A family of noblemen

by Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov

THE FAMILY COUNCIL

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CHAPTER I

Anton Vasilyev, the manager of a remote estate, was giving his mistress, Arina Petrovna Golovliov, an account of his trip to Moscow. He had gone there to collect the money due from those of her peasant serfs who bought the right to live in the city by paying her a tax. When he had finished with his report, she told him he might retire, but he lingered on irresolutely, as though he had something else to say, yet could not make up his mind to say it.

Arina Petrovna knew her servants through and through; she knew the meaning of their slightest gestures, she could even divine their inmost thoughts. And her steward's manner immediately aroused her disquietude.

"What else?" she asked, looking at him keenly.

"That's all," he replied evasively.

"Don't lie. There is something else. I can see it by your eyes."

Anton Vasilyev still hesitated and continued to shift from one foot to the other.

"What is it? Tell me!" she shouted imperiously. "Out with it, out with it! And don't wag your whole body like a dog, Telltale!"

Arina Petrovna liked to call her managers and domestics by nicknames. She used Telltale for Anton Vasilyev, not because she had found him to carry gossip treacherously, but simply because he had a loose tongue.

The centre of the estate that he managed was an important trading village in which there were many taverns. He liked to take a glass of tea in a tavern and boast of his mistress's great power. And in the course of his boasting he would sometimes unconsciously blab out secrets. His mistress was always with a lawsuit on her hands, so that her trusty's garrulousness sometimes brought her sly stratagems to the surface before they could be executed.

"Yes, I have got something else to say," Anton finally mumbled.

"What is it?" Arina Petrovna asked excitedly.

An imperious woman, with an extraordinarily lively imagination, she instantly pictured all sorts of disagreeable opposition and antagonism, and the thought so instantly took complete possession of her that she turned white and jumped up from her chair.

"Stepan Vladimirych's house in Moscow has been sold," Anton said after a pause.

"Well?"

"It's been sold."

"Why? How? Tell me."

"For debts, I suppose. Of course it can't be because of something nice."

"The police, the court, sold it, I suppose?"

"I suppose so. They say it was sold at auction for 8,000 rubles."

Arina Petrovna dropped back heavily into her armchair and gazed fixedly at the window panes. She was so stunned by the news that she seemed to have lost consciousness for a while. Had she heard that Stepan Vladimirych had killed somebody, or that the Golovliov peasant serfs had risen in revolt and refused to render the service due her on her estates, or that serfdom had been abolished, she would not have been so shocked. Her lips trembled, her eyes stared vacantly into the distance, but she saw nothing. She did not even see the little girl, Duniashka, run past the window carrying something hidden under her apron; she did not see the child stop suddenly on beholding her mistress and wheel round and then dart back guiltily to where she had come from. Such suspicious conduct at any other time would have led to a thorough investigation. Finally Arina Petrovna came to herself and managed to bring out:

"A good joke, I must say." After which there again followed several minutes of ominous silence.

"So the police sold the house for eight thousand?" she asked again.

"Yes, madam."

"So that's what he's done with his patrimony! Splendid! The blackguard!"

Arina Petrovna felt that the news called for a prompt decision, but nothing occurred to her. Her thoughts ran confusedly in exactly opposite directions. On the one hand she thought: "The police sold it. But the police could not have sold it in a minute. An inventory must first have been taken, then an appraisal made, and then the sale must have been advertised. Sold for eight thousand when I myself two years ago paid twelve thousand rubles for it, not a penny less. Had I only known it was going to be up for sale, I could have bought it myself for eight thousand rubles."

Her other thoughts ran: "The police sold it for eight thousand. That's what he's done with his patrimony. To sell one's patrimony for eight thousand rubles!"

"Who told you?" she asked, realizing finally that the house had been sold and the chance to secure it cheaply was gone forever.

"Ivan Mikhailov, the inn-keeper."

"Why didn't he let me know in time?"

"I suppose he was afraid."

"Afraid? I'll teach him to be afraid. I'll make him come here from Moscow, and the moment he comes I'll have him drafted into the army. He was afraid!"

Although on the decline, serfdom still existed. Anton Vasilyev had known his mistress to impose the most peculiar punishments, but, even so, her present decision was so unexpected that it made him miserable. He thought of his nickname Telltale. Ivan Mikhailov was an upright peasant, and Anton never dreamed that misfortune would touch him. Besides, Ivan Mikhailov was his friend and godfather. Now, all of a sudden, he was to be made a soldier just because he, Anton Vasilyev, the Telltale, could not hold his tongue.

"Forgive him—Ivan Mikhailov, I mean," he pleaded.

"Go away, you mollycoddler," she shouted in a voice so loud that he lost all desire to intercede any further for his friend.

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CHAPTER II

Arina Petrovna was sixty years old, still of sound health and accustomed to have her own way in everything. Her manner was severe. She lived alone, and managed the huge Golovliov estate all by herself, without having to answer to any one else. She calculated closely, almost parsimoniously, was not intimate with her neighbors, was gracious to the local authorities, and exacted implicit obedience from her children. They were not to do anything without first asking themselves, "What would mamenka say about it?" She was independent, inflexible, even stubborn, though her stubbornness was not so much native as due chiefly to the circumstance that there was not one person in the whole Golovliov family that could oppose her. Her husband was a trifling creature, and drank. Arina Petrovna used to say of herself that she was neither a widow nor a married woman. Some of the children were in St. Petersburg, the others took after their father and were relegated to the class of "horrid creatures," who were unfit for household duties. In these circumstances Arina Petrovna soon began to feel all left alone, and grew totally disaccustomed to family life, although the word "family" was constantly on her lips, and outwardly she seemed to be exclusively guided in all her work by the desire to build up the family estate and keep the family affairs in order.

The head of the family, Vladimir Mikhailych Golovliov, was known from his youth as a dissolute, quarrelsome fellow, with nothing in his character that would be sympathetic to a serious, active woman like Arina Petrovna. He led a lazy, good-for-nothing existence, usually stayed locked up in his room, where he imitated the warble of the starlings, the crowing of cocks, and the like, and composed ribald doggerel. In bursts of confidence he would boast that he had been a friend of the poet Barkov, intimating that the poet had blessed him on his deathbed. Arina Petrovna disliked her husband's verses from the very first. "Nasty stuff!" "Trash!" she called them. And since Vladimir Mikhailych's very object in marrying had been to have someone ever at hand to listen to his poetry, the result was that quarrels soon began, which grew worse and worse and more frequent until they ended with Arina Petrovna utterly indifferent and contemptuous of her clown husband, and Vladimir Mikhailych hating his wife sincerely, with a hatred considerably mixed with fear. The husband called the wife a "hag" and a "devil"; the wife called the husband a "windmill" and a "balalaika without strings."

They lived together in this way for more than forty years, and it never occurred to either of them that there was anything unnatural in such a life. Time did not diminish Vladimir Mikhailych's quarrelsomeness; on the contrary, it took on a still sharper edge. Apart from the poetical exercising in Barkov's spirit that he did, he began to drink and to lie in wait eagerly for the servant girls in the corridors. At first Arina Petrovna looked on this new occupation of her husband's with repugnance. She even got wrought up over it, not so much from jealousy as that she felt it to be an interference with her authority. After a while, however, she shrugged her shoulders, and merely watched out that the "dirty wenches" should not fetch brandy for their master.

From that time on, having said to herself once for all that her husband was not a companion, she directed her efforts exclusively to one object, the building up of the estate. And in the forty years of her married life she actually succeeded in multiplying her property tenfold. With astonishing patience and acumen she kept her eye on the near and distant villages, found out in secret ways the relations that existed between the neighboring landowners and the board of trustees, and always appeared at the auctions like snow on the head. In this fantastic hunt for new acquisitions Vladimir Mikhailych receded more and more into the background, turned seedy and at last dropped out of social life completely. He was now a decrepit old man already, keeping his bed almost the whole time. On the rare occasions that he left his room it was only to stick his head through the half-open door of his wife's bedroom and shout: "Devil!" After which he would go back and close himself up in his own room again.

Arina Petrovna was not much happier in her children. She was of a celibate nature, so to speak, independent and self-sufficient, and her children were nothing to her but a useless burden. The only times when she breathed freely was when she was alone with her accounts and her household affairs, and when no one interfered with her business talks with her managers, stewards, housekeepers, and so on. In her eyes, children were one of the preordained things in life that she felt she had no right to protest against. Nevertheless they did not touch a single chord in her inner being, which was given over wholly to the numberless details of the household.

There were four children, one daughter and three sons. Of the oldest son and the daughter she did not even like to speak; toward the youngest son she was indifferent. It was only for the middle one, Porfisha, that she cherished any feeling at all, a feeling not of love, but of something very akin to fear.

Stepan Vladimirych, the oldest son, passed in the family by the name of Simple Simon, or The Saucebox. He was very young when he was put into the class of "horrid creatures," and from childhood up played the rôle of half pariah, half clown. Unfortunately he was a bright child, susceptible to the impressions of his environment. From his father he inherited an irresistible inclination to play tricks, from his mother the ability to divine the weak sides of people's natures. The first characteristic soon made him his father's favorite, which still further intensified his mother's dislike of him. Often when the mother was absent on business, the father and the boy would betake themselves into the study adorned with the portrait of Barkov, read ribald poems, and gossip, the chief butt of their raillery being the "hag," that is to say, Arina Petrovna. The "hag," instinctively divining their occupation, would drive up to the front steps very quietly, then tiptoe to the study door and listen to their fun-making. The murderous punishment of Simple Simon followed swift and cruel. But Stiopka was not subdued. He was impervious either to blows or to admonitions, and in half an hour was back again at his tricks. He would cut up Aniutka's, the servant girl's, scarf, or he would stick flies into Vasiutka's mouth while he slept, or he would run into the kitchen and carry off a cake (Arina Petrovna kept her children half hungry), which he always divided with his brothers.

"You ought to be killed," his mother said. "I'll kill you, and I won't have to answer for it either. Even God won't punish me for it."

This humiliation, constantly put upon a nature soft, yielding and forgetful, did not remain without its effect. It did not embitter him, nor did it make him rebellious. It made him servile, disposed to buffoonery, with no sense of the fitness of things, and devoid of all foresight and prudence. Such natures yield to all influences and may become almost anything—drunkards, beggars, buffoons, even criminals.

At the age of twenty Stepan Golovliov graduated from the gymnasium in Moscow and entered the university. But his student's life was a bitter one. In the first place, his mother gave him just enough money to keep him from dying of hunger. Secondly, he did not show the least inclination to work. Instead, he developed an accursed talent, which expressed itself chiefly in mimickry. And he suffered from a desire for constant companionship. He hated to be alone a single instant. So he played the light rôle of hanger-on and parasite, and thanks to his readiness for any prank he soon became the favorite of the rich students. However, though they received him into their society, they looked on him, not as one of them, but as a clown; and the reputation clung to him. Once placed on such a plane, he naturally slid down lower and lower, and at the end of the fourth year was thoroughly confirmed in his clownship. Nevertheless, thanks to his receptive ability and good memory, he passed the examinations successfully and received his bachelor's degree.

When he appeared before his mother with the diploma, she merely shrugged her shoulders and said: "Well, that's funny." Then, after letting him spend a month in the country, she shipped him back to St. Petersburg with an allowance of a hundred rubles a month. Now there began for him endless visits to various government offices. He had neither patrons nor the determination to make his own way by hard work. The lad's mind had lost so completely the habit of concentration that bureaucratic tasks such as the drawing up of briefs and case abstracts were beyond his power. After four years of struggle Stepan was forced to admit that there was no hope of his ever rising above the rank of a government clerk. In reply to his lamentations, Arina Petrovna wrote him a stern letter which began with the words: "I was sure that would happen," and wound up with a command to return at once to Moscow. There, at the conclave of Arina Petrovna's favorite peasants, it was decided to place Simple Simon in the Aulic Court, entrusting him to the care of a pettifogger who from time immemorial had been the legal adviser of the Golovliov family.

What Stepan Vladimirych did in the Aulic Court and how he behaved there is a mystery. What is certain is that at the end of the third year he was there no longer. Then Arina Petrovna took a heroic measure. She "threw her son a bone," which was also supposed to fill the part of the "parental blessing," that is to say, the patrimony. "The bone" consisted of a house in Moscow, for which she had paid twelve thousand rubles.

For the first time in his life Stepan Golovliov breathed freely. The house promised to bring him an income of a thousand silver rubles, a sum which in comparison with his former income, seemed like genuine prosperity. He kissed his mamma's hand effusively, and promised to justify her kindness, whereupon Arina Petrovna said: "That's better; but mind you, you numskull, that's all you get from me!" But, alas! so little was he used to handling money, so absurd was his estimation of real values in life, that before long what he thought to be a fabulous revenue proved insufficient. In five or six years he was totally ruined, and was only too glad to enter the militia, which was then being organized. No sooner, however, did the militia troops reach Kharkov than peace was concluded, and Golovliov went back to Moscow, dressed in a somewhat threadbare uniform and high boots. By this time his house had already been sold, and the only thing he owned was a hundred rubles. He began "speculating" with this capital, that is, he tried his luck at cards, but in a short time he lost all he had. Then he conceived the plan of visiting his mother's well-to-do peasants who lived in Moscow. Some of them invited him to dinner, others, yielding to his importunings, gave him tobacco or lent him small sums of money. At last the hour came when he found himself before a blind wall, as it were. He was already almost forty years old, and had to confess to himself that his nomadic existence was too much for his strength. There was only one thing left to him, to take the road leading to Golovliovo.

After Stepan Vladimirych, the oldest child, came Anna Vladimirovna, about whom Arina Petrovna did not like to speak either. The truth of the matter was, the old lady had placed definite expectations in Annushka, but she, far from fulfilling her mother's hopes, had perpetrated a scandal which set the whole district agog. When Annushka left the girls' boarding-school, Arina Petrovna installed her at the village, hoping to make of her a sort of unpaid private secretary and bookkeeper, but instead Annushka eloped one fine night with cornet Ulanov and married him.

"They have married like dogs, without a parent's blessing!" complained Arina Petrovna. "Lucky, though, that he submitted to a wedding ceremony at all. Another man would have taken advantage of her—and vanished into thin air. A fine chance for catching a bird."

With her daughter Arina Petrovna dealt as peremptorily as she had with her hated son. She bestowed "a bone" upon her too, in the shape of five thousand rubles and a wretched little village of thirty souls and a manor-house going with it, so dilapidated that the wind blew through the gaping paneless windows and there was not one sound board in the flooring. In two years the young couple had gone through the money, and the cornet took himself off, deserting his wife and two twin girls, Anninka and Lubinka. Three months later the mother died, and Arina Petrovna, willy-nilly, had to take the little orphans into her own house. She installed them in a side-wing and entrusted them to the care of Palashka, old and one-eyed. "The Lord's mercy is great," remarked Arina Petrovna. "The little orphans won't eat much of my bread, but they'll be a solace to me in my old age. God has given me two daughters instead of one." At the same time she wrote to her son, Porfiry Vladimirych: "Your dear sister died as she lived, indecently, and now her two children are hanging round my neck."

What we are going to say may seem cynical, but we feel it our duty to state that the granting of the heritage to Stepan and Anna did not by any means impair Arina Petrovna's financial condition. On the contrary, in reducing the number of shareholders it contributed indirectly to the rounding out of the family estate. For Arina Petrovna was a woman of strict principles, and once having "thrown them a bone," she considered her obligations toward her unloved children completely and definitely settled. In regard to her grandchildren it never entered her mind that in due time she would have to part with something for them. All she cared for was to draw all the income possible from the small estate of her deceased daughter and deposit it in the Chamber of Trustees. "There I am," she would say, "laying by money for the orphans. For feeding and bringing them up I take nothing from them. For the bread they eat it is God who will pay me."

As for the younger children, Porfiry and Pavel, they served in St. Petersburg, the former in a civil capacity, the latter in the army. Porfiry was married; Pavel was an old bachelor.

Porfiry Vladimirych was known in the family by three nicknames, Yudushka (diminutive of Judas), Bloodsucker, and Goody-goody Boy, which had been invented by Simple Simon. From his early childhood Porfiry had been oddly intent upon currying favor with his "dear mamma" and showed a tendency to play the sycophant. He would open the door of his mother's room softly, creep noiselessly into a corner, and sit there, as if entranced, with his eyes fixed on his mother while she wrote or busied herself with accounts. Even in those days Arina Petrovna regarded her son's efforts to insinuate himself into her good graces with vague suspicion. His stare puzzled her. She could not decide what his eyes expressed, whether venom or filial reverence. "I cannot make out what is in his eyes," she sometimes argued with herself. "His glance is like a noose which he is getting ready to throw. He might look like that handing a person poison or enticing him into a pitfall."

In this connection she often recollected highly significant details of the time she was carrying Porfisha. An old man called Porfisha the Saint was at that time living in the manor. He had the reputation of a seer, and Arina Petrovna turned to him whenever she wanted to learn something about the future. She had asked him when she would be delivered of the child and whether it would be a boy or a girl; but the pious old man gave no direct answer. Instead he crowed three times like a cock and then mumbled:

"Cockerel, cockerel, sharp claw! The cock crows and threatens the brood-hen; the brood-hen—cluck! cluck!—but it will be too late!"

That was all he said. Three days later (the seer crowed three times!) Arina Petrovna gave birth to a son ("cockerel! cockerel!") and named him Porfiry in honor of the old soothsayer. The first half of the prophecy had been fulfilled; but what could be the hidden meaning of the mysterious words, "the brood-hen—cluck! cluck!—but it will be too late?" Arina Petrovna often pondered over it, whenever her eyes fell on Porfisha, who sat in his nook with his enigmatic gaze fixed on her.

Meanwhile Porfisha kept on staring, quiet and meek, staring so intently that his wide-open, motionless eyes began to swim in tears, as if he vaguely sensed the doubts that tormented his mother's soul, and wished to behave so as to disarm her most persistent suspicion. At the risk of annoying his mother, he constantly hovered about her, and the expression in his eyes seemed to say: "Look at me! I conceal nothing from you. I am all obedience and devotion, and, mind you, I am obedient and devoted not only from fear but also from loyalty." And although an inner voice constantly sounded warning that the young scoundrel was dangerous in spite of his wheedling and fawning, her heart could not resist such unremitting devotion and her hand involuntarily felt for the best piece in the dish to bestow upon the affectionate child. And yet the very sight of him at times awakened a vague fear of something puzzling and eery.

The exact opposite of Porfiry was his brother, Pavel, the most perfect embodiment of absolute passivity. As a boy he manifested no inclination whatever for study, or games, or playing with other boys, but liked to keep to himself. He would get into a corner, pout, and set to work building air castles, dreaming that he had gorged himself with oatmeal so that his legs had become thin and he had no lessons to learn, or else that he was Davidka, the shepherd, with a growing lump on his forehead, just like David's, and cracked a whip and had no lessons to learn. Arina Petrovna would gaze at him for a long time, and then her motherly feelings would well up:

"Why do you sit there like a mouse on groats?" she would scold. "Is the poison working in you already? Why don't you come over to your mother and say: 'Mamenka darling, hug me?'"

Pavel would leave his place of refuge and slowly approach his mother, as if someone were pushing him from behind. "Mamenka darling," he would repeat in a bass voice unnatural in a child, "hug me."

"Get out of my sight, you sneak. You think if you get into your corner I don't understand. You are mistaken, my darling. I see through and through you. Your plans and projects are as clear as if they were spread on the palm of my hand."

And Pavel would just as slowly retrace his steps and bury himself again in his corner.

Years passed by, and Pavel Vladimirych gradually developed that apathetic, unaccountably gloomy character which often goes with absolute passivity. He was, perhaps, good, but he had done nobody any good; he was, perhaps, not without some intelligence, but he had not achieved anything intelligent in his life. He was hospitable, but people did not like to avail themselves of his hospitality. He spent money readily, but nothing good or pleasant came of his lavishness to anybody. He never harmed anybody, but that was not considered a merit. He was honest, but no one had ever heard it said: "How honorably Pavel Golovliov dealt in that affair!" It must be added that sometimes, not often, he snarled at his mother, although he feared her like poison. I repeat, he was an ill-tempered person, but back of his moroseness was nothing but sheer inertness.

When the brothers reached maturity, the difference in their characters was most conspicuous in their relation to their mother. Yudushka punctually every week sent a lengthy epistle to "mother dear," in which he informed her in the greatest detail of all the minutiæ of his life in St. Petersburg, and assured her of his disinterested filial devotion in the most carefully selected terms. As for Pavel, he wrote rarely, laconically, and sometimes even enigmatically, pulling every word out of himself with a pair of tongs, as it were.

"My adorable friend and dear mother," is what Porfiry Vladimirych wrote, for instance, "I have received the money from the peasant Yerofeyev, and I send you my most heartfelt thanks for forwarding the sum, which, according to your gracious wish, dearest mamenka, is to be spent for my maintenance. I also kiss your hands with sincere filial devotion. What worries and grieves me is the thought that you are straining your precious health all too much by your ceaseless efforts to satisfy not only our needs, but our whims as well. I don't know what brother thinks, but I——" etc., etc.

As for Pavel, what he wrote on a similar occasion was: "Dear mother, am in receipt of the money, and, according to my calculations, you still owe six and a half rubles, for which I beg to be graciously forgiven."

When Arina Petrovna wrote reprimanding the children for their extravagance—she did so rather frequently, although there was no serious necessity for it—Porfisha invariably received her rebuke submissively and replied: "I am well aware, my dearest friend and mother, that you bear the heaviest burdens for the sake of us, your unworthy children. I know that often our behavior does not justify your motherly solicitude, and what is worse, erring humans that we are, we often forget it, for which I apologize most devotedly and sincerely, in the hope that in the course of time I will overcome my weakness and be more prudent in my expenditure of the funds that you send, my adorable friend and mother, for my maintenance and for other purposes." Pavel would answer back: "Dearest mother, though you have not as yet paid any of my debts, I accept most submissively the name of spendthrift which you choose to bestow upon me, whereof I beg most sincerely to accept my assurance."

Even the replies that the brothers made to the letter announcing the death of their sister, Anna Vladimirovna, were quite different from each other. Porfiry Vladimirych said: "The news of the death of my dear sister and good playmate, Anna Vladimirovna, has filled my heart with sorrow, a sorrow aggravated by the thought that a new cross has been given you to bear, dearest little mother, in the shape of two little orphans. Is it not sufficient that you, common benefactress to us all, deny yourself everything and, without sparing your health, concentrate all your power on the sole object of assuring the family not only the necessaries of life but also the luxuries? Believe me, it is a wicked thing to do, but now and then, I confess, I cannot refrain from grumbling. As far as I can see, the only solace for you, my dearest, in this state of affairs is to remember as often as you can all that Christ himself had to undergo." Pavel's reply ran: "The news of my sister, who has fallen a victim, I have received. I hope, however, that the Most High will rest her in His celestial tent, although this is uncertain."

Arina Petrovna reading these letters would try to guess which of the two sons would be her destruction. At times she felt certain the danger was coming from Porfiry Vladimirych.

"Look how he wags his tongue, a regular fiend at writing!" she would exclaim. "Simple Simon's nickname suits to a tee—Yudushka! Not a word of truth in all this stuff about my burdens, my cross, and the rest. Sheer lies! Not an ounce of feeling in his heart!"

At other times Pavel Vladimirych seemed to be her real enemy.

"A fool, and yet look how deftly he tries to make love to mother on the sly. 'Whereof I beg most sincerely to accept my assurance!' Wait a while! I'll teach you what 'accept assurances' means! I shall deal with you as I did with Simple Simon, and you'll find out what I mean by your 'assurances'!"

In the end a truly tragical cry would burst from her lips. "And for whom am I hoarding all this wealth? For whom am I gathering all this? I deny myself sleep and food—for whom?"

Such were the domestic circumstances of the Golovliovs at the time that the bailiff, Anton Vasilyev, reported to Arina Petrovna that Simple Simon had dissipated "the bone" flung to him, which, in view of its loss, might now be called with especial significance the "parental blessing."

Arina Petrovna sat in her bedroom, all her senses dazed. A vague, unaccountable feeling stirred within her, whether pity, born suddenly and miraculously, for her hated offspring, who, after all, was her son, or whether merely thwarted despotism, the most expert psychologist would have been unable to decide. Her sensations were utterly confused and succeeded each other with bewildering swiftness. Finally, out of the welter of her thoughts there crystallized one emotion, the fear that "the horrid creature" would again be hanging round her neck.

"Aniutka has forced her whelps on me, and now this dunderhead is coming here," she pondered deeply.

Long she sat silent, her eyes fixed and intent. Dinner was brought in, but she hardly touched it; a servant came and said the master wanted brandy. Without looking up she threw him the keys of the store-room. After the meal she ordered the bath to be prepared for her. Then she went into the oratory, ordered all the image lamps to be lit, and shut herself in. These were all clear signs that the mistress was "in a temper," and so the house turned as quiet as a churchyard. The chambermaids walked on tiptoe; Akulina, the housekeeper, ran back and forth like a lunatic. The preparations for preserving had been set for after dinner; the berries had been rinsed and made ready, but the mistress gave no orders either to go ahead or to wait. The gardener, Matvey, came to ask whether it was time to gather the peaches, but such was his reception in the maids' room that he fled precipitately.

Prayers and bath over, Arina Petrovna felt almost reconciled with the world and had the bailiff summoned again.

"Now tell me, what is the numskull doing?" she asked.

"Well, Moscow is big, it would take more than a year to walk through it."

"But he needs something to fill his stomach with, doesn't he?"

"Our peasants feed him. He eats with one, gets money for tobacco from another."

"And who permits them to give him anything?"

"Goodness me, madam! The people don't complain. They give alms to strangers. Should they refuse a mite to their own master's son?"

"I'll teach them to give mites! I'll have the blockhead deported to your estate, and the community will have to maintain him at its own expense."

"As you command, madam."

"What? What did you say?"

"As you command, my lady. If you order it, we shall feed him."

"That's better. But talk sensibly."

A pause ensued. Then the bailiff, true to his nature and his nickname, lost patience and began to shift from one leg to another, obviously burning with the desire to unburden his mind of something.

"He's a clever one, though," he finally blurted out. "People say he brought back a hundred rubles from the campaign. It isn't a fortune, but still one can live on it for a time."

"Well?"

"He thought he might improve his situation and went in for a shady business."

"Go on, go on, and don't give me any lies."

"He went to the German Club. He thought he would find a fool to beat at cards, but instead he happened on a cunning hawk. He tried to get away, but was held up in the lobby. Of course, he was plucked clean."

"I suppose he was roughly handled, too."

"Of course. The next morning he came to our man, Ivan Mikhailych, and told the tale himself. It's queer, he was in high spirits and laughed as if they had treated him like a lord."

"Things run from him like water off a duck's back. But I won't grieve over it, provided he does not come within sight of me."

"But I believe he will."

"Nonsense, I will not allow him to cross my threshold."

"But I'm sure he will," insisted Anton Vasilyev. "He said so in plain words to Ivan Mikhailych. 'Enough,' he says, 'I am going back to the old woman to eat her dry crusts.' And, madam, to speak the truth, where can he lay his head but here? He cannot keep on forever feeding on our men in Moscow. And besides, he needs clothing and comforts."

That was exactly the thing Arina Petrovna dreaded. It was the very essence of the obscure thought that so deeply alarmed her. "Yes, he will turn up," she said to herself, "he has no other place to go to, there's no doubt of it." He would always be there, within her sight, that accursed, hated stranger of a son. What had been the good of throwing his portion to him? She had thought that, having received "his due," he would drop into eternity. And there he was, rising from the dead. He would come, make insolent demands, and hang on like a leech, shocking everybody by his beggarly appearance. And she would have to meet his demands, because he was a brazen-faced bully, capable of any violence. You cannot put such a man under restraint; he is capable of parading in tatters before strangers, of the wildest debauchery, of running away to the neighbors and telling them the ins and outs of the family affairs. Should she have him deported to the Suzdal Monastery, which was said to be a place for ridding parents in distress of the sight of their refractory children? But the Lord knows whether that fabulous institution existed at all. People said there were such things as houses of correction. But how could one get an overgrown dolt into one of them?

In short, Arina Petrovna was altogether upset by the thought of how the arrival of Simple Simon was going to disturb her peaceful existence.

"I shall billet him upon you," was her threat to the bailiff. "Feed him at your own expense."

"Why so, madam?"

"Because you stand there croaking: 'He's sure to come,'" she mimicked. "Get out of my sight, you raven!"

Anton Vasilyev turned to go, but Arina Petrovna stopped him:

"Wait a minute. Is it true that he is starting out for Golovliovo?"

"I'm not in the habit of telling lies, madam. He said so plainly—'I am going back to the old woman to eat her dry crusts.'"

"He'll soon find out what kind of crusts the old woman has prepared for him."

"But, madam, he won't live with you long."

"Why not?"

"Well, madam, he coughs very badly and keeps on clutching the left side of his chest. He won't live long."

"That kind generally lives very long. He'll outlive us all. The coughing doesn't hurt him. Well, we shall see about it later. Leave me now. I have several matters to attend to."

Arina Petrovna spent the whole evening pondering over this problem. Finally she found it best to convoke the family council for the purpose of deciding what was to be done with Simple Simon. Such constitutionalism was not her habit. She made up her mind to digress from the traditions of autocracy solely for the purpose of shielding herself from public censure, and as she did not doubt the outcome of the conference, she sat down with a light heart to write to Porfiry and Pavel asking them to come to Golovliovo immediately.

---

CHAPTER III

Meanwhile, the cause of all this mess, Simple Simon, was on his way to Golovliovo. In Moscow he engaged a seat in one of the so-called "diligences," in which small merchants and peasant traders used to travel, and which are still seen in some districts. The diligence had the city of Vladimir as its point of destination, and Stepan was enabled to travel in it through the liberality of the aforesaid innkeeper Ivan Mikhailych, who also paid for his master's meals on the journey.

"Listen," said Ivan Mikhailych, with the air of an accomplice. "Do this, get off at the station and go straight up to your mother just as you are."

"Yes, yes, yes," answered Stepan Vladimirych approvingly. "The house is only about fifteen versts from there. I can walk it in no time. I shall appear before her all dirty and dusty."

"When your mother sees you in that rig, perhaps she'll take pity on you."

"She will, she will. Mother, after all, is a kindly old woman."

Stepan Golovliov was not quite forty, but he looked like fifty. Life had so thoroughly worn him out that there was not a vestige of his noble origin left, not a single trace of his university education nor of the enlightening word of science which in days bygone had been addressed to him, too. He was tall as a Maypole, racked by hunger, unkempt, untidy, with a sunken chest and long bony arms. His bloated face, his dishevelled hair, streaked with grey, his loud, hoarse voice, his bulging, bloodshot eyes were unmistakable signs of heavy drinking and a weather-beaten life. He wore an old, threadbare uniform, with the galloons gone—they had been sold to a smelter—and a pair of reddish boots, patched and sadly worn. Beneath his coat, when unbuttoned, peeped a dirty shirt, as black as if it had been smeared with soot. With the cynicism of a militiaman, he called it "a flea nest."

His glance was stealthy and gloomy, the expression not of inner discontent, but rather of a vague anxiety which seemed to come from an ever-present fear of death by starvation. He talked ceaselessly and disconnectedly, passing without transition from one subject to another. He spoke whether Ivan Mikhailych listened or dozed off under the soporific of his garrulousness. He was dreadfully uncomfortable, because there were four people in the diligence and he had to sit with his legs bent, so that at the end of three or four versts he had an intolerable pain in his knee-joints. Nevertheless the pain did not prevent him from talking. Clouds of dust entered through the side windows of the vehicle, at times flooded by a flaming, scorching sheet of sunlight. But Stepan Golovliov kept on talking.

"Yes, brother," he held forth, "I have lived hard all my life. It is high time to rest. I shan't be eating her out of house and home, shall I? She has enough and to spare. What d'you think, Ivan Mikhailych?"

"Oh, your mother has plenty to eat."

"Yes, but not for me, you mean to say? Yes, friend, she has heaps of money, but not a copper for me. And to think the hag has always hated me. Why? But now I'll sing her a different song. I've made up my mind. I'm desperate. If she tries to drive me out, I won't go. If she doesn't give me food, I'll take it. I've served my country, brother. Now it's everyone's duty to help me. There's only one thing I'm afraid of, that she won't give me tobacco."

"Yes, you'll have to say good-by to tobacco."

"Then I'll put the screw on the bailiff. The devil can well afford to give his master a present now and then."

"Oh, yes, he may do that, but what if your mother forbids him to?"

"Well, in that case I'll be done for. Tobacco is the only luxury that has remained of my former style. When I had money I used to smoke not less than a quarter of a pound of Zhukov's tobacco every day."

"I guess you'll have to do without brandy, too."

"Another calamity. Brandy does me a lot of good. It breaks up my phlegm. When we were marching to Sebastopol, we had hardly reached Serpukhov, when each man had already been given three gallons of brandy."

"You must have lost your senses."

"I don't remember. We marched as far as Kharkov, but I'll be hanged if I remember anything else. The only thing I can recall is that we passed through villages and towns and that at Tula an otkupshchik made a speech. He shed tears, the scoundrel did. Yes, our holy mother Russia drank from the cup of sorrow in those days. Otkupshchiki, contractors, receivers—it's a wonder God succeeded in saving the country from them."

"Oh, your mother came in for some of the profits. In our village hardly half of the soldiers returned home. A recruit's receipt is now given for each man lost in the campaign, and the government rates such a quittance at more than four hundred rubles."

"Yes, my mater is a cunning blade. She ought to be a minister of state instead of housekeeper at Golovliovo. Let me tell you, she has been unjust to me and she has insulted me, but I respect her. The main thing is, she's clever as the devil. If not for her, where would we have been now? We would have had nothing but Golovliovo with its one hundred and one and a half souls. Just think what an enormous pile she has made."

"Well, your brothers will certainly be rich."

"Yes. But I'll have nothing, that's just as certain. Yes, friend, I've gone to rack and ruin. But my brothers, they'll be rich, especially the Bloodsucker. He can ensnare a person in no time, and it won't be long before he'll undo her, too. He'll pump the estate and the money out of her. I have an eye for these things. But Pavel, he's a fine chap. He will send my tobacco on the sly. You'll see if he doesn't. As soon as I reach Golovliovo, I'll send a note off to him: 'Dear brother, it's so and so with me. Ease my soul.' Ah, if I were rich!"

"What would you do?"

"In the first place, I'd make you roll in wealth."

"Why me? First think of yourself. I'm contented, living as I do under your mother's rule."

"Oh, no, brother, attendez! I would make you the chief marshal of all my estates. Yes, my dear friend, you have fed and warmed a soldier, accept my thanks. If not for your generosity, I should now be footing it all the way to the home of my fathers. And, of course, I would free you on the spot and open up all my treasury to you—drink, eat and be merry. What did you think I would do?"

"You'd better stop worrying about me, sir. What else would you do if you were rich?"

"In the second place, I'd get a mistress at once. At Kursk I went to mass once and saw one—a queen! She was very fidgety and restless."

"But maybe she would object to becoming your mistress."

"And how about hard cash? What's the filthy lucre for? If a hundred thousand is not enough for her, she'll take two hundred thousand. When I have money, no expense is too great for me, if it is a question of getting a bit of pleasure out of life. I must confess that at the time I let her know through our corporal that I would give her three rubles. But the wench asked five."

"That was too much for you, of course!"

"Well, I can't tell. As I said, I was in a dream the whole time. Maybe she came to me, but I forget. Those two months of marching have gone completely out of my mind. No such thing has happened to you, I suppose?"

Ivan Mikhailych was silent. Stepan Vladimirych looked at him attentively and discovered that his fellow-traveller was sound asleep.

"Umph," he said. "He has nodded off, the sleepy-head. You have grown fat, brother, on the tea and fare of your eating-house. I can't sleep, not a wink. A good chance for a lark."

Golovliov looked around and saw that everybody was asleep. The merchant at his side was constantly striking his head against a cross-beam, but kept on sleeping. His face shone as if veneered, and flies swarmed about his mouth. A splendid idea, Stepan thought, to cram all the flies down the merchant's throat. His hand began to move toward the merchant, but halfway he repented and gave up the idea. "No more pranks," he said, "enough. Sleep, friends, and rest." Meanwhile—where had he hidden the bottle? Here, the darling! "Let me see you. Lord, save Thy creatures," he hummed, taking out a bottle from a bag fastened to the side of the vehicle and applying it to his mouth. "Ah, that's better. It warms your insides, you know. Shall I have some more? Well, no. The station is about twenty versts from here. I'll have time to get as drunk as a lord. But shan't I have just one drop more? The deuce take it, the vodka. The bottle simply acts like a charm. It's wicked to drink, but how can you help it, if it is the only way of getting some sleep? I wish the vodka, the deuce take it, would do for me quick."

He gulped down some more vodka, returned the bottle to its place, and began to fill his pipe.

"We are all right," he said, talking to himself. "First, we had a sip, and here we are smoking. She won't let me have any tobacco, the old hag, sure as fate she won't, the man is right. Will she give me food? She may send me what is left over from her meals. Well, we, too, had money, but now we have none. Such is life. To-day you eat and drink your fill, you enjoy yourself and smoke a pipe,

"'And to-morrow—where art thou, man?'

Still it would not be a bad thing to have a bite now. I drink like a fish and I hardly ever have a square meal. Doctors say drinking does you good only when followed by a hearty meal, as the Most Reverend Smaragd said when we passed through Oboyan. Was it Oboyan? The deuce knows, it may have been Kromy. But that's immaterial now. The main question is, how to get something to eat. I recollect that my man put a sausage and three rolls into the bag. Caviar is too expensive for the rascal. Look at the fellow—sleeps like a log and sings through his nose. I wouldn't be surprised if he were sitting on the bag."

He rummaged about in search of the bag, but could not find it.

"Ivan Mikhailych, Ivan Mikhailych," he shouted to the sleeping innkeeper. The man woke up and for a while could not make out where he was and how he happened to be sitting opposite his master.

"I was just beginning to nap," he said finally.

"Sleep, friend, sleep. I only want to know where the bag with the food is."

"Are you hungry? But you would like a drink first, I suppose."

"Right. Where is the bottle?"

Stepan Vladimirych took a drink, and then attacked the sausage, which happened to be as salty as salt itself and as hard as stone, so that he had to use the point of his knife to pierce it.

"Some whitefish would taste good now," he remarked.

"Excuse me, sir, I clean forgot about the whitefish. All morning I kept saying to my wife: 'Be sure to remind me of the whitefish.' I am very sorry."

"Oh, it doesn't matter. The sausage is good enough for me. When we were on the campaign, we ate worse things. Father used to tell that two Englishmen made a bet. One of them was to eat a dead cat, and he ate it."

"You don't say!"

"He did. And he was as sick as a dog afterwards. He cured himself with rum. He guzzled two bottles as fast as he could, and that set him right at once. Another Englishman made a bet that he would live a whole year on nothing but sugar."

"Did he win?"

"No. He kicked the bucket two days before the end of the year. And how about you, why don't you take a drink?"

"I never touch it."

"So you swill nothing but tea. No good, brother. That's why your belly has grown so big. One must be careful with tea. A cup of tea must be followed by a glass of vodka. Tea gathers phlegm, vodka breaks it up. Isn't that so?"

"Well, I don't know. You are learned; you know better."

"True. On the campaign we had no time to bother with tea or coffee. But vodka—that's a holy affair. You unscrew the flask, pour the vodka into a cup, drink, and that's all. At that time we had to march so fast that for ten days I went without washing."

"You certainly roughed it, sir."

"Yes, marching on the highroad is not a joke. Still, on our way forward it was not so bad. People gave us money, and there was plenty to eat and drink. But when we marched back there was no more fêting."

Golovliov gnawed at the sausage and finally chewed up a piece.

"It is very salty, this sausage is," he said. "But I'm not squeamish. After all, mother won't feed me on tid-bits. A plate of cabbage soup and some gruel—that's all she'll let me have."

"God is merciful. Maybe she'll give you pie on holidays."

"No, I imagine there'll be no tea, no tobacco, no vodka. People say she has become fond of playing fool, so she may call me in to take a hand at the game and give me some tea. As for the rest, there is no hope."

There was a four-hour rest to feed the horses. Golovliov had finished the bottle and was tormented by hunger. The travellers entered the inn and settled down to a hearty meal.

Stepan Vladimirych took a stroll in the court, paid a visit to the backyard, the stables and the dovecote, and even tried to sleep. Finally he came to the conclusion that the best thing for him to do was to join his fellow-travellers in the inn. There the cabbage soup was already steaming and on a wooden tray on the sideboard lay a great chunk of beef, which Ivan Mikhailych was just then engaged in carving. Golovliov seated himself a little way from the table, lighted his pipe, and sat silent for quite a while pondering over the way in which he could allay the pangs of hunger.

"I wish you a good appetite, gentlemen," he said finally, "the soup seems to be good and rich."

"The soup is all right," answered Ivan Mikhailych. "Why don't you order a portion for yourself?"

"Oh, it was only a remark on my part. I'm not hungry."

"Impossible. All you've eaten is a bit of sausage, and the damned thing only teases one's appetite. Please eat something. I'll have a separate table laid for you. My dear woman," he turned to the hostess, "a place for the gentleman."

The passengers silently attacked their meal and now and then exchanged meaningful looks. Golovliov felt his fellow-travellers suspected how matters stood, although he had played master throughout the journey, not without some arrogance, and had addressed the faithful innkeeper as if he had merely entrusted him with his cash. His brows knitted, and a thick cloud of smoke escaped from his mouth. In the depths of his heart he felt he ought to refuse, but so imperative are the dictates of hunger that he set upon the bowl of cabbage soup like a beast of prey and emptied it in a trice. Along with satiety came his customary self-assurance and, as if nothing were the matter, he said, turning to Ivan Mikhailych:

"Well, my cashier, you will pay up for me, and I am off for the hayloft to have a talk with Mr. Khrapovitzky."

He jogged over to the hayloft, and as his stomach was full he was soon fast asleep. He woke up at five o'clock in the morning. Noticing that the horses stood at their empty bins rubbing their noses against the edges, he roused the driver. "He sleeps like a top, the rascal," he shouted. "We're in a hurry, and he's having pleasant dreams."

Soon the travellers reached the station at which the road turned off to Golovliovo. Here at last Stepan Vladimirych lost some of his devil-may-care attitude and became crestfallen and taciturn. Ivan Mikhailych tried to cheer him up and insisted that he part with his pipe.

"You'd better throw the pipe into the nettles, sir, when you come to the manor-house," he coaxed. "You will find it later on."

Finally the horses that were to take the innkeeper to the end of his journey were ready, and the moment of parting came.

"Good-by, brother," said Golovliov in a tremulous voice, kissing Ivan Mikhailych. "She'll plague the life out of me."

"The Lord is merciful. Keep up a stout heart."

"She'll eat me up alive," repeated Stepan Vladimirych, with such conviction that the innkeeper involuntarily lowered his eyes.

With these words Golovliov turned sharply along the country road, walking in a shuffle and leaning on a gnarled stick which he had cut off a tree.

Ivan Mikhailych followed him with his eyes for a while, and then ran after him.

"Listen, master," he said. "When I was cleaning your uniform a few minutes ago, I saw three rubles in your side pocket. Please don't lose them."

Stepan Vladimirych was visibly irresolute and could not make up his mind how to act in this contingency. Finally, he stretched out his hand to the peasant and said, with tears in his eyes:

"I understand—to buy tobacco for the old trooper? Thanks. But she'll eat me up alive, friend. Sure as hell."

Golovliov found the country road again and several minutes later his grey soldier's cap showed afar off, now vanishing, now appearing above the young wood. It was early in the day. The morning mist, touched into gold by the first rays of the sun, hovered above the country road. The grass glistened with the dew, and the air was redolent of fir-trees, mushrooms, and wild berries. The road meandered across a plain swarming with birds.

Stepan Vladimirych, however, noticed nothing of the beauty about him. All his frivolity had suddenly gone, and he walked as if to the Last Judgment. One thought filled his mind to the exclusion of everything else. In three or four hours he would have reached his goal. He recalled his life at Golovliovo, and he felt as if the doors of a damp cellar were opening to let him in, and no sooner would he penetrate into the gloomy interior than the doors would close behind him and everything would be over. Memories prophetic of what awaited him at Golovliovo surged in his mind. There had been uncle Mikhail Petrovich, popularly known as Mishka the Squabbler, one of the "horrid" members of the family, whom grandfather Piotr Ivanych had exiled to Golovliovo, where he had lived in the servants' quarters and eaten out of the same dish with Trezorka, the house dog. There had been Aunt Vera Mikhailovna, who had lived on the estate by her brother's favor and died of "moderate living"; for Arina Petrovna had begrudged her every mouthful at dinner and every billet of wood for the stove in her room. And a similar fate awaited him.

He foresaw an endless succession of joyless days losing themselves in a grey yawning abyss, and he involuntarily shut his eyes. Henceforth he would have to be alone with a wicked old woman, half dead in the stagnation of despotism. She would be the death of him before long, as sure as fate. Not a soul to speak to, not a place to visit. She would be everywhere, scornful, despotic, deadening. The thought of that inevitable future made his heart so heavy that he stopped under a tree in desperation, and struck his head against it several times. His entire life with all its farcical strutting, idleness, and buffoonery loomed up as if flooded with sudden light. Then he started on his way again. He felt there was nothing else left for him. The least of men can make some effort, can earn his bread. He alone was helpless. It was a new thought. He had been accustomed in thinking of his future to picture various prospects, but always prospects of wealth coupled with idleness, never prospects of work. And now the time had come when he had to pay for the wickedness and aimlessness of his existence. It was a bitter settlement, summed up in the terrible phrase: "She will be the end of me."

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the white Golovliovo belfry showed above the forest. The traveller's face grew pale, and his hands began to tremble. He took off his cap and crossed himself. The parable of the prodigal son and his return occurred to him, but he at once rejected the idea as a bit of self-delusion.

Finally, he noticed the boundary-post standing by the wayside, and presently he was treading the Golovliovo soil, the hateful soil that had borne him, an unloved child, that had reared him, sent him, hated, into the wide world, and was now receiving him, the unloved one, back into its arms again. The sun was high in the heavens and was ruthlessly scorching the boundless fields of Golovliovo. But Stepan Vladimirych was growing paler and shivering with ague.

At length he reached the churchyard, and here his courage failed utterly. The manor-house looked out from behind the trees as if nothing unpleasant had ever happened there; yet the sight of it worked on him like the vision of a Medusa head. His paternal abode seemed to be a tomb. "A tomb, tomb, tomb," he repeated unconsciously. He had not the courage to go straight to the house, but first called on the priest and sent him to break the news of his arrival and inquire whether his mother would receive him.

The priest's wife was very sympathetic and hastened to prepare an omelette. The village children gathered about him and stared at the master with wondering eyes. The peasants passing by lifted their hats in silence and looked at him curiously. One old servant ran up with the intention of kissing the master's hand. Everyone understood that a wastrel was before them, an unloved son who had returned to his hated home never to leave it except for the graveyard. At the thought of it the people were overwhelmed with a mingled feeling of pity and dread.

At last the priest returned and announced that the lady of the manor was ready to receive Stepan Vladimirych. Ten minutes later he was standing in her presence. Arina Petrovna met him severely and solemnly, and measured him icily from head to foot, but allowed herself no useless reproaches. She received him, not in the living room, but on the porch, and ordered the young master to be taken to his father through another entrance. The old man was dozing in his bed, under a white coverlet, in a white nightcap, all white like a corpse. When he felt the presence of his son he woke up and began to laugh idiotically.

"Well, friend, so now you are under the hag's paw," he cried, while his son kissed his hand. Then he crowed like a cock, burst out laughing again, and repeated several times: "She'll eat him up! She'll eat him up!" The phrase found echo in Stepan's soul.

His fears were justified. He was installed in a separate room in the wing that also housed the counting-room. He was given homespun underwear and an old discarded dressing-gown of his father's, which he put on immediately. The doors of the burial vault had opened, let him in, and closed again.

There now began a long succession of dull, ugly days, which Time's grey, yawning abyss swallowed up, one after the other. Arina Petrovna never received him, nor was he allowed to see his father. Three days after his arrival, his mother informed him through Finogey Ipatych, the bailiff, that he would receive board and clothing and also a pound of Faler's tobacco monthly. Stepan Vladimirych listened to the bailiff, and merely remarked:

"The hag! She's found out that Zhukov's tobacco costs two rubles, while Faler's is only one ruble ninety kopeks a pound. So she pockets ten kopeks a month."

The symptoms of the moral sobering that had appeared during the hours of his approaching Golovliovo on the country road, vanished. Frivolity reasserted its rights and was followed by an acceptance of the conditions his mother imposed upon him. The disquieting thought of the hopeless future, which had once pierced his mind, faded gradually away and finally was no more. The day and the evil thereof, the petty interests of existence in all its undisguised ugliness absorbed his entire being. What part, indeed, could his intentions and opinions play when the course of the rest of his life in all its details was laid out in advance in Arina Petrovna's brain?

All day long he walked to and fro in his room, pipe in mouth, humming bits of songs, passing unaccountably from church tunes to boisterous airs. If the village clerk happened to be in the office, he went up to him and engaged in a conversation, of which the chief topic was Arina Petrovna's income.

"What does she do with all her wealth?" he would exclaim wonderingly, having reached the sum of more than eighty thousand rubles. "My brothers' allowances are rather poor; she herself lives shabbily, and she feeds cured meats to father. She deposits the money in the bank, that's what she does with it."

On one occasion Finogey Ipatych came to deliver the taxes he had gathered, and the table was littered with paper money, and Stepan's eyes glittered.

"Ah, what a heap of money!" he exclaimed. "And it all flows right down her throat. As for giving her son some of these nice greenbacks, no, she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't say: 'Here, my son, you who are visited by sorrow, here is some cash for wine and tobacco.'"

This was usually followed by endless cynical talks about how he could win over his mother's heart.

"In Moscow," he held forth, "I used to meet a man who knew a magic word. If his mother refused to give him money he would utter 'the word,' and she instantly got cramps in her hands and feet, in fact all over."

"It must have been a spell, I suppose," remarked the village clerk.

"Well, whatever it may have been, it is gospel truth that there is such a 'word.' Another man told me this: 'Take,' he says, 'a frog, and put it into an anthill at midnight. By morning the ants will have gnawed it clean, so that only its skeleton will be left. Take the skeleton, and when it is in your pocket ask anything you wish of any woman, and she won't refuse you."

"Well, that's easy."

"The trouble is, one must first damn oneself forever. If it weren't for that, the old hag would be cringing before me."

Hours on end were spent in such talk, but no remedy was found. The preliminary condition was that you either had to call a curse down on yourself, or sell your soul to the devil. There was no help. Stepan Vladimirych had to go on living under his mother's rule, the only relief coming in the small voluntary contributions that he raised from the village officials in the form of tobacco, tea, and sugar. His fare consisted mainly of what remained from his mother's table, and as Arina Petrovna was moderate to the point of avarice, his board was meagre, to say the least; which was all the more painful because ever since vodka had become unattainable, his appetite had grown considerably keener. All day long hunger gnawed at him, and his sole preoccupation was how to fill his stomach. He awaited the hour when his mother would retire for a rest, then sneaked into the kitchen and looked into the servants' quarters, snatching a bit here, a bit there. Sometimes he would sit at his open window watching for passers-by. If one of the serfs came along, he stopped him and levied toll in the form of an egg, a curd-cake, and the like.

At the first meeting between mother and son, Arina Petrovna briefly explained the whole program of his life.

"Live here," she said. "Here is a shelter for you in the counting-house. Your meals you will get from my table. In other matters you will have to put up with things as they are. There were never any dainties in the house, and I shan't change my ways for your sake. Your brothers will soon arrive. Whatever they will decide about you, I shall carry out. I shall take no sin upon my soul. Let them dispose of your fate."

He looked forward to his brothers' arrival with impatience. Not that he reflected on the influence their arrival might have on his existence, as he had evidently decided that the matter was not worth his thought. The only thing that interested him was whether Pavel would bring him tobacco and how much.

"Maybe he'll hand me over some coin, too," he mused. "Porfishka the Bloodsucker, he won't, but Pavel ... I'll say to him: 'Brother, give a soldier some cash for wine.' He'll give me some. He's sure to."

He did not notice the passage of the days, nor did he feel the weight of his absolute idleness. The only time he was lonesome was in the evenings, because the constable left at eight, and Arina Petrovna did not allow her son any candles, on the ground that one can walk to and fro without light. He soon became accustomed to the dark and even began to love it, for in the darkness his imagination had free play and carried him far, far away from the dreary place which was his home. In those hours only one thing disturbed him. He had a dull pain in the chest and his heart palpitated queerly, especially when he went to bed. Sometimes he jumped out of bed and ran about the room, clutching the left side of his chest.

"I wish I would die," he thought at such moments. "But, no, I shan't die. But maybe I shall."

One morning when the village clerk with an air of mystery reported that his brothers had arrived the night before, he shuddered and grew pale. Something childlike suddenly awoke in him. He felt like running to the house to see how his brothers were dressed, and find out what beds had been prepared for them, and whether they had travelling cases like one he had seen a militia captain carrying, and hear how they would talk to mother, and spy out what would be served at dinner. In short, a desire once more arose in him to return to life, which so persistently rejected him, to fall at "dear mamma's" knees, and obtain her pardon. Then perhaps he would eat the fatted calf and be merry.

The house was still quiet, but he had already visited, the kitchen and found out that the following courses had been ordered for dinner: soup with fresh cabbage, also some soup left over from yesterday, cured meat served with cutlets of chopped meat for entree, fried mutton chops and four snipes for the roast, and raspberry pie with cream for dessert.

"Yesterday's soup, cured meat, and the chops—that, brother, is for me," he said to the cook. "There will be no pie for me, I guess."

"For your mother to say, sir."

"Ah, friend, there was a time when I ate snipe. Yes, I did. Once I made a bet with Lieutenant Gremykin that I would eat fifteen snipes one after the other, and what do you think? I won the bet. After that I couldn't look at snipe for a month."

"But you won't refuse to have some now?"

"She wouldn't let me have any. I can't see, though, what makes her so stingy. A snipe is a free bird. You don't have to feed it or look after it. It is self-supporting. She doesn't buy snipes any more than she buys sheep—and yet! The hag knows snipe tastes better than mutton. That's why she won't let me have it. She'd rather let it rot than give it to me. What's ordered for breakfast?"

"Liver, mushrooms in sour cream, and custard."

"Why not send me a custard? Do, brother."

"Well, I'll try hard. Let me tell you, sir. When the brothers sit down to breakfast, you send the village clerk here. He'll fetch you a couple of custards under his coat."

Next day Stepan Vladimirych waited the entire morning for his brothers, but they did not arrive. Finally, about eleven o'clock, the village clerk brought the two promised custards and reported that the brothers had just finished breakfast and were closeted with Arina Petrovna in her bedroom.

---

CHAPTER IV

Arina Petrovna received her sons solemnly, weighed down by grief. Two maids supported her under the armpits. Her grey locks streamed out from under her cap, her head drooped, and shook from side to side, and her limbs seemed hardly able to support her. She always liked to play the part of a venerable, careworn mother before her children, moving with difficulty and getting her maids to assist her. Simple Simon called such solemn receptions high mass, herself a bishop, and the maids, Polka and Yulka, mace-bearers. As it was late at night the interview was almost a silent one. Without saying a word she gave her sons her hand to kiss; kissed them in turn, and made the sign of the cross over them; and when Porfiry Vladimirych made it clear that he would gladly spend the rest of the night with "mother dear," she merely waved her hand and said:

"Come now. Take a rest, you must be tired after the journey. This is not the time for discussion. We shall talk to-morrow."

Next morning the two sons went to kiss papa's hand, but papa refused his hand. He lay on his bed with closed eyes, and when they entered he cried out:

"Have you come to judge the toll-gatherer? Get out, Pharisees! Get out!"

But in spite of this reception, Porfiry Vladimirych emerged from papa's room agitated and with tears on his eyelids, while Pavel Vladimirych, like "the heartless dolt" that he was, merely picked his nose.

"He is very weak, mother dear, very weak!" exclaimed Porfiry Vladimirych, throwing himself on his mother's breast.

"Is it so bad?"

"Yes, very bad. He won't live much longer."

"Oh, well, it isn't as bad as that."

"No, dear, no. And although your life has never been too joyful, yet as I think how Fate deals you so many blows at once, upon my word, I wonder where you get the strength to bear up under it all."

"Well, my friend, the strength comes if such is the Lord's will. You know what it says in the Scriptures: 'Bear one another's burdens.' It seems that our Heavenly Father has chosen me to bear the burdens of my family."

Arina Petrovna shut her eyes, so delightful was this vision of the family finding their tables covered for them and of her toiling for them and bearing their burdens.

"Yes, my friend," she said after a minute's pause, "it's a hard life I lead in my old age. I have provided for my children, and it is time for me to rest. It's no joke—four thousand souls! At my age to take care of such an estate, to have an eye on everybody and everything, to run back and forth! As for all those bailiffs and managers, they look you straight in the eye, but, believe me, they are the most faithless kind. And you," she interrupted herself, turning to Pavel, "what are you digging in your nose for?"

"What have I to do with it?" snarled Pavel Vladimirych, disturbed in the very midst of his absorbing occupation.

"What do you mean? After all, he's your father. You might find a word of pity for him."

"Well—a father! A father like any other father. He has been that way for ten years. You always make things unpleasant for me."

"Why in the world should I, my boy? I am your mother. Here is Porfisha. He has found words of affection and pity for me as befits a good son, but you don't even look at your mother properly. You look at her out of the corner of your eye, as if she were not your mother, but your foe. Please don't bite me."

"Well, what——"

"Stop! Hold your tongue for a minute. Let your mother say a word. Do you remember the commandment, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, and all will be well with thee?' Am I to understand that you don't wish to be well?"

Pavel Vladimirych kept silence and looked at his mother in perplexity.

"You see, you're silenced," went on Arina Petrovna, "you are guilty. But I shall let you alone. For the sake of this joyful meeting we shall dispense with this talk. God, my child, sees everything. As for me, I see you through and through, and I always have. Children, children, you will remember your mother when she lies in her grave. You will remember her, but it will be too late."

"Mamma dear!" interposed Porfiry Vladimirych. "Away with such black thoughts, away with them!"

"We must all die," said Arina Petrovna sententiously. "These are not black, but pious thoughts. I'm growing weak, children, oh, how weak! Debility and ailments are the only things left of my former strength. Even the maids have noticed it, and they don't care a rap for me. If I say one word, they have ten in reply. I have only one threat, that I shall complain to the young masters. That works sometimes."

Tea was served and then breakfast, during which Arina Petrovna continued her complaining and self-pitying. After breakfast she invited her sons to her bedroom.

When the door was locked, she went straight to the business for which she had convoked the family council.

"Simple Simon is here," she began.

"We heard about it, mamma dear," said Porfiry Vladimirych; and it was hard to say whether it was irony or the calm complacency of a man who has just eaten a hearty meal that sounded in his voice.

"He has come here as if that were the proper thing to do. Whatever he may have done, he seems to think the old mother will always have bread for him. Think of all his hatred for me, of all the trouble his tricks and buffoonery have caused me. And what have I not done to get him a good berth? It all ran off like water from a duck's back. At last, I made up my mind. Goodness, if he cannot take care of himself, am I to ruin my life on account of the big lout? I'll give him a piece of the property, I decided. Perhaps, I thought, once an independent proprietor he'll sober down. No sooner said than done. I myself found a house for him and paid out twelve thousand silver rubles for it with my own hands. And what's the upshot? After less than three years he's hanging round my neck again. How long am I to stand such insults?"

Porfisha lifted up his eyes and shook his head sorrowfully, as if to say, "Fine doings. Why disturb mother dear so ruthlessly? Why not live peacefully and quietly? Then dear mamma would not be angry. Fine doings." But Porfisha's gestures did not please Arina Petrovna, who objected to any interruption to the course of her thoughts.

"Wait a minute," she said, "don't shake your head. Listen first. Think of my feelings when I learned that he had thrown away his parental blessing like a gnawed bone into a cesspool. Think how he outraged me, me, who for years refused myself sleep and food. He has done to his patrimony what one would do to a bauble bought at a fair."

"Oh, mother dear, what a shame, what a shame!" began Porfiry Vladimirych, but Arina Petrovna stopped him again.

"Wait a minute. Let me have your opinion when I order you to. If at least the scoundrel had come to me in time and said: 'I am guilty, dear mamma, I couldn't restrain myself,' I might have bought the house back for a song. The unworthy son did not know how to make use of the property. Perhaps the worthier children would. The house easily brought in fifteen per cent. income yearly. Maybe I would have thrown him out another thousand rubles in his distress. But instead, he disposed of the property without so much as saying a word to me. With my own hands, I paid out twelve thousand rubles for the house, and it was sold at auction for eight thousand rubles!"

"The main thing, dear mamma, is that he has dealt so basely with the parental blessing," Porfiry interjected hastily, as if afraid of being stopped again.

"Yes, that's so, too. My money does not come lightly. I have earned it with the sweat of my brow. When I married your father, all he owned was the estate of Golovliovo with one hundred and one souls, and a few more souls scattered in distant estates, a hundred and fifty in all. As for me, I had nothing at all. Now look what an estate I have built up on that foundation. There are four thousand souls, not a single one less. I can't take them into the grave with me. Do you think it was an easy task to scrape four thousand souls together? No, dear child, not easy, far from easy. I spent many a sleepless night trying to work out a good business scheme, so that no one should smell it out and stand in my way. And what have I not endured in my business travels? I have had plenty of hard road and bad weather and slippery ice. It is only lately that I allow myself the luxury of a coach. In former times I rode in a plain two-horse peasant's cart with a cover put on extra for me. It was in nothing but a cart that I used to go to Moscow. And the filth and stench I had to put up with in the Moscow inns! I begrudged myself the dime for the cabby, and I walked all the way from Rogozhskaya Street to Solyanka. The house-porter would say to me wonderingly: "Mistress, they say you are young and well-to-do, why do you work so hard?" But I was silent and patient. At first all I had at my disposal were thirty thousand rubles in bank notes. I sold your father's remote estates with their one hundred souls, and with what I realized from the sale I set out to buy a property with a thousand souls. I had a mass said at the Iverska Church and went to Solyanka to try my luck. What do you think happened? The Holy Virgin must have seen my bitter tears. She helped me buy the estate. It was like a miracle. The instant I bid thirty thousand rubles the auction came to an end. There had been a lot of noise and excitement, but then the people stopped bidding, and it was as quiet as could be. The auctioneer got up and congratulated me. I was dumfounded. Ivan Nikolaich, the lawyer, came over to me and said: 'Let me congratulate you, madam, on your purchase.' But I stood there stiff as a post. How great is God's mercy! Think of it, if in my confusion someone had called out just for spite, 'I bid thirty-five thousand,' I should certainly have offered every bit of forty thousand. And where would I have gotten the money from?"

Many a time before had Arina Petrovna regaled her children with the epical beginnings of her career of acquisition. It had never lost the charm of novelty for them. Porfiry Vladimirych listened smiling, sighing, turning up his eye-balls, lowering them, to the tune of the rapid changes through which the tale passed. As for Pavel Vladimirych, he sat with wide-open eyes, like a child, listening to a familiar, yet ever-fascinating fairy tale.

"Do you think your mother built up her fortune without trouble?" went on Arina Petrovna. "It takes trouble even to make a pimple on your nose. After the first purchase I was laid up with fever for six weeks. So judge for yourselves how it must make my heart ache to see my hard-earned money, money I went through torments to get, you may say, thrown out into the gutter for no earthly reason."

There was a minute's pause. Porfiry Vladimirych was ready to rend his garments, but refrained, fearing there would be no one in the village to mend them. Pavel Vladimirych, as soon as the fairy tale was over, fell back into his wonted apathy, and his face resumed its customary dull expression.

"That is why I asked you to come here," began Arina Petrovna anew. "Now judge us, me and the villain. Whatever you decide will be done. If you condemn him, he will be guilty. If you condemn me, I shall be guilty. Only I shall not allow the rascal to get the better of me," she added, quite unexpectedly.

Porfiry Vladimirych felt his turn had come, and he prepared to hold forth, but approached the subject in a roundabout way.

"If you will permit me, dearest mother, to express my opinion," he said, "here it is in two words: children must obey their parents, blindly do their bidding, cherish them in their old age. That's all! What are children, dear mother? Children are loving creatures who owe their parents everything, from their persons to the last rag they possess. Therefore, parents may judge children, while children may never judge parents. Children are in duty bound to respect, not to judge. You say: 'Judge us.' That is magnanimous of you, dear mother, magnificent! But how can we think about it without fear, we whom from the first day of our birth you have been clothing with kindness from head to foot? Say what you may, it would not be judgment but blasphemy. It would be such blasphemy, such blasphemy——"

"Stop, wait a minute. If you say you cannot sit in judgment on me, acquit me and condemn him," Arina Petrovna interrupted. She was listening and trying to search his meaning, but could not make out what new plot was back of the Bloodsucker's mind.

"No, mother dear, even that I cannot do, or rather I don't dare to. I have no right to. I can neither acquit nor condemn. I simply cannot judge. You are the mother; you alone know how to deal with us children. You have the right to reward us if we deserve it, and chastise us if we are guilty. Our duty is not to criticise, but to obey. And if at the moment of parental wrath you exceed the measure of justice, even then we dare not grumble, for the ways of Providence are hidden from us. Who knows, perhaps it was necessary. Our brother Stepan has acted basely, unspeakably, but you alone can determine the degree of punishment he deserves."

"Then you refuse to help me? You would have me get out of this affair as best I can?"

"Oh, dearest, dearest, how you misunderstood me! Goodness, goodness! I said, that however you might be pleased to dispose of brother Stepan's fate, so shall it be, and you—what horrible thoughts you ascribe to me."

"All right. And you?" she turned to Pavel Vladimirych.

"Do you want my opinion? But what's my opinion to you?" said he, as if only half-awake. However, he braced himself unexpectedly and went on: "Of course, he's guilty. Have him torn to pieces—ground to dust in a mortar—it's settled in advance. What am I in this?"

Having mumbled these incoherent words, he stopped and stared at his mother, his mouth wide open, as if not trusting his own ears.

"Well, my dear, I shall speak to you later," Arina Petrovna cut him off coldly. "I see that you are anxious to tread in Stiopka's tracks. Take care, my child. You will repent, but it will be too late."

"Why, what's the matter? I'm not saying anything. I say, just as you please. What is there disrespectful in that?" said Pavel Vladimirych, faintly.

"I'll talk with you later on, my boy, later on. You think because you are an army officer, you can run wild. You are greatly mistaken. Then neither of you wants to sit in judgment?"

"I, dearest mother——"

"What am I in this?" said Pavel Vladimirych. "I don't care. Have him torn to pieces."

"Hold your tongue, for Christ's sake, you wicked man!" Arina Petrovna felt she was fully entitled to call her son "scoundrel," but refrained in deference to the joyous meeting. "Well, if you refuse to judge him I shall. Here is my verdict. I shall try to treat him kindly once more. I shall hand over to him the little Vologda village, have a cottage built there, and let him live there and be fed by the peasants."

Although Porfiry Vladimirych had refused to sit in judgment on his brother, his mother's generosity was so amazing that he felt he simply had to point out the dangerous consequences of her project.

"Dearest mamma," he exclaimed, "you are more than magnanimous. You are confronted by a deed—well, the vilest, meanest deed—and then you forget and pardon. Magnificent! But forgive me, I am afraid for you, dearest. Think what you will of me, but if I were you, I wouldn't do it."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I lack your magnanimity, that motherly feeling of yours. But one thought comes back to me all the while—what if brother Stepan does the same with his second legacy as he did with his first?"

Arina Petrovna had already thought of that, yet in the back of her mind was another consideration.

"The Vologda estate is father's property, it belongs to the patrimony," she said through her teeth. "Sooner or later a portion of the patrimony will have to be doled out to him."

"I understand that very well, mother dear."

"Then you also understand that on giving him the Vologda village we can make him sign a document to the effect that he has received his full share and that he renounces all further inheritance claims."

"I understand that too, dearest mother. Your excessive kindness caused you to commit a grave mistake. At the time you bought him the house you ought to have made him give you such a document then."

"Yes, that was a blunder."

"At that time, in his joy, he would have signed any document. But you, dearest, in the kindness of your heart—goodness, what a mistake! What a mistake!"

"Don't talk of it any more. Why didn't you speak up before it was too late? Now you are ready to blame everything on your mother, but when it comes to business, you are not there. However, it isn't the document I have in mind. I can make him sign it even now. Papa, I suppose, isn't going to die at once. Until his death the blockhead must live on something. In case he refuses to sign, we can chase him out and bid him wait for papa's death. No, what I want to know is, do you dislike my idea of giving him the Vologda estate?"

"He will squander away the village, darling, as he did the house."

"If he does, let him blame himself."

"He'll come back to you, again, to no one else."

"Oh, no, I won't stand for it. I won't let him come near my threshold. There won't be a drink of water for him in my house. And people won't condemn me for it, nor will God punish me. To squander away first a house, then an estate! Am I his slave? Is he the only one I have to provide for? Have I not other children?"

"Still, it is to you that he will come. Isn't he brazen-faced enough to do that, darling mamma?"

"I tell you, I won't let him come near my threshold. Why do you sit there croaking, 'he'll come, he'll come?' I won't let him in."

Arina Petrovna grew silent and fixed her gaze on the window. She herself vaguely realized that the Vologda estate would only temporarily free her from "the horrid creature," that in the end he would dispose of it, too, and would return to her again, and that as a mother she could not refuse him a corner in her house. But the thought that the odious fellow would always be with her, that even though locked up in the counting-house he would be preying on her imagination like a spook, was so appalling that she shuddered involuntarily.

"Not for the world!" she exclaimed, striking the table with her fist and leaping to her feet.

Meanwhile, Porfiry Vladimirych kept on staring at "mother dear" and shaking his head rhythmically in token of condolence.

"I see you are angry, dearest mamma," he said at last in a tone so sugared that he seemed to be getting ready to tickle Arina Petrovna.

"What would you have me do? Dance a jig?"

"Excuse me, darling, but what do the Scriptures say about patience? 'In patience,' it says, 'possess ye your souls,' 'In patience'—that's the word. Do you think God does not see? He sees everything, mother dear. We perhaps don't suspect anything, we sit here proposing this and planning that, while He may already have disposed. Oh, dearest mamma, how unjust you are to me."

But Arina Petrovna was fully aware that the Bloodsucker was throwing a snare, and she flew into a rage.

"Are you making sport of me?" she shouted. "I am discussing business, and he's trying to hoax me. Don't pull the wool over my eyes. Speak plainly. Do you want him to remain at Golovliovo, hanging around his mother's neck?"

"Just so, dearest mother, if you please. Let him be where he is and make him sign a paper about the heritage."

"So, so. I knew that was what you would advise. All right. God alone knows how it will pain me always to be having that creature around. However, it seems nobody will take pity on me. When I was young I bore my cross. Shall I refuse it in my old age? But there is still another point. While papa and I are alive, he'll live at Golovliovo, and we won't let him starve. But how about afterwards?"

"Dearest mother! Darling! Why such melancholy thoughts?" cried the Bloodsucker.

"Melancholy or not, still one has to provide ahead. We aren't babies. When we die, what will become of him?"

"Dearest mother! Can't you count on us, your children? Have we not been properly brought up by you?"

Porfiry Vladimirych flashed on her one of those puzzling glances which had always made her uneasy, and went on:

"The poor man, dear mamma, I shall help with greater joy than the rich. The rich man, Christ be with him, the rich man has enough of his own. But the poor man—you know what Christ said of the poor."

Porfiry Vladimirych got up and kissed his mother's hand.

"Dearest mamma, allow me to present my brother with two pounds of tobacco," he said entreatingly.

Arina Petrovna did not answer. She looked at him and reflected: "Is he really such a Bloodsucker that he would turn his own brother out on the streets?"

"Well, do as you please. Let him live at Golovliovo," she said finally, turning to Porfiry. "You have trapped me. You started with 'just as you please, dearest mamma,' and finished by dancing me on your wire. But let me tell you this, I hate him and he has disgraced and pestered me all his life, he has even dishonored my motherly blessing. Nevertheless, if you turn him out into the streets or make a beggar of him, you shall not have my blessing. No, no, no. Now you two go to him. The idiot is wearing out his silly eyes looking for you."

The sons left. Arina Petrovna rose and watched them stride over the front yard to the counting-house without exchanging a word. Porfiry was constantly taking off his cap and crossing himself, now at the sight of the church, which shimmered afar off, now before the chapel, now before the wooden post to which a charity box was attached. As for Pavel, he seemed unable to take his eyes off his boot tips shining in the sunlight.

"For whom have I been accumulating riches? Refused myself sleep and food—for whom?" she cried bitterly.

---

CHAPTER V

The brothers departed, and the manor-house of Golovliovo was deserted. With renewed energy, Arina Petrovna took up her work again. The clatter of the knives in the kitchen ceased, but activities in office, storehouses, cellars, were redoubled. Summer, the great provider, was nearly over; preserving, canning, pickling, storing were in full swing. Winter provisions flowed in from all quarters, dried mushrooms, berries, eggs, vegetables. This requisition in kind imposed upon the peasant women came in wagons from all the various family estates. Everything was measured and added to the stores of former years. Not in vain had the lady of Golovliovo had a long row of cellars, storehouses and granaries built. They were full to the brim. Quite a good deal of damaged material was along with the rest and smelt foully. At the end of summer the stuff was all sorted and what was suspicious was sent to the servants' quarters.

"The pickles are still in good condition, only the skin is coming off in some places, and they smell a little. Well, let the servants enjoy a dainty bit," Arina Petrovna would say, pointing out the barrels to be put aside.

Stepan Vladimirych adapted himself admirably to his new condition. At times he felt a strong craving to get drunk as a piper. He had money for the purpose, as we shall see later. But he restrained himself stoically, as if considering that the time had not yet arrived. He was always busy now, for he took a lively part in the provisioning, rejoicing in its successes and regretting its failures in a wholly disinterested manner. In a sort of ecstasy, hatless, clad in his dressing-gown, he scurried from the office to the cellars, hiding from his mother behind trees and various small buildings that crowded the court-yard. Arina Petrovna noticed him in this garb many times, and felt an itching in her motherly heart to give Simple Simon a severe scolding, but on second thought she left him alone in his escapades. In the cellars Stepan Vladimirych with feverish impatience watched how the carts were unloaded, how jars, barrels and tubs were brought in from the estate, and everything was assorted and finally sent off into the yawning abyss of cellars and storehouses. He felt satisfied in most instances.

"To-day two wagons of mushrooms came from Dubrovino. Ripping fine mushrooms, brother," he informed the village clerk rapturously. "And we were afraid we should have to get along without mushrooms this winter. Bravo, Dubrovino fellow, much obliged! Fine fellows they are! They have helped us out!"

On another occasion, he said:

"To-day mother gave an order to catch some carps in the pond. You ought to see them! Some three feet long! It looks as if we were going to live on carp the whole week."

Sometimes he was worried.

"The cucumbers failed completely this season. There is not a good one among them—all crooked and spotty. They're just good enough to be sent to the servants' quarters. We shall have to use last year's."

He did not approve of Arina Petrovna's management. "Goodness, what heaps of provisions she allows to rot! Just now she's having cured meat, pickles, fish and what not hauled to the servants' quarters. Is that what you call good business? Is that the right way of doing things, I'd like to know. There are lots of fresh provisions, but she will not touch them until the old rot is eaten up."

The confidence entertained by Arina Petrovna that it would be easy to induce Simple Simon to sign any paper proved wholly justified. Not only did he not object to signing all the papers that his mother sent him, but the same evening he even boasted about it to the village clerk.

"Well, brother, to-day I have been doing nothing but signing papers. I have renounced all my rights of inheritance. I am cleaned out. Not a cent to my name, and none coming. I have set the old woman at ease."

He parted with his brothers peaceably, and was in raptures over his big supply of tobacco. Of course, he couldn't help calling Porfisha Bloodsucker and Yudushka, but the disparaging terms were drowned in a deluge of incoherent, meaningless chatter.

In taking leave the brothers became liberal and even gave him money. Porfiry Vladimirych accompanied his gift with the following speech:

"This money will be handy in case you need oil for the ikon lamp or if you want to set up a candle in the church. That's how it is, brother. Be good and gentle, and our dear mother will be satisfied. You will have your comforts, and all of us will be merry and happy. Our mother is a kindly soul, you know."

"There is no denying that she is kindly," agreed Stepan Vladimirych. "Only she feeds me on rotten pickled meat."

"Whose fault is it? Who treated mother's blessing with disrespect? It is your own fault that you lost your estate. What a nice little estate it was. If you only knew how to behave yourself and live modestly, you would now be eating beef and veal and even ordering sauce with them. You would have plenty of everything, potatoes, cabbage, peas. Am I not right, brother?"

Had Arina Petrovna heard this harangue, it would have made her impatient, and she would have let the orator know that it did. But Simple Simon was fortunate that his mind could not, as it were, retain other people's words, and not a syllable of Yudushka's speech reached its destination.

So Stepan Vladimirych parted with his brothers amicably. And there was some vanity in his showing Yakov, the village clerk, two twenty-five ruble notes that had been left in his hands after the brothers had departed.

"This will last me a long time," he said. "We've got tobacco. We're well provided with tea and sugar. Nothing is missing but vodka. However, should we want vodka, we'll get vodka, too. Nevertheless, I will restrain myself for a little while yet. I am too busy now, I have to keep an eye on the cellars. Weaken your watch for a single instant, and everything will be pillaged. She saw me, brother, she saw me, the hag, once, when I was gliding by along the kitchen wall. She stood at the window looking at me and I bet she thought: 'Well, well, so that's why I miss so many cucumbers.'"

Then came October. It began to rain, the road turned black, into an impassable stream of mud. Stepan Vladimirych could not go out because his only garments were his father's old dressing-gown and worn slippers. He sat at his window watching the tiny, humble village drowned in mud. There, in the gray autumn mist, men were moving about briskly, looking like black dots.

The heavy summer work was still in full swing, but now its setting was no longer the jubilant, sun-flooded hues of summer, but the endless autumn twilight. The corn kilns emitted clouds of smoke far into the night. The melancholy clatter of the flails resounded in the air. Thrashing was also going on in the manorial barns, and in the office they said it would hardly be possible to get through with the whole mass of grain before Shrovetide. Everything looked gloomy and drowsy, everything spoke of oppressiveness. The doors of the counting-house were no longer ajar, and inside the air was filled with a bluish fog rising from the wet fur cloaks.

It is difficult to say what impression this spectacle of a toilsome, rural autumn made on Stepan's mind, and whether he was at all aware of the labors going on in the incessant rain out in the boggy fields. One thing is certain, that the drab, tearful autumn sky oppressed him. It seemed to hang close down over his head and threaten to drown him in a deluge of mud. All he had to do was to look out through the window and watch the heavy masses of clouds. From the dawn on they covered the heavens, hanging motionless as if spellbound. Even after several hours they were still in the same place, without the slightest apparent change in hue or outline. In the morning, one cloud, heavy and black, had a ragged shape resembling a priest in a cassock with outstretched arms. It was clearly outlined on the pallid background of the upper clouds, and at noon it still had the identically same form. The right hand, it is true, had become shorter, and the left was stretched out in an ugly fashion and was sending down such a flood of rain that against the dark background of the sky there formed a streak still darker, almost black. Another huge shaggy lump of a cloud a little farther up hung over the village, threatening to smother it, you would think. Hours later it was still hanging in the same place, the same shaggy monster with outstretched paws, as though ready to pounce upon the earth. Clouds, clouds, nothing but clouds! Around five o'clock a change took place, darkness gradually enveloped heaven and earth, and soon the clouds disappeared completely, vanishing beneath a black shroud. They were the first to go, next followed the forest and the village, then the church, the chapel, the hamlet, the orchard, and finally the manor-house, several yards away.

It has already become quite dark in the room, and there is no light. So what can one do but pace up and down? A morbid languor seizes Stepan's brain; his entire body, despite its idleness, is filled with an incomprehensible, indescribable feeling of fatigue. Just one thought moves in him and sucks at him—the grave, the grave, the grave! Those black dots which have recently been moving busily on the dark background of the boggy soil and near the village barns are not oppressed by that thought. They will not perish under the burden of despondency and weariness. If they do not challenge the sky directly, at least they struggle, build, make enclosures, repair their houses. Stepan did not question whether all this bustle was worth the while, but he was aware that even the nameless dots were incomparably superior to him, that he couldn't even struggle, that he had nothing to build, nothing to repair.

He spent the evenings in the counting-house, because Arina Petrovna refused to supply him with candles. Several times, through the bailiff, he asked for boots and a fur coat, and was invariably told that boots were not kept in store for him, but that he would be given a pair of felt shoes as soon as the cold spells arrived. Evidently, Arina Petrovna intended to fulfill her program literally, that was, to sustain her son in such a manner as barely to keep him from starvation. At first he abused his mother, but then behaved as though he had forgotten all about her. Even the light of the candles in the counting-room annoyed him, and he began to lock himself in his room and remain all alone in the darkness. There was just a single refuge left, one that he still dreaded but that attracted him irresistibly, to get drunk and forget deeply, irrevocably, to plunge into the sea of oblivion and never emerge again. Everything drove him to it, the debauchery of the past, the enforced idleness of the present, his ailing body with the torturing cough, the unbearable asthma, and the constantly increasing pains in his heart. At last the hour came.

"You must fetch me a bottle of vodka for to-night," he said once to the village clerk in a voice boding little good.

That one bottle of vodka was followed by a long succession of other bottles. After that he got drunk every night. At nine o'clock, when the light in the counting-house had been put out and the servants had retired to their quarters, he placed a bottle of vodka and a slice of rye bread thickly strewn over with salt on the table. He did not attack the liquor at once, but approached it stealthily as it were. Everybody on the place was fast asleep. The mice scudded behind the wall paper and the clock in the counting-house ticked ominously. Stepan threw off his dressing-gown, and began to stride back and forth in the overheated room, with nothing but a shirt on his back. At times he stopped, went over to the table, searched for the bottle in the darkness, then resumed his restless pacing. The first tumblers he emptied in a sort of passion, voluptuously swallowing down the burning liquid. But little by little his heart began to beat faster, the blood mounted to his head, and he mumbled incoherently. His feeble imagination tried to create images, his blunted memory attempted to pierce the mists of the past. But the images were broken and meaningless, and the past remained dim and formless. There was no recollection, either bitter or sweet, as though an impervious wall separated the past from the present.

He was completely filled by the present, which seemed like a prison cell, in which he would be locked up for eternity without consciousness of time or space. His mind took in nothing but the room, the stove, the three windows in the front wall, the squeaking wooden bed with its mattress worn thin, and the table with the bottle.

As the contents of the bottle decreased and his head grew hotter and hotter, even this boresome sense of the present gradually faded. His mumblings, to which at first there had been a bit of form, now lost all meaning. His pupils dilated in the attempt to pierce the engulfing darkness. Finally, the darkness itself vanished and its place was taken by a phosphorescent sheen.

It was an endless void, with not a color or a sound, but radiant with sinister splendor. The void followed him in his wanderings, trod on his heels at every step. There were no walls, no windows, nothing but this endless vacant splendor. Dread fell on him, coupled with an irresistible impulse to annihilate even the void. A few more efforts, and his goal was reached. His stumbling legs carried a benumbed body, his chest gave forth not a murmur but an inarticulate cry, his very existence seemingly ceased. A strange stupor took possession of him, in which conscious life had no part, which plumbed the depths of a life independent of and beyond the boundaries of normal existence. Groans burst from his chest without in the least disturbing his sleep. His organic disease continued its destructive work, without apparently causing him any physical pain.

He rose early in the morning, filled with agonizing longing, disgust and hatred. It was an inarticulate hatred, without either cause or definite object. His bloodshot eyes rolled restlessly, his limbs trembled, his heart worked with sickening irregularity, now stopping altogether, now hammering with such violence that his hand involuntarily clutched at his breast. Not a thought, not a desire! Objects of immediate perception filled his mind so completely that it was closed to other impressions.

He filled his pipe and lighted it. It dropped from his nerveless fingers. His tongue mumbled something, but seemingly by force of habit only. He sat in silence and stared at one point. He felt an intense craving to raise the temperature of his body so that he would feel the presence of life for at least a short while. But he had no way of getting vodka in the daytime. He had to wait for night to attain those blissful moments when the ground vanished from under his feet and the four odious prison walls were replaced by a shoreless, shining void.

Arina Petrovna had not the slightest idea of how Simple Simon spent his time. The casual glimmer of feeling which had appeared for a moment during the conversation with the Bloodsucker vanished so precipitately that she was unconscious of its ever having appeared. It was not a premeditated course of action on her part, but sheer oblivion. She completely forgot that in the counting-house, in close proximity to her, there lived a human being bound to her by ties of blood, who perhaps was pining away in the yearning for life. Once having cut out a certain channel in life and filling it almost mechanically with the same things, she thought others ought to do likewise, it never occurring to her that the very character of the things life holds vary among people according to a multitude of circumstances in different combinations, and that these things may be dear to some, herself among these some, while they are an abomination and a tyranny to others.

Therefore when the bailiff repeatedly reported that "something was the matter" with Stepan Vladimirych, the words slipped by her ears, leaving no impression on her mind. Indeed, she scarcely ever even replied, and when she did, then only with the stereotyped reply:

"Oh, well, he'll be all right. I bet he'll outlive you and me. Nothing is the matter with the shambling colt. Coughing, you say! Well, some people cough thirty years on end and they don't feel it."

Nevertheless, one morning when they came and told her that Stepan Vladimirych had disappeared during the night, she was aroused. Immediately she sent out all the available men in search of him, and herself started an investigation beginning with the room in which Stepan had lived. The first thing that struck her was a bottle standing on the table, with a bit of vodka in it.

"What's this?" she asked, pretending not to understand.

"Why, I guess—the young master indulged," stammered the bailiff.

"Who supplied——?" she began, flaring up. But she restrained herself, and continued her investigation, hiding her rage.

The room was so filthy that even she, who did not know and did not recognize any demands of comfort, began to feel awkward. The ceiling was smutty, the wall paper in many places was hanging in tatters, the window-sills were black with a thick layer of tobacco ashes, pillows were lying about on the floor beslimed with viscous mud, on the bed lay a crumpled sheet, gray with accumulated dirt. In one window the winter frame had been taken, or, rather, torn out, and the window itself was left half open. Apparently it was through this opening that Simple Simon had disappeared. Arina Petrovna instinctively looked out on the road and became more frightened. It was already the first of November, but the autumn that year had lasted long, and the cold spells had not yet arrived. Both the road and the field were one black sea of mud. How had he got away? Where had he gone to? Here it occurred to her that he had nothing on but a dressing-gown and a slipper. The other slipper had been found under the window. And the night before it had been pouring ceaselessly.

"It's a long, long time since I've been here," she said, inhaling instead of air a foul mixture of vodka, tobacco and sheepskin evaporations.

All day long, while the servants were searching the forest, she stood at the window staring dully out upon the naked fields unrolled before her eyes. So much ado on account of Simple Simon! It seemed like a preposterous dream. She had said he ought to have been shipped off to the Vologda village. "No," that cursed Yudushka had wheedled, "leave him here, dearest mother, at Golovliovo." Now handle him, if you please, Yudushka.

"I wish he had lived there, out of my sight, as he pleased—Christ be with him!" Arina Petrovna mused. "But I did my part. If he wasted one good thing, well, I would throw him another. If he'd have wasted the other, too, well, what could I do then? Even God can't fill a bottomless belly. Everything would have been peaceful and quiet here. But now—who knows what he has been up to? Go, look in the forest and whistle for him. It would be good if he were brought home alive, but with drunken eyes one is liable to run into a noose—take a rope, tie it to a branch, put it round his neck, and no more Stiopka. His mother denied herself sleep and food, and he has invented a new style—hanging himself. There would be some excuse for him if he had had it hard here. But goodness, what did he have to do but walk about in his room all day and eat and drink? Another son would not have known how to thank his mother enough. And how does this precious son repay his mother? Goes and hangs himself. The idea!"

Arina Petrovna's surmises about Simple Simon's violent death were not justified. Toward evening he was brought back in a peasant wagon, still alive. He was in a semi-conscious state, all bruised and cut, his face blue and swollen. He had been found at the Dubrovino estate, twenty miles away.

The returned fugitive slept straight through the next twenty-four hours. When he awoke, he stumbled to his feet and began to pace up and down the room as was his habit, but he did not touch the pipe and made no reply to the questions he was asked. Arina Petrovna's heart softened so that on the spur of the moment she all but had him transferred to the manor-house. Then she quieted down, and left him in the counting-house, but gave orders for the room to be scoured and tidied up, the bed linen changed, curtains hung, and so on.

The following evening, when told that Stepan Vladimirych was awake, she had him brought to the house for tea and found it possible, in talking to him, to inject kindliness into her voice.

"Why did you go away from your mother?" she began. "Do you know you caused her great anxiety? It's good the news did not reach papa. It would have been a terrible shock to the poor sick man."

But Stepan seemed altogether indifferent to his mother's kindly words. He kept staring at the candle with his glassy eyes, as if watching the snuff forming on the wick.

"My, my, aren't you a foolish boy?" continued Arina Petrovna, growing kinder and kinder. "Just think what rumors will be spread about your mother because of you. There are enough people who envy her. What will they not say about her? They will say she did not give you food or clothes. My, my, what a foolish boy you are!"

There was the same silence and the same motionless staring glance.

"Was your stay at mother's so bad? Thank God, you don't go hungry or naked. What else do you want? If you are lonesome, don't fret. This is nothing but a village, my boy. We have no entertainments or halls, we sit in our nooks and we hardly know how to while away the time. I, myself, would be glad to dance now and then or sing a song, but you look out upon the road and you lose the desire to go even to church in such weather."

Arina Petrovna paused, hoping that Simple Simon would give utterance to at least some sounds, but he was as dumb as a stone. She was beginning to work up a temper, but restrained herself.

"And if you were discontented with anything, if perhaps you lacked food or linen, could you not explain it frankly to your mother? Could you not say, 'Mamma, darling, won't you have some liver or curd-cakes prepared for me?' Do you think your mother would have refused you? Or if you wanted a drop of vodka, goodness, I wouldn't have begrudged you a glass or two. To think of it, you were not ashamed to beg from a serf, while it was difficult for you to say a word to your own mother."

But her flattering words were of no avail. Simple Simon remained impervious to either emotion (Arina Petrovna had hoped he would kiss her hand) or repentance. In fact, he seemed to have heard nothing.

From that time on he never spoke a single word. All day long he walked up and down his room, his brows knit and his lips moving, apparently never growing tired. At times he halted as if wishing to say something, but he could not find the words. He had not lost the capacity for thinking, but impressions left so slight a trace on his brain that he could not hold them for any appreciable length of time. Consequently his failure to find the necessary words did not even make him impatient. Arina Petrovna, for her part, thought he would surely set the house on fire.

"He does not say a word all day long," she repeated. "Still he must be thinking of something, the blockhead! I am sure he'll set the house on fire one of these days."

But the blockhead did not think of anything at all. He was deeply immersed in absolute darkness, in which there was no room either for reality or the illusory world of imagination. His brain did work, but in a void, disconnected from either the past, the present, or the future. It was as though he was completely wrapt up in a black cloud and all he did was to scan it, to watch its imaginary fluctuations, and, at times, to make a feeble attempt at resisting its sinister sway. The whole physical and spiritual world dwindled down to that enigmatic cloud.

In December of the same year, Porfiry Vladimirych received the following letter from his mother:

"Yesterday morning God visited us with a new ordeal. My son and your brother, Stepan, breathed his last. The very evening before he had been quite well and even took his supper, but in the morning he was found dead in bed. Such is the brevity of this earthly life! And what is most grievous to a mother's heart is that he left this world of vanity for the realm of the unknown without the last communion.

"May this be a warning to us all. He who sets at naught the ties of kinship must always await such an end. Failures in this life, untimely death, and everlasting torments in the life to come, all these evils spring from the one source. For, however learned and exalted we may be, if we do not honor our parents, our learning and eminence will be turned into nothingness. Such are the precepts which every one inhabiting this world must commit to his mind. Besides, slaves should revere their masters.

"Notwithstanding this, all honors were duly given to him who had departed into life eternal, as becomes my son. The pall was ordered from Moscow, and the burial ceremonies were solemnly presided over by the Father archimandrite. And according to the Christian custom, I am having memorial services performed daily. I mourn the loss of my son, but I do not complain, nor do I advise you, my children, to do so. For who knows? We may be mourning and complaining here while his soul may be rejoicing in Heaven."

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[BOOK II]