'When I get well' he kept on saying, 'I will make my will and write the notes.'"
Silence, heavier than before, filled the room.
The girls took the crocheting from the table, and their trembling hands worked one row after the other. Arina Petrovna heaved a deep sigh of dejection. The doctor paced up and down the room and whistled,
"Head over heels, head over heels."
"But did you try to drive the matter home to him, doctor?"
"Well, I said to him: 'You'll be a scoundrel if you don't make a definite provision for the orphans.' Could I make it clearer?
Yes, mother, you certainly slipped up.
If you had called me in a month ago, I would have given him a good bleeding and I would have seen to it that he made his will. But now everything will go to Yudushka, the lawful heir. It certainly will."
"Oh, grandmother, what will become of us?" said the older of the two girls, plaintively and almost in tears. "What is uncle doing to us?" The girls were Anninka and Lubinka, the daughters of Anna Vladimirovna Ulanova, to whom Arina Petrovna had once "thrown a bone."
"I don't know, dear, I don't know.
I don't even know what will become of me.
Today I am here, and tomorrow God knows where I'll be. Maybe I'll have to sleep in a shed or at a peasant's."
"Goodness, isn't uncle silly!" exclaimed the younger girl.
"I wish, young lady, you would keep your mouth shut," remarked the doctor. Turning to Arina Petrovna, he suggested, "Why not try to talk to him yourself, mother?"
"No, no.
There's no use my talking to him. He doesn't even want to see me.
The other day I stuck my nose into his room, and he snarled, 'Have you come to see me off to the other world?'"
"I think Ulita is back of it all. She incites him against you."
"She surely does, nobody but she.
And then she reports everything to Porfiry the Bloodsucker.
People say he keeps a pair of horses harnessed all day waiting for the beginning of the agony.
And just imagine, the other day Ulita went so far as to take an inventory of the furniture, wardrobe, and dishes, so that nothing should be lost, as she said.
We are the thieves, just imagine it."
"Why don't you treat her more severely? Head over heels, you know, head over heels."
But fate decreed that the doctor should not develop his thought. A girl, all out of breath, dashed into the room and exclaimed in a fright:
"The master! The master wants the doctor."
_____ _____ CHAPTER II
Not more than ten years had passed since the death of Simple Simon, but the condition of the various members of the Golovliov family had so completely changed that not a trace remained of those artificial ties which had given the family the air of an impregnable stronghold.
This stronghold, erected by the tireless hands of Arina Petrovna, had crumbled away, but so imperceptibly that she herself was ignorant of how it had happened, was even involved in the destruction, the leading spirit in which, of course, had been Porfiry the Bloodsucker.
From an irresponsible, hot-tempered ruler over the Golovliovo estate, Arina Petrovna had descended into a mere hanger-on in the home of her younger son, a useless hanger-on, with no voice in the household management.
Her head was bowed, her back bent, the fire in her eyes had died out, her gait was languid, the vivacity of her movements was gone.
She had taken to knitting to occupy her idleness, but her mind was always wandering somewhere away from her needles, and the knitting was a failure.
She would knit for a few moments, then her hands would drop of themselves, her head would fall on the back of her chair, and she would begin to go over bygones in her mind, until she got drowsy and dropped off into a senile slumber.
Or else she would get up and begin to pace the rooms, always searching for something; always looking into corners, like a good housewife hunting for her keys, which she usually carries about with her and has now misplaced somehow.
The first blow to her authority was not so much the abolition of serfdom as the preparations preceding it.
At first, there were simply rumors, then came the meetings of landowners and addresses, next followed provincial committees, and revising commissions. All these things exhausted and confused her.
Arina Petrovna's imagination, active enough without additional stimuli, conceived numerous absurd situations.
"How am I going to call Agashka?" she'd think. "Perhaps I'll have to tack a 'Miss' before her name."
Or she would see herself walking about in the empty rooms while the servants were taking it easy in their quarters and were gorging themselves with all kinds of food; and when they got tired of gorging she saw them throwing the remnants under the table.
Then she would find herself surprising Yulka and Feshka in the cellar, devouring everything in sight, like beasts, and she would itch to reprimand them, but would have to check herself with the thought,
"How dare one say anything to them, now that they are free? Why one can't even appeal to the court against them!"
However insignificant such trifles may be, a whole fantastic world is built up of them, which holds you tight and completely paralyzes your activity.
Arina Petrovna somehow suddenly let the reins of government slip out of her grasp, and for a space of two years did nothing from morning until night except complain.
"One or the other," she was fond of saying, "gains all or loses all. But these meetings and addresses and commissions, they're nothing but trouble."
At that time, just when the committees were in full swing, Vladimir Mikhailych died.
On his deathbed he repudiated Barkov and his teachings, and died appeased and reconciled to the world.
His last words were:
"I thank my God that He did not suffer me to come into His presence on an equal footing with the serfs."
These words made a deep impression on his wife's receptive soul, so that both his death and her fantastic notions about the future laid a coloring of gloom and despair on the atmosphere of the house.
It seemed as if both the old manor and its inhabitants were getting ready for death.