[3] Scribbler.
[4] In 1812.
XI
Half an hour later Nikolai Petrovitch sought his favourite arbour. Despondent thoughts were thronging through his brain, for the rift between himself and his son was only too evident. Also, he knew that that rift would widen from day to day. For nothing had he spent whole days, during those winters in St. Petersburg, in the perusal of modern works! For nothing had he listened to the young men's discourses! For nothing had he been delighted when he had been able to interpolate a word into their tempestuous debates!
"My brother says that we are more in the right than they," he reflected. "And certainly I too can say without vanity that I believe these young fellows to stand at a greater distance from the truth than ourselves. Yet also I believe that they have in them something which we lack—something which gives them an advantage over us. What is that something? Is it youth? No, it is not youth alone. Is it that there hovers about them less of the barin than hovers about ourselves? Possibly!"
Bending his head, he passed his hand over his face.
"Yet to reject poetry!" he muttered. "To fail to sympathise with art and nature!"
And he gazed around as though he were trying to understand how any one could be out of sympathy with the natural world. Evening was just closing in, and the sun sinking behind a small aspen copse which, situated half a verst from the garden, was trailing long shadows over the motionless fields. Along the narrow, dark track beside the copse a peasant on a white pony was trotting; and though the pair were overshadowed by the trees, the rider was as clearly visible, even to a patch on his shoulder, as the twinkling legs of his steed. Piercing the tangled aspens, the sun's beams were bathing the trunks in so brilliant a glow that trunks and beams were one bright mass, and only the foliage on the boughs above formed a dusky blur against the lighter tints of the flame-coloured sky. Overhead bats were whirling; the wind had sunk to rest; a few late-homing bees were buzzing somnolently, sluggishly amid the lilac blossoms; and a pillared swarm of gnats was dancing over a projecting bough.
"O God, how fair!" was Nikolai's involuntary thought as his lips breathed a favourite couplet.