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
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.