Besides these lucky families there is a great multitude of families upon whose members the household gods bestow nothing but misfortune and despair.
Like a baleful blight, vice and ill-luck beset them and devour their substance.
The malignant influences attack the whole stock, eating their way into the very heart and laying waste generation after generation.
There is born a race of weaklings, drunkards, petty rakes, idlers and shiftless ne'er-do-wells.
As time goes on the race degenerates more and more, until finally there appear miserable weaklings, like Yudushka's two sons, who perish at the first onslaught of life.
Such a sinister fate pursued the Golovliovo family.
For several generations, their history was marked by three characteristics, idleness, utter uselessness, and habitual hard drinking, the last coming as the sorry crown to a chaotic life.
The Golovliovo family would have run to seed completely but for the fact that Arina Petrovna flashed like a casual meteor through this drunken confusion.
By her personal energy alone this woman brought the family to an unprecedented height of prosperity. Nevertheless her labors were in vain. Not only did she not transmit any of her qualities to her children, but she herself died ensnared by idleness, empty talk and mental vacuity.
Until now Porfiry Vladimirych had held out against the temptation of drink.
It may be that he had been frightened off by the fate of his brothers and had consciously abstained from drink, or that he had been satisfied by the intoxication of his frenzied day dreams.
But it was not for nothing that he had the reputation of a drunkard among his neighbors.
At times he himself felt something was lacking in his existence. Idle musings gave him much, but not all.
They did not supply that sharp, stupefying sensation which would completely do away with his sense of reality and plunge him headlong into the void forever.
And now the long-wished-for opportunity presented itself.
Ever since Anninka's arrival, Yudushka had been aware of a vague noise at night coming from the other end of the house. For a long time he had puzzled his head over the significance of the mysterious sounds. At last he discovered what they were.
Anninka expected a reprimand the next day. None came.
Porfiry Vladimirych spent the morning locked up in his study as usual, but when he appeared at the midday meal, he poured out two wineglasses of vodka instead of only one for himself, and pointed to one with a sheepish smile.
Anninka accepted the silent invitation.
"So you say Lubinka is dead?" said Yudushka when the dinner was well under way, as if recalling something.
"Yes, uncle, she is dead."
"Well, God rest her soul!
To grumble is a sin, but to honor her memory is quite fitting.
Shall we?"
"Yes, uncle, let's honor her memory."
They emptied one more glass, and then Yudushka grew silent. He was evidently still unaccustomed to the society of human beings.
When the meal was over, Anninka, performing a family rite, kissed uncle's cheek, and in response he patted her on her cheek and said:
"So that's the kind you are."
The evening of the same day, at tea, which lasted longer this time than usual, Porfiry Vladimirych looked at his niece for a while with a quizzical smile, and finally said:
"Shall we have some corned meats served?"
"Well, if you wish."
"Yes. It's better you should do it in uncle's sight than on the sly. At least, uncle will——"
Yudushka did not finish the sentence.
Perhaps he had wanted to say that uncle would keep her from drinking, but something prevented him from saying it.
From that time on cold cuts were served in the dining-room every evening.
The outer window shutters were closed, the servants retired, and uncle and niece remained all alone.
In the beginning Yudushka did not keep pace with Anninka, but with a little practice he came up to her.
They sat slowly sipping their vodka and talking.
The conversation, at first dull and indifferent, became more and more animated as their heads grew hotter, and invariably passed into a chaotic quarrel, at the bottom of which were always reminiscences about the victims of Golovliovo.
Anninka started the quarrels.
She dug up the family archives with ruthless persistence and delighted in teasing Yudushka by arguing that he along with Arina Petrovna had been the chief cause of the Golovliovo tragedies.
Every word breathed such cynicism and such burning hatred that it was difficult to understand how so much vitality could still exist in that worn-out, shattered body.
Anninka's attacks galled Yudushka immensely, but he defended himself feebly, angrily sputtering ejaculations of discomfiture. At times, when Anninka went too far in her insolence, he shouted and cursed.
Such scenes repeated themselves day in, day out, without change.
Every detail of the pitiful family chronicle was speedily exhausted, but it still held the minds of the two riveted. Every episode of the past lacerated some wound in their hearts, and they felt a bitter delight in constantly evoking, scrutinizing and exaggerating painful memories.
Neither the past nor the present contained any moral mainstay on which Anninka could lean.
Nothing but sordid stinginess on one side, and mental vacuity on the other. Her youthful heart had thirsted for warmth and love, but had received a stone instead of bread, blows instead of instruction.
By the irony of fate, the cruel school in which she had been taught implanted in her not an austere attitude toward life, but a passionate yearning to partake of its sweet poisons.
Youth had wrought the miracle of oblivion, it kept her heart from hardening and the germs of hatred from developing. Youth had made her drunk with the thirst for life.
That was why a turbulent, furtive debauchery had held her in its sway for several years, and had pushed Golovliovo into the background.