They suddenly became dull and dispirited and were agitated by some vague plans for the future, plans in which notions of work were interspersed with notions of pleasures of the most innocent kind, of course—reminiscences of the boarding-school where they had been brought up, mingled with stray notions about men of toil, which they retained from their fragmentary reading, and timid hopes of clutching at some thread through their boarding-school connections, and so entering the bright kingdom of human life.
One tormenting hope stood out definitely from the other vague longings, to leave hateful Pogorelka at whatever costs.
And at length one fine day Anninka and Lubinka actually announced to grandma that they simply could not stay at Pogorelka a moment longer; they led a beastly life there, met nobody but the priest, and he, when he met them, felt it incumbent upon him to tell of the virgins who had extinguished their lamps. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair.
The girls spoke sharply, afraid of their grandmother and simulating courage in order to overcome the anger and resistance they expected.
But to their surprise Arina Petrovna listened without anger, without even a disposition toward the useless sermonizing that impotent old age is so given to.
Alas, she was no longer that dominating woman who used to say so confidently:
"I am going to Khotkov and will take the little orphans with me."
The change was due, not to senile impotence alone, but also to an acquired sense of something better and truer.
The last buffets of fortune had not only tamed Arina Petrovna; they had also lighted up some corners of her mental horizon into which her thoughts evidently had never before entered.
Now, she knew, there were certain forces in the human being that can remain dormant a long while, but once awakened, they carry one irresistibly on to the glimmering ray of life, that cheering ray for whose appearance one's eyes have been yearning so long amidst the hopeless darkness of the present.
Once realizing the legitimacy of such a striving, she was powerless to oppose it.
It is true, she tried to dissuade her granddaughters from their purpose, but feebly, without conviction. She was uneasy about the future in store for them; all the more so since she herself had no connections in so-called "society." Yet she felt that the parting with the girls was a proper and inevitable thing.
What would become of them? frequently pressed on her mind; but she was now fully aware that neither this question nor others more terrible would restrain one who was struggling for release from captivity.
The girls insisted on one thing, on shaking the dust of Pogorelka from their feet.
And finally, after some hesitating and postponing to please grandmother, they left.
The Pogorelka manor-house was now steeped in a forlorn quiet.
Self-centered as Arina Petrovna was by nature, yet the proximity of human breath had its calming effect even upon her.
For the first time, perhaps, she felt that something had torn itself away from her being, and the freedom with which she herself was now confronted was so boundless that all she saw was empty space. To hide the void from her eyes, she ordered the state-rooms and the attic where the orphans had lived to be nailed up. "Incidentally, there will be less firewood burned," she said to herself. She retained only two rooms, in one of which a large ikon case with images was stowed away. The other was a combined bedroom, study and dining-room.
For the sake of economy she dismissed her retinue of servants, retaining only her housekeeper Afimyushka, an old, broken-down woman, and Markovna, one-eyed, the soldier's wife, who did the cooking and washing.
All these precautions, however, were of little help. The sensation of emptiness was not slow to penetrate into the two rooms that were meant to be guarded from it.
Helpless solitude and dreary idleness were the two enemies Arina Petrovna now confronted. And she was to be bound to these two enemies the rest of her days.
Physical and mental disintegration were not slow to follow in the wake of loneliness and idleness, and the less the resistance, the crueller, the more destructive its work.
Days dragged on in the oppressive monotony peculiar to rural life when there are no comforts or there is no executive work to be done, and there is no material for mental occupation.
In addition to the external causes at work to take the management of household affairs away from her, was an inner aversion that Arina Petrovna now felt to the petty cares and bustle coming at the sunset of her life.
Perhaps she would have overcome her repugnance had she had an aim in view to justify her efforts, but that very aim was wanting.
Everybody was sick and weary of her, and she was sick and weary of everybody and everything.
Her feverish activity of old suddenly yielded to idleness, and idleness little by little corrupted her will and induced propensities of which Arina Petrovna could never have dreamed only a few months ago.
The strong, reserved woman, whom no one would have thought of calling old, turned into a wreck of her former self. There was neither past nor future for her, but only the immediate moment to live through.
The greater part of the day she dozed, sitting in an easy-chair by the table, on which ill-smelling cards were arranged. She would doze for hours on end.
Then her body would shudder convulsively, she would wake up, look out of the window, and for a long time stare into the distance, without a single conscious thought.
Pogorelka was a dreary manor-house.
It stood all alone, without orchard or shade, or the least indication of comfort.
There was not even a flower garden in front of the house.
It was a one-story structure, squat, weather-beaten, all black with age. Back of it were the many out-buildings, also half worn-out, and all around was one vast stretch of fields—fields without end. Not even the glimpse of forest anywhere on the horizon.
But from her very childhood Arina Petrovna had hardly ever left the country, and this monotonous landscape did not seem dreary to her. It even appealed to her heart and awakened remnants of emotion still glowing within her.
The best part of her being lived in these naked fields, and her gaze sought them instinctively.
She stared at the expanse of fields; she stared at the drenched hamlets making black specks on the landscape; she stared at the white churches of the rural parishes; she stared at the motley spots that the cloud shadows formed on the plains; she stared at the peasant unknown to her who walked along the ploughed furrows, and she thought him slow and stiff.
While staring, she had no conscious thoughts, or, rather, her thoughts were so fragmentary and disconnected that they could not stay with any one thing for even a short time.
She just gazed, gazed till senile slumber again hummed dully in her ears, and the fields, the churches, the hamlets and the peasant in the distance became wrapped in mist.
At times, apparently, she recollected something; but the memories of the past came incoherently, in fragments.
Her attention could not concentrate on one point. It jumped from one remote memory to another.
Yet sometimes she would be struck by something singular, not joy—her past was very scant in joys—but some grievance, some abuse, bitter and unbearable.
Then sudden anger would flare up, anguish would creep into her heart, and tears come to her eyes.
She would weep grievously, painfully, the weeping of piteous old age, when tears flow as if under the load of a nightmare.
But even while her tears were flowing, her mind unconsciously continued to work in its usual way, and her thoughts drifted imperceptibly away from the cause of her mood, so that in a few minutes the old woman was wondering what had been the matter with her.
Altogether, she lived as if not participating in life personally, but solely because in those ruins there were still left a few odds and ends which had to be collected, recorded, and accounted for.
While these odds and ends were present, life went its way compelling the ruin to perform all the external functions necessary to keep that half-asleep existence from crumbling to dust.
But if the days passed in unconscious slumber, the nights were sheer torment.
At night Arina Petrovna was afraid; she was afraid of thieves, of ghosts, of devils, of all that was the product of her education and life.
And the defenses of the place were very poor, for beside the two tottering women domestics Pogorelka had a night-watch in the person of the lame little peasant Fedoseyushka, who for two rubles a month came from the village to guard the manor-house, and usually slept in the vestibule, coming out at the appointed hours to strike the steel plate.