Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [15]
‘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.’
‘Matvei!’ he called. ‘You and Marya arrange things for Anna Arkadyevna there in the sitting room,’ he said to Matvei as he came in.
‘Very good, sir!’
Stepan Arkadyich put on his fur coat and went out to the porch.
‘You won’t be dining at home?’ Matvei asked, seeing him off.
‘That depends. And here’s something for expenses,’ he said, giving him ten roubles from his wallet. ‘Will that be enough?’
‘Enough or not, it’ll have to do,’ Matvei said, shutting the carriage door and stepping back on to the porch.
Meanwhile Darya Alexandrovna, having quieted the child and understanding from the sound of the carriage that he had left, went back to the bedroom. This was her only refuge from household cares, which surrounded her the moment she stepped out. Even now, during the short time she had gone to the children’s room, the English governess and Matryona Filimonovna had managed to ask her several questions that could not be put off and that she alone could answer: what should the children wear for their walk? should they have milk? should not another cook be sent for?
‘Ah, let me be, let me be!’ she said, and, returning to the bedroom, she again sat down in the same place where she had talked with her husband, clasped her wasted hands with the rings slipping off her bony fingers, and began turning the whole conversation over in her mind. ‘He left! But how has he ended it with her?’ she thought. ‘Can it be he still sees her? Why didn’t I ask him? No, no,