CHAPTER XVI
The country-house in which Anna Sergyevna lived stood on an exposedhill at no great distance from a yellow stone church with a green roof,white columns, and a fresco over the principal entrance representingthe 'Resurrection of Christ' in the 'Italian' style. Sprawling in theforeground of the picture was a swarthy warrior in a helmet, speciallyconspicuous for his rotund contours. Behind the church a long villagestretched in two rows, with chimneys peeping out here and there abovethe thatched roofs. The manor-house was built in the same style as thechurch, the style known among us as that of Alexander; the house toowas painted yellow, and had a green roof, and white columns, and apediment with an escutcheon on it. The architect had designed bothbuildings with the approval of the deceased Odintsov, who could notendure--as he expressed it--idle and arbitrary innovations. The housewas enclosed on both sides by the dark trees of an old garden; anavenue of lopped pines led up to the entrance.
Our friends were met in the hall by two tall footmen in livery; one ofthem at once ran for the steward. The steward, a stout man in a blackdress coat, promptly appeared and led the visitors by a staircasecovered with rugs to a special room, in which two bedsteads werealready prepared for them with all necessaries for the toilet. It wasclear that order reigned supreme in the house; everything was clean,everywhere there was a peculiar delicate fragrance, just as there is inthe reception rooms of ministers.
'Anna Sergyevna asks you to come to her in half-an-hour,' the stewardannounced; 'will there be orders to give meanwhile?'
'No orders,' answered Bazarov; 'perhaps you will be so good as totrouble yourself to bring me a glass of vodka.'
'Yes, sir,' said the steward, looking in some perplexity, and hewithdrew, his boots creaking as he walked.
'What _grand genre_!' remarked Bazarov. 'That's what it's called inyour set, isn't it? She's a grand-duchess, and that's all about it.'
'A nice grand-duchess,' retorted Arkady, 'at the very first meeting sheinvited such great aristocrats as you and me to stay with her.'
'Especially me, a future doctor, and a doctor's son, and a villagesexton's grandson.... You know, I suppose, I'm the grandson of asexton? Like the great Speransky,' added Bazarov after a brief pause,contracting his lips. 'At any rate she likes to be comfortable; oh,doesn't she, this lady! Oughtn't we to put on evening dress?'
Arkady only shrugged his shoulders ... but he too was conscious of alittle nervousness.
Half-an-hour later Bazarov and Arkady went together into thedrawing-room. It was a large lofty room, furnished rather luxuriouslybut without particularly good taste. Heavy expensive furniture stood inthe ordinary stiff arrangement along the walls, which were covered withcinnamon-coloured paper with gold flowers on it; Odintsov had orderedthe furniture from Moscow through a friend and agent of his, a spiritmerchant. Over a sofa in the centre of one wall hung a portrait of afaded light-haired man--and it seemed to look with displeasure at thevisitors. 'It must be the late lamented,' Bazarov whispered to Arkady,and turning up his nose, he added, 'Hadn't we better bolt ...?' But atthat instant the lady of the house entered. She wore a light baregedress; her hair smoothly combed back behind her ears gave a girlishexpression to her pure and fresh face.
'Thank you for keeping your promise,' she began. 'You must stay alittle while with me; it's really not bad here. I will introduce you tomy sister; she plays the piano well. That is a matter of indifferenceto you, Monsieur Bazarov; but you, I think, Monsieur Kirsanov, are fondof music. Besides my sister I have an old aunt living with me, and oneof our neighbours comes in sometimes to play cards; that makes up allour circle. And now let us sit down.'
Madame Odintsov delivered all this little speech with peculiarprecision, as though she had learned it by heart; then she turned toArkady. It appeared that her mother had known Arkady's mother, and hadeven been her confidante in her love for Nikolai Petrovitch. Arkadybegan talking with great warmth of his dead mother; while Bazarov fellto turning over albums. 'What a tame cat I'm getting!' he was thinkingto himself.
A beautiful greyhound with a blue collar on, ran into the drawing-room,tapping on the floor with his paws, and after him entered a girl ofeighteen, black-haired and dark-skinned, with a rather round butpleasing face, and small dark eyes. In her hands she held a basketfilled with flowers.
'This is my Katya,' said Madame Odintsov, indicating her with a motionof her head. Katya made a slight curtsey, placed herself beside hersister, and began picking out flowers. The greyhound, whose name wasFifi, went up to both of the visitors, in turn wagging his tail, andthrusting his cold nose into their hands.
'Did you pick all that yourself?' asked Madame Odintsov.
'Yes,' answered Katya.
'Is auntie coming to tea?'
'Yes.'
When Katya spoke, she had a very charming smile, sweet, timid, andcandid, and looked up from under her eyebrows with a sort of humorousseverity. Everything about her was still young and undeveloped; thevoice, and the bloom on her whole face, and the rosy hands, with whitepalms, and the rather narrow shoulders.... She was constantly blushingand getting out of breath.
Madame Odintsov turned to Bazarov. 'You are looking at pictures frompoliteness, Yevgeny Vassilyitch,' she began. That does not interestyou. You had better come nearer to us, and let us have a discussionabout something.'
Bazarov went closer. 'What subject have you decided upon fordiscussion?' he said.
'What you like. I warn you, I am dreadfully argumentative.'
'You?'
'Yes. That seems to surprise you. Why?'
'Because, as far as I can judge, you have a calm, cool character, andone must be impulsive to be argumentative.'
'How can you have had time to understand me so soon? In the firstplace, I am impatient and obstinate--you should ask Katya; andsecondly, I am very easily carried away.'
Bazarov looked at Anna Sergyevna. 'Perhaps; you must know best. And soyou are inclined for a discussion--by all means. I was looking throughthe views of the Saxon mountains in your album, and you remarked thatthat couldn't interest me. You said so, because you suppose me to haveno feeling for art, and as a fact I haven't any; but these views mightbe interesting to me from a geological standpoint, for the formation ofthe mountains, for instance.'
'Excuse me; but as a geologist, you would sooner have recourse to abook, to a special work on the subject, and not to a drawing.'
'The drawing shows me at a glance what would be spread over ten pagesin a book.'
Anna Sergyevna was silent for a little.
'And so you haven't the least artistic feeling?' she observed, puttingher elbow on the table, and by that very action bringing her facenearer to Bazarov. 'How can you get on without it?'
'Why, what is it wanted for, may I ask?'
'Well, at least to enable one to study and understand men.'
Bazarov smiled. 'In the first place, experience of life does that; andin the second, I assure you, studying separate individuals is not worththe trouble. All people are like one another, in soul as in body; eachof us has brain, spleen, heart, and lungs made alike; and the so-calledmoral qualities are the same in all; the slight variations are of noimportance. A single human specimen is sufficient to judge of all by.People are like trees in a forest; no botanist would think of studyingeach individual birch-tree.'
Katya, who was arranging the flowers, one at a time in a leisurelyfashion, lifted her eyes to Bazarov with a puzzled look, and meetinghis rapid and careless glance, she crimsoned up to her ears. AnnaSergyevna shook her head.
'The trees in a forest,' she repeated. 'Then according to you there isno difference between the stupid and the clever person, between thegood-natured and ill-natured?'
'No, there is a difference, just as between the sick and the healthy.The lungs of a consumptive patient are not in the same condition asyours and mine, though they are made on the same plan. We knowapproximately what physical diseases come from; moral diseases comefrom bad education, from all the nonsense people's
heads are stuffedwith from childhood up, from the defective state of society; in short,reform society, and there will be no diseases.'
Bazarov said all this with an air, as though he were all the whilethinking to himself, 'Believe me or not, as you like, it's all one tome!' He slowly passed his fingers over his whiskers, while his eyesstrayed about the room.
'And you conclude,' observed Anna Sergyevna, 'that when society isreformed, there will be no stupid nor wicked people?'
'At any rate, in a proper organisation of society, it will beabsolutely the same whether a man is stupid or clever, wicked or good.'
'Yes, I understand; they will all have the same spleen.'
'Precisely so, madam.'
Madame Odintsov turned to Arkady. 'And what is your opinion, ArkadyNikolaevitch?'
'I agree with Yevgeny,' he answered.
Katya looked up at him from under her eyelids.
'You amaze me, gentlemen,' commented Madame Odintsov, 'but we will havemore talk together. But now I hear my aunt coming to tea; we must spareher.'
Anna Sergyevna's aunt, Princess H----, a thin little woman with apinched-up face, drawn together like a fist, and staringill-natured-looking eyes under a grey front, came in, and, scarcelybowing to the guests, she dropped into a wide velvet covered arm-chair,upon which no one but herself was privileged to sit. Katya put afootstool under her feet; the old lady did not thank her, did not evenlook at her, only her hands shook under the yellow shawl, which almostcovered her feeble body. The Princess liked yellow; her cap, too, hadbright yellow ribbons.
'How have you slept, aunt?' inquired Madame Odintsov, raising hervoice.
'That dog in here again,' the old lady muttered in reply, and noticingFifi was making two hesitating steps in her direction, she cried,'Ss----ss!'
Katya called Fifi and opened the door for him.
Fifi rushed out delighted, in the expectation of being taken out for awalk; but when he was left alone outside the door, he began scratchingand whining. The princess scowled. Katya was about to go out....
'I expect tea is ready,' said Madame Odintsov.
'Come gentlemen; aunt, will you go in to tea?'
The princess got up from her chair without speaking and led the way outof the drawing-room. They all followed her in to the dining-room. Alittle page in livery drew back, with a scraping sound, from the table,an arm-chair covered with cushions, devoted to the princess's use; shesank into it; Katya in pouring out the tea handed her first a cupemblazoned with a heraldic crest. The old lady put some honey in hercup (she considered it both sinful and extravagant to drink tea withsugar in it, though she never spent a farthing herself on anything),and suddenly asked in a hoarse voice, 'And what does Prince Ivanwrite?'
No one made her any reply. Bazarov and Arkady soon guessed that theypaid no attention to her though they treated her respectfully.
'Because of her grand family,' thought Bazarov....
After tea, Anna Sergyevna suggested they should go out for a walk; butit began to rain a little, and the whole party, with the exception ofthe princess, returned to the drawing-room. The neighbour, the devotedcard-player, arrived; his name was Porfiry Platonitch, a stoutish,greyish man with short, spindly legs, very polite and ready to beamused. Anna Sergyevna, who still talked principally with Bazarov,asked him whether he'd like to try a contest with them in theold-fashioned way at preference? Bazarov assented, saying 'that heought to prepare himself beforehand for the duties awaiting him as acountry doctor.'
'You must be careful,' observed Anna Sergyevna; 'Porfiry Platonitch andI will beat you. And you, Katya,' she added, 'play something to ArkadyNikolaevitch; he is fond of music, and we can listen, too.'
Katya went unwillingly to the piano; and Arkady, though he certainlywas fond of music, unwillingly followed her; it seemed to him thatMadame Odintsov was sending him away, and already, like every young manat his age, he felt a vague and oppressive emotion surging up in hisheart, like the forebodings of love. Katya raised the top of the piano,and not looking at Arkady, she said in a low voice--
'What am I to play you?'
'What you like,' answered Arkady indifferently.
'What sort of music do you like best?' repeated Katya, without changingher attitude.
'Classical,' Arkady answered in the same tone of voice.
'Do you like Mozart?'
'Yes, I like Mozart.'
Katya pulled out Mozart's Sonata-Fantasia in C minor. She played verywell, though rather over correctly and precisely. She sat upright andimmovable, her eyes fixed on the notes, and her lips tightlycompressed, only at the end of the sonata her face glowed, her haircame loose, and a little lock fell on to her dark brow.
Arkady was particularly struck by the last part of the sonata, the partin which, in the midst of the bewitching gaiety of the careless melody,the pangs of such mournful, almost tragic suffering, suddenly breakin.... But the ideas stirred in him by Mozart's music had no referenceto Katya. Looking at her, he simply thought, 'Well, that young ladydoesn't play badly, and she's not bad-looking either.'
When she had finished the sonata, Katya without taking her hands fromthe keys, asked, 'Is that enough?' Arkady declared that he could notventure to trouble her again, and began talking to her about Mozart; heasked her whether she had chosen that sonata herself, or some one hadrecommended it to her. But Katya answered him in monosyllables; shewithdrew into herself, went back into her shell. When this happened toher, she did not very quickly come out again; her face even assumed atsuch times an obstinate, almost stupid expression. She was not exactlyshy, but diffident, and rather overawed by her sister, who had educatedher, and who had no suspicion of the fact. Arkady was reduced at lastto calling Fifi to him, and with an affable smile patting him on thehead to give himself an appearance of being at home.
Katya set to work again upon her flowers.
Bazarov meanwhile was losing and losing. Anna Sergyevna played cards inmasterly fashion; Porfiry Platonitch, too, could hold his own in thegame. Bazarov lost a sum which, though trifling in itself, was notaltogether pleasant for him. At supper Anna Sergyevna again turned theconversation on botany.
'We will go for a walk to-morrow morning,' she said to him; 'I want youto teach me the Latin names of the wild flowers and their species.'
'What use are the Latin names to you?' asked Bazarov.
'Order is needed in everything,' she answered.
'What an exquisite woman Anna Sergyevna is!' cried Arkady, when he wasalone with his friend in the room assigned to them.
'Yes,' answered Bazarov, 'a female with brains. Yes, and she's seenlife too.'
'In what sense do you mean that, Yevgeny Vassilyitch?'
'In a good sense, a good sense, my dear friend, Arkady Nikolaevitch!I'm convinced she manages her estate capitally too. But what's splendidis not her, but her sister.'
'What, that little dark thing?'
'Yes, that little dark thing. She now is fresh and untouched, and shyand silent, and anything you like. She's worth educating anddeveloping. You might make something fine out of her; but theother's--a stale loaf.'
Arkady made no reply to Bazarov, and each of them got into bed withrather singular thoughts in his head.
Anna Sergyevna, too, thought of her guests that evening. She likedBazarov for the absence of gallantry in him, and even for his sharplydefined views. She found in him something new, which she had notchanced to meet before, and she was curious.
Anna Sergyevna was a rather strange creature. Having no prejudices ofany kind, having no strong convictions even, she never gave way or wentout of her way for anything. She had seen many things very clearly; shehad been interested in many things, but nothing had completelysatisfied her; indeed, she hardly desired complete satisfaction. Herintellect was at the same time inquiring and indifferent; her doubtswere never soothed to forgetfulness, and they never grew strong enoughto distract her. Had she not been rich and independent, she wouldperhaps have thrown herself into the struggle, and have known
passion.But life was easy for her, though she was bored at times, and she wenton passing day after day with deliberation, never in a hurry, placid,and only rarely disturbed. Dreams sometimes danced in rainbow coloursbefore her eyes even, but she breathed more freely when they died away,and did not regret them. Her imagination indeed overstepped the limitsof what is reckoned permissible by conventional morality; but even thenher blood flowed as quietly as ever in her fascinatingly graceful,tranquil body. Sometimes coming out of her fragrant bath all warm andenervated, she would fall to musing on the nothingness of life, thesorrow, the labour, the malice of it.... Her soul would be filled withsudden daring, and would flow with generous ardour, but a draught wouldblow from a half-closed window, and Anna Sergyevna would shrink intoherself, and feel plaintive and almost angry, and there was only onething she cared for at that instant--to get away from that horriddraught.
Like all women who have not succeeded in loving, she wanted something,without herself knowing what. Strictly speaking, she wanted nothing;but it seemed to her that she wanted everything. She could hardlyendure the late Odintsov (she had married him from prudential motives,though probably she would not have consented to become his wife if shehad not considered him a good sort of man), and had conceived a secretrepugnance for all men, whom she could only figure to herself asslovenly, heavy, drowsy, and feebly importunate creatures. Once,somewhere abroad, she had met a handsome young Swede, with a chivalrousexpression, with honest blue eyes under an open brow; he had made apowerful impression on her, but it had not prevented her from goingback to Russia.
'A strange man this doctor!' she thought as she lay in her luxuriousbed on lace pillows under a light silk coverlet.... Anna Sergyevna hadinherited from her father a little of his inclination for splendour.She had fondly loved her sinful but good-natured father, and he hadidolised her, used to joke with her in a friendly way as though shewere an equal, and to confide in her fully, to ask her advice. Hermother she scarcely remembered.
'This doctor is a strange man!' she repeated to herself. She stretched,smiled, clasped her hands behind her head, then ran her eyes over twopages of a stupid French novel, dropped the book--and fell asleep, allpure and cold, in her pure and fragrant linen.
The following morning Anna Sergyevna went off botanising with Bazarovdirectly after lunch, and returned just before dinner; Arkady did notgo off anywhere, and spent about an hour with Katya. He was not boredwith her; she offered of herself to repeat the sonata of the daybefore; but when Madame Odintsov came back at last, when he caughtsight of her, he felt an instantaneous pang at his heart. She camethrough the garden with a rather tired step; her cheeks were glowingand her eyes shining more brightly than usual under her round strawhat. She was twirling in her fingers the thin stalk of a wildflower, alight mantle had slipped down to her elbows, and the wide gray ribbonsof her hat were clinging to her bosom. Bazarov walked behind her,self-confident and careless as usual, but the expression of his face,cheerful and even friendly as it was, did not please Arkady. Mutteringbetween his teeth, 'Good-morning!' Bazarov went away to his room, whileMadame Odintsov shook Arkady's hand abstractedly, and also walked pasthim.
'Good-morning!' thought Arkady ... 'As though we had not seen eachother already to-day!'