It was after the trial, when sentence had been pronounced.
He wrote he had lost three thousand rubles in cards and you would not give him the money.
But you are rich, uncle, aren't you?"
"Ah, my dear, it's easy to count money in another man's pocket.
Sometimes we think a man has mountains of gold, and when you come closer you see he has barely enough for oil and a candle—not for himself—for God."
"Well, then, we are richer than you.
We gave some of our own money and took up a collection among our gentlemen friends. We scraped six hundred rubles together and sent it to him."
"What do you mean 'gentlemen friends?'"
"Oh, uncle, we are actresses, you know. Didn't you yourself suggest that I purify myself?"
"I don't like it when you speak that way."
"What can you do?
Whether you like it or not, you can't undo what has been done.
According to you, God is in that, too."
"Don't blaspheme at least.
You may say anything you want, but don't blaspheme. I won't stand for it.
Where did you send the money to?"
"I don't remember.
To a little town of some sort. He wrote us the name."
"I didn't know.
If there was money, I should have gotten it after his death.
It is not possible that he spent it all at once.
Well, I don't know, I didn't get any.
I suppose the jailers and guards were on to it."
"I'm not asking for it, uncle. I just mentioned it while we were on the subject.
It's awful, uncle, for a man to perish on account of three thousand rubles."
"It wasn't all on account of the three thousand.
Haven't you something else to say than to keep on repeating 'three thousand, three thousand?'
But God——"
Yudushka had got his cue and was about to explain in detail how God—Providence—by unseen ways—and all that, but Anninka unceremoniously yawned and said:
"Oh, uncle, how boring it is here."
This time Porfiry Vladimirych was truly offended and became silent.
For a long time they both paced up and down the dining room. Anninka yawned, Porfiry Vladimirych crossed himself at every step.
At last the carriage was announced and the usual comedy of seeing relations off began.
Golovliov put on his fur coat, went out on the porch, kissed Anninka and shouted to the servants, "Her feet! Wrap up her feet well!" and "What about the blankets, have you taken the blankets along? See you don't forget them!" all the while making signs of the cross in the air.
Anninka visited her grandmother's grave, asked the priest to say the mass, and when the choir began to chant the "Eternal memory," she cried a bit.
The background of the ceremony was rather sad.
The church near which Arina Petrovna had been buried was of the poorest kind. In some places the plaster had fallen off its walls and exposed large patches of brick. The sound of the bells was feeble and hollow, the priest's robe was threadbare.
The cemetery was snowed under, so that the path to the grave had to be shovelled clear. No monument had yet been placed. Nothing but a plain white cross, even without an inscription, marked the grave.
The cemetery was in a lonely spot removed from any dwelling. Not far from the church stood the houses of the priest and the church officials and all around the cheerless, snow-covered plains stretched as far as the eye could reach. Here and there one could see brushwood jutting out from the snow.
A sharp March wind was sweeping over the churchyard, wafting away the chanting of the churchmen and lashing the priest's robe.
"Who would have thought, madam, that the richest landlady in the district would rest here under this modest cross in our poor parish?" said the priest when he was through with the requiem.
At these words Anninka cried again.
She recalled the poet's line: "Where feasts once reigned a hearse now stands!" And the tears kept streaming down her cheeks.
Then she went to the priest's house, had tea there, and talked with his wife. Another line came back to her: "And pallid death on all doth stare," and again she wept, long and bitterly.
Nobody had notified the people at Pogorelka that the young lady was coming, so that the rooms were not even heated.
Anninka, with her fur coat on, walked through all the rooms, remaining a moment in grandmother's bedroom and the ikon room.
In the former she found a bedstead with a heap of soiled, greasy pillows, some without pillow-cases.
Scraps of paper lay on the desk in disorder, the floor had not been swept and a thick coat of dust covered everything.
Anninka sat down in the easy-chair where her grandmother used to sit, and became lost in thought.
At first came up reminiscences of the past; then they were crowded out by images of the present.