The first year of his marriage was a hard one for Eugene. It was hard because affairs he had managed to put off during the time of his courtship now, after his marriage, all came upon him at once.
To escape from debts was impossible. An outlying part of the estate was sold and the most pressing obligations met, but others remained, and he had no money. The estate yielded a good revenue, but he had had to send payments to his brother, and to spend on his own marriage, so that there was no ready money and the factory could not carry on and would have to be closed down. The only way of escape was to use his wife's money. Liza, having realized her husband's position, insisted on this herself. Eugene agreed, but only on condition that he should give her a mortgage on half his estate; and this he did. Of course it was not for the sake of his wife, who felt offended at it, but to appease his mother-in-law.
These affairs, with various fluctuations of success and failure, helped to poison Eugene's life that first year. Another thing was his wife's ill-health. That same first year, seven months after their marriage, in autumn, a misfortune befell Liza. She drove out to meet her husband who was returning from town; the quiet horse became rather playful, and she was frightened and jumped out. Her jump was comparatively fortunate—she might have been caught by the wheel—but she was pregnant, and that same night the pains began and she had a miscarriage from which she was long in recovering. The loss of the expected child and his wife's illness, together with the disorder in his affairs, and above all the presence of his mother-in-law, who arrived as soon as Liza fell ill—all this together made the year still harder for Eugene.
But notwithstanding these difficult circumstances, towards the end of the first year Eugene felt very well. First of all his cherished hope of restoring his fallen fortune and renewing his grandfather's way of life in a new form, was approaching accomplishment, though slowly and with difficulty. There was no longer any question of having to sell the whole estate to meet the debts. The chief estate, though transferred to his wife's name, was saved, and if only the beet crop succeeded and the price kept up, by next year his position of want and stress might be replaced by one of complete prosperity. That was one thing.
Another was that however much he had expected from his wife, he had never expected to find in her what he actually found. It was not what he had expected, but it was much better. Emotion, raptures of love—though he tried to produce them—did not take place or were very slight, but something quite different appeared, namely, that he was not merely more cheerful and happier but that it became easier to live. He did not know why this should be so, but it was.
It happened because immediately after the marriage she decided that Eugene Irtenev was superior to, wiser, purer, and nobler than, anyone else in the world, and therefore it was right for everyone to serve him and do what would please him; but as it was impossible to make everyone do this, she to the limit of her strength must do it herself. So she did; and therefore all her strength of mind was directed towards learning and guessing what he liked, and then doing just that, whatever it was and however difficult it might be.
She had the gift which furnishes the chief delight of intercourse with a loving woman; thanks to her love of her husband she penetrated into his soul. She knew—better it seemed to him than he himself—his every state, and every shade of his feeling, and she behaved correspondingly, and therefore never hurt his feelings, but always lessened his distresses and strengthened his joys. And she understood not only his feelings but also his joys. Things quite foreign to her—concerning the farming, the factory, or the appraisement of others, she immediately understood so that she could not merely converse with him, but could often, as he himself said, be a useful and irreplaceable counsellor. She regarded affairs and people, and everything in the world, only through his eyes. She loved her mother, but having seen that Eugene disliked his mother-in-law's interference in their life she immediately took her husband's side, and did so with such decision that he had to restrain her.
Besides all this she had very much taste, tact, and above all, peacefulness. All that she did, she did unnoticed; only the results of what she did were observable, namely, that always and in everything there was cleanliness, order, and elegance. Liza had at once understood in what her husband's ideal of life consisted, and she tried to attain, and in the arrangement and order of the house did attain, what he wanted. Children, it is true, were lacking, but there was hope of this also. In winter she went to Petersburg to see a specialist, and he assured them that she was quite well and could have children.
And this desire was accomplished. By the end of the year she was again pregnant.
The one thing that threatened, not to say poisoned, their happiness was her jealousy; a jealousy she restrained and did not exhibit, but from which she often suffered. Not only might Eugene not love anyone—because there was not a woman on earth worthy of him (as to whether she herself was worthy or not, she never asked herself),—but not a single woman might, therefore, dare to love him.