Anna Karenina

hen he was dressed, Stepan Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on
himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his
cigarettes, pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and
seals, and shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean,
fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in spite of his unhappiness,
he walked with a slight swing on each leg into the dining-room, where
coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee, letters and
papers from the office.

He read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was
buying a forest on his wife’s property. To sell this forest was
absolutely essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his
wife, the subject could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of
all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the
question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that he
might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a reconciliation
with his wife on account of the sale of the forest—that idea hurt him.

When he had finished his letters, Stepan Arkadyevitch moved the
office-papers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of
business, made a few notes with a big pencil, and pushing away the
papers, turned to his coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he opened a
still damp morning paper, and began reading it.

Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme
one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of
the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for
him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held
by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the
majority changed them—or, more strictly speaking, he did not change
them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views;
these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just
as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took
those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain
society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion,
for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as
indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his
preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many
of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more
rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of
life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and
certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of
money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out
of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly
afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into
lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal
party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is
only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and
Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without
his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the
object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world
when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this,
Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man
by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop
at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family—the monkey. And so
Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked
his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it
diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was
maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry
that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative
elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the
revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, “in our opinion the danger
lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of
traditionalism clogging progress,” etc., etc. He read another article,
too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped
some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic
quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it
came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him,
as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction
was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna’s advice and the unsatisfactory
state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to
have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and
of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a
situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a
quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup
of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the
roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled
joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his
mind—the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.

But this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew
thoughtful.

Two childish voices (Stepan Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of
Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard
outside the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.

“I told you not to sit passengers on the roof,” said the little girl in
English; “there, pick them up!”

“Everything’s in confusion,” thought Stepan Arkadyevitch; “there are
the children running about by themselves.” And going to the door, he
called them. They threw down the box, that represented a train, and
came in to their father.

The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him,
and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell
of scent that came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed
his face, which was flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with
tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her
father held her back.

“How is mamma?” he asked, passing his hand over his daughter’s smooth,
soft little neck. “Good morning,” he said, smiling to the boy, who had
come up to greet him. He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and
always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with
a smile to his father’s chilly smile.

“Mamma? She is up,” answered the girl.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed. “That means that she’s not slept again all
night,” he thought.

“Well, is she cheerful?”

The little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and
mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father
must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked about
it so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it,
and blushed too.

“I don’t know,” she said. “She did not say we must do our lessons, but
she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma’s.”

“Well, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though,” he said,
still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.

He took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little
box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate
and a fondant.

“For Grisha?” said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.

“Yes, yes.” And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her on
the roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.

“The carriage is ready,” said Matvey; “but there’s someone to see you
with a petition.”

“Been here long?” asked Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Half an hour.”

“How many times have I told you to tell me at once?”

“One must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least,” said Matvey,
in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be
angry.

“Well, show the person up at once,” said Oblonsky, frowning with
vexation.

The petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a
request impossible and unreasonable; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he
generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively
without interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how and to
whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his large, sprawling, good and
legible hand, a confident and fluent little note to a personage who
might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff captain’s widow,
Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he
had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing
except what he wanted to forget—his wife.

“Ah, yes!” He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a harassed
expression. “To go, or not to go!” he said to himself; and an inner
voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but
falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible,
because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to
inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love.
Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and
lying were opposed to his nature.

“It must be some time, though: it can’t go on like this,” he said,
trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a
cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl
ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing-room, and
opened the other door into his wife’s bedroom.