And Lubinka was more reasonable and saw quite clearly that there was not even any profit in their mode of living.
For the future she expected nothing but shame, poverty and the street.
Shame is a matter of habit, it can be tolerated, but poverty—never!
It is better to end it all at once.
"We must die," she once said to Anninka in that same cool and deliberate tone in which two years ago she had asked her for whom she was saving her "treasure."
"Why?" Anninka objected, somewhat frightened.
"I mean it seriously. We must die," Lubinka repeated. "Understand, wake up, think!"
"Well—let us die," Anninka assented, hardly realizing the dismal meaning of her decision.
That same day Lubinka cut off the tips of some matches and prepared two glasses of the mixture.
One of these she drank herself, the other she offered her sister.
But Anninka immediately lost courage and refused to drink.
"Drink, you slut," Lubinka cried out. "Sister, dearest, darling, drink!"
Anninka, almost insane with fear, ran about the room, instinctively clutching at her throat as if trying to choke herself.
"Drink, drink—you street-walker!"
The artistic career of the two sisters was ended.
That same evening Lubinka's corpse was taken into the field and buried.
Anninka remained alive.
_____ CHAPTER III
Anninka soon introduced an atmosphere of Bohemian life into Yudushka's nest.
She rose late and would roam about the house until dinner-time, undressed, uncombed, with an aching head, and coughing in such agony that each time it would send a shudder through Porfiry Vladimirych in his study and quite frighten him.
Her room was always untidy, the bedding in disorder, and her clothes lying about on the chairs and floor.
At first she saw her uncle only at dinner and evening tea.
The master of Golovliovo came out of his room all dressed in black, spoke little, and ate with his old-time exasperating slowness.
He was apparently observing her.
After dinner came the early December twilight.
Anninka loved to watch the glimmer of the gray winter day gradually die out and the fields grow dim; she loved to see the shadows flood the rooms until finally the whole house was plunged in impenetrable darkness.
In the darkness she always felt at ease and hardly ever lit the candles.
The only one she allowed to burn was at one end of the sitting-room. It was of cheap palm wax, and sputtered and dripped, its feeble flame formed a tiny circle of light.
For some time the house would be astir with the usual after-dinner noises. Plates would rattle in the hands of the dish-washers, and drawers open and close with a clatter; but soon the sound of receding steps would be heard and a dead silence begin to reign.
Porfiry Vladimirych would take his after-dinner nap and Yevpraksia bury herself in the bedding in her room. Prokhor would go into the servants' room, and Anninka would remain entirely alone.
She would pace from room to room, humming, trying to tire herself out, but chiefly endeavoring to drive her thoughts away.
In walking toward the sitting-room she would fix her eyes upon the circle of light about the candle, and walking away from it, she would try to single out some point in the darkness and keep her eyes fixed on it.
But in spite of her efforts reminiscences surged up in her mind irresistibly.
She saw the dressing-room with its cheap wall paper, the inevitable pier-glass and the equally inevitable bouquet from Lieutenant Pankov II; the stage with the stage-properties, sooty, slippery from the damp; the hall with its pieces of furniture picked up at random and its boxes upholstered in threadbare purple plush,—the hall which, seen from the stage, looked trim and even splendid, but in reality was dark and miserable.
And finally—officers, officers, officers without end.
Then she saw the hotel with the vile-smelling corridor, dimly lit by the smoky kerosene lamp; the room she would dart into in order to change her dress for further triumphs, the room with the bed in disorder from the morning; the wash-stand full of dirty water, the bed-sheet lying on the floor, her cast-off underwear forgotten on a chair. Next she saw herself in the general dining-room, filled with kitchen odors, the tables set for supper, with its tobacco smoke, noise, crowds, drinking, debauchery. And again officers, officers, officers without end.
Such were her memories of the time she had once called the years of her successes, triumphs, prosperity.
These reminiscences were followed by others, the prominent part in which was played by the inn, filled with a foul stench, with walls on which the vapor froze in the winter time, insecure flooring, and board partitions, the glossy bellies of bed-bugs showing in the crevices.
Nights of drinking and brawls, travelling squires hastily taking greenbacks out of their meager pocket-books, merchants encouraging the "actresses" almost with a whip in hand.
And in the morning—headaches, nausea, and utter dejection.
At last—Golovliovo.
Golovliovo was death itself, relentless, hollow-wombed death, constantly lying in wait for new victims.
Two uncles had died there, two cousins had received mortal wounds. And Lubinka! Although Lubinka, to be sure, had died somewhere in Kretchetov because of her "own affairs," yet the origin of her wounds went back to her life at Golovliovo.
All the deaths, all the poisonings, all the pestilence, came from there.
There the orphans had been fed on rotten cured meats, there they heard the first words of hatred and contempt for human dignity. Not the slightest childish misdeed had passed without punishment. Nothing could be hidden from the stony-hearted, eccentric old woman, not an extra bite of bread, not a broken clay doll, not a torn rag, not a worn shoe.
Each breach of law and order was instantly punished either with a reproach or a slap.
And then, when they had been permitted to dispose of themselves, when they had understood that they might run away from the disgusting place, they ran—there!
And nobody kept them from running away, nor could they have been kept from running away, because they could imagine nothing worse or more repulsive than Golovliovo.
Ah, if all that could only be forgotten, if one could create a different existence in one's dreams, a magic world that would supplant both the past and the present!
But alas, the reality Anninka had lived through had so powerful a hold, that the clutch of it suppressed the feeble efforts of her imagination.