"I wish the orphans were here," she moaned.
"Well, much need you have of the orphans here.
Oh, mother, mother!
How is it all of a sudden you—really!
Just a little bad turn, and at once you are ready to give up the ship.
We'll attend to it all. We'll send a special messenger to the orphans and we'll do everything else in due time.
Now, what's the hurry, really? We are going to live yet, yes indeed we are. And we'll have a fine time of it, too.
Wait till summer is here, we'll both of us go to the woods to pick mushrooms, and raspberries, and nice juicy black currants.
Or else, we'll go to Dubrovino to catch German carps.
We'll bring out the horse and carriage, get into it, and one, two, three—there we go. Nicely and easily."
"I wish the orphans were here," repeated Arina Petrovna in anguish.
"We'll bring the orphans, too.
Give us time. We'll call them together, all of them.
We'll all be here and sit by you.
You will be the brood-hen and we'll be your chicks.
We'll have it all, if you behave.
Now you are a naughty girl, because you went and took sick.
That's the kind of mischief you're up to. My, my! Instead of being good and serving as an example for others, look what you're doing.
That's bad, my dear, very bad."
But no matter how hard Porfiry Vladimirych tried to cheer up his mother dear with banter, her strength waned from hour to hour.
A messenger was dispatched to town to fetch a doctor, and since the patient persisted in moaning and calling the orphans, Yudushka in his own hand wrote a letter to Anninka and Lubinka in which he compared his and their conduct, called himself a Christian and them ungrateful.
At night the doctor arrived, but it was too late.
Arina Petrovna's fate was sealed.
At about four o'clock in the morning the death agony set in and at six Porfiry Vladimirych was kneeling at his mother's bed wailing:
"Mother dear! My friend! Give me your blessing!"
But Arina Petrovna did not hear him.
Her wide-open eyes stared dimly into space as if she were trying to understand something and could not.
Yudushka, too, did not understand.
He did not understand that the yawning grave was to carry off the last creature that linked him to the living world.
With his usual bustle he delved into the mass of trifles and details that were incident upon the ceremonial of burial.
He had requiems chanted, ordered memorial masses for the future, discussed matters with the priest, hurried from room to room with his shambling gait. Every now and then he peeped into the dining-room where the deceased lay, crossed himself, lifted his hands heavenward, and late at night stole quietly to the door to listen to the sexton's monotonous reading of the Psalms.
He was pleasantly surprised that his expenses upon the occasions would be very slight, for Arina Petrovna long before her death had put away a sum of money for her burial and itemized in detail the various expenditures.
Having buried his mother, Porfiry Vladimirych at once began to familiarize himself with her effects.
Examining the papers he found about a dozen various wills (in one of them she called him "undutiful"); but all of them had been written when Arina Petrovna was still the domineering, despotic mistress, and were incomplete—in the form of tentative drafts.
So Yudushka was quite pleased that he had no need to play foul in order to declare himself the sole legitimate heir to his mother's property.
The latter consisted of a capital of fifteen thousand rubles and of a scanty movable estate which included the famous coach that had nearly become the cause of dissension between mother and son.
Arina Petrovna kept her own accounts quite separate and distinct from those of her wards, so that one could see at a glance what belonged to her and what to the orphans.
Yudushka lost no time in declaring himself heir at the proper legal places. He sealed the papers bearing on the guardianship, gave the servants his mother's scanty wardrobe, and sent the coach and two cows to Golovliovo, which were placed in the inventory under the heading "mine." Then he had the last requiem performed and went his way.
"Wait for the owners," he told the people gathered in the hallway to see him off. "If they come, they'll be welcome; if they don't—just as they please.
For my part, I did all I could. I straightened out the guardianship accounts and hid nothing. Everything was done in plain view, in front of everybody.
The money that mother left belongs to me legally. The coach and the two cows that I sent to Golovliovo are mine by law.
Maybe some of my property is left here. However, I won't insist on it. God Himself commands us to give to orphans.
I am sorry to have lost mother, she was a good old woman, a kindly soul.
Oh, mother dear, it was not right of you, darling, to have left us poor orphans.
But if it had pleased God to take you, it befits us to submit to His holy will.
May, at least, your soul rejoice in heaven, and as for us—well, we are not to be considered."
The first death was soon followed by another.
Yudushka's attitude toward his son's fate was quite puzzling.
Since he did not receive newspapers and was not in correspondence with anybody, he could not learn anything of the trial in which Petenka figured.
And he hardly wished to.