Part One: Chapter 4

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Darya Alexandrovna, in a dressing jacket, and with her nowscanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up withhairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face andlarge, startled eyes, which looked prominent from the thinness ofher face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of thingsscattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from whichshe was taking something. Hearing her husband's steps, shestopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to giveher features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt shewas afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She wasjust attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten timesalready in these last three days--to sort out the children'sthings and her own, so as to take them to her mother's--andagain she could not bring herself to do this; but now again, aseach time before, she kept saying to herself, "that things cannotgo on like this, that she must take some step" to punish him, puthim to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of thesuffering he had caused her. She still continued to tellherself that she should leave him, but she was conscious thatthis was impossible; it was impossible because she could not getout of the habit of regarding him as her husband and loving him.Besides this, she realized that if even here in her own house shecould hardly manage to look after her five children properly,they would be still worse off where she was going with them all.As it was, even in the course of these three days, the youngestwas unwell from being given unwholesome soup, and the others hadalmost gone without their dinner the day before. She wasconscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheatingherself, she went on all the same sorting out her things andpretending she was going.

　　Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of thebureau as though looking for something, and only looked round athim when he had come quite up to her. But her face, to which shetried to give a severe and resolute expression, betrayedbewilderment and suffering.

　　"Dolly!" he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his headtowards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, butfor all that he was radiant with freshness and health. In arapid glance she scanned his figure that beamed with health andfreshness. "Yes, he is happy and content!" she thought; "whileI.... And that disgusting good nature, which every one likes himfor and praises--I hate that good nature of his," she thought.Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek contracted on theright side of her pale, nervous face.

　　"What do you want?" she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.

　　"Dolly!" he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. "Anna iscoming today."

　　"Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.

　　"But you must, really, Dolly..."

　　"Go away, go away, go away!" she shrieked, not looking at him, asthough this shriek were called up by physical pain.

　　Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, hecould hope that she would come round, as Matvey expressed it, andcould quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee;but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone ofher voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, there was acatch in his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes beganto shine with tears.

　　"My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God's sake!.... Youknow...." He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

　　She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

　　"Dolly, what can I say?.... One thing: forgive...Remember,cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant...."

　　She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say,as it were beseeching him in some way or other to make herbelieve differently.

　　"--instant of passion?" he said, and would have gone on, but atthat word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffenedagain, and again the muscles of her right cheek worked.

　　"Go away, go out of the room!" she shrieked still more shrilly,"and don't talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness."

　　She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of achair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled,his eyes were swimming with tears.

　　"Dolly!" he said, sobbing now; "for mercy's sake, think of thechildren; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me,make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to doanything! I am to blame, no words can express how much I am toblame! But, Dolly, forgive me!"

　　She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and hewas unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to beginto speak, but could not. He waited.

　　"You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but Iremember them, and know that this means their ruin," shesaid--obviously one of the phrases she had more than oncerepeated to herself in the course of the last few days.

　　She had called him "Stiva," and he glanced at her with gratitude,and moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him withaversion.

　　"I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anythingin the world to save them, but I don't myself know how to savethem. by taking them away from their father, or by leaving themwith a vicious father--yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, afterwhat...has happened, can we live together? Is that possible?Tell me, eh, is it possible?" she repeated, raising her voice,"after my husband, the father of my children, enters into alove affair with his own children's governess?"

　　"But what could I do? what could I do?" he kept saying in apitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sanklower and lower.

　　"You are loathsome to me, repulsive!" she shrieked, getting moreand more heated. "Your tears mean nothing! You have never lovedme; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You arehateful to me, disgusting, a stranger--yes, a completestranger!" With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terribleto herself--stranger.

　　He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed andamazed him. He did not understand how his pity for herexasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love."No, she hates me. She will not forgive me," he thought.

　　"It is awful! awful!" he said.

　　At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably ithad fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her facesuddenly softened.

　　She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, asthough she did not know where she was, and what she was doing,and getting up rapidly, she moved towards the door.

　　"Well, she loves my child," he thought, noticing the change ofher face at the child's cry, "my child: how can she hate me?"

　　"Dolly, one word more," he said, following her.

　　"If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children!They may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once,and you may live here with your mistress!"

　　And she went out, slamming the door.

　　Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subduedtread walked out of the room. "Matvey says she will come round;but how? I don't see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, howhorrible it is! And how vulgarly she shouted," he said tohimself, remembering her shriek and the words--"scoundrel" and"mistress." "And very likely the maids were listening! Horriblyvulgar! horrible!" Stepan Arkadyevitch stood a few secondsalone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of theroom.

　　It was Friday, and in the dining room the German watchmaker waswinding up the clock. Stepan Arkadyevitch remembered his jokeabout this punctual, bald watchmaker, "that the German was woundup for a whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches," and hesmiled. Stepan Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: "And maybe shewill come round! That's a good expression, 'come round,'" hethought. "I must repeat that."

　　"Matvey!" he shouted. "Arrange everything with Darya in thesitting room for Anna Arkadyevna," he said to Matvey when he camein.

　　"Yes, sir."

　　Stepan Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto thesteps.

　　"You won't dine at home?" said Matvey, seeing him off.

　　"That's as it happens. But here's for the housekeeping," hesaid, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. "That'll beenough."

　　"Enough or not enough, we must make it do," said Matvey, slammingthe carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.

　　Darya Alexandrovna meanwhile having pacified the child, andknowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, wentback again to her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from thehousehold cares which crowded upon her directly she went out fromit. Even now, in the short time she had been in the nursery, theEnglish governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded inputting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay,and which only she could answer: "What were the children to puton for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not a newcook be sent for?"

　　"Ah, let me alone, let me alone!" she said, and going back to herbedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat whentalking to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with therings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to goingover in her memory all the conversation. "He has gone! But hashe broken it off with her?" she thought. "Can it be he sees her?Why didn't I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible.Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers--strangersforever! She repeated again with special significance the wordso dreadful to her. "And how I loved him! my God, how I lovedhim!.... How I loved him! And now don't I love him? Don't Ilove him more than before? The most horrible thing is," shebegan, but did not finish her thought, because MatronaPhilimonovna put her head in at the door.

　　"Let us send for my brother," she said; "he can get a dinneranyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat tillsix again, like yesterday."

　　"Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did yousend for some new milk?"

　　And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, anddrowned her grief in them for a time.