Anna Karenina | Page 5

nothing to be done. "And

how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was
contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in
anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked.
It's true it's bad HER having been a governess in our house. That's bad!
There's something common, vulgar, in flirting with one's governess.
But what a governess!" (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of
Mlle. Roland and her smile.) "But after all, while she was in the house,
I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she's already...it
seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be
done?"
There was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one
must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself. To forget
himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could
not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must
forget himself in the dream of daily life.
"Then we shall see," Stepan Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting
up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the tassels
in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest,
he walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his
feet that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang
the bell loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old
friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram.
Matvey was followed by the barber with all the necessaries for shaving.
"Are there any papers form the office?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch,
taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.
"On the table," replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his
master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, "They've
sent from the carriage-jobbers."
Stepan Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in
the looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the
looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another. Stepan
Arkadyevitch's eyes asked: "Why do you tell me that? don't you

know?"
Matvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and
gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.
"I told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or
themselves for nothing," he said. He had obviously prepared the
sentence beforehand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract
attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through,
guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his
face brightened.
"Matvey, my sister Anna Arkadyevna will be here tomorrow," he said,
checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a
pink path through his long, curly whiskers.
"Thank God!" said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his
master, realized the significance of this arrival--that is, that Anna
Arkadyevna, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a
reconciliation between husband and wife.
"Alone, or with her husband?" inquired Matvey.
Stepan Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on
his upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the
looking-glass.
"Alone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?"
"Inform Darya Alexandrovna: where she orders."
"Darya Alexandrovna?" Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.
"Yes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do
what she tells you."
"You want to try it on," Matvey understood, but he only said, "Yes sir."

Stepan Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be
dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came
back into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.
"Darya Alexandrovna told me to inform you that she is going away. Let
him do--that is you--as he likes," he said, laughing only with his eyes,
and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his
head on one side. Stepan Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a
good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome
face.
"Eh, Matvey?" he said, shaking his head.
"It's all right, sir; she will come round," said Matvey.
"Come round?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think so? Who's there?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch, hearing
the rustle of a woman's dress at the door.
"It's I," said a firm, pleasant, woman's voice, and the stern, pockmarked
face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in at the doorway.
"Well, what