第111章

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 kitchenmaid 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 neither butter nor milk enough even for the children. There were no eggs. They could get no fowls; old, purplish, stringy roosters 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 riverbank 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 flew open whenever anyone passed by them. There were no pots and kettles; there was no boiler 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 Arkadyevich 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 would say 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 - Matriona Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her that everything would come round (it was her expression, and Matvei 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 Matriona 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 countinghouse 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 kitchenmaid 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 fly 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 Matriona 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 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 pains. 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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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 3, Chapter 08[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 8 Toward the end of May, when everything had been more or less satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband's answer to her complaints of the disorganized state of things in the country. He wrote begging her forgiveness for not having thought of everything before, and promised to come down at the first chance. This chance did not present itself, and till the beginning of June Darya Alexandrovna stayed alone in the country.