Anna Karenina

Chapter 7
Stephan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural
and essential official duty--so familiar to everyone 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
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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 kitchen maid 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 anyone passed by them. There were no pots and pans; there
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was no copper in the washhouse, 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 every 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
everything would come round (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 kitchen maid 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
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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.
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