“Thank you for the invitation, Anna Sergeyevna, and for your flattering opinion of my conversational talents.
But I find I’ve already been moving around for too long in a sphere which is alien to me.
Flying fish can hold out for a time in the air, but soon they have to splash back into the water; you must allow me too to flop down into my natural element.”
Madame Odintsov looked at Bazarov.
A bitter smile twisted his pale face.
“This man loved me,” she thought, and she felt sorry for him and held out her hand with sympathy.
But he too understood her.
“No,” he said, stepping back a pace. “I’m a poor man, but I’ve never accepted charity so far.
Good-by and good luck.”
“I am sure that we are not seeing each other for the last time,” said Anna Sergeyevna with an unconscious movement.
“Anything can happen in this world,” answered Bazarov, and he bowed and went out.
“So you propose to build yourself a nest?” he said the same day to Arkady, crouching on the floor as he packed his trunk. “Well, it’s a good thing.
Only you needn’t have been such a humbug about it.
I expected you’d go in quite a different direction.
Perhaps, though, it took you unawares?”
“I certainly didn’t expect this when I left you,” answered Arkady; “but why are you being a humbug yourself and calling it a ‘good thing,’ as if I didn’t know your opinion of marriage?”
“Ah, my dear friend,” said Bazarov, “how you express yourself.
You see what I’m doing; there happened to be an empty space in my trunk, and I’m putting hay into it; that’s how it is with the luggage of our life; we would stuff it up with anything rather than leave a void.
Don’t be offended, please; you probably remember what I always thought of Katerina Sergeyevna.
Many a young lady is called intelligent simply because she can sigh intelligently; but yours can hold her own, and indeed she’ll hold it so well that she’ll have you under her thumb — well, and that’s quite as it should be.” He slammed the lid and got up from the floor. “And now I say again, farewell . . . because it’s useless to deceive ourselves; we are parting forever, and you know it yourself . . . you acted sensibly; you were not made for our bitter, rough, lonely existence.
There’s no daring in you, no hatred, though you’ve got youthful dash and youthful fervor; that’s not enough for our business.
Your sort, the nobility, can never go farther than noble resignation or noble indignation, but those things are trifles.
For instance, you won’t fight — and yet you fancy yourselves as brave fellows — but we want to fight.
So there!
Our dust would get into your eyes, our mud would soil you, but you’re not up to our standard, you unconsciously admire yourselves and you enjoy finding fault with yourselves; but we’re fed up with all that — we want something else! We want to smash people!
You’re a fine fellow, but all the same you’re a mild little liberal gentleman — ay volatoo,as my parent would say.”
“You are bidding good-by to me for ever, Evgeny,” said Arkady sadly, “and you have nothing else to say to me.”
Bazarov scratched the back of his head.
“Yes, Arkady, I have other things to say to you, but I won’t say them, because that’s romanticism — that means sentimental trash.
But you hurry up and marry, settle down in your nest and have as many children as you like.
They’ll have the gumption to be born in a better time than you and me.
Aha! I see the horses are ready.
It’s time to go.
I’ve said good-by to everyone . . . well, what’s this? Embracing, eh?”
Arkady threw himself on the neck of his former teacher and friend, and tears fairly streamed from his eyes.
“That’s what comes of being young!” remarked Bazarov calmly. “But I rely on Katerina Sergeyevna.
You’ll see how quickly she can console you.”
“Farewell, brother,” he called out to Arkady, as he was already climbing into the cart, and pointing to a pair of jackdaws, sitting side by side on the roof of the stables, he added, “There you are! Learn from the example.”
“What does that mean?” asked Arkady.
“What?
Are you so weak in natural history or have you forgotten that the jackdaw is a most respectable family bird!
An example to you . . .!
Good-by.”
The cart creaked and rolled away.
Bazarov spoke the truth.
Talking that evening with Katya, Arkady had completely forgotten about his former teacher.
He had already begun to follow her lead, and Katya felt this and was not surprised.
He was to set off the next day to Maryino to see Nikolai Petrovich.
Anna Sergeyevna had no wish to hamper the freedom of the young people, but on account of decorum she did not leave them alone for too long.
She generously kept the princess out of their way; the old lady had been reduced to a state of tearful frenzy by the news of the approaching marriage.