Chapter VII
Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg
to perform the most natural and essential official duty—so familiar
to every one in the government service, though incomprehensible to
outsiders—that duty, but for which one could hardly be in
government service, of reminding the ministry of his existence—and
having, for the due performance of this rite, taken all the
available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days
at the races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the
children had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much
as possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been
her dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold. It
was nearly forty miles from Levin’s Pokrovskoe. The big, old house
at Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old prince had
had the lodge done up and built on to. Twenty years before, when
Dolly was a child, the lodge had been roomy and comfortable,
though, like all lodges, it stood sideways to the entrance avenue,
and faced the south. But by now this lodge was old and dilapidated.
When Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down in the spring to sell the
forest, Dolly had begged him to look over the house and order what
repairs might be needed. Stepan Arkadyevitch, like all unfaithful
husbands indeed, was very solicitous for his wife’s comfort, and he
had himself looked over the house, and given instructions about
everything that he considered necessary. What he considered
necessary was to cover all the furniture with cretonne, to put up
curtains, to weed the garden, to make a little bridge on the pond,
and to plant flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters,
the want of which greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later
on.
In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s efforts to be an
attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that
he had a wife and children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in
accordance with them that he shaped his life. On his return to
Moscow he informed his wife with pride that everything was ready,
that the house would be a little paradise, and that he advised her
most certainly to go. His wife’s staying away in the country was
very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch from every point of view: it
did the children good, it decreased expenses, and it left him more
at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded staying in the country for
the summer as essential for the children, especially for the little
girl, who had not succeeded in regaining her strength after the
scarlatina, and also as a means of escaping the petty humiliations,
the little bills owing to the wood-merchant, the fishmonger, the
shoemaker, which made her miserable. Besides this, she was pleased
to go away to the country because she was dreaming of getting her
sister Kitty to stay with her there. Kitty was to be back from
abroad in the middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed
for her. Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend
the summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations
for both of them.
The first days of her existence in the country were
very hard for Dolly. She used to stay in the country as a child,
and the impression she had retained of it was that the country was
a refuge from all the unpleasantness of the town, that life there,
though not luxurious—Dolly could easily make up her mind to
that—was cheap and comfortable; that there was plenty of
everything, everything was cheap, everything could be got, and
children were happy. But now coming to the country as the head of a
family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she had
fancied.
The day after their arrival there was a heavy fall
of rain and in the night the water came through in the corridor and
in the nursery, so that the beds had to be carried into the
drawing-room. There was no kitchenmaid to be found; of the nine
cows, it appeared from the words of the cowherd-woman that some
were about to calve, others had just calved, others were old, and
others again hard-uddered; there was not butter nor milk enough
even for the children. There were no eggs. They could get no fowls;
old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for roasting and
boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the floors—all were
potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the question, because one of the
horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts. There was no place
where they could bathe; the whole of the river-bank was trampled by
the cattle and open to the road; even walks were impossible, for
the cattle strayed into the garden through a gap in the hedge, and
there was one terrible bull, who bellowed, and therefore might be
expected to gore somebody. There were no proper cupboards for their
clothes; what cupboards there were either would not close at all,
or burst open whenever any one passed by them. There were no pots
and pans; there was no copper in the wash-house, nor even an
ironing-board in the maids’ room.
Finding instead of peace and rest all these, from
her point of view, fearful calamities, Darya Alexandrovna was at
first in despair. She exerted herself to the utmost, felt the
hopelessness of the position, and was very instant suppressing the
tears that started into her eyes. The bailiff, a retired
quartermaster, whom Stepan Arkadyevitch had taken a fancy to and
had appointed bailiff on account of his handsome and respectful
appearance as a hall-porter, showed no sympathy for Darya
Alexandrovna’s woes. He said respectfully, “nothing can be done,
the peasants are such a wretched lot,” and did nothing to help
her.
The position seemed hopeless. But in the Oblonskys’
household, as in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous
but most valuable and useful person, Marya Philimonovna. She
soothed her mistress, assured her that things would look up
(it was her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and
without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had
immediately made friends with the bailiff’s wife, and on the very
first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under the acacias,
and reviewed all the circumstances of the position. Very soon Marya
Philimonovna had established her club, so to say, under the
acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting of the
bailiff’s wife, the village elder, and the counting-house clerk,
that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away,
and in a week’s time everything actually had come round. The roof
was mended, a kitchenmaid was found—a crony of the village
elder’s—hens were bought, the cows began giving milk, the garden
hedge was stopped up with stakes, the carpenter made a mangle,
hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to burst open
spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with army cloth was
placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of drawers, and
there was a smell of flatirons in the maids’ room.
“Just see, now, and you were quite in despair,”
said Marya Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even
rigged up a bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and
Darya Alexandrovna began to realize, if only in part, her
expectations, if not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life
in the country. Peaceful with six children Darya Alexandrovna could
not be. One would fall ill, another might easily become so, a third
would be without something necessary, a fourth would show symptoms
of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were the brief periods
of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for Darya Alexandrovna
the sole happiness possible. Had it not been for them, she would
have been left alone to brood over her husband who did not love
her. And besides, hard though it was for the mother to bear the
dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of seeing
signs of evil propensities in her children—the children themselves
were even now repaying her in small joys for her sufferings. Those
joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand,
and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but
sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the
joy, nothing but gold.
Now in the solitude of the country, she began to be
more and more frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at
them, she would make every possible effort to persuade herself that
she was mistaken, that she as a mother was partial to her children.
All the same, she could not help saying to herself that she had
charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set of
children such as is not often to be met with, and she was happy in
them, and proud of them.