When the week is up, I won't say a word.
We'll attend mass, and have a bite, and some tea, and a chat, and we'll take a good look at each other, and then—God speed you!
But, see here, suppose we visit the grave at Voplino again.
It would be best to take leave of your grandmother, you know. Maybe her soul will be of guidance to you."
"I shouldn't mind it," Anninka consented.
"So that's what we'll do. Early in the morning on Wednesday we'll attend mass here, then we'll have a bite before you go, and then my team will take you to Pogorelka. From there to Dvoriky you will go with your own team.
You are a landlady yourself, I dare say. You've got your own horses."
She had to consent.
There is something tremendously powerful in vulgarity. It catches a person unawares, and while he is staring in bewilderment, it has him in its clutches.
When we pass a cesspool we close our noses and try not to breathe. We have to do the same violence to ourselves in an atmosphere saturated with idle chatter and vulgarity, deaden our sight, hearing, smell and taste, overcome all sensibility, turn into stone.
Otherwise we run the danger of suffocation from the miasma of vulgarity.
Anninka understood this, a bit late, perhaps. At any rate, she decided to let the process of her liberation from the Golovliovo captivity take its own course.
She was so thoroughly overcome by Yudushka's irresistible twaddle that she dared not resist when he, like a good relative, embraced her and stroked her back, saying as he did so: "You see, now you are a good little girl."
She recoiled instinctively at the touch of his trembling bony hand creeping over her back, but was held back from any other expression of loathing by the hope that he might release her when the week was up.
Luckily for her Yudushka was not at all squeamish. He perhaps observed her impatient gestures but paid no attention to them.
Evidently he adhered to the theory of sexual relationship epitomized in the saying, "Kiss me, whether you love me or not."
At last came the long expected day of departure.
Anninka rose at about six o'clock, but Yudushka was already up and about.
He had already performed the ceremonial of his morning prayers, and was sauntering from room to room in dressing-gown and slippers without any plan or purpose.
He was visibly agitated, and when he met Anninka looked at her askew.
It was almost full daylight, but the weather was bad.
The sky was covered with massive dark clouds, from which a chilling sleet was drizzling. The road along the hamlet had turned black and was full of puddles—a forecast of roads impassable because of the thaw. A strong south wind was blowing, another indication of thawing weather. The trees had cast off their snowy mantles, and their nude wet tops swayed drearily. The barns in the yard looked black and slimy.
Porfiry Vladimirych led Anninka to the window and pointed out the picture of spring's awakening.
"Does it really pay to go?" he asked. "Would it not be better to stay, after all?"
"Oh no, no!" she cried in a frightened voice. "The bad weather will soon be over."
"Hardly.
If you start now I doubt if you will reach Pogorelka before seven o'clock.
And in this thawing weather you cannot travel at night, you know. So you'll have to spend a night at Pogorelka anyway."
"Oh, no! I'll travel at night. I'll leave at once. I am brave, you know. And wait till one o'clock?
Uncle, darling! Let me leave at once."
"And what would grandma say?
'That's the kind of granddaughter I have!' she'll say. 'She came here, romped about, and wouldn't even come to ask my blessing.'"
Porfiry Vladimirych stopped.
For a while he shifted from one foot to the other, then looked at Anninka, then lowered his eyes.
Apparently he was making up his mind about something.
"Wait, I'll show you something," he said at last, took a folded note from his pocket and gave it to Anninka. "Here, read this."
Anninka read:
"I was praying to-day, and I asked my good, kind God to leave me my good little Anninka.
And the good, kind God said, 'Put your arm around good little Anninka's plump waist and press her close to your heart.'"
"Yes?" he asked turning slightly pale.
"Fi, how nasty!" she answered, looking at him in bewilderment.
Porfiry Vladimirych turned still paler and hissed through his teeth:
"I suppose, we must have hussars!" then crossed himself and shuffled out of the room.
In about fifteen minutes he returned and resumed his jesting as if nothing had happened.
"Well?" he asked. "Are you going to stop at Voplino? Will you go and say good-by to your old granny? Do, my dear, do.
It is very good of you to have thought of your grandma.
Never forget your kinsfolk, my dear, especially those who, in a manner of speaking, were willing to die for us."
They attended the mass and requiem services, ate some kutya in the church, then came home, ate some more kutya and sat down at the tea table.
Porfiry Vladimirych, as if to spite her, sipped his tea more slowly than usual, and dragged his words out wearisomely, discoursing in the intervals between gulps.
About ten o'clock they finished tea, and Anninka said imploringly: