“He is jealous. You should not provoke him.”
“Oh, please don’t! He is simply stupid, that is all!” Xenia Pavlovna interrupted her, laughing through her tears, and Maria Petrovna grew angry.
“If a wife speaks like that about her husband, no good will ever come of it!” And she began to defend her son-in-law with all her might, and in the end it appeared, according to her own words, that a better man than Iván Mikhailovich could not be found the world over. “Just look at others, little mother! Take, for instance, the husband of Kapitolina Ivanovna! And it is nothing to her, my lady. She does not complain—she suffers in silence, and would not even think of dubbing her husband ‘stupid’—as you are doing. Of course, what we have we are careless of—and once we lose it—we cry!”
Nevertheless she could get no explanation of what had occurred, and could only take refuge in guesswork and supposition.
She did not go to sleep till the return of her son-in-law, and, sitting in the drawing-room on the sofa, she continually pondered over what now most interested her, letting escape from time to time an “M’m.”
And Iván Mikhailovich, after he had supped and taken an extra glass or two, came home and announced himself by a ring so angry and imperious that it sounded noisily through the quiet rooms, and frightened Maria Petrovna. “He must be drunk,” she thought, and, opening the door, she did not even sigh as usual, but spoke lovingly. “There is some supper left for you in the dining-room.”
Iván Mikhailovich did not reply. He passed through the rooms with protesting step, banged the doors, coughed loudly, and, in general, gave one to understand that he was his own master. And to still more emphasize his independence, he did not go to sleep in the superb double bed with its silver ornaments, but lay down on the sofa in his study under the reindeer antlers and the rifle from which he had never fired a shot.
“Here, take at least a pillow!” came Maria Petrovna’s meek voice from the other side of the door, and the white corner of a pillow was thrust through the slightly open door of the study. Her son-in-law did not reply. “It is uncomfortable to lie that way, your neck will pain you.”
“Don’t you trouble yourself about my neck!” came from the cabinet.
But Maria Petrovna threw the pillow on an easy chair, and the door closed. Iván Mikhailovich was a man who prided himself on the strength of his character, and, therefore, he did not take the pillow, but supported his head with his fist and puffed while he thought of the oppressive disagreeableness of married life.