwartung. Like honey did the voluptuous melody suffuse the air.

      "Who is the musician?" asked Bazarov in astonishment.

      "My father."

      "What? Your father plays the 'cello?"

      "He does."

      "At his age?"

      "Yes—he is only forty-four."

      Bazarov burst out laughing.

      "Why do you laugh?" asked Arkady.

      "Pardon me, but the idea that your father—a man of forty-four, a paterfamilias, and a notable in the county—should play the 'cello!"

      And he continued laughing, though Arkady, for all his reverence for his mentor, failed to accomplish even a smile.

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      During the next two weeks life at Marino pursued its normal course. Arkady took things easily, and Bazarov worked. In passing, it may be said that, for all his careless manner and abrupt, laconic speech, the latter had become an accepted phenomenon in the house. In particular had Thenichka so completely lost her shyness of him that one night she sent to awake him because Mitia had been seized with convulsions; whereupon Bazarov arrived, and, half-joking, half-yawning, according to his usual manner, helped her for two hours in the task of attending to the baby. Only Paul Petrovitch disliked the man with the whole strength of his soul, for he accounted him a proud, cynical, conceited plebeian, and suspected him not only of failing to respect, but even of holding in contempt, the personality of Paul Petrovitch Kirsanov. Also, Nikolai Petrovitch stood in slight awe of the young Nihilist, since he doubted the likelihood of any good accruing from Bazarov's influence over Arkady. Yet always he would listen with pleasure to Bazarov's discourses, and gladly attend the chemical or physical experiments with which the young doctor (who had brought a microscope with him) would occupy himself for hours at a stretch. On the other hand, in spite of Bazarov's domineering manner, all the servants had become attached to him, for they felt him to be less a barin than their brother; and in particular did Duniasha readily joke and talk with him, and throw him many meaning glances as she sped past in quail-like fashion, while Peter himself, though a man full of conceit and stupidity, with a forehead perpetually puckered, and a dignity which consisted of a deferential demeanour, a practice of reading journals syllable by syllable, and a habit of constantly brushing his coat; even Peter, I say, would brighten and strike an attitude when he was noticed by Bazarov. In fact, the only servant to disapprove of Bazarov was old Prokofitch, the butler, who looked sour whenever he handed the young doctor a dish, and called him a "sharper" and a "flaunter," and declared that, for all his whiskers, Bazarov was no better than "a dressed-up pig," whereas he, Prokofitch, was practically as good an aristocrat as Paul Petrovitch himself.

      In the early days of June, the best season of the year, the weather became beautiful. True, from afar there came threatenings of cholera, but to the local inhabitants such visitations had become a commonplace. Each day Bazarov rose early to set forth upon a tramp of some two or three versts; nor СКАЧАТЬ