IV
Darya Alexandrovna, wearing a dressing-jacket, the skimpy braids of her once thick and beautiful hair pinned at the back of her head, her face pinched and thin, her big, frightened eyes protruding on account of that thinness, was standing before an open chiffonier, taking something out of it. Various articles lay scattered about the room. Hearing her husband’s footsteps, she stopped, looked at the door and vainly tried to give her face a stern and contemptuous expression. She felt that she was afraid of him and of the impending meeting. She had just been trying to do something she had already tried to do ten times in those three days: to choose some of her own and the children’s things to take to her mother’s - and again she could not make up her mind to do it; but now, as each time before, she told herself that things could not remain like this, that she had to do something, to punish, to shame him, to take revenge on him for at least a small part of the hurt he had done her. She still kept saying she would leave him, yet she felt it was impossible, because she could not get out of the habit of considering him her husband and of loving him. Besides, she felt that if she could barely manage to take care of her five children here in her own house, it would be still worse there where she was taking them all. As it was, during those three days the youngest had fallen ill because he had been fed bad broth, and the rest had gone with almost no dinner yesterday. She felt it was impossible to leave; but, deceiving herself, she still kept choosing things and pretending she was going to leave.
Seeing her husband, she thrust her hands into a drawer of the chiffonier as if hunting for something, and turned to look at him only when he came up quite close to her. But her face, to which she had wanted to give a stern and resolute expression, showed bewilderment and suffering.
‘Dolly!’ he said in a soft, timid voice. He drew his head down between his shoulders, wishing to look pitiful and submissive, but all the same he radiated freshness and health.
She gave his figure radiating freshness and health a quick glance up and down. ‘Yes, he’s happy and content!’ she thought, ‘while I ... ? And this repulsive kindness everyone loves and praises him for - I hate this kindness of his.’ She pressed her lips together; the cheek muscle on the right side of her pale, nervous face began to twitch.
‘What do you want?’ she said in a quick, throaty voice, not her own.
‘Dolly,’ he repeated with a tremor in his voice, ‘Anna is coming today!’
‘So, what is that to me? I can’t receive her!’ she cried.
‘But anyhow, Dolly, we must...’
‘Go away, go away, go away,’ she cried out, not looking at him, as if the cry had been caused by physical pain.
Stepan Arkadyich could be calm when he thought about his wife, could hope that everything would shape up, as Matvei put it, and could calmly read the newspaper and drink his coffee; but when he saw her worn, suffering face, and heard the sound of that resigned and despairing voice, his breath failed him, something rose in his throat and his eyes glistened with tears.
‘My God, what have I done! Dolly! For God’s sake! ... If ...’ He could not go on, sobs caught in his throat.
She slammed the chiffonier shut and looked at him.
‘Dolly, what can I say? ... Only - forgive me, forgive me ... Think back, can’t nine years of life atone for a moment, a moment...’
She lowered her eyes and listened, waiting for what he would say, as if begging him to dissuade her somehow.
‘A moment of infatuation ...’ he brought out and wanted to go on, but at this phrase she pressed her lips again, as if from physical pain, and again the cheek muscle on the right side of her face began to twitch.
‘Go away, go away from here!’ she cried still more shrilly. ‘And don’t talk to me about your infatuations and your abominations!’
She wanted to leave but swayed and took hold of the back of a chair to support herself. His face widened, his lips swelled, his eyes filled with tears.
‘Dolly!’ he said, sobbing now. ‘For God’s sake, think of the children, they’re not guilty. I’m guilty, so punish me, tell me to atone for it. However I can, I’m ready for anything! I’m guilty, there are no words to say how guilty I am! But, Dolly, forgive me!’
She sat down. He could hear her loud, heavy breathing and felt inexpressibly sorry for her. She tried several times to speak, but could not. He waited.
‘You think of the children when it comes to playing with them, Stiva, but I always think of them, and I know that they’re lost now.’ She uttered one of the phrases she had obviously been repeating to herself during those three days.
She had said ‘Stiva’ to him. He glanced at her gratefully and made a movement to take her hand, but she withdrew from him with loathing.
‘I think of the children and so I’ll do anything in the world to save them; but I don’t know how I can best save them: by taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a depraved father - yes, depraved ... Well, tell me, after ... what’s happened, is it possible for us to live together? Is it possible? Tell me, is it possible?’ she repeated, raising her voice. ‘After my husband, the father of my children, has had a love affair with his children’s governess ...’
‘But what to do? What to do?’ he said in a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, and hanging his head lower and lower.
‘You are vile, you are loathsome to me!’ she cried, growing more and more excited. ‘Your tears are just water! You never loved me; there’s no heart, no nobility in you! You’re disgusting, vile, a stranger, yes, a total stranger to me!’ With pain and spite she uttered this word so terrible for her - ‘stranger’.
He looked at her, and the spite that showed on her face frightened and astonished him. He did not understand that his pity for her exasperated her. In him she saw pity for herself, but no love. ‘No, she hates me. She won’t forgive me,’ he thought.
‘This is terrible! Terrible!’ he said.
Just then a child, who had probably fallen down, started crying in the other room. Darya Alexandrovna listened and her face suddenly softened.
It clearly took her a few seconds to pull herself together, as if she did not know where she was or what to do, then she got up quickly and went to the door.
‘But she does love my child,’ he thought, noticing the change in her face at the child’s cry, ‘my child - so how can she hate me?’
‘One word more, Dolly,’ he said, going after her.
‘If you come after me, I’ll call the servants, the children! Let everybody know you’re a scoundrel! I’m leaving today, and you can live here with your mistress!’
And she went out, slamming the door.
Stepan Arkadyich sighed, wiped his face and with quiet steps started out of the room. ‘Matvei says it will shape up - but how? I don’t see even a possibility. Ah, ah, how terrible! And what trivial shouting,’ he said to himself, remembering her cry and the words ‘scoundrel’ and ‘mistress’. ‘And the maids may have heard! Terribly trivial, terribly!’ Stepan Arkadyich stood alone for a few seconds, wiped his eyes, sighed, and, squaring his shoulders, walked out of the room.
It was Friday and the German clockmaker was winding the clock in the dining room. Stepan Arkadyich remembered his joke about this punctilious, bald-headed man, that the German ‘had been wound up for life himself, so as to keep winding clocks’ - and smiled. Stepan Arkadyich loved a good joke. ‘But maybe it will shape up! A nice little phrase: shape up,’ he thought. ‘It bears repeating.’