No crowd of house-serfs ran out on to the steps to meet the gentlemen;

a little girl of twelve years old made her appearance alone. After her

there came out of the house a young lad, very like Piotr, dressed in a

coat of grey livery, with white armorial buttons, the servant of Pavel

Petrovitch Kirsanov. Without speaking, he opened the door of the

carriage, and unbuttoned the apron of the coach. Nikolai Petrovitch

with his son and Bazarov walked through a dark and almost empty hall,

from behind the door of which they caught a glimpse of a young woman's

face, into a drawing-room furnished in the most modern style.



'Here we are at home,' said Nikolai Petrovitch, taking off his cap, and

shaking back his hair. 'That's the great thing; now we must have supper

and rest.'



'A meal would not come amiss, certainly,' observed Bazarov, stretching,

and he dropped on to a sofa.



'Yes, yes, let us have supper, supper directly.' Nikolai Petrovitch

with no apparent reason stamped his foot. 'And here just at the right

moment comes Prokofitch.'



A man about sixty entered, white-haired, thin, and swarthy, in a

cinnamon-coloured dress-coat with brass buttons, and a pink

neckerchief. He smirked, went up to kiss Arkady's hand, and bowing to

the guest retreated to the door, and put his hands behind him.



'Here he is, Prokofitch,' began Nikolai Petrovitch; 'he's come back to

us at last.... Well, how do you think him looking?'



'As well as could be,' said the old man, and was grinning again, but he

quickly knitted his bushy brows. 'You wish supper to be served?' he

said impressively.



'Yes, yes, please. But won't you like to go to your room first, Yevgeny

Vassilyitch?'



'No, thanks; I don't care about it. Only give orders for my little box

to be taken there, and this garment, too,' he added, taking off his

frieze overcoat.



'Certainly. Prokofitch, take the gentleman's coat.' (Prokofitch, with

an air of perplexity, picked up Bazarov's 'garment' in both hands, and

holding it high above his head, retreated on tiptoe.) 'And you, Arkady,

are you going to your room for a minute?'



'Yes, I must wash,' answered Arkady, and was just moving towards the

door, but at that instant there came into the drawing-room a man of

medium height, dressed in a dark English suit, a fashionable low

cravat, and kid shoes, Pavel Petrovitch Kirsanov. He looked about

forty-five: his close-cropped, grey hair shone with a dark lustre, like

new silver; his face, yellow but free from wrinkles, was exceptionally

regular and pure in line, as though carved by a light and delicate

chisel, and showed traces of remarkable beauty; specially fine were his

clear, black, almond-shaped eyes. The whole person of Arkady's uncle,

with its aristocratic elegance, had preserved the gracefulness of youth

and that air of striving upwards, away from earth, which for the most

part is lost after the twenties are past.



Pavel Petrovitch took out of his trouser pocket his exquisite hand with

its long tapering pink nails, a hand which seemed still more exquisite

from the snowy whiteness of the cuff, buttoned with a single, big opal,

and gave it to his nephew. After a preliminary handshake in the

European style, he kissed him thrice after the Russian fashion, that is

to say, he touched his cheek three times with his perfumed moustaches,

and said, 'Welcome.'



Nikolai Petrovitch presented him to Bazarov; Pavel Petrovitch greeted

him with a slight inclination of his supple figure, and a slight smile,

but he did not give him his hand, and even put it back into his pocket.



'I had begun to think you were not coming to-day,' he began in a

musical voice, with a genial swing and shrug of the shoulders, as he

showed his splendid white teeth. 'Did anything happen on the road.'



'Nothing happened,' answered Arkady; 'we were rather slow. But we're as

hungry as wolves now. Hurry up Prokofitch, dad; and I'll be back

directly.'



'Stay, I'm coming with you,' cried Bazarov, pulling himself up suddenly

from the sofa. Both the young men went out.



'Who is he?' asked Pavel Petrovitch.



'A friend of Arkasha's; according to him, a very clever fellow.'



'Is he going to stay with us?'



'Yes.'



'That unkempt creature?'



'Why, yes.'



Pavel Petrovitch drummed with his finger tips on the table. 'I fancy

Arkady _s'est dégourdi_,' he remarked. 'I'm glad he has come back.'



At supper there was little conversation. Bazarov especially said

nothing, but he ate a great deal. Nikolai Petrovitch related various

incidents in what he called his career as a farmer, talked about the

impending government measures, about committees, deputations, the

necessity of introducing machinery, etc. Pavel Petrovitch paced slowly

up and down the dining-room (he never ate supper), sometimes sipping at

a wineglass of red wine, and less often uttering some remark or rather

exclamation, of the nature of 'Ah! aha! hm!' Arkady told some news from

Petersburg, but he was conscious of a little awkwardness, that

awkwardness, which usually overtakes a youth when he has just ceased to

be a child, and has come back to a place where they are accustomed to

regard him and treat him as a child. He made his sentences quite

unnecessarily long, avoided the word 'daddy,' and even sometimes

replaced it by the word 'father,' mumbled, it is true, between his

teeth; with an exaggerated carelessness he poured into his glass far

more wine than he really wanted, and drank it all off. Prokofitch did

not take his eyes off him, and kept chewing his lips. After supper they

all separated at once.



'Your uncle's a queer fish,' Bazarov said to Arkady, as he sat in his

dressing-gown by his bedside, smoking a short pipe. 'Only fancy such

style in the country! His nails, his nails--you ought to send them to

an exhibition!'



'Why of course, you don't know,' replied Arkady. 'He was a great swell

in his own day, you know. I will tell you his story one day. He was

very handsome, you know, used to turn all the women's heads.'



'Oh, that's it, is it? So he keeps it up in memory of the past. It's a

pity there's no one for him to fascinate here though. I kept staring at

his exquisite collars. They're like marble, and his chin's shaved

simply to perfection. Come, Arkady Nikolaitch, isn't that ridiculous?'



'Perhaps it is; but he's a splendid man, really.'



'An antique survival! But your father's a capital fellow. He wastes his

time reading poetry, and doesn't know much about farming, but he's a

good-hearted fellow.'



'My father's a man in a thousand.'



'Did you notice how shy and nervous he is?'



Arkady shook his head as though he himself were not shy and nervous.



'It's something astonishing,' pursued Bazarov, 'these old idealists,

they develop their nervous systems till they break down ... so balance

is lost. But good-night. In my room there's an English washstand, but

the door won't fasten. Anyway that ought to be encouraged--an English

washstand stands for progress!'



Bazarov went away, and a sense of great happiness came over Arkady.

Sweet it is to fall asleep in one's own home, in the familiar bed,

under the quilt worked by loving hands, perhaps a dear nurse's hands,

those kind, tender, untiring hands. Arkady remembered Yegorovna, and

sighed and wished her peace in heaven.... For himself he made no

prayer.



Both he and Bazarov were soon asleep, but others in the house were

awake long after. His son's return had agitated Nikolai Petrovitch. He

lay down in bed, but did not put out the candles, and his head propped

on his hand, he fell into long reveries. His brother was sitting long

after midnight in his study, in a wide armchair before the fireplace,

on which there smouldered some faintly glowing embers. Pavel Petrovitch

was not undressed, only some red Chinese slippers had replaced the kid

shoes on his feet. He held in his hand the last number of _Galignani_,

but he was not reading; he gazed fixedly into the grate, where a bluish

flame flickered, dying down, then flaring up again.... God knows where

his thoughts were rambling, but they were not rambling in the past

only; the expression of his face was concentrated and surly, which is

not the way when a man is absorbed solely in recollections. In a small

back room there sat, on a large chest, a young woman in a blue dressing

jacket with a white kerchief thrown over her dark hair, Fenitchka. She

was half listening, half dozing, and often looked across towards the

open door through which a child's cradle was visible, and the regular

breathing of a sleeping baby could be heard.