Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
Toward the beginning of June, when everything was more or less satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband's reply to her complaints about her domestic tribulations. He wrote, asking pardon because he had not remembered everything, and promised to come just as soon as he could. This had not yet come to pass; and at the end of June Darya Aleksandrovna was still living alone in the country.
It was midsummer, Sunday, the feast of St. Peter, and Darya Aleksandrovna took all her children to the holy communion. In her intimate philosophical discussions with her sister, her mother, or her friends, she often surprised them by the breadth of her views on religious subjects. A strange religious metempsychosis had taken place in her, and she had come out into a faith which had very little in common with ecclesiastical dogmas. But in her family,—not merely for the sake of example, but in answer to the requirements of her own soul,—she conformed strictly to all the obligations of the church, and now she was blaming herself because her children had not been to communion since the beginning of the year; and, with the full approbation and sympathy of Matriona Filimonovna, she resolved to accomplish this duty.
For several days beforehand she had been occupied in arranging what the children should wear: and now their dresses were arranged, all clean and in order; flutings and flounces were added, new buttons were put on, and ribbons were gathered in knots. Only Tania's frock, which had been intrusted to the English governess to alter, caused Dolly great vexation. The English governess, in making the changes, put the seams in the wrong place, cut the sleeves too short, and spoiled the whole garment. It fitted so badly about the shoulders that it was painful to look at her. But it occurred to Matriona Filimonovna to piece out the waist and to make a cape. The damage was repaired, but they almost had a quarrel with the English governess.
By morning all was in readiness; and about ten o'clock—the hour they had asked the father to give them for the communion—the children, in their best clothes and radiant with joy, were gathered on the steps before the calash waiting for their mother.
Thanks to Matriona Filimonovna's watchful care, the overseer's Buroï had been harnessed to the calash in place of the restive Voron, and Darya Aleksandrovna, who had taken considerable pains with her toilet, appeared in a white muslin gown, and took her seat in the vehicle.
Darya Aleksandrovna had arranged her hair and dressed herself with care and with emotion. In former times she had liked to dress well so as to render herself handsome and attractive; but as she became older, she lost her taste for adornment; she saw how her beauty had faded. But now she once more found satisfaction and a certain emotion in being attractively arrayed. She did not now dress for her own sake, or to enhance her beauty, but so that, as mother of these lovely children, she might not spoil the general impression. And as she cast a final glance at the mirror, she was satisfied with herself. She was beautiful,—not beautiful in the same way as at one time she liked to be at a ball, but beautiful for the purpose which she had now in mind.
There was no one at church except the muzhiks and the household servants; but Darya Aleksandrovna noticed, or thought she noticed, the attention that she and her children attracted as they went along. The children were handsome in their nicely trimmed dresses, and still more charming in their behavior. Alosha, to be sure, was not absolutely satisfactory; he kept turning round, and trying to look at the tails of his little coat, but nevertheless he was wonderfully pretty. Tania behaved like a grown-up lady, and looked after the younger ones. But Lili, the smallest, was fascinating in her naïve wonder at everything that she saw; and it was hard not to smile when, after she had received the communion, she cried out in English, "Please, some more!"
After they got home, the children felt the consciousness that something solemn had taken place, and were very quiet.
All went well in the house, till at lunch Grisha began to whistle, and, what was worse than all, refused to obey the English governess; and he was sent away without any tart. Darya Aleksandrovna would not have allowed any punishment on such a day if she had been there; but she was obliged to uphold the governess, and confirm her in depriving Grisha of the tart. This was a cloud on the general happiness.
Grisha began to cry, saying that Nikolinka also had whistled but they did not punish him, and that he was not crying about the tart,—that was no account,—but because they had not been fair to him. This was very disagreeable; and Darya Aleksandrovna, after a consultation with the English governess, decided to pardon Grisha, and went to get him. But then, as she went through the hall, she saw a scene which brought such joy to her heart, that the tears came to her eyes, and she herself forgave the culprit.
The little fellow was sitting in the drawing-room by the bay-window; near him stood Tania with a plate. Under the pretext of wanting some dessert for her dolls, she had asked the English governess to let her take her portion of the pie to the nursery; but, instead of this, she had taken it to her brother. Grisha, still sobbing over the unfairness of his punishment, was eating the pie, and saying to his sister in the midst of his tears, "Take some too .... we will eat to .... together."
Tania was full of sympathy for her brother, and had the sentiment of having performed a generous action, and the tears stood in her eyes, but she accepted the portion and was eating it.
When they saw their mother, they were scared, but they felt assured, by the expression of her face, that they were doing right; they both laughed, and, with their mouths still full of pie, they began to wipe their laughing lips with their hands, and their shining faces were stained with tears and jam.
"Ye saints! my new white gown! Tania! Grisha!" exclaimed the mother, endeavoring to save her gown, but at the same time smiling at them with a happy, beatific smile.
Afterwards the new frocks were taken off, and the girls put on their old blouses and the boys their old jackets; and the lineïka, or two-seated drozhky, was brought out, and again, to the overseer's annoyance, Buroï was at the pole, so that they might go out after mushrooms, and to have a bath. It is needless to say that enthusiastic shouts and squeals arose in the nursery, and did not cease until they actually got started for their excursion.
They soon filled a basket with mushrooms; even Lili found some of the birch agarics. Always before Miss Hull had found them and pointed them out to her; but now she herself found a huge birch shliupik, and there was a universal cry of enthusiasm:—
"Lili has found a mushroom!"
Afterwards they came to the river, left the horses under the birch trees, and went to the bath-house. The coachman, Terenti, leaving the animals to switch away the flies with their tails, stretched himself out on the grass in the shade of the birches, and smoked his pipe, and listened to the shouts and laughter of the children in the bath-house.
Though it was rather embarrassing to look after all these children, and to keep them from mischief; though it was hard to remember, and not mix up all these stockings, shoes, and trousers for so many different legs, and to untie, unbutton, and then fasten again, so many tapes and buttons,—still Darya Aleksandrovna always took a lively interest in the bathing, looking on it as advantageous for the children, and never feeling happier than when engaged in this occupation. To fit the stockings on those plump little legs; to take the younger ones by the hand, and dip their naked little bodies into the water; to hear their cries, now joyful, now terrified; to see these breathless faces of those splashing cherubimchiks of hers, with their scared or sparkling eyes wide open with excitement,—all this was a perfect delight to her.
When half of the children were dressed, some peasant women, in Sunday attire, on their way to get herbs, came along, and stopped timidly at the bath-house. Matriona Filimonovna called to one of them, in order to give her a sheet and a shirt to dry that had fallen into the water; and Darya Aleksandrovna talked with the women. At first they laughed behind their hands, not understanding her questions; but little by little their courage returned and they began to chatter, and they quite won Darya Aleksandrovna's heart by their sincere admiration of the children.
"Ish tui! ain't she lovely, now? White as sugar!" said one, pointing to Tania, and nodding her head. "But thin...."
"Yes; because she has been ill."
"Vish tui," said still another, pointing to the youngest child.
"It seems you don't take him into the water, do you?"
"No," said Darya Aleksandrovna, proudly. " e is only three months old."
"You don't say so!"[1]
"And have you any children?"
"I've had four; two are alive, a boy and a girl. I weaned the youngest before Lent."
"How old is she?"
"Well, she is going into her second year."
"Why do you nurse her so long?"
"It's our way: three springs." ....
And then the woman asked Darya Aleksandrovna about the birth of her baby: did she have a hard time? where was her husband? would he come often?
Darya Aleksandrovna was reluctant to part with the peasant women, so delightful did she find the conversation with them, so perfectly identical were their interests and hers. And it was more pleasant to her than anything else to see how evidently all these women were filled with admiration because she had so many and such lovely children. The women made Darya Aleksandrovna laugh, and offended Miss Hull for the very reason that she was the cause of their unaccountable laughter. One of the young women gazed with all her eyes at the English governess, who was dressing last; and, when she put on the third petticoat, she could not restrain herself any longer, but burst out laughing:—
"Ish tui! she put on one, and then she put on another, and she has n't got them all on yet!" and they all broke into loud laughter.
- ↑ "Ish tui!"