He absolutely refused to meet him, and when the Bloodsucker occasionally visited Dubrovino to kiss the hand of his mother dear, Pavel Vladimirych would lock himself into the entresol and remain imprisoned there until he left.
So the days passed until Pavel Vladimirych found himself face to face with a deadly malady.
_____ CHAPTER IV
The doctor stayed at the house overnight merely for the sake of form, and departed for the city early the next day.
On taking leave he said frankly that the patient had no more than two days to live, and it was already too late to talk about any "arrangements" since Pavel Vladimirych could not even sign his name properly.
"He'll sign the document wrong and then you will have a lawsuit on your hands," he added. "Of course, Yudushka respects his mother very highly, but, at that, he'll commence proceedings to prove fraud, and should 'mother dear' be sent to distant regions, the only thing he'll do is to have a mass said for the welfare of the travellers."
All morning Arina Petrovna walked about as if in a dream.
She tried to say her prayers. Perhaps God would suggest something, but prayers would not enter her head. Even her tongue refused to obey.
There was utter confusion in her mind. Fragments of prayers mingled with incoherent thoughts and vague impressions.
Finally she sat down and sobbed.
The tears flowed from her dull eyes over her aged shrivelled cheeks, lingered in the hollows of her wrinkles, and dribbled down on the greasy collar of her old calico waist.
Her tears spoke of bitterness, despair, and feeble, but stubborn resistance.
Her age, her senile ailments, and the hopelessness of the situation, all seemed to point to death as the only way out. At the same time memories of the past intervened, memories of a life of power, prosperity and unrestrained freedom, and these reminiscences plunged their sting into her soul, dragging her down to earth.
"To die!" passed through her mind, but the thought was instantly supplanted by a dogged desire to live.
She recalled neither Yudushka nor her dying son. It was as if both had ceased to exist for her.
She thought of no one, was indignant at no one, accused no one, even forgot whether she had any capital or no and whether it was sufficient to provide for her old age.
A deadly anguish seized her entire being.
Her tears had come from a deep source. Drop by drop they had been accumulating since the moment when she left Golovliovo and settled at Dubrovino.
She was quite prepared for everything that awaited her. She had expected and foreseen everything, but somehow it had never come to her with such vividness that her fears would be realized.
And now this very end had arrived, an end full of anguish and hopeless lonesomeness.
All her life long she had been busy building up, she had worn herself to the bone for something, and now she felt as if she had wasted her life on a phantom.
All her life the word "family" had never left her lips. In the name of "family" she had punished some and rewarded others. In the name of "family" she had subjected herself to privations, torments, she had crippled her whole life; and suddenly she discovered that "family" was exactly what she did not have.
"Good Lord! Can it possibly be the same everywhere?" was the thought that kept revolving in her mind.
She sat with her head resting on her hand and her face soaked with tears turned to the rising sun, as if to bid it, "Look!"
She neither groaned nor cursed. She simply sobbed as if choked by her tears.
At the same time the thought seared her soul,
"There is no one! No one! No one!"
But now her eyes were drained of tears.
She washed her face and wandered without purpose into the dining-room. Here she was assailed by the girls with new complaints which seemed at this time particularly importunate.
"What is going to come of it, grandma? Is it possible that we shall be left just so, without anything?" grumbled Anninka.
"How silly uncle is," Lubinka chimed in.
About midday, Arina Petrovna decided to go to her dying son.
Stepping softly she climbed the stairs and groped in the dark till she found the door leading into the rooms.
The entresol was buried in deepest gloom. The windows were darkened by green shades, through which the light could scarcely filter. A sickening mixture of odors pervaded the room, which had not been ventilated for a long while. There was the smell of berries, plaster, oil from the image-lamp, and those peculiar odors which bespeak the presence of sickness and death.
There were only two rooms. In the first one sat Ulita, cleaning berries. The flies swarmed about the heap of gooseberries and impudently attacked her nose and lips, and she would keep driving them off in exasperation.
Through the half-closed door of the adjoining room came the sound of incessant coughing which every now and then ended in painful expectoration.
Arina Petrovna stopped in an uncertain pose, searching the gloom and waiting for the course of action that Ulita would take in view of her arrival.
But Ulita never moved an eyelash, entirely confident that every attempt to influence the sick man would be fruitless.
Her lips merely twitched in resentment, and Arina Petrovna heard the word "hag" pronounced under her breath.
"You had better go down, my dear," said Arina Petrovna, turning to Ulita.
"Where did you get that idea from?" snapped the latter.
"I have to talk to Pavel Vladimirych.
Go down."
"Excuse me, madam, how can I leave the master?
What if something should happen? There's no one to serve him and attend to him."
"What's the matter?" a hollow voice called from the bedroom.
"Order Ulita to go downstairs, my friend.
I have matters to talk over with you."
This time Arina Petrovna pressed her point so persistently that she was victorious.
She crossed herself and entered the room.