“By all means,” she said at length, and bending over the bench she began to pick out some roses. “Which will you have — a red or a white one?”
“Red, and not too large.”
She sat up again.
“Here, take it,” she said, but at once drew back her outstretched hand, and biting her lips, looked towards the entrance of the summerhouse and then listened.
“What is it?” asked Bazarov. “Nikolai Petrovich?”
“No — he has gone to the fields . . . and I’m not afraid of him . . . but Pavel Petrovich . . . I fancied .” .
“What?”
“It seemed to me he was passing by.
No . . . it was no one.
Take it.” Fenichka gave Bazarov the rose.
“What makes you afraid of Pavel Petrovich?”
“He always frightens me.
One talks — and he says nothing, but just looks knowing.
Of course, you don’t like him either.
You remember you were always quarreling with him.
I don’t know what you quarreled about, but I can see you turning him this way and that . . .”
Fenichka showed with her hands how in her opinion Bazarov turned Pavel Petrovich round about.
Bazarov smiled.
“And if he defeated me,” he asked, “would you stand up for me?”
“How could I stand up for you? But no, one doesn’t get the better of you.”
“You think so?
But I know a hand which, if it wanted to, could knock me down with one finger.”
“What hand is that?”
“Why, don’t you know really?
Smell the wonderful scent of this rose you gave me.”
Fenichka stretched her little neck forward and put her face close to the flower, . . . The kerchief slipped from her hair on to her shoulders, disclosing a soft mass of black shining and slightly ruffled hair.
“Wait a moment; I want to smell it with you,” said Bazarov; he bent down and kissed her vigorously on her parted lips.
She shuddered, pushed him back with both her hands on his breast, but pushed weakly, so that he was able to renew and prolong his kiss.
A dry cough made itself heard behind the lilac bushes.
Fenichka instantly moved away to the other end of the bench.
Pavel Petrovich showed himself in the entrance, bowed slightly, muttered in a tone of sorrowful anger,
“You are here!” and walked away.
Fenichka at once gathered up all her roses and went out of the summerhouse.
“That was wrong of you, Evgeny Vassilich,” she whispered as she left; there was a tone of sincere reproach in her whisper.
Bazarov remembered another recent scene and he felt both ashamed and contemptuously annoyed.
But he shook his head at once, ironically congratulated himself on his formal assumption of the role of a Don Juan, and went back to his own room.
Pavel Petrovich went out of the garden and made his way with slow steps to the wood.
He stayed there quite a long time, and when he returned to lunch, Nikolai Petrovich inquired anxiously whether he felt unwell; his face had turned so dark.
“You know I sometimes suffer from bilious attacks,” Pavel Petrovich answered calmly.
Chapter 24
Two hours later he knocked at Bazarov’s door.
“I must apologize for hindering you in your scientific researches,” he began, seating himself in a chair by the window and leaning with both hands on a handsome walking-stick with an ivory knob (he usually walked without a stick), “but I am obliged to ask you to spare me five minutes of your time . . . no more.”
“All my time is at your disposal,” answered Bazarov, whose face quickly changed its expression the moment Pavel Petrovich crossed the threshold.
“Five minutes will be enough for me.
I have come to put one question to you.”
“A question?
What about?”
“I will tell you if you will be good enough to listen to me.
At the beginning of your stay in my brother’s house, before I had renounced the pleasure of conversing with you, I had occasion to hear your opinion on many subjects; but as far as I can remember, neither between us, nor in my presence, was the subject of singlecombats or dueling discussed.
Allow me to hear what are your views on that subject?”