"Do me a favor and leave me, you goblin! Else I'll scald you with this boiling water.
And I don't want your tea. I don't want anything.
The idea—to reproach me for the piece of bread I eat.
I'll go away from here! By Jesus, I will!"
She banged the door and ran out, leaving Porfiry Vladimirych alone in the dining-room.
Yudushka was completely puzzled.
He began to pour the tea himself, but his hands trembled so violently that he had to call a servant to his assistance.
"No, this is impossible. I must think up something, arrange matters," he whispered, pacing up and down the dining-room in excitement.
But he turned out to be quite unable "to think up something" or "to arrange matters."
His mind was so accustomed to leaping unrestrainedly from one fantastic subject to another, that the simplest problem of workaday reality threw him off his balance.
No sooner did he make an effort to concentrate than a swarm of futile trifles attacked him from all sides and shut actuality out from his consideration.
A strange stupor, a kind of mental and moral an?mia possessed his being.
He was constantly lured away from the hard realities of life to the pleasant softness of phantoms, which he could shift and rearrange at will and without any hindrance whatever.
He spent the entire day in solitude, for Yevpraksia did not make her appearance at dinner or at evening tea. She stayed at the priest's the entire time and returned late in the evening. Yudushka's distress was extreme.
He could not apply himself to any task, he even lost his wonted interest in trifles.
One irrepressible thought tormented him: "I must somehow arrange matters, I must."
He could not engage in idle calculations, nor even say prayers.
He felt that a strange ailment was about to attack him.
Many a time he halted before the window in the hope of concentrating his wavering mind on something, or distracting his attention, but all in vain.
It was early spring. The trees stood naked and the new grass had not yet appeared.
Black fields, spotted here and there with white cakes of snow, stretched far away.
The road was black and boggy and glittered with puddles.
Yudushka saw it all as through a mist.
There was no one round the rain-soaked servants' buildings, though all the doors were ajar. Nor could he reach anyone in the manor-house, although he constantly heard sounds as of doors banging in the distance.
"How fine it would be," he mused, "to turn invisible and overhear what the knaves are saying about me.
Do the rascals appreciate my favors or do they return abuse for my kindness?
You stuff their bellies from morning till night, and still they squeal for more.
Only the other day we opened a barrel of pickled cucumbers, and——" But no sooner did his thoughts embark upon the exploration of some fantastic subject, no sooner did he began to calculate how many pickles the barrel held and how many pickles one man could consume, than the piercing thought of Yevpraksia brought him back to harsh reality and upset all his calculations.
"She went away without so much as saying a word to me," he reflected, while his eyes scanned the distance, endeavoring to sight the priest's house, in which Yevpraksia was in all probability chatting away at that moment.
Dinner was served. Yudushka sat at table alone slowly sipping thin soup (she knew he hated thin soup and had had it cooked watery on purpose).
"I imagine the Father must be distressed by Yevpraksia's unbidden visit," he reflected.
"She's a hearty eater and an extra dish, perhaps a roast, will have to be served for the guest."
His imagination began to run away with him once more, and his mind began to ponder over questions like these: How many spoonfuls of cabbage-soup will Yevpraksia swallow? How many spoonfuls of gruel? What would the Father say to his wife about Yevpraksia's visit? How do they abuse her when alone? All this, the food and the conversation, hovered before his eyes with corporeal vividness.
"I fancy they all guzzle the soup from the same dish.
The idea! A fine place she found to hunt for knick-knacks. Outside it's wet and slushy—just the kind of weather that breeds disease.
Soon she will return, her skirt all dripping with mud, the disgusting creature.
Yes, I must, I must do something!"
All his musings inevitably ended with this phrase.
After dinner, he lay down for his nap, as usual, but tossed from side to side, unable to fall asleep.
Yevpraksia came back after dark and stole into her nook so quietly that he did not observe her entrance.
He had ordered the servants to let him know when she returned, but none of them said a word, as if they had agreed among themselves.
He made another attempt to penetrate into her room, but again found the door locked.
Next morning Yevpraksia made her appearance at tea, but now her words were even more alarming and threatening.
"Dear me, where is my little Volodya?" she began, speaking in a studiously tearful tone.
Porfiry Vladimirych shuddered.
"If I could have the tiniest glimpse of him, if I could see how the darling suffers away from his mother!
But maybe he is dead already."
Yudushka's lips whispered a prayer.
"It isn't the same as at other people's here.
When Palageyushka gave birth to a daughter, they dressed the baby in batiste and silks and made a pink little bed for her. The nurse received more sarafans and frontlets than I ever had.