3
1675 Words
When he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on himself,
pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his cigarettes,
pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and seals, and shaking out
his handkerchief, feeling himself clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease,
in spite of his unhappiness, he walked with a slight swing on each leg into the
dining-room, where coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee,
letters and papers from the office.
He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was
buying a forest on his wife’s property. To sell this forest was absolutely essential;
but at present, until he was reconciled with his wife, the subject could not be
discussed. The most unpleasant thing of all was that his pecuniary interests
should in this way enter into the question of his reconciliation with his wife. And
the idea that he might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a
reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the forest—that idea hurt
him.
When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the officepapers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of business, made a few
notes with a big pencil, and pushing away the papers, turned to his coffee. As he
sipped his coffee, he opened a still damp morning paper, and began reading it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one,
but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that
science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those
views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper,
and he only changed them when the majority changed them—or, more strictly
speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves
within him.
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views;
these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did
not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being
worn. And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily
developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have
views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his
preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his
circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its
being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in
Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts
and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an
institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life
certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into
lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said,
or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check
the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get
through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could
never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language
about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with
all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain
man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at
Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so
Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his
newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his
brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite
senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow
up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to
crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, "in our opinion the danger
lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of
traditionalism clogging progress," etc., etc. He read another article, too, a
financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some
innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he
caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what
ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain
satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona
Philimonovna’s advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read,
too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need
have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person
seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a
quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee
and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat;
and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was
anything particularly agreeable in his mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a
good digestion.
But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew
thoughtful.
Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of Grisha,
his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard outside the door. They
were carrying something, and dropped it.
"I told you not to sit passengers on the roof," said the little girl in English;
"there, pick them up!"
"Everything’s in confusion," thought Stepan Arkadyevitch; "there are the
children running about by themselves." And going to the door, he called them.
They threw down the box, that represented a train, and came in to their father.
The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him, and hung
laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell of scent that came
from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his face, which was flushed from
his stooping posture and beaming with tenderness, loosed her hands, and was
about to run away again; but her father held her back.
"How is mamma?" he asked, passing his hand over his daughter’s smooth,
soft little neck. "Good morning," he said, smiling to the boy, who had come up to
greet him. He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be
fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with a smile to his father’s chilly
smile.
"Mamma? She is up," answered the girl.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. "That means that she’s not slept again all
night," he thought.
"Well, is she cheerful?"
The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and mother,
and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father must be aware of
this, and that he was pretending when he asked about it so lightly. And she
blushed for her father. He at once perceived it, and blushed too.
"I don’t know," she said. "She did not say we must do our lessons, but she
said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma’s."
"Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though," he said, still
holding her and stroking her soft little hand.
He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little box of
sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.
"For Grisha?" said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.
"Yes, yes." And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her on the roots
of her hair and neck, and let her go.
"The carriage is ready," said Matvey; "but there’s some one to see you with
a petition."
"Been here long?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"Half an hour."
"How many times have I told you to tell me at once?"
"One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least," said Matvey, in the
affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be angry.
"Well, show the person up at once," said Oblonsky, frowning with vexation.
The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a request
impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he generally did,
made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively without interrupting her, and
gave her detailed advice as to how and to whom to apply, and even wrote her, in
his large, sprawling, good and legible hand, a confident and fluent little note to a
personage who might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff captain’s
widow, Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he
had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what he
wanted to forget—his wife.
"Ah, yes!" He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a harassed
expression. "To go, or not to go!" he said to himself; and an inner voice told him
he must not go, that nothing could come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set
right their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her
attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old man, not
susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and
deceit and lying were opposed to his nature.
"It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this," he said, trying to
give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs
at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through
the drawing room, and opened the other door into his wife’s bedroom.
- Writer
