Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part One/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
Having dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled himself with perfume, straightened the sleeves of his shirt, according to his usual routine put into his various pockets cigarettes, his letter-case, matches, his watch with its double chain and locket, and, shaking out his handkerchief, feeling clean, well-perfumed, healthy, and physically happy in spite of his unhappiness, went out somewhat unsteadily to the dining-room, where his coffee was already waiting for him, and next the coffee his letters and the papers from the court-house.
He read his letters. One was very disagreeable,—from a merchant who was negotiating for the purchase of a forest on his wife's estate. It was necessary to sell this forest, but now nothing could be done about it until a reconciliation was effected with his wife. Most unpleasant it was to think that his pecuniary interests in this approaching transaction were complicated with his reconciliation to his wife. And the thought that he might be influenced by this interest, that his desire for a reconciliation with his wife was on account of the sale of the forest, this thought mortified him.
Having finished his letters Stepan Arkadyevitch took up the papers from the court-house, rapidly turned over the leaves of two deeds, made several notes with a big pencil, and then pushing them away, took his coffee. While he was drinking it he opened a morning journal still damp, and began to read.
Stepan Arkadyevitch subscribed to a liberal paper, and read it. It was not extreme in its views, but advocated those principles which the majority held. And though he was not really interested in science or art or politics, he strongly adhered to such views on all these subjects as the majority, including his paper, advocated, and he changed them only when the majority changed them; or more correctly, he did not change them, but they themselves imperceptibly changed in him.
Stepan Arkadyevitch never chose principles or opinions, but these principles and opinions came to him, just as he never chose the shape of a hat or coat, but took those that others wore. And, living as he did in fashionable society, through the necessity of some mental activity, developing generally in a man's best years, it was as indispensable for him to have views as to have a hat. If there was any reason why he preferred liberal views rather than the conservative direction which many of his circle followed, it was not because he found a liberal tendency more rational, but because he found it better suited to his mode of life.
The liberal party declared that everything in Russia was wretched; and the fact was that Stepan Arkadyevitch had a good many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage was a defunct institution and that it needed to be remodeled, and in fact domestic life afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch very little pleasure, and compelled him to lie, and to pretend what was contrary to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather took it for granted, that religion is only a curb on the barbarous portion of the community, and in fact Stepan Arkadyevitch could not bear the shortest prayer without pain in his knees, and he could not comprehend the necessity of all these awful and high-sounding words about the other world when it is so very pleasant to live in this. Moreover, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a merry jest, was sometimes fond of scandalizing a quiet man by saying that any one who was proud of his origin ought not to stop at Rurik and deny his earliest ancestor—the monkey.
Thus the liberal tendency had become a habit with Stepan Arkadyevitch, and he liked his paper, just as he liked his cigar after dinner, because of the slight haziness which it caused in his brain. He was now reading the leading editorial, which proved that in our day a cry is raised, without reason, over the danger that radicalism may swallow up all the conservative elements, and that government ought to take measures to crush the hydra of revolution, and that, on the contrary, "according to our opinion, the danger lies not in this imaginary hydra of revolution, but in the inertia of traditions which block progress," and so on. He read through another article on finance which made mention of Bentham and Mill, and dropped some sharp hints for the ministry. With his peculiar quickness of comprehension he appreciated each point,—from whom and against whom and on what occasion it was directed; and this as usual afforded him some amusement. But his satisfaction was poisoned by the remembrance of Matriona's advice and of the unfortunate state of his domestic affairs. He read also that Count von Beust was reported to have gone to Wiesbaden, that there was to be no more gray hair; he read about the sale of a light carriage and a young woman's advertisement for a place. But these items did not afford him quiet, ironical satisfaction as usual.
Having finished his paper, his second cup of coffee, and a buttered roll, he stood up, shook the crumbs of the roll from his waistcoat, and, filling his broad chest, smiled joyfully, not because there was anything extraordinarily pleasant in his mind, but the joyful smile was caused by good digestion.
But this joyful smile immediately brought back the memory of everything, and he sank into thought.
The voices of two children—Stepan Arkadyevitch knew they were Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tania, his eldest daughter—were now heard behind the door. They were dragging something and upset it.
"I told you not to put passengers on top," cried the little girl in English.—"Now pick them up."
"Everything is in confusion," said Stepan Arkadyevitch to himself. "Now here the children are, running wild!" And going to the door, he called to them. They dropped the little box which served them for a railway-train, and ran to their father.
The little girl, her father's favorite, ran in boldly, threw her arms around his neck and laughingly hugged him, enjoying as usual the odor which exhaled from his whiskers. Then kissing his face, reddened by his bending position and beaming with tenderness, the little girl unclasped her hands and wanted to run away again, but her father held her back.
"What is mamma doing?" he asked, caressing his daughter's smooth, soft neck. "How are you?" he added, smiling at the boy, who stood saluting him. He acknowledged he had less love for the little boy, yet he tried to be impartial. But the boy felt the difference, and did not smile back in reply to his father's chilling smile.
"Mamma? She's up," answered the little girl.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. "Of course she has spent another sleepless night," he said to himself.
"Well, is she cheerful?"
The little girl knew that there was trouble between her father and her mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father ought to know it, and that he was dissembling when he questioned her so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He instantly perceived it and also turned red.
"I don't know," she said; "she told me that we were not to have lessons this morning but were to go with Miss Hull over to grandmother's."
"Well, then, run along, Tanchurotchka moya.—Oh, yes, wait," said he, still detaining her and smoothing her delicate little hand.
He took down from the mantelpiece a box of candy which he had placed there the day before, and gave her two pieces, selecting her favorite chocolate and vanilla.
"For Grisha?" she asked, pointing to the chocolate.
"Yes, yes;" and still smoothing her soft shoulder he kissed her on the neck and hair, and let her go.
"The carriage is at the door," said Matve, and he added, "A woman is here—a petitioner."
"Has she been here long?" demanded Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Half an hour."
"How many times have you been told to announce visitors instantly?"
"I had to get your coffee ready," replied Matve in his kind, rough voice, at which it was impossible to take offense.
"Well, show her in quick!" said Oblonsky, frowning with annoyance.
The petitioner, the wife of Captain Kalanin, asked some impossible and nonsensical favor; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, according to his custom, gave her a comfortable seat, listened to her story without interrupting, and then gave her careful advice to whom and how to make her application, and in lively and eloquent style wrote, in his big, scrawling, but handsome and legible hand, a note to the person who might aid her. Having dismissed the captain's wife, Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stood for a moment trying to remember whether he had forgotten anything. He seemed to have forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget—his wife.
"Ah, yes!"
He dropped his head, and a gloomy expression came over his handsome face.
"To go or not to go," he said to himself; and an inner voice told him that it was not advisable to go, that there was no way out of it except through deception, that to straighten, to smooth out, their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive and lovable again, or to make him an old man insensible to passion. Nothing but deception and lying could come of it, and deception and lying were opposed to his nature.
"But it must be done sometime; it can't remain so always," he said, striving to gain courage. He straightened himself, took out a cigarette, lighted it, puffed at it two or three times, threw it into a mother-of-pearl-lined ash-tray, went with quick steps through the sitting-room, and opened the door into his wife's sleeping-room.