letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and
indignation.
“What’s this? this?” she asked, pointing to the letter.
And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case, was
not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his
wife’s words.
There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when
they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not
succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards
his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying,
defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent
even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face
utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch,
who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual,
good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.
This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that
smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her
characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room.
Since then she had refused to see her husband.
“It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all,” thought Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
“But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to himself in
despair, and found no answer.
Chapter 2
Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He
was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented
of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a
handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the
mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than
himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it
from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for
his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to
conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the
knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never
clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife
must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her
eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no
longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting,
merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent
view. It had turned out quite the other way.
“Oh, it’s awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!” Stepan Arkadyevitch kept
repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. “And how
well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented
and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her
manage the children and the house just as she liked. It’s true it’s bad her
having been a governess in our house. That’s bad! There’s something
common, vulgar, in flirting with one’s governess. But what a governess!”
(He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.)
“But after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the
worst of it all is that she’s already … it seems as if ill-luck would have it so!
Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?”
There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must
live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in
sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now
to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the
dream of daily life.
“Then we shall see,” Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting up
he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the tassels in a
knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he walked
to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet that carried
his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang the bell loudly. It
was at once answered by the appearance of an old friend, his valet, Matvey,
carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was followed by the
barber with all the necessaries for shaving.
“Are there any papers from the office?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch,
taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.
“On the table,” replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his
master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, “They’ve sent
from the carriage-jobbers.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the
looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the looking-glass, it
was clear that they understood one another. Stepan Arkadyevitch’s eyes
asked: “Why do you tell me that? don’t you know?”
Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and gazed
silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.
“I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or
themselves for nothing,” he said. He had obviously prepared the sentence
beforehand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract
attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through, guessing
at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his face
brightened.
“Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow,” he said,
checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a pink
path through his long, curly whiskers.
“Thank God!” said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his
master, realized the significance of this arrival—that is, that Anna
Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a reconciliation
between husband and wife.
“Alone, or with her husband?” inquired Matvey.
Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his
upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the looking-glass.
“Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?”
“Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders.”
“Darya Alexandrovna?” Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.
“Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do what
she tells you.”
“You want to try it on,” Matvey understood, but he only said, “Yes, sir.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be
dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came back
into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.
“Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away. Let
him do—that is you—as he likes,” he said, laughing only with his eyes, and
putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his head on one
side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a good-humored and
rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome face.
“Eh, Matvey?” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s all right, sir; she will come round,” said Matvey.
“Come round?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think so? Who’s there?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, hearing the
rustle of a woman’s dress at the door.
“It’s I,” said a firm, pleasant, woman’s voice, and the stern, pockmarked
face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in at the doorway.
“Well, what is it, Matrona?” queried Stepan Arkadyevitch, going up to
her at the door.
Although Stepan Arkadyevitch was completely in the wrong as regards
his wife, and was conscious of this himself, almost everyone in the house
(even the nurse, Darya Alexandrovna’s chief ally) was on his side.
“Well, what now?” he asked disconsolately.
“Go to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you. She is
suffering so, it’s sad to see her; and besides, everything in the house is
topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the children. Beg her forgiveness,
sir. There’s no help for it! One must take the consequences….”
“But she won’t see me.”
“You do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray to God.”
“Come, that’ll do, you can go,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, blushing
suddenly. “Well now, do dress me.” He turned to Matvey and threw off his
dressing-gown decisively.
Matvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse’s collar, and,
blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious pleasure over
the well-groomed body of his master.
