Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part One/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
Darya Aleksandrovna, surrounded by all sorts of things thrown in confusion about the room, was standing before an open chiffonnier from which she was removing the contents. She had on a dressing-sack, and the thin braids of her once luxuriant and beautiful hair were pinned back. Her face was thin and sunken, and her big eyes, protruding from her pale, worn face, had an expression of terror. When she heard her husband's steps she stopped in her work and, gazing at the door, vainly tried to give her face a stern and forbidding expression. She was conscious that she feared him and that she dreaded the coming interview. She was in the act of doing what she had attempted to do a dozen times during those three days: gathering up her own effects and those of her children to carry to her mother's house; and again she could not bring herself to do it, yet now, as before, she said to herself that things could not remain as they were, that she must take some measures to punish him, to put him to shame, to have some revenge on him, if only for a small part of the anguish that he had caused her. She still kept saying that she should leave him, but she felt that it was impossible; it was impossible because she could not cease to consider him her husband and to love him. Moreover, she confessed that if here in her own home she had barely succeeded in looking after her five children, it would be far worse where she was going with them. In the course of these three days the youngest child had been made ill by eating some poor soup, and the rest had been obliged to go almost dinnerless the night before. She felt that it was impossible to leave, yet for the sake of deceiving herself she was collecting her things and pretending that she was going.
When she saw her husband, she thrust her hands into a drawer of the chiffonnier, as if trying to find something, and looked at him only when he came close up to her. But her face, to which she had intended to give a stern and resolute expression, showed her confusion and anguish of mind.
"Dolly," said he, in a gentle, subdued voice. He hung his head and tried to assume a humble and submissive mien, but nevertheless he was radiant with fresh life and health. She gave him a quick glance which took in his whole figure from head to foot, radiant with life and health.
"Yes, he is happy and contented," she said to herself,.... "but I?.... And this good nature which makes everybody like him so well and praise him is revolting to me! I hate this good nature of his."
Her mouth grew firm, the muscles of her right cheek contracted, she looked pale and nervous.
"What do you want?" she demanded, in a quick, unnatural tone.
"Dolly," he repeated, with a quaver in his voice, "Anna is coming to-day."
"Well, what is that to me? I cannot receive her," she cried.
"Still, it must be done, Dolly."....
"Go away! go away! go away!" she cried, without looking at him, and as if her words were torn from her by physical agony.
Stepan Arkadyevitch might be calm enough as his thoughts turned to his wife, he might have some hope that it would all straighten itself out according to Matve's prediction, and he might be able tranquilly to read his morning paper and drink his coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, when he heard that resigned and hopeless tone of her voice, he breathed hard, something rose in his throat, and his eyes filled with tears.
"My God! What have I done? for God's sake!.... See...."
He could not say another word for the sobs that choked him.
She shut the drawer violently, and looked at him.
"Dolly, what can I say?.... Only one thing: forgive me. Just think! Cannot nine years of my life pay for a single moment, a moment...."
She let her eyes fall, and listened to what he was going to say, as if beseeching him in some way to persuade her of his innocence.
"A single moment of temptation," he ended, and was going to continue; but at that word, Dolly's lips again closed tight as if from physical pain, and again the muscles of her right cheek contracted.
"Go away, go away from here," she cried still more impetuously, "and don't speak to me of your temptations and your wretched conduct."
She attempted to leave the room, but she almost fell, and was obliged to lean upon a chair for support. Oblonsky's face grew melancholy, his lips trembled, and his eyes filled with tears.
"Dolly," said he, almost sobbing, "for God's sake think of the children. They are not to blame; I am the one to blame. Punish me! Tell me how I can atone for my fault. .... I am ready to do anything. I am guilty! No words can tell how guilty I am. But, Dolly, forgive me!"
She sat down. He heard her quick, hard breathing, and his soul was filled with pity for her. She tried several times to speak, but could not utter a word. He waited.
"You think of the children, because you like to play with them; but I think of them, too, and I know what they have lost," said she, repeating one of the phrases that during the last three days she had many times repeated to herself.
She had used the familiar tui (thou), and he looked at her with gratitude, and made a movement as if to take her hand, but she turned from him with abhorrence.
"I have consideration for my children, and therefore I would do all in the world to save them; but I do not myself know how I can best save them: by taking them from their father, or by leaving them with a father who is a libertine,—yes, a libertine!.... Now tell me after this,—this that has happened, can we live together? Is it possible? Tell me, is it possible?" she demanded, raising her voice. "When my husband, the father of my children, has a love-affair with their governess ...."
".... But what is to be done about it? what is to be done?" said he, interrupting with broken voice, not knowing what he said, and letting his head sink lower and lower.
"You are revolting to me, you are insulting," she cried, with increasing anger. "Your tears are water! You never loved me; you have no heart, no honor. You are abominable, revolting, and henceforth you are a stranger to me,—yes, a perfect stranger," and she repeated with spiteful anger this word "stranger" which was so terrible to her own ears.
He looked at her, and the anger expressed in her face alarmed and surprised him. He had no realizing sense that his pity exasperated his wife. She saw that he felt sympathy for her, but not love. "No, she hates me, she will not forgive me," he said to himself.
"This is terrible, terrible!" he cried.
At this moment one of the children in the next room, having apparently had a fall, began to cry. Darya Aleksandrovna listened and her face suddenly softened. She seemed to collect her thoughts for a few seconds, as if she did not know where she was and what was happening to her, then, quickly rising, she hastened to the door.
"At any rate she loves my child," thought Oblonsky, who had noticed the change in her face as she heard the little one's cry. "My child; how then can she hate me?"
"Dolly! just one word more," he said, following her.
"If you follow me, I will call the domestics, the children! Let them all know that you are infamous! I leave this very day, and you may live here with your paramour."
And she went out and slammed the door.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and softly left the room.
"Matve says this can be settled; but how? I don't see the possibility. Akh! akh! how terrible! and how foolishly she shrieked," said he to himself, as he recalled her cry and the words "infamous" and "paramour"!
"Perhaps the chambermaids heard her! horribly foolish, horribly!"
Stepan Arkadyevitch stood by himself a few seconds, rubbed his eyes, sighed, and then, throwing out his chest, left the room.
It was Friday, and in the dining-room the German clock-maker was winding the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered a joke that he had made about this punctilious German clock-maker, to the effect that "he must have been wound up himself for a lifetime for the purpose of winding clocks," and he smiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch loved a good joke. "Perhaps it will straighten itself out. That's a good little phrase! straighten itself out," he thought; "I must tell that."
"Matve!" he shouted; and when the old servant appeared, he said, "Have Marya put the best room in order for Anna Arkadyevna."
"Very well."
Stepan Arkadyevitch took his fur coat, and started down the steps.
"Shall you dine at home?" asked Matve, as he escorted him down.
"That depends. Here, take this if you need to spend anything," said he, taking out a bill of ten rubles from his pocket-book. "That will be enough."
"Whether it is enough or not, it will have to do," said Matve, as he shut the carriage-door and went up the steps.
Meantime, Darya Aleksandrovna, having pacified the child, and knowing by the sound of the carriage that he was gone, came back to her room. This was her sole refuge from the domestic troubles that besieged her as soon as she went out. Even during the short time that she had been in the nursery, the English maid and Matriona Filimonovna asked her all sorts of questions demanding immediate attention, questions which she alone could answer,—what clothes should they put on the children for their walk? should they give them milk? should they send for another cook?
"Akh! leave me alone, leave me alone!" she cried, and, hastening back to the chamber, she sat down in the place where she had been talking with her husband. Then, clasping her thin hands, on whose fingers the rings would scarcely stay, she reviewed the whole conversation.
"He has gone! But has he broken with her?" she asked herself. "Does he still continue to see her? Why did n't I ask him? No, no, we cannot live together. Even if we continue to live in the same house, we are only strangers, strangers forever!" she repeated, with a strong emphasis on the word that hurt her so cruelly. "How I loved him! my God, how I loved him!.... How I loved him! and even now do I not love him? Do I not love him even more than before? that is the most terrible thing," she was beginning to say, but she did not finish out her thought, because Matriona Filimonovna put her head in at the door. "Give orders to send for my brother," said she; "he will get dinner. If you don't, it will be like yesterday, when the children did not have anything to eat for six hours."
"Very good, I will come and give the order. Have you sent for some fresh milk?"
And Darya Aleksandrovna entered into her daily tasks, and in them forgot her sorrow for the time being.
CHAPTER V
Stepan Arkadyevitch had done well at school, by reason of his excellent natural gifts, but he was lazy and mischievous, and consequently had been at the foot of his class; but, in spite of his irregular habits, his low rank in the Service, and his youth, he, nevertheless, held an important salaried position as nachalnik, or president of one of the courts in Moscow. This place he had secured through the good offices of his sister Anna's husband, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch Karenin, who occupied one of the most influential positions in the ministry of which he