A family of noblemen

by Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov

"Mother, dear! Darling! Lord be with you! Be calm, dear! God is merciful. All will be well."

But his words were expressive of alarm for her rather than for himself. Her act had been so unexpected that Yudushka even forgot to pretend to be frightened. Only last night his mother had been affectionate, had jested, and played fool with Yevpraksia. Evidently, then, it had all happened in a moment of sudden anger, and there was nothing premeditated, nothing real about it all.

Indeed, he had been very much afraid of his mother's curse but he had pictured it quite differently. In his idle mind he had built an elaborate staging for the occasion, ikons, burning candles, his mother standing in the center of the room, terrible, with a darkened face as she hurled the curse. Then, thunder, candles going out, the veil tearing asunder, darkness covering the earth, and above, amidst the clouds the wrathful countenance of Jehovah illumined by a flash of lightning. But nothing of the sort had happened, so his mother had simply done something rash and silly. And she had had no reason to curse him in earnest, because of late there had been no cause for quarreling. Many changes had occurred since Yudushka expressed his doubt as to whether a certain coach belonged to his mother dear (Yudushka admitted to himself that then he had been wrong and deserved damnation). Arina Petrovna had become more submissive, and Porfiry Vladimirych had but one thought in his head: how to placate his mother dear.

"The old woman is doing poorly, my, how poorly! At times she even raves," he consoled himself. "The darling sits down to play fool and before you know it, she dozes off."

In justice to Yudushka it must be admitted that his mother's decrepitude gave him some alarm. Even he was not quite ready for her death, had not made any plans, had had no time to make estimates—how much capital mother had when she left Dubrovino, what that capital might bring in annually, how much of the interest she had spent, and how much she had added to the principal. In a word, he had not gone through an infinity of useless trifles, without which he always felt as if he were caught unawares.

"The old woman is hale and hearty," he would muse at times. "Still she won't spend it all—impossible. When she shared us out, she had a neat sum. Maybe she transferred some to the orphans. Oh, the old woman is rich. Yes, she is."

But these musings were not so very serious, and vanished without leaving an impress on his mind. The mass of daily trivialities was already great, and there was as yet no urgent need to augment them by the addition of new trivialities. Porfiry Vladimirych kept putting the matter off, and did not realize it was time to begin until after the damnation scene.

The catastrophe came sooner than he expected. On the second day after Petenka's departure Arina Petrovna left for Pogorelka, and never again visited Golovliovo. She spent a month in total solitude, keeping to her room and scarcely exchanging a word with her servants. From force of habit she rose early in the morning, sat down at her desk, and began to play patience, but hardly ever brought the game to an end, and sat in frozen rigidity—with her glazed eyes fixed on the window. What she thought about or whether she thought at all, even the keenest judge of the deep-lying mysteries of the human soul could not have divined. She seemed to be trying to recollect something, perhaps how she came to be within those walls, and could not. Alarmed by her mistress's silence, Afimyushka would appear in the room, arrange the pillows lining her easy-chair, and try to open a conversation on this or that, but received only impatient monosyllabic replies.

Once or twice Porfiry Vladimirych came to Pogorelka, invited mother dear to Golovliovo, tried to kindle her imagination with the prospect of mushrooms, German carp, and the other allurements of Golovliovo, but his overtures evoked nothing but an enigmatic smile.

One morning she tried to leave her bed as usual, but could not, though she felt no particular pain, and complained of nothing. She took it, apparently, as a matter of course, without any sign of alarm. The very day before she had been sitting at the table and even walked, though with difficulty, and now she was in bed "feeling indisposed." It was even more comfortable. But Afimyushka became thoroughly frightened and without the mistress's knowledge sent a messenger to Porfiry Vladimirych.