Stephan Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most

natural and essential official duty--so familiar to everyone in

the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders--

that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government

service, of reminding the ministry of his existence--and having,

for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available

cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the

races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Dolly and the children

had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much as

possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been

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her dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold.

It was nearly forty miles from Levin's Pokrovskoe. The big, old

house at Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old

prince had had the lodge done up and built on to. Twenty years

before, when Dolly was a child, the lodge had been roomy and

comfortable, though, like all lodges, it stood sideways to the

entrance avenue, and faced the south. But by now this lodge was

old and dilapidated. When Stepan Arkadyevitch had gone down in

the spring to sell the forest, Dolly had begged him to look over

the house and order what repairs might be needed. Stepan

Arkadyevitch, like all unfaithful husbands indeed, was very

solicitous for his wife's comfort, and he had himself looked over

the house, and given instructions about everything that he

considered necessary. What he considered necessary was to cover

all the furniture with cretonne, to put up curtains, to weed the

garden, to make a little bridge on the pond, and to plant

flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters, the want of

which greatly distressed Darya Alexandrovna later on.

In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive

father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a

wife and children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in

accordance with them that he shaped his life. On his return to

Moscow he informed his wife with pride that everything was ready,

that the house would be a little paradise, and that he advised

her most certainly to go. His wife's staying away in the country

was very agreeable to Stepan Arkadyevitch from every point of

view: it did the children good, it decreased expenses, and it

left him more at liberty. Darya Alexandrovna regarded staying in

the country for the summer as essential for the children,

especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in

regaining her strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means

of escaping the petty humiliations, the little bills owing to the

wood-merchant, the fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her

miserable. Besides this, she was pleased to go away to the

country because she was dreaming of getting her sister Kitty to

stay with her there. Kitty was to be back from abroad in the

middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed for her.

Kitty wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the

summer with Dolly at Ergushovo, full of childish associations for

both of them.




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