ANNA KARENINA
PART 61
Chapter 22
Stepan
Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strange talk which he was
hearing for the first time. The complexity of Petersburg, as a rule, had a
stimulating effect on him, rousing him out of his Moscow stagnation. But he
liked these complications, and understood them only in the circles he knew and
was at home in. In these unfamiliar surroundings he was puzzled and
disconcerted, and could not get his bearings. As he listened to Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, aware of the beautiful, artless—or perhaps artful, he could not decide
which—eyes of Landau fixed upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be conscious
of a peculiar heaviness in his head.
The most
incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. “Marie Sanina is glad her
child’s dead.... How good a smoke would be now!... To be saved, one need only
believe, and the monks don’t know how the thing’s to be done, but Countess
Lidia Ivanovna does know.... And why is my head so heavy? Is it the cognac, or
all this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I’ve done nothing unsuitable so far.
But anyway, it won’t do to ask her now. They say they make one say one’s
prayers. I only hope they won’t make me! That’ll be too imbecile. And what
stuff it is she’s reading! but she has a good accent. Landau—Bezzubov—what’s he
Bezzubov for?” All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw
was uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to cover the yawn,
and shook himself together. But soon after he became aware that he was dropping
asleep and on the very point of snoring. He recovered himself at the very
moment when the voice of Countess Lidia Ivanovna was saying “he’s asleep.”
Stepan Arkadyevitch started with dismay, feeling guilty and caught. But he was
reassured at once by seeing that the words “he’s asleep” referred not to him,
but to Landau. The Frenchman was asleep as well as Stepan Arkadyevitch. But
Stepan Arkadyevitch’s being asleep would have offended them, as he thought
(though even this, he thought, might not be so, as everything seemed so queer),
while Landau’s being asleep delighted them extremely, especially Countess Lidia
Ivanovna.
“Mon
ami,” said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully
holding the folds of her silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her excitement
calling Karenin not Alexey Alexandrovitch, but “mon ami,” “donnez-lui la
main. Vous voyez? Sh!” she hissed at the footman as he came in again. “Not
at home.”
The
Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with his head on the back of
his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay on his knee, made faint movements, as
though trying to catch something. Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, tried to move
carefully, but stumbled against the table, went up and laid his hand in the
Frenchman’s hand. Stepan Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes wide,
trying to wake himself up if he were asleep, he looked first at one and then at
the other. It was all real. Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was getting
worse and worse.
“Que la
personne qui est arrivée la dernière, celle qui demande, qu’elle sorte! Qu’elle
sorte!” articulated the Frenchman, without opening his eyes.
“Vous
m’excuserez, mais vous voyez.... Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain.”
“Qu’elle
sorte!” repeated the Frenchman impatiently.
“C’est
moi, n’est-ce pas?” And receiving an answer in the affirmative, Stepan
Arkadyevitch, forgetting the favour he had meant to ask of Lidia Ivanovna, and
forgetting his sister’s affairs, caring for nothing, but filled with the sole
desire to get away as soon as possible, went out on tiptoe and ran out into the
street as though from a plague-stricken house. For a long while he chatted and
joked with his cab-driver, trying to recover his spirits.
At the
French theatre where he arrived for the last act, and afterwards at the Tatar
restaurant after his champagne, Stepan Arkadyevitch felt a little refreshed in
the atmosphere he was used to. But still he felt quite unlike himself all that
evening.
On getting
home to Pyotr Oblonsky’s, where he was staying, Stepan Arkadyevitch found a
note from Betsy. She wrote to him that she was very anxious to finish their
interrupted conversation, and begged him to come next day. He had scarcely read
this note, and frowned at its contents, when he heard below the ponderous tramp
of the servants, carrying something heavy.
Stepan Arkadyevitch
went out to look. It was the rejuvenated Pyotr Oblonsky. He was so drunk that
he could not walk upstairs; but he told them to set him on his legs when he saw
Stepan Arkadyevitch, and clinging to him, walked with him into his room and
there began telling him how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep doing so.
Stepan
Arkadyevitch was in very low spirits, which happened rarely with him, and for a
long while he could not go to sleep. Everything he could recall to his mind,
everything was disgusting; but most disgusting of all, as if it were something
shameful, was the memory of the evening he had spent at Countess Lidia
Ivanovna’s.
Next day
he received from Alexey Alexandrovitch a final answer, refusing to grant Anna’s
divorce, and he understood that this decision was based on what the Frenchman
had said in his real or pretended trance.
Chapter 23
In order
to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be
either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement.
When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the
other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.
Many
families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are
sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement
between them.
Both
Vronsky and Anna felt life in Moscow insupportable in the heat and dust, when
the spring sunshine was followed by the glare of summer, and all the trees in
the boulevards had long since been in full leaf, and the leaves were covered
with dust. But they did not go back to Vozdvizhenskoe, as they had arranged to
do long before; they went on staying in Moscow, though they both loathed it,
because of late there had been no agreement between them.
The
irritability that kept them apart had no external cause, and all efforts to
come to an understanding intensified it, instead of removing it. It was an
inner irritation, grounded in her mind on the conviction that his love had
grown less; in his, on regret that he had put himself for her sake in a
difficult position, which she, instead of lightening, made still more
difficult. Neither of them gave full utterance to their sense of grievance, but
they considered each other in the wrong, and tried on every pretext to prove
this to one another.
In her
eyes the whole of him, with all his habits, ideas, desires, with all his
spiritual and physical temperament, was one thing—love for women, and that
love, she felt, ought to be entirely concentrated on her alone. That love was
less; consequently, as she reasoned, he must have transferred part of his love
to other women or to another woman—and she was jealous. She was jealous not of
any particular woman but of the decrease of his love. Not having got an object
for her jealousy, she was on the lookout for it. At the slightest hint she
transferred her jealousy from one object to another. At one time she was
jealous of those low women with whom he might so easily renew his old bachelor
ties; then she was jealous of the society women he might meet; then she was
jealous of the imaginary girl whom he might want to marry, for whose sake he
would break with her. And this last form of jealousy tortured her most of all,
especially as he had unwarily told her, in a moment of frankness, that his
mother knew him so little that she had had the audacity to try and persuade him
to marry the young Princess Sorokina.
And being
jealous of him, Anna was indignant against him and found grounds for
indignation in everything. For everything that was difficult in her position
she blamed him. The agonizing condition of suspense she had passed in Moscow,
the tardiness and indecision of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her solitude—she put it
all down to him. If he had loved her he would have seen all the bitterness of
her position, and would have rescued her from it. For her being in Moscow and
not in the country, he was to blame too. He could not live buried in the
country as she would have liked to do. He must have society, and he had put her
in this awful position, the bitterness of which he would not see. And again, it
was his fault that she was forever separated from her son.
Even the
rare moments of tenderness that came from time to time did not soothe her; in
his tenderness now she saw a shade of complacency, of self-confidence, which
had not been of old, and which exasperated her.
It was
dusk. Anna was alone, and waiting for him to come back from a bachelor dinner.
She walked up and down in his study (the room where the noise from the street
was least heard), and thought over every detail of their yesterday’s quarrel.
Going back from the well-remembered, offensive words of the quarrel to what had
been the ground of it, she arrived at last at its origin. For a long while she
could hardly believe that their dissension had arisen from a conversation so
inoffensive, of so little moment to either. But so it actually had been. It all
arose from his laughing at the girls’ high schools, declaring they were
useless, while she defended them. He had spoken slightingly of women’s
education in general, and had said that Hannah, Anna’s English protégée, had
not the slightest need to know anything of physics.
This
irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her occupations.
And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the pain he had given
her. “I don’t expect you to understand me, my feelings, as anyone who loved me
might, but simple delicacy I did expect,” she said.
And he had
actually flushed with vexation, and had said something unpleasant. She could
not recall her answer, but at that point, with an unmistakable desire to wound
her too, he had said:
“I feel no
interest in your infatuation over this girl, that’s true, because I see it’s
unnatural.”
The
cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built up for herself so laboriously
to enable her to endure her hard life, the injustice with which he had accused
her of affectation, of artificiality, aroused her.
“I am very
sorry that nothing but what’s coarse and material is comprehensible and natural
to you,” she said and walked out of the room.
When he
had come in to her yesterday evening, they had not referred to the quarrel, but
both felt that the quarrel had been smoothed over, but was not at an end.
Today he
had not been at home all day, and she felt so lonely and wretched in being on
bad terms with him that she wanted to forget it all, to forgive him, and be
reconciled with him; she wanted to throw the blame on herself and to justify
him.
“I am
myself to blame. I’m irritable, I’m insanely jealous. I will make it up with
him, and we’ll go away to the country; there I shall be more at peace.”
“Unnatural!”
She suddenly recalled the word that had stung her most of all, not so much the
word itself as the intent to wound her with which it was said. “I know what he
meant; he meant—unnatural, not loving my own daughter, to love another person’s
child. What does he know of love for children, of my love for Seryozha, whom
I’ve sacrificed for him? But that wish to wound me! No, he loves another woman,
it must be so.”
And
perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind, she had gone round
the same circle that she had been round so often before, and had come back to
her former state of exasperation, she was horrified at herself. “Can it be
impossible? Can it be beyond me to control myself?” she said to herself, and
began again from the beginning. “He’s truthful, he’s honest, he loves me. I
love him, and in a few days the divorce will come. What more do I want? I want
peace of mind and trust, and I will take the blame on myself. Yes, now when he
comes in, I will tell him I was wrong, though I was not wrong, and we will go
away tomorrow.”
And to
escape thinking any more, and being overcome by irritability, she rang, and
ordered the boxes to be brought up for packing their things for the country.
At ten
o’clock Vronsky came in.
Chapter 24
“Well, was
it nice?” she asked, coming out to meet him with a penitent and meek
expression.
“Just as
usual,” he answered, seeing at a glance that she was in one of her good moods.
He was used by now to these transitions, and he was particularly glad to see it
today, as he was in a specially good humour himself.
“What do I
see? Come, that’s good!” he said, pointing to the boxes in the passage.
“Yes, we
must go. I went out for a drive, and it was so fine I longed to be in the
country. There’s nothing to keep you, is there?”
“It’s the
one thing I desire. I’ll be back directly, and we’ll talk it over; I only want
to change my coat. Order some tea.”
And he
went into his room.
There was
something mortifying in the way he had said “Come, that’s good,” as one says to
a child when it leaves off being naughty, and still more mortifying was the
contrast between her penitent and his self-confident tone; and for one instant
she felt the lust of strife rising up in her again, but making an effort she
conquered it, and met Vronsky as good-humouredly as before.
When he
came in she told him, partly repeating phrases she had prepared beforehand, how
she had spent the day, and her plans for going away.
“You know
it came to me almost like an inspiration,” she said. “Why wait here for the
divorce? Won’t it be just the same in the country? I can’t wait any longer! I
don’t want to go on hoping, I don’t want to hear anything about the divorce. I
have made up my mind it shall not have any more influence on my life. Do you
agree?”
“Oh, yes!”
he said, glancing uneasily at her excited face.
“What did
you do? Who was there?” she said, after a pause.
Vronsky
mentioned the names of the guests. “The dinner was first rate, and the boat
race, and it was all pleasant enough, but in Moscow they can never do anything
without something ridicule. A lady of a sort appeared on the scene,
teacher of swimming to the Queen of Sweden, and gave us an exhibition of her
skill.”
“How? did
she swim?” asked Anna, frowning.
“In an
absurd red costume de natation; she was old and hideous too. So when
shall we go?”
“What an
absurd fancy! Why, did she swim in some special way, then?” said Anna, not
answering.
“There was
absolutely nothing in it. That’s just what I say, it was awfully stupid. Well,
then, when do you think of going?”
Anna shook
her head as though trying to drive away some unpleasant idea.
“When?
Why, the sooner the better! By tomorrow we shan’t be ready. The day after
tomorrow.”
“Yes ...
oh, no, wait a minute! The day after tomorrow’s Sunday, I have to be at
maman’s,” said Vronsky, embarrassed, because as soon as he uttered his mother’s
name he was aware of her intent, suspicious eyes. His embarrassment confirmed
her suspicion. She flushed hotly and drew away from him. It was now not the
Queen of Sweden’s swimming-mistress who filled Anna’s imagination, but the
young Princess Sorokina. She was staying in a village near Moscow with Countess
Vronskaya.
“Can’t you
go tomorrow?” she said.
“Well, no!
The deeds and the money for the business I’m going there for I can’t get by
tomorrow,” he answered.
“If so, we
won’t go at all.”
“But why
so?”
“I shall
not go later. Monday or never!”
“What
for?” said Vronsky, as though in amazement. “Why, there’s no meaning in it!”
“There’s
no meaning in it to you, because you care nothing for me. You don’t care to
understand my life. The one thing that I cared for here was Hannah. You say
it’s affectation. Why, you said yesterday that I don’t love my daughter, that I
love this English girl, that it’s unnatural. I should like to know what life
there is for me that could be natural!”
For an
instant she had a clear vision of what she was doing, and was horrified at how
she had fallen away from her resolution. But even though she knew it was her
own ruin, she could not restrain herself, could not keep herself from proving
to him that he was wrong, could not give way to him.
“I never
said that; I said I did not sympathize with this sudden passion.”
“How is
it, though you boast of your straightforwardness, you don’t tell the truth?”
“I never
boast, and I never tell lies,” he said slowly, restraining his rising anger.
“It’s a great pity if you can’t respect....”
“Respect
was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. And if you don’t
love me any more, it would be better and more honest to say so.”
“No, this
is becoming unbearable!” cried Vronsky, getting up from his chair; and stopping
short, facing her, he said, speaking deliberately: “What do you try my patience
for?” looking as though he might have said much more, but was restraining
himself. “It has limits.”
“What do
you mean by that?” she cried, looking with terror at the undisguised hatred in
his whole face, and especially in his cruel, menacing eyes.
“I mean to
say....” he was beginning, but he checked himself. “I must ask what it is you
want of me?”
“What can
I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of
doing,” she said, understanding all he had not uttered. “But that I don’t want;
that’s secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.”
She turned
towards the door.
“Stop!
sto-op!” said Vronsky, with no change in the gloomy lines of his brows, though
he held her by the hand. “What is it all about? I said that we must put off
going for three days, and on that you told me I was lying, that I was not an honourable
man.”
“Yes, and
I repeat that the man who reproaches me with having sacrificed everything for
me,” she said, recalling the words of a still earlier quarrel, “that he’s worse
than a dishonourable man—he’s a heartless man.”
“Oh, there
are limits to endurance!” he cried, and hastily let go her hand.
“He hates
me, that’s clear,” she thought, and in silence, without looking round, she
walked with faltering steps out of the room. “He loves another woman, that’s
even clearer,” she said to herself as she went into her own room. “I want love,
and there is none. So, then, all is over.” She repeated the words she had said,
“and it must be ended.”
“But how?”
she asked herself, and she sat down in a low chair before the looking-glass.
Thoughts
of where she would go now, whether to the aunt who had brought her up, to
Dolly, or simply alone abroad, and of what he was doing now alone in his
study; whether this was the final quarrel, or whether reconciliation were still
possible; and of what all her old friends at Petersburg would say of her now;
and of how Alexey Alexandrovitch would look at it, and many other ideas of what
would happen now after this rupture, came into her head; but she did not give
herself up to them with all her heart. At the bottom of her heart was some
obscure idea that alone interested her, but she could not get clear sight of
it. Thinking once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she recalled the time of her
illness after her confinement, and the feeling which never left her at that
time. “Why didn’t I die?” and the words and the feeling of that time came back
to her. And all at once she knew what was in her soul. Yes, it was that idea
which alone solved all. “Yes, to die!... And the shame and disgrace of Alexey
Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my awful shame, it will all be saved by
death. To die! and he will feel remorse; will be sorry; will love me; he will
suffer on my account.” With the trace of a smile of commiseration for herself
she sat down in the armchair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left
hand, vividly picturing from different sides his feelings after her death.
Approaching
footsteps—his steps—distracted her attention. As though absorbed in the
arrangement of her rings, she did not even turn to him.
He went up
to her, and taking her by the hand, said softly:
“Anna,
we’ll go the day after tomorrow, if you like. I agree to everything.”
She did
not speak.
“What is
it?” he urged.
“You
know,” she said, and at the same instant, unable to restrain herself any
longer, she burst into sobs.
“Cast me
off!” she articulated between her sobs. “I’ll go away tomorrow ... I’ll do
more. What am I? An immoral woman! A stone round your neck. I don’t want to
make you wretched, I don’t want to! I’ll set you free. You don’t love me; you
love someone else!”
Vronsky
besought her to be calm, and declared that there was no trace of foundation for
her jealousy; that he had never ceased, and never would cease, to love her;
that he loved her more than ever.
“Anna, why
distress yourself and me so?” he said to her, kissing her hands. There was
tenderness now in his face, and she fancied she caught the sound of tears in
his voice, and she felt them wet on her hand. And instantly Anna’s despairing
jealousy changed to a despairing passion of tenderness. She put her arms round
him, and covered with kisses his head, his neck, his hands.
Chapter 25
Feeling
that the reconciliation was complete, Anna set eagerly to work in the morning
preparing for their departure. Though it was not settled whether they should go
on Monday or Tuesday, as they had each given way to the other, Anna packed
busily, feeling absolutely indifferent whether they went a day earlier or
later. She was standing in her room over an open box, taking things out of it,
when he came in to see her earlier than usual, dressed to go out.
“I’m going
off at once to see maman; she can send me the money by Yegorov. And I shall be
ready to go tomorrow,” he said.
Though she
was in such a good mood, the thought of his visit to his mother’s gave her a
pang.
“No, I
shan’t be ready by then myself,” she said; and at once reflected, “so then it was
possible to arrange to do as I wished.” “No, do as you meant to do. Go into the
dining-room, I’m coming directly. It’s only to turn out those things that
aren’t wanted,” she said, putting something more on the heap of frippery that
lay in Annushka’s arms.
Vronsky
was eating his beefsteak when she came into the dining-room.
“You
wouldn’t believe how distasteful these rooms have become to me,” she said,
sitting down beside him to her coffee. “There’s nothing more awful than these chambres
garnies. There’s no individuality in them, no soul. These clocks, and
curtains, and, worst of all, the wallpapers—they’re a nightmare. I think of
Vozdvizhenskoe as the promised land. You’re not sending the horses off yet?”
“No, they
will come after us. Where are you going to?”
“I wanted
to go to Wilson’s to take some dresses to her. So it’s really to be tomorrow?”
she said in a cheerful voice; but suddenly her face changed.
Vronsky’s
valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg.
There was nothing out of the way in Vronsky’s getting a telegram, but he said,
as though anxious to conceal something from her, that the receipt was in his
study, and he turned hurriedly to her.
“By
tomorrow, without fail, I will finish it all.”
“From whom
is the telegram?” she asked, not hearing him.
“From
Stiva,” he answered reluctantly.
“Why
didn’t you show it to me? What secret can there be between Stiva and me?”
Vronsky
called the valet back, and told him to bring the telegram.
“I didn’t
want to show it to you, because Stiva has such a passion for telegraphing: why
telegraph when nothing is settled?”
“About the
divorce?”
“Yes; but
he says he has not been able to come at anything yet. He has promised a
decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it.”
With
trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and read what Vronsky had told her. At
the end was added: “Little hope; but I will do everything possible and
impossible.”
“I said
yesterday that it’s absolutely nothing to me when I get, or whether I never
get, a divorce,” she said, flushing crimson. “There was not the slightest
necessity to hide it from me.” “So he may hide and does hide his correspondence
with women from me,” she thought.
“Yashvin
meant to come this morning with Voytov,” said Vronsky; “I believe he’s won from
Pyevtsov all and more than he can pay, about sixty thousand.”
“No,” she
said, irritated by his so obviously showing by this change of subject that he
was irritated, “why did you suppose that this news would affect me so, that you
must even try to hide it? I said I don’t want to consider it, and I should have
liked you to care as little about it as I do.”
“I care
about it because I like definiteness,” he said.
“Definiteness
is not in the form but the love,” she said, more and more irritated, not by his
words, but by the tone of cool composure in which he spoke. “What do you want
it for?”
“My God!
love again,” he thought, frowning.
“Oh, you
know what for; for your sake and your children’s in the future.”
“There
won’t be children in the future.”
“That’s a
great pity,” he said.
“You want
it for the children’s sake, but you don’t think of me?” she said, quite
forgetting or not having heard that he had said, “For your sake and the
children’s.”
The
question of the possibility of having children had long been a subject of
dispute and irritation to her. His desire to have children she interpreted as a
proof he did not prize her beauty.
“Oh, I
said: for your sake. Above all for your sake,” he repeated, frowning as though
in pain, “because I am certain that the greater part of your irritability comes
from the indefiniteness of the position.”
“Yes, now
he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me is apparent,”
she thought, not hearing his words, but watching with terror the cold, cruel
judge who looked mocking her out of his eyes.
“The cause
is not that,” she said, “and, indeed, I don’t see how the cause of my
irritability, as you call it, can be that I am completely in your power. What
indefiniteness is there in the position? on the contrary....”
“I am very
sorry that you don’t care to understand,” he interrupted, obstinately anxious
to give utterance to his thought. “The indefiniteness consists in your
imagining that I am free.”
“On that
score you can set your mind quite at rest,” she said, and turning away from
him, she began drinking her coffee.
She lifted
her cup, with her little finger held apart, and put it to her lips. After
drinking a few sips she glanced at him, and by his expression, she saw clearly
that he was repelled by her hand, and her gesture, and the sound made by her
lips.
“I don’t
care in the least what your mother thinks, and what match she wants to make for
you,” she said, putting the cup down with a shaking hand.
“But we
are not talking about that.”
“Yes,
that’s just what we are talking about. And let me tell you that a heartless
woman, whether she’s old or not old, your mother or anyone else, is of no
consequence to me, and I would not consent to know her.”
“Anna, I
beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother.”
“A woman
whose heart does not tell her where her son’s happiness and honour lie has no
heart.”
“I repeat
my request that you will not speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I
respect,” he said, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.
She did
not answer. Looking intently at him, at his face, his hands, she recalled all
the details of their reconciliation the previous day, and his passionate
caresses. “There, just such caresses he has lavished, and will lavish, and
longs to lavish on other women!” she thought.
“You don’t
love your mother. That’s all talk, and talk, and talk!” she said, looking at
him with hatred in her eyes.
“Even if
so, you must....”
“Must
decide, and I have decided,” she said, and she would have gone away, but at
that moment Yashvin walked into the room. Anna greeted him and remained.
Why, when
there was a tempest in her soul, and she felt she was standing at a turning
point in her life, which might have fearful consequences—why, at that minute,
she had to keep up appearances before an outsider, who sooner or later must
know it all—she did not know. But at once quelling the storm within her, she
sat down and began talking to their guest.
“Well, how
are you getting on? Has your debt been paid you?” she asked Yashvin.
“Oh,
pretty fair; I fancy I shan’t get it all, but I shall get a good half. And when
are you off?” said Yashvin, looking at Vronsky, and unmistakably guessing at a
quarrel.
“The day
after tomorrow, I think,” said Vronsky.
“You’ve
been meaning to go so long, though.”
“But now
it’s quite decided,” said Anna, looking Vronsky straight in the face with a
look which told him not to dream of the possibility of reconciliation.
“Don’t you
feel sorry for that unlucky Pyevtsov?” she went on, talking to Yashvin.
“I’ve
never asked myself the question, Anna Arkadyevna, whether I’m sorry for him or
not. You see, all my fortune’s here”—he touched his breast pocket—“and just now
I’m a wealthy man. But today I’m going to the club, and I may come out a
beggar. You see, whoever sits down to play with me—he wants to leave me without
a shirt to my back, and so do I him. And so we fight it out, and that’s the
pleasure of it.”
“Well, but
suppose you were married,” said Anna, “how would it be for your wife?”
Yashvin
laughed.
“That’s why
I’m not married, and never mean to be.”
“And
Helsingfors?” said Vronsky, entering into the conversation and glancing at
Anna’s smiling face. Meeting his eyes, Anna’s face instantly took a coldly
severe expression as though she were saying to him: “It’s not forgotten. It’s
all the same.”
“Were you
really in love?” she said to Yashvin.
“Oh
heavens! ever so many times! But you see, some men can play but only so that
they can always lay down their cards when the hour of a rendezvous
comes, while I can take up love, but only so as not to be late for my cards in
the evening. That’s how I manage things.”
“No, I
didn’t mean that, but the real thing.” She would have said Helsingfors,
but would not repeat the word used by Vronsky.
Voytov,
who was buying the horse, came in. Anna got up and went out of the room.
Before
leaving the house, Vronsky went into her room. She would have pretended to be
looking for something on the table, but ashamed of making a pretense, she
looked straight in his face with cold eyes.
“What do
you want?” she asked in French.
“To get
the guarantee for Gambetta, I’ve sold him,” he said, in a tone which said more
clearly than words, “I’ve no time for discussing things, and it would lead to
nothing.”
“I’m not
to blame in any way,” he thought. “If she will punish herself, tant pis pour
elle. But as he was going he fancied that she said something, and his heart
suddenly ached with pity for her.
“Eh,
Anna?” he queried.
“I said
nothing,” she answered just as coldly and calmly.
“Oh,
nothing, tant pis then,” he thought, feeling cold again, and he turned
and went out. As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the looking-glass of
her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say some
comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he
could think what to say. The whole of that day he spent away from home, and
when he came in late in the evening the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had
a headache and begged him not to go in to her.
Chapter 26
Never
before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time. And this was
not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete coldness. Was it
possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came into the room for the
guarantee?—to look at her, see her heart was breaking with despair, and go out
without a word with that face of callous composure? He was not merely cold to
her, he hated her because he loved another woman—that was clear.
And
remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the words that
he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew more
and more exasperated.
“I won’t
prevent you,” he might say. “You can go where you like. You were unwilling to
be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to him. Go
back to him. If you want money, I’ll give it to you. How many roubles do you
want?”
All the
most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her
imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually
said them.
“But
didn’t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and sincere man?
Haven’t I despaired for nothing many times already?” she said to herself
afterwards.
All that
day, except for the visit to Wilson’s, which occupied two hours, Anna spent in doubts
whether everything were over or whether there were still hope of
reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see him once more. She
was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own
room, leaving a message for him that her head ached, she said to herself, “If
he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If
not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I’m to do!...”
In the
evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance, his ring,
his steps and his conversation with the servant; he believed what was told him,
did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then everything was
over.
And death
rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of bringing back
love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the victory in that
strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him.
Now
nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting
a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter. The one thing that mattered
was punishing him. When she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and
thought that she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to
her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would
suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in
bed with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the
carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part
of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would
be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. “How could I say such cruel
things to her?” he would say. “How could I go out of the room without saying
anything to her? But now she is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She
is....” Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole
cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side swooped to meet
it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they
darted forward, wavered, commingled, and all was darkness. “Death!” she
thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not
realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands could not find
the matches and light another candle, instead of the one that had burned down
and gone out. “No, anything—only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me!
This has been before and will pass,” she said, feeling that tears of joy at the
return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she
went hurriedly to his room.
He was
asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and holding the light
above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now when he was asleep, she
loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back tears of
tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he would look at her with cold
eyes, convinced that he was right, and that before telling him of her love, she
would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his treatment of her.
Without waking him, she went back, and after a second dose of opium she fell
towards morning into a heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite
lost consciousness.
In the
morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had recurred several times
in her dreams, even before her connection with Vronsky. A little old man with
unkempt beard was doing something bent down over some iron, muttering
meaningless French words, and she, as she always did in this nightmare (it was
what made the horror of it), felt that this peasant was taking no notice of
her, but was doing something horrible with the iron—over her. And she waked up
in a cold sweat.
When she
got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in mist.
“There was
a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I had a headache, and
he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we’re going away; I must see him and get
ready for the journey,” she said to herself. And learning that he was in his
study, she went down to him. As she passed through the drawing-room she heard a
carriage stop at the entrance, and looking out of the window she saw the
carriage, from which a young girl in a lilac hat was leaning out giving some
direction to the footman ringing the bell. After a parley in the hall, someone
came upstairs, and Vronsky’s steps could be heard passing the drawing-room. He
went rapidly downstairs. Anna went again to the window. She saw him come out
onto the steps without his hat and go up to the carriage. The young girl in the
lilac hat handed him a parcel. Vronsky, smiling, said something to her. The
carriage drove away, he ran rapidly upstairs again.
The mists
that had shrouded everything in her soul parted suddenly. The feelings of
yesterday pierced the sick heart with a fresh pang. She could not understand
now how she could have lowered herself by spending a whole day with him in his
house. She went into his room to announce her determination.
“That was
Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They came and brought me the money and the
deeds from maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday. How is your head, better?” he
said quietly, not wishing to see and to understand the gloomy and solemn
expression of her face.
She looked
silently, intently at him, standing in the middle of the room. He glanced at
her, frowned for a moment, and went on reading a letter. She turned, and went
deliberately out of the room. He still might have turned her back, but she had
reached the door, he was still silent, and the only sound audible was the
rustling of the note paper as he turned it.
“Oh, by
the way,” he said at the very moment she was in the doorway, “we’re going
tomorrow for certain, aren’t we?”
“You, but
not I,” she said, turning round to him.
“Anna, we
can’t go on like this....”
“You, but
not I,” she repeated.
“This is
getting unbearable!”
“You ...
you will be sorry for this,” she said, and went out.
Frightened
by the desperate expression with which these words were uttered, he jumped up
and would have run after her, but on second thoughts he sat down and scowled,
setting his teeth. This vulgar—as he thought it—threat of something vague
exasperated him. “I’ve tried everything,” he thought; “the only thing left is
not to pay attention,” and he began to get ready to drive into town, and again
to his mother’s to get her signature to the deeds.
She heard
the sound of his steps about the study and the dining-room. At the drawing-room
he stood still. But he did not turn in to see her, he merely gave an order that
the horse should be given to Voytov if he came while he was away. Then she
heard the carriage brought round, the door opened, and he came out again. But
he went back into the porch again, and someone was running upstairs. It was the
valet running up for his gloves that had been forgotten. She went to the window
and saw him take the gloves without looking, and touching the coachman on the
back he said something to him. Then without looking up at the window he settled
himself in his usual attitude in the carriage, with his legs crossed, and
drawing on his gloves he vanished round the corner.
To be continued
