Chapter 42

OUR STEPMOTHER

Notwithstanding that Papa had not meant to return to Moscow
before the New Year, he arrived in October, when there was still
good riding to hounds to be had in the country. He alleged as his
reason for changing his mind that his suit was shortly to come on
before the Senate, but Mimi averred that Avdotia had found
herself so ennuyee in the country, and had so often talked about
Moscow and pretended to be unwell, that Papa had decided to
accede to her wishes. "You see, she never really loved him--she
and her love only kept buzzing about his ears because she wanted
to marry a rich man," added Mimi with a pensive sigh which said:
"To think what a certain other person could have done for him if
only he had valued her!"

Yet that "certain other person" was unjust to Avdotia, seeing
that the latter's affection for Papa--the passionate, devoted
love of self-abandonment--revealed itself in her every look and
word and movement. At the same time, that love in no way hindered
her, not only from being averse to parting with her adored
husband, but also from desiring to visit Madame Annette's and
order there a lovely cap, a hat trimmed with a magnificent blue
ostrich feather, and a blue Venetian velvet bodice which was to
expose to the public gaze the snowy, well
shaped breast and arms which no one had yet gazed upon except her
husband and maids. Of course Katenka sided with her mother and,
in general, there became established between Avdotia and
ourselves, from the day of her arrival, the most extraordinary
and burlesque order of relations. As soon as she stepped from the
carriage, Woloda assumed an air of great seriousness and
ceremony, and, advancing towards her with much bowing and
scraping, said in the tone of one who is presenting something for
acceptance:

"I have the honour to greet the arrival of our dear Mamma, and to
kiss her hand."

"Ah, my dear son!" she replied with her beautiful, unvarying
smile.

"And do not forget the younger son," I said as I also approached
her hand, with an involuntary imitation of Woloda's voice and
expression.

Had our stepmother and ourselves been certain of any mutual
affection, that expression might have signified contempt for any
outward manifestation of our love. Had we been ill-disposed
towards one another, it might have denoted irony, or contempt for
pretence, or a desire to conceal from Papa (standing by the
while) our real relations, as well as many other thoughts and
sentiments. But, as a matter of fact, that expression (which well
consorted with Avdotia's own spirit) simply signified nothing at
all--simply concealed the absence of any definite relations
between us. In later life I often had occasion to remark, in the
case of other families whose members anticipated among themselves
relations not altogether harmonious, the sort of provisional,
burlesque relations which they formed for daily use; and it was
just such relations as those which now became established between
ourselves and our stepmother. We scarcely ever strayed beyond
them, but were polite to her, conversed with her in French, bowed
and scraped before her, and called her "chere Maman"--a term to
which she always responded in a tone of similar lightness and
with her beautiful, unchanging smile. Only the lachrymose
Lubotshka, with her goose feet and artless prattle, really liked
our stepmother, or tried, in her naive and frequently awkward
way, to bring her and ourselves together: wherefore the only
person in the world for whom, besides Papa, Avdotia had a spark
of affection was Lubotshka. Indeed, Avdotia always treated her
with a kind of grave admiration and timid deference which greatly
surprised me.

From the first Avdotia was very fond of calling herself our
stepmother and hinting that, since children and servants usually
adopt an unjust and hostile attitude towards a woman thus
situated, her own position was likely to prove a difficult one.
Yet, though she foresaw all the unpleasantness of her
predicament, she did nothing to escape from it by (for instance)
conciliating this one, giving presents to that other one, and
forbearing to grumble--the last a precaution which it would have
been easy for her to take, seeing that by nature she was in no
way exacting, as well as very good-tempered. Yet, not only did
she do none of these things, but her expectation of difficulties
led her to adopt the defensive before she had been attacked. That
is to say, supposing that the entire household was designing to
show her every kind of insult and annoyance, she would see plots
where no plots were, and consider that her most dignified course
was to suffer in silence--an attitude of passivity as regards
winning AFfection which of course led to DISaffection. Moreover,
she was so totally lacking in that faculty of "apprehension" to
which I have already referred as being highly developed in our
household, and all her customs were so utterly opposed to those
which had long been rooted in our establishment, that those two
facts alone were bound to go against her. From the first, her mode
of life in our tidy, methodical household was that of a person
only just arrived there. Sometimes she went to bed late,
sometimes early; sometimes she appeared at luncheon, sometimes
she did not; sometimes she took supper, sometimes she dispensed
with it. When we had no guests with us she more often than not
walked about the house in a semi-nude condition, and was not
ashamed to appear before us--even before the servants--in a white
chemise, with only a shawl thrown over her bare shoulders. At
first this Bohemianism pleased me, but before very long it led to
my losing the last shred of respect which I felt for her. What
struck me as even more strange was the fact that, according as we
had or had not guests, she was two different women. The one (the
woman figuring in society) was a young and healthy, but rather
cold, beauty, a person richly dressed, neither stupid nor clever,
and unfailingly cheerful. The other woman (the one in evidence
when no guests were present) was considerably past her first
youth, languid, depressed, slovenly, and ennuyee, though
affectionate. Frequently, as I looked at her when, smiling, rosy
with the winter air, and happy in the consciousness of her
beauty, she came in from a round of calls and, taking off her
hat, went to look at herself in a mirror; or when, rustling in
her rich, decollete ball dress, and at once shy and proud before the
servants, she was passing to her carriage; or when, at one of our
small receptions at home, she was sitting dressed in a high
silken dress finished with some sort of fine lace about her soft
neck, and flashing her unvarying, but lovely, smile around her--as
I looked at her at such times I could not help wondering what
would have been said by persons who had been ravished to behold
her thus if they could have seen her as I often saw her, namely,
when, waiting in the lonely midnight hours for her husband to
return from his club, she would walk like a shadow from room to
room, with her hair dishevelled and her form clad in a sort of
dressing-jacket. Presently, she would sit down to the piano and,
her brows all puckered with the effort, play over the only waltz
that she knew; after which she would pick up a novel, read a few
pages somewhere in the middle of it, and throw it aside. Next,
repairing in person to the dining-room, so as not to disturb the
servants, she would get herself a cucumber and some cold veal,
and eat it standing by the window-sill--then once more resume her
weary, aimless, gloomy wandering from room to room. But what,
above all other things, caused estrangement between us was that
lack of understanding which expressed itself chiefly in the
peculiar air of indulgent attention with which she would listen
when any one was speaking to her concerning matters of which she
had no knowledge. It was not her fault that she acquired the
unconscious habit of bending her head down and smiling slightly
with her lips only when she found it necessary to converse on
topics which did not interest her (which meant any topic except
herself and her husband); yet that smile and that inclination of
the head, when incessantly repeated, could become unbearably
wearisome. Also, her peculiar gaiety--which always sounded as
though she were laughing at herself, at you, and at the world in
general--was gauche and anything but infectious, while her
sympathy was too evidently forced. Lastly, she knew no reticence
with regard to her ceaseless rapturising to all and sundry
concerning her love for Papa. Although she only spoke the truth
when she said that her whole life was bound up with him, and
although she proved it her life long, we considered such
unrestrained, continual insistence upon her affection for him bad
form, and felt more ashamed for her when she was descanting thus
before strangers even than we did when she was perpetrating bad
blunders in French. Yet, although, as I have said, she loved her
husband more than anything else in the world, and he too had a
great affection for her (or at all events he had at first, and
when he saw that others besides himself admired her beauty), it
seemed almost as though she purposely did everything most likely
to displease him--simply to prove to him the strength of her
love, her readiness to sacrifice herself for his sake, and the
fact that her one aim in life was to win his affection! She was
fond of display, and my father too liked to see her as a beauty
who excited wonder and admiration; yet she sacrificed her
weakness for fine clothes to her love for him, and grew more and
more accustomed to remain at home in a plain grey blouse. Again,
Papa considered freedom and equality to be indispensable
conditions of family life, and hoped that his favourite Lubotshka
and his kind-hearted young wife would become sincere friends; yet
once again Avdotia sacrificed herself by considering it incumbent
upon her to pay the "real mistress of the house," as she called
Lubotshka, an amount of deference which only shocked and annoyed
my father. Likewise, he played cards a great deal that winter,
and lost considerable sums towards the end of it, wherefore,
unwilling, as usual, to let his gambling affairs intrude upon his
family life, he began to preserve complete secrecy concerning his
play; yet Avdotia, though often ailing, as well as, towards the
end of the winter, enceinte, considered herself bound always to
sit up (in a grey blouse, and with her hair dishevelled) for my
father when, at, say, four or five o'clock in the morning, he
returned home from the club ashamed, depleted in pocket, and
weary. She would ask him absent-mindedly whether he had been
fortunate in play, and listen with indulgent attention, little
nods of her head, and a faint smile upon her face as he told her
of his doings at the club and begged her, for about the hundredth
time, never to sit up for him again. Yet, though Papa's winnings
or losings (upon which his substance practically depended) in no
way interested her, she was always the first to meet him when he
returned home in the small hours of the morning. This she was
incited to do, not only by the strength of her devotion, but by a
certain secret jealousy from which she suffered. No one in the
world could persuade her that it was REALLY from his club, and
not from a mistress's, that Papa came home so late. She would try
to read love secrets in his face, and, discerning none there,
would sigh with a sort of enjoyment of her grief, and give
herself up once more to the contemplation of her unhappiness.

As the result of these and many other constant sacrifices which
occurred in Papa's relations with his wife during the
latter months of that winter (a time when he lost much, and was
therefore out of spirits), there gradually grew up between the
two an intermittent feeling of tacit hostility--of restrained
aversion to the object of devotion of the kind which expresses
itself in an unconscious eagerness to show the object in question
every possible species of petty annoyance.