She completely forgot that in the counting-house, in close proximity to her, there lived a human being bound to her by ties of blood, who perhaps was pining away in the yearning for life.
Once having cut out a certain channel in life and filling it almost mechanically with the same things, she thought others ought to do likewise, it never occurring to her that the very character of the things life holds vary among people according to a multitude of circumstances in different combinations, and that these things may be dear to some, herself among these some, while they are an abomination and a tyranny to others.
Therefore when the bailiff repeatedly reported that "something was the matter" with Stepan Vladimirych, the words slipped by her ears, leaving no impression on her mind.
Indeed, she scarcely ever even replied, and when she did, then only with the stereotyped reply:
"Oh, well, he'll be all right. I bet he'll outlive you and me.
Nothing is the matter with the shambling colt.
Coughing, you say! Well, some people cough thirty years on end and they don't feel it."
Nevertheless, one morning when they came and told her that Stepan Vladimirych had disappeared during the night, she was aroused.
Immediately she sent out all the available men in search of him, and herself started an investigation beginning with the room in which Stepan had lived.
The first thing that struck her was a bottle standing on the table, with a bit of vodka in it.
"What's this?" she asked, pretending not to understand.
"Why, I guess—the young master indulged," stammered the bailiff.
"Who supplied——?" she began, flaring up. But she restrained herself, and continued her investigation, hiding her rage.
The room was so filthy that even she, who did not know and did not recognize any demands of comfort, began to feel awkward.
The ceiling was smutty, the wall paper in many places was hanging in tatters, the window-sills were black with a thick layer of tobacco ashes, pillows were lying about on the floor beslimed with viscous mud, on the bed lay a crumpled sheet, gray with accumulated dirt.
In one window the winter frame had been taken, or, rather, torn out, and the window itself was left half open. Apparently it was through this opening that Simple Simon had disappeared.
Arina Petrovna instinctively looked out on the road and became more frightened.
It was already the first of November, but the autumn that year had lasted long, and the cold spells had not yet arrived.
Both the road and the field were one black sea of mud.
How had he got away? Where had he gone to?
Here it occurred to her that he had nothing on but a dressing-gown and a slipper. The other slipper had been found under the window. And the night before it had been pouring ceaselessly.
"It's a long, long time since I've been here," she said, inhaling instead of air a foul mixture of vodka, tobacco and sheepskin evaporations.
All day long, while the servants were searching the forest, she stood at the window staring dully out upon the naked fields unrolled before her eyes.
So much ado on account of Simple Simon! It seemed like a preposterous dream.
She had said he ought to have been shipped off to the Vologda village. "No," that cursed Yudushka had wheedled, "leave him here, dearest mother, at Golovliovo." Now handle him, if you please, Yudushka.
"I wish he had lived there, out of my sight, as he pleased—Christ be with him!"
Arina Petrovna mused. "But I did my part. If he wasted one good thing, well, I would throw him another.
If he'd have wasted the other, too, well, what could I do then?
Even God can't fill a bottomless belly.
Everything would have been peaceful and quiet here. But now—who knows what he has been up to? Go, look in the forest and whistle for him.
It would be good if he were brought home alive, but with drunken eyes one is liable to run into a noose—take a rope, tie it to a branch, put it round his neck, and no more Stiopka.
His mother denied herself sleep and food, and he has invented a new style—hanging himself.
There would be some excuse for him if he had had it hard here. But goodness, what did he have to do but walk about in his room all day and eat and drink?
Another son would not have known how to thank his mother enough. And how does this precious son repay his mother? Goes and hangs himself. The idea!"
Arina Petrovna's surmises about Simple Simon's violent death were not justified.
Toward evening he was brought back in a peasant wagon, still alive.
He was in a semi-conscious state, all bruised and cut, his face blue and swollen.
He had been found at the Dubrovino estate, twenty miles away.
The returned fugitive slept straight through the next twenty-four hours.
When he awoke, he stumbled to his feet and began to pace up and down the room as was his habit, but he did not touch the pipe and made no reply to the questions he was asked.
Arina Petrovna's heart softened so that on the spur of the moment she all but had him transferred to the manor-house. Then she quieted down, and left him in the counting-house, but gave orders for the room to be scoured and tidied up, the bed linen changed, curtains hung, and so on.
The following evening, when told that Stepan Vladimirych was awake, she had him brought to the house for tea and found it possible, in talking to him, to inject kindliness into her voice.
"Why did you go away from your mother?" she began. "Do you know you caused her great anxiety?
It's good the news did not reach papa. It would have been a terrible shock to the poor sick man."
But Stepan seemed altogether indifferent to his mother's kindly words. He kept staring at the candle with his glassy eyes, as if watching the snuff forming on the wick.
"My, my, aren't you a foolish boy?" continued Arina Petrovna, growing kinder and kinder. "Just think what rumors will be spread about your mother because of you.
There are enough people who envy her. What will they not say about her?
They will say she did not give you food or clothes. My, my, what a foolish boy you are!"
There was the same silence and the same motionless staring glance.
"Was your stay at mother's so bad?