In the cattle-yard, it is true, there lived a few farm hands, men and women, but the cattle house was about fifty yards away and it was not easy to summon any one from there.
There is something exceedingly dreary and oppressive in a sleepless night in the country.
At nine, or at latest ten o'clock, life ceases. A weird stillness sets in that is full of terrors.
There is nothing to do, and it is a waste to burn candles. Willy-nilly one must go to bed.
As soon as the samovar was removed from the table Afimyushka, from an old habit acquired during serfdom, spread a felt blanket in front of the door leading to the mistress's bedroom, scratched her head, yawned, flopped down on the floor, and fell dead asleep.
Markovna always fumbled in the maids' room a trifle longer, muttering something to herself as if scolding somebody. But at last she, too, got quiet, and a moment later you could hear her snoring and raving intermittently.
The watchman banged on the plate several times to announce his presence, then kept quiet for a long time.
Arina Petrovna, sitting in front of a snuffy tallow candle, tried to stave off sleep by playing "patience," but scarcely did she have the cards arranged when she fell into a doze.
"It is as easy as not for a fire to start while one is asleep," she would say to herself, and decide to go to bed.
But no sooner did she sink into the down pillows than another trouble set in. Her sleepiness, so inviting and insistent all evening long, now left her completely.
The room was a close one at the best, and now, from the open flue the heat came thick, and the down pillows were insufferable.
Arina Petrovna tossed restlessly. She wanted to call someone, but knew no one would come in answer to her summons.
A mysterious quiet reigned all around, a quiet in which the delicate ear could distinguish a multitude of sounds.
Now something crackled somewhere, now a whining was audible, now it seemed as if somebody were walking through the corridor, now a puff of wind swept through the room and even touched her face.
The ikon lamp burned in front of an image, and the light gave the objects in the room a kind of elusiveness, as if they were not actual things, but only the contours of things.
Another bit of light strayed from the open door of the adjacent room, where four or five ikon lamps were burning before the image case.
A mouse squeaked behind the wall paper. "Sh-sh-sh, you nasty thing," said Arina Petrovna, and all was silent again.
And shadows again, whisperings again coming from no one knew where.
The greater part of the night passed in that half-awake senile slumber. Real sleep did not set in and do its work until nearly morning.
By six o'clock Arina Petrovna was already on her feet, tired out after a sleepless night.
Other things to add to the misery of this miserable existence of Arina Petrovna's were the poor food she ate and the discomfort of her home.
She ate little and used poor food, wishing, probably, to make up for the loss caused by insufficient supervision.
And the Pogorelka manor-house was dilapidated and damp. The room into which Arina Petrovna locked herself was never ventilated and remained without cleaning for weeks on end.
In this complete helplessness and the absence of all comfort and care, decrepitude began slowly to set in.
But her desire to live grew stronger, or, rather, her desire for "a dainty bit" asserted itself.
With this came coupled a total absence of the thought of death.
Previously, she had been afraid of death; now she seemed to have quite forgotten about it.
And with ideals of life differing but little from a peasant's, her conception of a "comfortable life" was of rather a base kind.
Everything she had formerly denied herself, dainties, rest, association with wide-awake people, now forced itself upon her in an insistent craving.
All the propensities of a regular sponger and hanger-on, idle talk, subservience for the sake of a prospective gift, gluttony, grew in her with astounding rapidity.
Like the servants, she fed on cabbage-soup and cured bacon of doubtful quality, and at the same time dreamed of the stores of provisions at Golovliovo, of the German carps that swarmed in the Dubrovino ponds, of the mushrooms that filled the Golovliovo woods, of the fowl that fattened in the Golovliovo poultry-yard.
"Some soup with giblets, or some garden-cress in cream would not be a bad thing," would cross her mind so vividly that her mouth watered.
At night when she tossed about rigid with fright at the least rustling, she would think:
"Yes, at Golovliovo the locks are secure and the watchmen reliable. They keep banging on the steel plates all the time, and you can sleep in perfect safety."
During the day, from sheer lack of human companionship, she was compelled to be silent for hours, and during these spells of compulsory taciturnity, she could not help thinking: "At Golovliovo there are lots of people. There you can talk your troubles away."
In fact, Golovliovo kept constantly recurring to her mind, and the reminiscences of her former estate became a radiant spot in which "comfortable living" concentrated itself.
The more frequently the vision of Golovliovo came back to her mind, the stronger became her will to live again, and the farther the deadly affronts she had recently sustained sank into oblivion.
The Russian woman, by the very nature of her life and bringing-up, too quickly acquiesces in the lot of a hanger-on. Even Arina Petrovna did not escape that fate, though her past, it would seem, should have tended to warn and guard her against such a yoke.
Had she not made a mistake "at that time," had she not portioned out her estate to her sons, had she not trusted Yudushka, she would to this very day have been a harsh, exacting old woman, with everybody under her thumb.
But since the mistake was fatal, the transition from a testy, arbitrary mistress to an obedient, obsequious parasite was only a matter of time.
As long as she still retained remnants of former vigor, the change was not evident, but as soon as she realized that she was irrevocably doomed to helplessness and solitude, all the pusillanimous propensities began to make their way into her soul, and her will, already weakened, became completely shattered.
Yudushka, who used to be received most coldly when he visited Pogorelka, suddenly ceased to be hateful to her.
The old injuries were somehow forgotten, and Arina Petrovna was the first to court intimacy.
It began with begging.
Messengers from Pogorelka would come to Yudushka, at first rarely, but then with increasing frequency.
Now there had been a poor crop of garden-cress at Pogorelka, now the rains had ruined the gherkins, now the turkey-poults had died—there's freedom for you! And then it came to: "Would you mind, my dear friend, ordering some German carps caught in Dubrovino? My late son Pavel never refused them to me."
Yudushka frowned, but thought it best not to show open displeasure.
The carps were an item, to be sure, but he was filled with terror at the thought that his mother might put her curse upon him.
He well remembered her once saying: "I will come to Golovliovo, order the church opened, call in the priest and shout:
'I curse you!'" It was the recollection of this that held him back from many dastardly acts that quite accorded with his nature.