Fainting!
Oh these nervous people!
Fancy, what a delicate skin.”
“Is he killed?” whispered the trembling voice of Pyotr behind his back.
Bazarov looked round.
“Go for some water quickly, my good fellow, and he’ll outlive you and me yet.”
But the perfect servant failed apparently to understand his words and did not move from the spot.
Pavel Petrovich slowly opened his eyes.
“He’s dying,” murmured Pyotr and started crossing himself.
“You are right . . . what an idiotic face!” remarked the wounded gentleman with a forced smile.
“Go and fetch the water, damn you!” shouted Bazarov.
“There’s no need . . . it was a momentary vertigo. Help me to sit up . . . there, that’s right . . . I only need something to bind up this scratch, and I can reach home on foot, or else you can send for a droshky for me.
The duel, if you agree, need not be renewed.
You have behaved honorably . . . today, today — take note.”
“There’s no need to recall the past,” answered Bazarov, “and as regards the future, it’s not worth breaking your head about that either, for I intend to move off from here immediately.
Let me bind up your leg now; your wound — is not dangerous, but it’s always better to stop the bleeding.
But first I must bring this corpse to his senses.”
Bazarov shook Pyotr by the collar and sent him off to fetch a droshky.
“Mind you don’t frighten my brother,” Pavel Petrovich said to him; “don’t inform him on any account.”
Pyotr dashed off, and while he was running for a droshky, the two antagonists sat on the ground in silence.
Pavel Petrovich tried not to look at Bazarov; he did not want to be reconciled to him in any case; he felt ashamed of his own arrogance, of his failure; he was ashamed of the whole affair he had arranged even though he realized it could not have ended more auspiciously.
“At least he won’t go on hanging around here,” he consoled himself by thinking: “one should be thankful even for that.”
The prolonged silence was oppressive and awkward.
Both of them felt ill at ease; each was conscious that the other understood him.
For friends such a feeling is agreeable, but for those who are not friends it is most unpleasant, especially when it is impossible either to come to an understanding or to separate.
“Haven’t I bound up your leg too tight?” asked Bazarov at last.
“No, not at all, it’s excellent,” answered Pavel Petrovich, and added after a pause, “we can’t deceive my brother, he will have to be told that we quarreled about politics.”
“Very good,” said Bazarov. “You can say that I cursed all Anglomaniacs.”
“All right.
What do you suppose that man thinks about us now?” continued Pavel Petrovich, pointing at the same peasant who had driven the hobbled horses past Bazarov a few minutes before the duel, and who was now going back again along the same road and took off his cap at the sight of the “masters.”
“Who knows him!” answered Bazarov. “Most likely of all he thinks about nothing. The Russian peasant is that mysterious unknown person about whom Mrs. Radcliffe used to say so much.
Who can understand him?
He doesn’t understand himself.”
“Ah, so that’s what you think,” Pavel Petrovich began, then suddenly exclaimed, “Look what your fool of a Pyotr has done!
Here’s my brother galloping towards us.”
Bazarov turned round and saw Nikolai Petrovich sitting in a droshky, his face pale.
He jumped out before it had stopped and ran up to his brother.
“What does this mean?” he called out in an agitated voice. “Evgeny Vassilich, what is this?”
“Nothing,” answered Pavel Petrovich, “they have alarmed you quite unnecessarily.
We had a little dispute, Mr. Bazarov and I— and I have had to pay for it a little.”
“But for heaven’s sake, what was it all about?”
“How shall I explain?
Mr. Bazarov alluded disrespectfully to Sir Robert Peel.
I hasten to add that I am the only person to blame in all this, and Mr. Bazarov has behaved honorably.
I challenged him.”
“But you’re covered with blood!”
“Well, did you suppose I had water in my veins?
But this bloodletting positively does me good.
Isn’t that so, doctor?
Help me to get into the droshky and don’t give way to gloomy thoughts.