Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy

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 put on his fur coat, and went out into the porch.

      ‘Will you be home to dinner, sir?’ said Matthew, as he showed him out.

      ‘I’ll see… . Oh, and here’s some money,’ said he, taking a ten-rouble note out of his pocket-book. ‘Will it be enough?’

      ‘Enough or not, we shall have to manage, that’s clear,’ said Matthew, closing the carriage door and stepping back into the porch.

      Meanwhile Darya Alexandrovna after soothing the child, knowing from the sound of the carriage wheels that her husband had gone, returned to her bedroom. It was her only place of refuge from household cares. Even now, during the few minutes she had spent in the nursery, the English governess and Matrena Filimonovna had found time to ask some questions that could not be put off and which she alone could answer. ‘What should the children wear when they went out? Ought they to have milk? Should not a new cook be sent for?’

      ‘Oh, do leave me alone!’ she cried; and returning to her bedroom she sat down where she had sat when talking with her husband. Locking together her thin fingers, on which her rings hung loosely, she went over in her mind the whole of their conversation.

      ‘Gone! But how did he finish with her?’ she thought. ‘Is it possible that he still sees her? Why didn’t I ask him? No, no! It’s impossible to be reunited… . Even if we go on living in the same house, we are strangers — strangers for ever!’ she repeated, specially emphasizing the word that was so dreadful to her. ‘And how I loved him! Oh God, how I loved him! … How I loved — and don’t I love him now? Don’t I love him more than ever? The most terrible thing …’ She did not finish the thought, because Matrena Filimonovna thrust her head in at the door.

      ‘Hadn’t I better send for my brother?’ she said. ‘After all, he can cook a dinner; — or else the children will go without food till six o’clock, as they did yesterday.’

      ‘All right! I’ll come and see about it in a moment… . Has the milk been sent for?’ and Darya Alexandrovna plunged into her daily cares, and for a time drowned her grief in them.

      Chapter 5

       Table of Contents

      OBLONSKY’S natural ability had helped him to do well at school, but mischief and laziness had caused him to finish very low in his year’s class. Yet in spite of his dissipated life, his unimportant service rank, and his comparative youth, he occupied a distinguished and well-paid post as Head of one of the Government Boards in Moscow. This post he had obtained through Alexis Alexandrovich Karenin, his sister Anna’s husband, who held one of the most important positions in the Ministry to which that Moscow Board belonged. But even if Karenin had not nominated his brother-in-law for that post, Stiva Oblonsky, through one of a hundred other persons — brothers, sisters, relations, cousins, uncles or aunts — would have obtained this or a similar post with a salary of some 6000 roubles a year, which he needed because in spite of his wife’s substantial means his affairs were in a bad way.

      Half Moscow and half Petersburg were his relations or friends. He was born among those who were or who became the great ones of this world. One third of the official world, the older men, were his father’s friends and had known him in petticoats, he was on intimate terms with another third, and was well acquainted with the last third. Consequently the distributors of earthly blessings, such as government posts, grants, concessions, and the like, were all his friends. They could not overlook one who belonged to them, so that Oblonsky had no special difficulty in obtaining a lucrative post; he had only not to raise any objections, not to be envious, not to quarrel, and not to take offence — all things which, being naturally good-tempered, he never did. It would have seemed to him ridiculous had he been told that he would not get a post with the salary he required; especially as he did not demand anything extraordinary. He only wanted what other men of his age and set were getting; and he could fill such an office as well as anybody else.

      Oblonsky was not only liked by every one who knew him for his kind and joyous nature and his undoubted honesty, but there was something in him — in his handsome and bright appearance, his beaming eyes, black hair and eyebrows, and his white-and-rosy complexion, that had a physical effect on those he met, making them feel friendly and cheerful. ‘Ah! Stiva Oblonsky! Here he is!’ said almost every one he met, smilingly. Even if conversation with him sometimes caused no special delight, still the next day, or the next, every one was as pleased as ever to meet him.

      It was the third year that Oblonsky had been Head of that Government Board in Moscow, and he had won not only the affection but also the respect of his fellow-officials, subordinates, chiefs, and all who had anything to do with him. The chief qualities that had won him this general respect in his Office were, first, his extreme leniency, founded on a consciousness of his own defects; secondly, his true Liberalism — not that of which he read in his paper, but that which was in his blood and made him treat all men alike whatever their rank or official position; thirdly and chiefly, his complete indifference to the business he was engaged on, in consequence of which he was never carried away by enthusiasm and never made mistakes.

      Having arrived at his destination, Oblonsky, respectfully followed by the doorkeeper bearing his portfolio, entered his little private room, put on his uniform, and came out into the Office. The clerks and attendants all rose and bowed cheerfully and respectfully. Oblonsky walked quickly, as was his wont, to his place, shook