DARYA ALEXANDROVNA was there in a dressing-jacket, with her large frightened eyes, made more prominent by the emaciation of her face, and her knot of thin plaits of once luxurious and beautiful hair. The room was covered with scattered articles, and she was standing among them before an open wardrobe, where she was engaged in selecting something. Hearing her husband’s step she stopped and looked at the door, vainly trying to assume a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt that she was afraid of him and afraid of the impending interview. She was trying to do what she had attempted ten times already during those three days, to sort out her own and her children’s clothes to take to her mother’s; but she could not bring herself to do it, and said again, as she had done after each previous attempt, that things could not remain as they were — that she must do something to punish and humiliate him, and to revenge herself if only for a small part of the pain he had caused her. She still kept saying that she would leave him, but felt that this was impossible. It was impossible because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and of loving him. Besides, she felt that if here, in her own home, it was all she could do to look after her five children properly, it would be still worse where she meant to take them. As it was, during these three days the youngest had fallen ill because they had given him sour broth, and the others had had hardly any dinner yesterday. She felt that it was impossible for her to leave; but still deceiving herself, she went on sorting the things and pretending that she really would go.
On seeing her husband she thrust her arms into a drawer of the wardrobe as if looking for something, and only when he had come close to her did she turn her face toward him. But her face, which she wanted to seem stern and determined, expressed only perplexity and suffering.
‘Dolly!’ he said in a soft, timid voice. He drew his head down, wishing to look pathetic and submissive, but all the same he shone with freshness and health. With a rapid glance she took in his fresh and healthy figure from head to foot. ‘Yes, he is happy and contented,’ she thought, ‘but what about me? … And that horrid good-nature of his which people love and praise so, how I hate it!’ She pressed her lips together and a cheek-muscle twitched on the right side of her pale and nervous face.
‘What do you want?’ she said quickly in a voice unlike her usual deep tones.
‘Dolly,’ he repeated unsteadily, ‘Anna is coming to-day.’
‘What’s that to do with me? I can’t receive her!’ she exclaimed.
‘But after all, Dolly, you really must,’ said he.
‘Go away, go away, go away!’ she cried, as if in physical pain, without looking at him.
Oblonsky could think calmly of his wife, could hope that ‘things would shape themselves’ as Matthew had said, and could calmly read his paper and drink his coffee, but when he saw her worn, suffering face, and heard her tone, resigned and despairing, he felt a choking sensation. A lump rose to his throat and tears glistened in his eyes.
‘Oh, my God! What have I done? Dolly — for heaven’s sake! … You know …’ He could not continue. His throat was choked with sobs.
She slammed the doors of the wardrobe and looked up at him.
‘Dolly, what can I say? … Only forgive me! Think, nine years… . Can’t they atone for a momentary — a momentary …’
Her eyes drooped and she waited to hear what he would say, as if entreating him to persuade her somehow that she had made a mistake.
‘A momentary infatuation, …’ he said, and was going on; but at those words her lips tightened again as if with pain, and again the muscle in her right cheek began to twitch.
‘Go away — go away from here!’ she cried in a still shriller voice, ‘and don’t talk to me of your infatuations and all those horrors!’
She wished to go away, but staggered and held on to the back of a chair to support herself. His face broadened, his lips swelled, and his eyes filled with tears.
‘Dolly!’ he said, now actually sobbing, ‘for heaven’s sake think of the children — they have done nothing! Punish me — make me suffer for my sin! Tell me what to do — I am ready for anything. I am the guilty one. I have no words to express my guilt… . But Dolly, forgive me!’
She sat down and he could hear her loud, heavy breathing. He felt unutterably sorry for her. She tried again and again to speak and could not. He waited.
‘You think of our children when you want to play with them, but I am always thinking of them, and know they are ruined now,’ she said, evidently repeating one of the phrases she had used to herself again and again during those three days.
But she had spoken of ‘our children’, and looking gratefully at her he moved to take her hand; but she stepped aside with a look of repugnance.
‘I do think of the children, and would do anything in the world to save them; but I do not know how to save them — whether by taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a dissolute — yes, a dissolute father… . Tell me, do you think it possible for us to live together after what has happened? Is it possible? Say, is it possible?’ she repeated, raising her voice. ‘When my husband, the father of my children, has love affairs with his children’s governess?’
‘But what’s to be done? — what’s to be done?’ said he, in a piteous voice, hardly knowing what he was saying, and sinking his head lower and lower.
‘You are horrid and disgusting to me!’ she shouted, getting more and more excited. ‘Your tears are — water! You never loved me; you have no heart, no honour! To me you are detestable, disgusting — a stranger, yes, a perfect stranger!’ She uttered that word stranger, so terrible to herself, with anguish and hatred.
He looked at her and the hatred he saw in her face frightened and surprised him. He did not understand that his pity exasperated her. She saw in him pity for herself but not love. ‘No, she hates me; she will not forgive me,’ he thought. ‘It is awful, awful!’ he muttered.
At that moment a child began to cry in another room, probably having tumbled down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face softened suddenly.
She seemed to be trying to recollect herself, as if she did not know where she was or what she had to do. Then she rose quickly and moved toward the door.
‘After all, she loves my child,’ he thought, noticing the change in her face when the baby cried; ‘my child — then how can she hate me?’
‘Dolly, just a word!’ he said, following her.
‘If you follow me, I shall call the servants and the children! I’ll let everybody know you are a scoundrel! I am going away to-day, and you may live here with your mistress!’
She went out, slamming the door.
Oblonsky sighed, wiped his face, and with soft steps left the room. ‘Matthew says “things will shape themselves,” — but how? I don’t even see a possibility… . Oh dear, the horror of it! And her shouting — it was so vulgar,’ he thought, recalling her screams and the words scoundrel and mistress. ‘And the maids may have heard it! It is dreadfully banal, dreadfully!’ For a few seconds Oblonsky stood alone; then he wiped his eyes, sighed, and expanding his chest went out of the room.
It was a Friday, the day on which a German clockmaker always came to wind up the clocks. Seeing him in the dining-room, Oblonsky recollected a joke he had once made at the expense of this accurate baldheaded clockmaker, and he smiled. ‘The German,’ he had said, ‘has been wound up for life to wind up clocks.’ Oblonsky was fond of a joke. ‘Well, perhaps things will shape themselves — “shape themselves”! That’s a good phrase,’ he thought. ‘I must use that.’
‘Matthew!’ he called. ‘Will you and Mary arrange everything for Anna Arkadyevna in the little sitting-room?’ he added when Matthew appeared.
‘Yes, sir.’
Oblonsky