“I would like to know why I was not awakened in time?”
“You were, and you replied, ‘I hear!’”
“I did! Well, what of it? A person is not supposed to be responsible for what he says when half asleep. Is the samovár ready?”
Then he went into the dining-room, and sat down to the tea-table with his paper—and again with the appearance of a man whose thoughts are wholly occupied with very serious and important matters. His wife, Xenia Pavlovna, poured out the tea, and he could hardly see her face from behind the samovár. Maria Petrovna sat at the other end of the table, with a child’s stocking in her hand, which she was forever darning.
They were generally silent, only rarely exchanging laconic questions and answers: “More tea?”—“Please”—“Again there is no lemon?”—“Why, it is lying before your very nose!”
After tea Iván Mikhailovich went to his club, where he played cards, after which he had his supper there, and coming home about two past midnight, he found his wife already sleeping. Only Maria Petrovna was still up, and she usually met him in déshabillé, with an old wrap thrown over her shoulders, her hair in disorder, and with sighs. Iván Mikhailovich understood but too well the hidden meaning of these sighs: they expressed silent reproaches and indirect disapproval of his conduct. Therefore, while taking off his rubbers, Iván Mikhailovich said: “Please spare me your sighs!”
Xenia Pavlovna never reproached her husband. She had long ago become accustomed to either Iván Mikhailovich’s snoring or being away. Only Maria Petrovna could not become resigned to it.
“What kind of a husband is he! All you see of him is his dressing-gown on the peg,” she said.
“Oh, don’t say that, mother. All husbands are like that,” remarked Xenia Pavlovna, but her face became sad and clouded, and at last a sort of concentrated musing settled upon it. Walking up and down the salon in the twilight, she would keep thinking about something or other, and sing in a low, sweet voice: “Beyond the distant horizon there is a happy land.”
Then she shook her head with a jerk and went into the nursery. Here she played dolls with the children, romped about with them, and told them fairy-tales about Sister Alenushka and Brother Ivanushka.