When she saw her husband, she lowered her hands into a drawer as if she was searching for something, and turned to look at him only when he had come right up close. But her face, to which she had wanted to impart a stern and resolute expression, was a picture of bewilderment and suffering.
‘Dolly!’ he said in a quiet, timid voice. He drew his head into his shoulders in an attempt to look pitiful and meek, but he still radiated health and vigour.
She ran a quick eye from top to toe over this figure radiant with health and vigour. ‘Yes, he is happy and contented!’ she thought, ‘but what about me? … And that ghastly kind-heartedness which everyone loves and admires about him; I hate that kind-heartedness of his,’ she thought. She pursed her lips, and a muscle in her cheek began to twitch on the right side of her pale, tense face.
‘What do you want?*’ she asked in an abrupt, rasping voice that was not hers.
‘Dolly!’ he repeated with a trembling in his voice. ‘Anna is arriving today.’
‘Well, what has that got to do with me? I can’t receive her!’ she cried.
‘But we must nevertheless, Dolly …’
‘Go away, go away, go away!’ she cried without looking at him, as if her cry was prompted by physical pain.
Stepan Arkadyich could be calm when he thought about his wife, he could hope that everything would shape up, as Matvey had put it, and he could calmly read his newspaper and drink his coffee; but when he saw her worn-out, suffering face and heard that submissive, despairing sound in her voice, he gasped, a lump came into his throat, and his eyes glistened with tears.
‘Heavens, what have I done! Dolly! For God’s sake! … After all …’ He could not continue, as his throat was choked with sobs.
She slammed the drawer shut and glanced at him.
‘Dolly, what can I say? … Only one thing: forgive me, forgive me … Think back: surely nine years can atone for moments, moments …’
She stood listening with her eyes cast down, waiting to hear what he had to say, as if entreating him to dissuade her somehow …
‘Moments … moments of infatuation …’ he managed to utter, and was about to go on, but her lips pursed at the mention of that word as if in physical pain, and the muscle in her cheek on the right side of her face started twitching again.
‘Go away, go away from here!’ she cried even more shrilly, ‘and don’t talk to me about your infatuations, about your vile behaviour!’
She wanted to walk away but was unsteady on her feet, and gripped the back of a chair for support. His face expanded, his lips swelled, and his eyes filled with tears.
‘Dolly!’ he said, sobbing. ‘For God’s sake, think about the children; they are not to blame. I’m the one to blame, so punish me, order me to atone for my sin. I am ready to do whatever I can! I am guilty, there are no words to express how guilty I am! But forgive me, Dolly!’
She sat down. He heard her loud, heavy breathing, and felt unbelievably sorry for her. She tried to begin saying something several times, but could not. He waited.
‘You think about the children* when you want to play with them, Stiva, but I always think about them, and know they are ruined now,’ she said, clearly producing one of the phrases she had been saying to herself over the last three days.
She had reverted to the familiar form of address with him, and he looked at her with gratitude and made a move to take her hand, but she shrank from him in disgust.
‘I do think about the children, and therefore I would do anything in the world to save them; but I do not know myself how to save them: whether by taking them away from their father, or leaving them with a father who is depraved—yes, a father who is depraved … Well, you tell me, after … what has happened, is it really possible for us to live together? Is it really possible? Tell me, do you think it is really possible?’ she repeated, raising her voice. ‘After my husband, the father of my children, has had an affair with the governess of his children …’
‘Well what … Well what is to be done then?’ he said in a pitiful voice, not knowing himself what he was saying, hanging his head lower and lower.
‘You are loathsome and disgusting to me!’ she shouted, growing more and more angry. ‘Your tears are just water! You never loved me; you have no heart, no sense of honour! You are a vile, loathsome stranger to me, yes, a stranger!’ She pronounced this word stranger she found so terrible with pain and fury.
He looked at her, and the fury expressed on her face frightened and surprised him. He did not understand that his pity for her irritated her. She could see he had pity for her, but not love. ‘No, she hates me. She won’t forgive me,’ he thought.
‘This is awful! Awful!’ he said.
A child cried out at that moment in another room, probably after falling down; Darya Alexandrovna listened out and her face suddenly softened.
It clearly took her several seconds to collect herself, as if she did not know where she was or what she should do, and then she got up quickly and headed for the door.
‘She does love my child, though,’ he thought, noticing how her face had changed when the child cried out, ‘my child; so how can she hate me?’
‘Dolly, just one more word,’ he said, following her.
‘If you come after me, I will call the servants and the children! Let everyone know that you are a scoundrel! I am leaving today, and you can live here with your mistress!’
And she went out, slamming the door.
Stepan Arkadyich sighed, wiped his face, and walked slowly out of the room. ‘Matvey says: things will shape up, but how? I can’t even see any possibility. Oh, oh, what a nightmare! And her shouting was so tawdry,’ he said to himself, remembering her screaming and the words: scoundrel and mistress. ‘And maybe the maids heard! It was awfully tawdry, it really was.’ Stepan Arkadyich stood alone for a few seconds, wiped his eyes and sighed, then straightened himself up and left the room.
It was Friday, and the German clockmaker was winding up the clock in the dining room. Stepan Arkadyich remembered his joke about this punctilious bald clockmaker, which was that the German ‘had himself been wound up his whole life so that he could wind up clocks’, and he smiled. Stepan Arkadyich loved a good joke. ‘Well, maybe things will shape up! That’s a good little phrase: shape up,’ he thought. ‘I’ll have to tell people that one.’
‘Matvey!’ he shouted. ‘If you and Marya could get everything ready in the sitting room for Anna Arkadyevna,’ he said when Matvey appeared.
‘Very good, sir.’
Stepan Arkadyich put on his fur coat and went out on to the porch.
‘You won’t be dining at home?’ said Matvey as he saw him out.
‘We’ll see. Look, take this for expenses,’ he said, pulling ten roubles from his wallet. ‘Will that be enough?’
‘Whether it is enough or not, we’ll have to make do,’ said Matvey as he banged the carriage door shut and stepped back on to the porch.