"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."