Anna Karenina
absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation yesterday was
about.
“I think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts to
this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that
interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain
degree of advancement. Possibly you are right too, that action founded
on material interest would be more desirable. You are altogether, as
the French say, too _primesautière_ a nature; you must have intense,
energetic action, or nothing.”
Levin listened to his brother and did not understand a single word, and
did not want to understand. He was only afraid his brother might ask
him some question which would make it evident he had not heard.
“So that’s what I think it is, my dear boy,” said Sergey Ivanovitch,
touching him on the shoulder.
“Yes, of course. But, do you know? I won’t stand up for my view,”
answered Levin, with a guilty, childlike smile. “Whatever was it I was
disputing about?” he wondered. “Of course, I’m right, and he’s right,
and it’s all first-rate. Only I must go round to the counting house and
see to things.” He got up, stretching and smiling. Sergey Ivanovitch
smiled too.
“If you want to go out, let’s go together,” he said, disinclined to be
parted from his brother, who seemed positively breathing out freshness
and energy. “Come, we’ll go to the counting house, if you have to go
there.”
“Oh, heavens!” shouted Levin, so loudly that Sergey Ivanovitch was
quite frightened.
“What, what is the matter?”
“How’s Agafea Mihalovna’s hand?” said Levin, slapping himself on the
head. “I’d positively forgotten her even.”
“It’s much better.”
“Well, anyway I’ll run down to her. Before you’ve time to get your hat
on, I’ll be back.”
And he ran downstairs, clattering with his heels like a spring-rattle.
Chapter 7
Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural
and essential official duty—so familiar to everyone in the government
service, though incomprehensible to outsiders—that duty, but for which
one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of
his existence—and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken
all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his
days at the races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the
children had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much as
possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been her
dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold. It was
nearly forty miles from Levin’s Pokrovskoe. The big, old house at
Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old prince had had the
lodge done up and built on to. Twenty years before, when Dolly was a
child, the lodge had been roomy and comfortable, though, like all
lodges, it stood sideways to the entrance avenue, and faced the south.
But by now this lodge was old and dilapidated. When Stepan Arkadyevitch
had gone down in the spring to sell the forest, Dolly had begged him to
look over the house and order what repairs might be needed. Stepan
Arkadyevitch, like all unfaithful husbands indeed, was very solicitous
for his wife’s comfort, and he had himself looked over the house, and
given instructions about everything that he considered necessary. What
he considered necessary was to cover all the furniture with cretonne,
to put up curtains, to weed the garden, to make a little bridge on the
pond, and to plant flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters,
the want of which greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later on.
In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s efforts to be an attentive father and
husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and
children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in accordance with them
that he shaped his life. On his return to Moscow he informed his wife
with pride that everything was ready, that the house would be a little
paradise, and that he advised her most certainly to go. His wife’s
staying away in the country was very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch
from every point of view: it did the children good, it decreased
expenses, and it left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded
staying in the country for the summer as essential for the children,
especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in regaining her
strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means of escaping the
petty humiliations, the little bills owing to the wood-merchant, the
fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her miserable. Besides this, she
was pleased to go away to the country because she was dreaming of
getting her sister Kitty to stay with her there. Kitty was to be back
from abroad in the middle of the summer, and bathing had been
prescribed for her. Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to
spend the summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations
for both of them.
The first days of her existence in the country were very hard for
Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child, and the impression
she had retained of it was that the country was a refuge from all the
unpleasantness of the town, that life there, though not luxurious—Dolly
could easily make up her mind to that—was cheap and comfortable; that
there was plenty of everything, everything was cheap, everything could
be got, and children were happy. But now coming to the country as the
head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she
had fancied.
The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain, and in the
night the water came through in the corridor and in the nursery, so
that the beds had to be carried into the drawing-room. There was no
kitchen maid to be found; of the nine cows, it appeared from the words
of the cowherd-woman that some were about to calve, others had just
calved, others were old, and others again hard-uddered; there was not
butter nor milk enough even for the children. There were no eggs. They
could get no fowls; old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for
roasting and boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the floors—all
were potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the question, because one of the
horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts. There was no place where
they could bathe; the whole of the river-bank was trampled by the
cattle and open to the road; even walks were impossible, for the cattle
strayed into the garden through a gap in the hedge, and there was one
terrible bull, who bellowed, and therefore might be expected to gore
somebody. There were no proper cupboards for their clothes; what
cupboards there were either would not close at all, or burst open
whenever anyone passed by them. There were no pots and pans; there was
no copper in the washhouse, nor even an ironing-board in the maids’
room.
Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of view,
fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at first in despair. She
exerted herself to the utmost, felt the hopelessness of the position,
and was every instant suppressing the tears that started into her eyes.
The bailiff, a retired quartermaster, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had
taken a fancy to and had appointed bailiff on account of his handsome
and respectful appearance as a hall-porter, showed no sympathy for
Darya Alexandrovna’s woes. He said respectfully, “nothing can be done,
the peasants are such a wretched lot,” and did nothing to help her.
The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys’ household, as in
all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and
useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured
her that everything would _come round_ (it was her expression, and
Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded
to set to work herself. She had immediately made friends with the
bailiff’s wife, and on the very first day she drank tea with her and
the bailiff under the acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of
the position. Very soon Marya Philimonovna had established her club, so
to say, under the acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting
of the bailiff’s wife, the village elder, and the counting-house clerk,
that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away, and in
a week’s time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended,
a kitchen maid was found—a crony of the village elder’s—hens were
bought, the cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up
with stakes, the carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the
cupboards, and they ceased to burst open spontaneously, and an
ironing-board covered with army cloth was placed across from the arm of
a chair to the chest of drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in
the maids’ room.
“Just see, now, and you were quite in despair,” said Marya
Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up a
bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Darya
Alexandrovna began to realize, if only in part, her expectations, if
not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the country.
Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could not be. One would
fall ill, another might easily become so, a third would be without
something necessary, a fourth would show symptoms of a bad disposition,
and so on. Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace. But these cares
and anxieties were for Darya Alexandrovna the sole happiness possible.
Had it not been for them, she would have been left alone to brood over
her husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was for
the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and
the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children—the
children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her
sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like
gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain,
nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing
but the joy, nothing but gold.
Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more
frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would make
every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that
she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could
not help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of
them in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to
be met with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them.
Chapter 8
Towards the end of May, when everything had been more or less
satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband’s answer to her
complaints of the disorganized state of things in the country. He wrote
begging her forgiveness for not having thought of everything before,
and promised to come down at the first chance. This chance did not
present itself, and till the beginning of June Darya Alexandrovna
stayed alone in the country.
On the Sunday in St. Peter’s week Darya Alexandrovna drove to mass for
all her children to take the sacrament. Darya Alexandrovna in her
intimate, philosophical talks with her sister, her mother, and her
friends very often astonished them by the freedom of her views in
regard to religion. She had a strange religion of transmigration of
souls all her own, in which she had firm faith, troubling herself
little about the dogmas of the Church. But in her family she was strict
in carrying out all that was required by the Church—and not merely in
order to set an example, but with all her heart in it. The fact that
the children had not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried
her extremely, and with the full approval and sympathy of Marya
Philimonovna she decided that this should take place now in the summer.