A family of noblemen

by Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov

CHAPTER II

Porfiry Vladimirych's hopes were not realized. First occurred the catastrophe with Petenka, then Arina Petrovna's death. And there was no possibility in sight of his extricating himself by means of some ugly machinations. He could not dismiss Yevpraksia for dissolute conduct, because Arina Petrovna had carried the affair too far and made it too widely known. Nor was Ulita so very reliable. Dexterous woman though she was, yet if he put his trust in her, he might have to deal with the coroner. For the first time in his life Yudushka seriously and sincerely regretted his loneliness; for the first time he realized vaguely that the people around him were not mere pawns to be played with.

"Why didn't she wait a while to die?" Yudushka reproached his mother dear. "She should have fixed it all up quietly and with good sense, and then—as she pleased! If it's time to die—you can't help it. I am sorry for the old woman. But if God wills it so, all our tears, and the doctors, and the cures, and all of us are naught before the power of God. The old woman lived long enough. She had her day—was herself a mistress all her life, and left her children a gentry estate. She lived to old age—well that's enough."

And as usual his idle mind, not used to dwell on a matter presenting practical obstacles, skipped to the easier topic that gave occasion to endless, unhampered verbiage.

"And to think how she died! Why, her death was worthy of a saint," he lied to himself, not knowing, though, whether he lied or spoke the truth. "Without ailment, without trouble—just so. She heaved a sigh, and before we knew it, she was no more. Oh, mother dear! And her smile, and the glow of her cheeks! Her hands placed together as if she wanted to confer a blessing. She shut her eyes and—good-by!"

But in the very heat of his sentimental babblings, something would suddenly prick him. That filthy business again. Fi, fi! "And really why didn't she wait a while! It was only a matter of a month or so, and now, look what she did!"

For some time he attempted to pretend ignorance, and answered Ulita's inquiries just as he had answered his mother's, "I don't know, I don't know anything."

But Ulita, an impudent woman, who had suddenly become conscious of her power, could not be dismissed like that.

"Do I know? Have I brought this business on?" she cut him short. And then he realized that from that moment on the happy combination of the rôle of adulterer with the rôle of the unconcerned observer of the consequences of his adultery had become quite impossible.

Nearer and nearer came the disaster, inevitable, tangible. It pursued him relentlessly and—what was worst of all—it paralyzed his idle mind. He exerted all possible efforts to rid himself of the thought of the approaching calamity, to drown it in a torrent of idle words, but he succeeded only in part. He tried to hide behind the infallibility of the law of Providence and, as was his custom, turned it into a ball of thread which he could wind and unwind without end. There was the parable of the hair falling from a man's head, and the legend of the house built on sand; but just at the moment when his idle thoughts were about to roll down into a kind of mysterious abyss, when the endless winding of the ball seemed quite assured, a single word suddenly jumped out from the ambush and broke the thread. Alas! That one word was "adultery" and designated an act of which Yudushka did not wish to confess himself guilty even to himself.