2
1225 Words
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 Elisa 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 Elisa 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—do 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 every one 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 topsyturvy. 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 wellgroomed body of his master.
- Writer
