Oh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love,
and he’s no more thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh,
that I should live to see it! Ah! spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah!
the ball!’ And the prince, imagining that he was
mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word.
‘And this is how we’re preparing wretchedness for Kitty;
and she’s really got the notion into her head..’
‘But what makes you suppose so?’
‘I don’t suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things,
though women-folk haven’t. I see a man who has serious
intentions, that’s Levin: and I see a peacock, like this
feather-head, who’s only amusing himself.’
‘Oh, well, when once you get an idea into your
head!..’
‘Well, you’ll remember my words, but too late, just as
with Dolly.’
‘Well, well, we won’t talk of it,’ the princess stopped
him, recollecting her unlucky Dolly.
‘By all means, and good night!’
And signing each other with the cross, the husband and
wife parted with a kiss, feeling that they each remained of
their own opinion.
The princess had at first been quite certain that that
evening had settled Kitty’s future, and theat there could be
no doubt of Vronsky’s intentions, but her husband’s words
had disturbed her. And returning to her own room, in
terror before the unknown future, she, too, like Kitty,
repeated several times in her heart, ‘Lord, have pity; Lord,
have pity; Lord, have pity.’
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Chapter 16
Vronsky had never had a real home life. His mother
had been in her youth a brilliant society woman, who had
had during her married life, and still more afterwards,
many love affairs notorious in the whole fashionable
world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had
been educated in the Corps of Pages.
Leaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he
had at once got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army
men. Although he did go more or less into Petersburg
society, his love affairs had always hitherto been outside it.
In Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his
luxurious and coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of
intimacy with a sweet and innocent girl of his own rank,
who cared for him. It never even entered his head that
there could be any harm in his relations with Kitty. At
balls he danced principally with her. He was a constant
visitor at their house. He talked to her as people
commonly do talk in society—all sorts of nonsense, but
nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special
meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that
he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she
was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and
the more he felt this, the better he liked it, and the
tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know that his
mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite
character, that it is courting young girls with no intention
of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil
actions common among brilliant young men such as he
was. It seemed to him that he was the first who had
discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his
discovery.
If he could have heard what her parents were saying
that evening, if he could have put himself at the point ov
view of the family and have heard that Kitty would be
unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been
greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He
could not believe that what gave such great and delicate
pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong. Still
less could he have believed that he ought to marry.
Marriage had never presented itself to him as a
possibility. He not only disliked family life, but a family,
and especially a husband was, in accordance with the
views general in the bachelor world in which he lived,
conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all,
ridiculous.
But though Vronsky had not the least suspicion what
the parents were saying, he felt on coming away from the
Shtcherbatskys’ that the secret spiritual bond which existed
between him and Kitty had grown so much stronger that
evening that some step must be taken. But what step could
and ought to be taken he could not imagine.
‘What is so exquisite,’ he thought, as he returned from
the Shtcherbatskys’, carrying away with him, as he always
did, a delicious feeling of purity and freshness, arising
partly from the fact that he had not been smoking for a
whole evening, and with it a new feeling of tenderness at
her love for him—‘what is so exquisite is that not a word
has been said by me or by her, but we understand each
other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones,
that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she
loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most of all, how
trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have a
heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those
sweet, loving eyes! When she said: Indeed I do...’
‘Well, what then? Oh, nothing. It’s good for me, and
good for her.’ And he began wondering where to finish
the evening.
He passed in review of the places he might go to.
‘Club? a game of bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No,
I’m not going. Chateau des Fleurs; there I shall find
Oblonsky, songs, the cancan. No, I’m sick of it. That’s
why I like the Shtcherbatskys’, that I’m growing better. I’ll
go home.’ He went straight to his room at Dussot’s Hotel,
ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his
head touched the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.
Chapter 17
Next day at eleven o’clock in the morning Vronsky
drove to the station of the Petersburg railway to meet his
mother, and the first person he came across on the great
flight of steps was Oblonsky, who was expecting his sister
by the same train.
‘Ah! your excellency!’ cried Oblonsky, ‘whom are you
meeting?’
‘My mother,’ Vronsky responded, smiling, as everyone
did who met Oblonsky. He shook hands with him, and
together they ascended the steps. ‘She is to be here from
Petersburg today.’
‘I was looking out for you till two o’clock last night.
Where did you go after the Shtcherbatskys’?’
‘Home,’ answered Vronsky. ‘I must own I felt so well
content yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys’ that I didn’t
care to go anywhere.’
‘I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,’
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch, just as he had done
before to Levin.
Vronsky smiled with a look that seemed to say that he
did not deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.
‘And whom are you meeting?’ he asked.
‘I? I’ve come to meet a pretty woman,’ said Oblonsky.
‘You don’t say so!’
‘Honi soit qui mal y pense! My sister Anna.’
‘Ah! that’s Madame Karenina,’ said Vronsky.
‘You know her, no doubt?’
‘I think I do. Or perhaps not...I really am not sure,’
Vronsky answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of
something stiff and tedious evoked by the name Karenina.
‘But Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-inlaw,
you surely must know. All the world knows him.’
‘I know him by reputation and by sight. I know that
he’s clever, learned, religious somewhat.... But you know
that’s not...not in my line,’ said Vronsky in English.
‘Yes, he’s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative,
but a splendid man,’ observed Stepan Arkadyevitch, ‘a
splendid man.’
‘Oh, well, so much the better for him,’ said Vronsky
smiling. ‘Oh, you’ve come,’ he said, addressing a tall old
footman of his mother’s, standing at the door; ‘come
here.’
Besides the charm Oblonsky had in general for
everyone, Vronsky had felt of late specially drawn to him
by the fact that in his imagination he was associated with
Kitty.
‘Well, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on
Sunday for the diva?’ he said to him with a smile, taking
his arm.
‘Of course. I’m collecting subscriptions. Oh, did yo
make the acquaintance of my friend Levin?’ asked Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
‘Yes; but he left rather early.’
‘He’s a capital fellow,’ pursued Oblonsky. ‘Isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know why it is,’ responded Vronsky, ‘in all
Moscow people—present company of course excepted,’
he put in jestingly, ‘there’s something uncompromising.
They are all on the defensive, lose their tempers, as though
they all want to make one feel something..’
‘Yes, that’s true, it is so,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
laughing good-humoredly.
‘Will the train soon be in?’ Vronsky asked a railway
official.
‘The train’s signaled,’ answered the man.
The approach of the train was more and more evident
by the preparatory bustle in the station, the rush of porters,
the movement of policemen and attendants, and people
meeting the train. Through the frosty vapor could be seen
workmen in short sheepskins and soft felt boots crossing
the rails of the curving line. The hiss of the boiler could be
heard on the distant rails, and the rumble of something
heavy.
‘No,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, who felt a great
inclination to tell Vronsky of Levin’s intentions in regard
to Kitty. ‘No, you’ve not got a true impression of Levin.
He’s a very nervous man, and is sometimes out of humor,
it’s true, but then he is often very nice. He’s such a true,
honest nature, and a heart of gold. But yesterday there
were special reasons,’ pursued Stepan Arkadyevitch, with a
meaning smile, totally oblivious of the genuine sympathy
he had felt the day before for his friend, and feeling the
same sympathy now, only for Vronsky. ‘Yes, there were
reasons why he could not help being either particularly
happy or particularly unhappy.’
Vronsky stood still and asked directly: ‘How so? Do
you mean he made your belle-soeur an offer yesterday?’
‘Maybe,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘I fancied
something of the sort yesterday. Yes, if he went away
early, and was out of humor too, it must mean it.... He’s
been so long in love, and I’m very sorry for him.’
‘So that’s it! I should imagine, though, she might
reckon on a better match,’ said Vronsky, drawing himself
up and walking about again, ‘though I don’t know him, of
course,’ he added. ‘Yes, that is a hateful position! That’s
why most fellows prefer to have to do with Klaras. If you
don’t succeed with them it only proves that you’ve not
enough cash, but in this case one’s dignity’s at stake. But
here’s the train.’
The engine had already whistled in the distance. A few
instants later the platform was quivering, and with puffs of
steam hanging low in the air from the frost, the engine
rolled up, with the lever of the middle wheel rhythmically
moving up and down, and the stooping figure of the
engine-driver covered with frost. Behind the tender,
setting the platform more and more slowly swaying, came
the luggage van with a dog whining in it. At last the
passenger carriages rolled in, oscillating before coming to a
standstill.
A smart guard jumped out, giving a whistle, and after
him one by one the impatient passengers began to get
down: an officer of the guards, holding himself erect, and
looking severely about him; a nimble little merchant with
a satchel, smiling gaily; a peasant with a sack over his
shoulder.
Vronsky, standing beside Oblonsky, watched the
carriages and the passengers, totally oblivious of his
mother. What he had just heard about Kitty excited and
delighted him. Unconsciously he arched his chest, and his
eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.
‘Countess Vronskaya is in that compartment,’ said the
smart guard, going up to Vronsky.
The guard’s words roused him, and forced him to think
of his mother and his approaching meeting with her. He
did not in his heart respect his mother, and without
acknowledging it to himself, he did not love her, though
in accordance with the ideas of the set in which he lived,
and with his own education, he could not have conceived
of any behavior to his mother not in the highest degree
respectful and obedient, and the more externally obedient
and respectful his behavior, the less in his heart he
respected and loved her.
Chapter 18
Vronsky followed the guard to the carriage, and at the
door of the compartment he stopped short to make room
for a lady who was getting out.
With the insight of a man of the world, from one
glance at this lady’s appearance Vronsky classified her as
belonging to the best society. He begged pardon, and was
getting into the carriage, but felt he must glance at her
once more; not that she was very beautiful, not on
account of the elegance and modest grace which were
apparent in her whole figure, but because in the
expression of her charming face, as she passed close by
him, there was something peculiarly caressing and soft. As
he looked round, she too turned her head. Her shining
gray eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested
with friendly attention on his face, as though she were
recognizing him, and then promptly turned away to the
passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In that brief
look Vronsky had time to notice the suppressed eagerness
which played over her face, and flitted between the
brilliant eyes and the faint smile that curved her red lips. It
was as though her nature were so brimming over with
something that against her will it showed itself now in the
flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she
shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will
in the faintly perceptible smile.
Vronsky stepped into the carriage. His mother, a driedup
old lady with black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her
eyes, scanning her son, and smiled slightly with her thin
lips. Getting up from the seat and handing her maid a bag,
she gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to kiss, and
lifting his head from her hand, kissed him on the cheek.
‘You got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God.’
‘You had a good journey?’ said her son, sitting down
beside her, and involuntarily listening to a woman’s voice
outside the door. He knew it was the voice of the lady he
had met at the door.
‘All the same I don’t agree with you,’ said the lady’s
voice.
‘It’s the Petersburg view, madame.’
‘Not Petersburg, but simply feminine,’ she responded.
‘Well, well, allow me to kiss your hand.’
‘Good-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. And could you see if my
brother is here, and send him to me?’ said the lady in the
doorway, and stepped back again into the compartment.
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‘Well, have you found your brother?’ said Countess
Vronskaya, addressing the lady.
Vronsky understood now that this was Madame
Karenina.
‘Your brother is here,’ he said, standing up. ‘Excuse
me, I did not know you, and, indeed, our acquaintance
was so slight,’ said Vronsky, bowing, ‘that no doubt you
do not remember me.’
‘Oh, no,’ said she, ‘I should have known you because
your mother and I have been talking, I think, of nothing
but you all the way.’ As she spoke she let the eagerness
that would insist on coming out show itself in her smile.
‘And still no sign of my brother.’
‘Do call him, Alexey,’ said the old countess. Vronsky
stepped out onto the platform and shouted:
‘Oblonsky! Here!’
Madame Karenina, however, did not wait for her
brother, but catching sight of him she stepped out with
her light, resolute step. And as soon as her brother had
reached her, with a gesture that struck Vronsky by its
decision and its grace, she flung her left arm around his
neck, drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly.
Vronsky gazed, never taking his eyes from her, and smiled,
he could not have said why. But recollecting that his
mother was waiting for him, he went back again into the
carriage.
‘She’s very sweet, isn’t she?’ said the countess of
Madame Karenina. ‘Her husband put her with me, and I
was delighted to have her. We’ve been talking all the way.
And so you, I hear...vous filez le parfait amour. Tant
mieux, mon cher, tant mieux.’
‘I don’t know what you are referring to, maman,’ he
answered coldly. ‘Come, maman, let us go.’
Madame Karenina entered the carriage again to say
good-bye to the countess.
‘Well, countess, you have met your son, and I my
brother,’ she said. ‘And all my gossip is exhausted. I should
have nothing more to tell you.’
‘Oh, no,’ said the countess, taking her hand. ‘I could
go all around the world with you and never be dull. You
are one of those delightful women in whose company it’s
sweet to be silent as well as to talk. Now please don’t fret
over your son; you can’t expect never to be parted.’
Madame Karenina stood quite still, holding herself very
erect, and her eyes were smiling.
‘Anna Arkadyevna,’ the countess said in explanation to
her son, ‘has a little son eight years old, I believe, and she
has never been parted from him before, and she keeps
fretting over leaving him.’
‘Yes, the countess and I have been talking all the time,
I of my son and she of hers,’ said Madame Karenina, and
again a smile lighted up her face, a caressing smile
intended for him.
‘I am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored,’
he said, promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had
flung him. But apparently she did not care to pursue the
conversation in that strain, and she turned to the old
countess.
‘Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly.
Good-bye, countess.’
‘Good-bye, my love,’ answered the countess. ‘Let me
have a kiss of your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age,
and I tell you simply that I’ve lost my heart to you.’
Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina
obviously believed it and was delighted by it. She flushed,
bent down slightly, and put her cheek to the countess’s
lips, drew herself up again, and with the same smile
fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand
to Vronsky. He pressed the little hand she gave him, and
was delighted, as though at something special, by the
energetic squeeze with which she freely and vigorously
shook his hand. She went out with the rapid step which
bore her rather fully-developed figure with such strange
lightness.
‘Very charming,’ said the countess.
That was just what her son was thinking. His eyes
followed her till her graceful figure was out of sight, and
then the smile remained on his face. He saw out of the
window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in
his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously
something that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and
at that he felt annoyed.
‘Well, maman, are you perfectly well?’ he repeated,
turning to his mother.
‘Everything has been delightful. Alexander has been
very good, and Marie has grown very pretty. She’s very
interesting.’
And she began telling him again of what interested her
most—the christening of her grandson, for which she had
been staying in Petersburg, and the special favor shown
her elder son by the Tsar.
‘Here’s Lavrenty,’ said Vronsky, looking out of the
window; ‘now we can go, if you like.’
The old butler who had traveled with the countess,
came to the carriage to announce that everything was
ready, and the countess got up to go.
‘Come; there’s not such a crowd now,’ said Vronsky.
The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler
and a porter the other baggage. Vronsky gave his mother
his arm; but just as they were getting out of the carriage
several men ran suddenly by with panic-stricken faces.
The station-master, too, ran by in his extraordinary
colored cap. Obviously something unusual had happened.
The crowd who had left the train were running back
again.
‘What?... What?... Where?... Flung himself!...
Crushed!...’ was heard among the crowd. Stepan
Arkadyevitch, with his sister on his arm, turned back.
They too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door
to avoid the crowd.
The ladies go in, while Vronsky and Stepan
Arkadyevitch followed the crowd to find out details of the
disaster.
A guard, either dunk or too much muffled up in the
bitter frost, had not heard the train moving back, and had
been crushed.
Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies
heard the facts from the butler.
Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated
corpse. Oblonsky was evidently upset. He frowned and
seemed ready to cry.
‘Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how
awful!’ he said.
Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious,
but perfectly composed.
‘Oh, if you had seen it, countess,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. ‘And his wife was there.... It was awful to
see her!.... She flung herself on the body. They say he was
the only support of an immense family. How awful!’
‘Couldn’t one do anything for her?’ said Madame
Karenina in an agitated whisper.
Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the
carriage.
‘I’ll be back directly, maman,’ he remarked, turning
round in the doorway.
When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan
Arkadyevitch was already in conversation with the
countess about the new singer, while the countess was
impatiently looking towards the door, waiting for her son.
‘Now let us be off,’ said Vronsky, coming in. They
went out together. Vronsky was in front with his mother.
Behind walked Madame Karenina with her brother. Just as
they were going out of the station the station-master
overtook Vronsky.
‘You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would
you kindly explain for whose benefit you intend them?’
‘For the widow,’ said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders.
‘I should have thought there was no need to ask.’
‘You gave that?’ cried Oblonsky, behind, and, pressing
his sister’s hand, he added: ‘Very nice, very nice! Isn’t he a
splendid fellow? Good-bye, countess.’
And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.
When they went out the Vronsky’s carriage had already
driven away. People coming in were still talking of what
happened.
‘What a horrible death!’ said a gentleman, passing by.
‘They say he was cut in two pieces.’
‘On the contrary, I think it’s the easiest—
instantaneous,’ observed another.
‘How is it they don’t take proper precautions?’ said a
third.
Madame Karenina seated herself in the carriage, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw with surprise that her lips were
quivering, and she was with difficulty restraining her tears.
‘What is it, Anna?’ he asked, when they had driven a
few hundred yards.
‘It’s an omen of evil,’ she said.
‘What nonsense!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘You’ve
come, that’s the chief thing. You can’t conceive how I’m
resting my hopes on you.’
‘Have you known Vronsky long?’ she asked.
‘Yes. You know we’re hoping he will marry Kitty.’
‘Yes?’ said Anna softly. ‘Come now, let us talk of you,’
she added, tossing her head, as though she would
physically shake off something superfluous oppressing her.
‘Let us talk of your affairs. I got your letter, and here I
am.’
‘Yes, all my hopes are in you,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch.
‘Well, tell me all about it.’
And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.
On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out,
sighed, pressed her hand, and set off to his office.
Chapter 19
When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in
the little drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy,
already like his father, giving him a lesson in French
reading. As the boy read, he kept twisting and trying to
tear off a button that was nearly off his jacket. His mother
had several times taken his hand from it, but the fat little
hand went back to the button again. His mother pulled
the button off and put it in her pocket.
‘Keep your hands still, Grisha,’ she said, and she took
up her work, a coverlet she had long been making. She
always set to work on it at depressed moments, and now
she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and
counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the day
before to her husband that it was nothing to her whether
his sister came or not, she had made everything ready for
her arrival, and was expecting her sister-in-law with
emotion.
Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up
by it. Still she did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law,
was the wife of one of the most important personages in
Petersburg, and was a Petersburg grande dame. And,
thanks to this circumstance, she did not carry out her
threat to her husband—that is to say, she remembered that
her sister-in-law was coming. ‘And, after all, Anna is in no
wise to blame,’ thought Dolly. ‘I know nothing of her
except the very best, and I have seen nothing but kindness
and affection from her towards myself.’ It was true that as
far as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at the
Karenins’, she did not like their household itself; there was
something artificial in the whole framework of their family
life. ‘But why should I not receive her? If only she doesn’t
take it into her head to console me!’ thought Dolly. ‘All
consolation and counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that
I have thought over a thousand times, and it’s all no use.’
All these days Dolly had been alone with her children.
She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that
sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters.
She knew that in one way or another she would tell Anna
everything, and she was alternately glad at the thought of
speaking freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of
her humiliation with her, his sister, and of hearing her
ready-made phrases of good advice and comfort. She had
been on the lookout for her, glancing at her watch every
minute, and, as so often happens, let slip just that minute
when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the bell.
Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door,
she looked round, and her care-worn face unconsciously
expressed not gladness, but wonder. She got up and
embraced her sister-in-law.
‘What, here already!’ she said as she kissed her.
‘Dolly, how glad I am to see you!’
‘I am glad, too,’ said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying
by the expression of Anna’s face to find out whether she
knew. ‘Most likely she knows,’ she thought, noticing the
sympathy in Anna’s face. ‘Well, come along, I’ll take you
to your room,’ she went on, trying to defer as long as
possible the moment of confidences.
‘Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he’s grown!’ said Anna;
and kissing him, never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood
still and flushed a little. ‘No, please, let us stay here.’
She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in
a lock of her black hair, which was a mass of curls, she
tossed her head and shook her hair down.
‘You are radiant with health and happiness!’ said Dolly,
almost with envy.
‘I?.... Yes,’ said Anna. ‘Merciful heavens, Tanya!
You’re the same age as my Seryozha,’ she added,
addressing the little girl as she ran in. She took her in her
arms and kissed her. ‘Delightful child, delightful! Show me
them all.’
She mentioned them, not only remembering the
names, but the years, months, characters, illnesses of all the
children, and Dolly could not but appreciate that.
‘Very well, we will go to them,’ she said. ‘It’s a pity
Vassya’s asleep.’
After seeing the children, They sat down, alone now,
in the drawing room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and
then pushed it away from her.
‘Dolly,’ she said, ‘he has told me.’
Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for
phrases of conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing
of the sort.
‘Dolly, dear,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to speak for him to
you, nor to try to comfort you; that’s impossible. But,
darling, I’m simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!’
Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears
suddenly glittered. She moved nearer to her sister-in-law
and took her hand in her vigorous little hand. Dolly did
not shrink away, but her face did not lose its frigid
expression. She said:
‘To comfort me’s impossible. Everything’s lost after
what has happened, everything’s over!’
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And directly she had said this, her face suddenly
softened. Anna lifted the wasted, thin hand of Dolly,
kissed it and said:
‘But, Dolly, what’s to be done, what’s to be done?
How is it best to act in this awful position—that’s what
you must think of.’
‘All’s over, and there’s nothing more,’ said Dolly. ‘And
the worst of all is, you see, that I can’t cast him off: there
are the children, I am tied. And I can’t live with him! it’s a
torture to me to see him.’
‘Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear
it from you: tell me about it.’
Dolly looked at her inquiringly.
Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna’s
face.
‘Very well,’ she said all at once. ‘But I will tell you it
from the beginning. You know how I was married. With
the education mamma gave us I was more than innocent, I
was stupid. I knew nothing. I know they say men tell their
wives of their former lives, but Stiva’—she corrected
herself—‘Stepan Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You’ll
hardly believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the
only woman he had known. So I lived eight years. You
must understand that I was so far from suspecting
infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then— try to
imagine it—with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the
horror, all the loathsomeness.... You must try and
understand me. To be fully convinced of one’s happiness,
and all at once...’ continued Dolly, holding back her sobs,
‘to get a letter...his letter to his mistress, my governess.
No, it’s too awful!’ She hastily pulled out her handkerchief
and hid her face in it. ‘I can understand being carried away
by feeling,’ she went on after a brief silence, ‘but
deliberately, slyly deceiving me...and with whom?... To go
on being my husband together with her...it’s awful! You
can’t understand..’
‘Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I
do understand,’ said Anna, pressing her hand.
‘And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my
position?’ Dolly resumed. ‘Not the slightest! He’s happy
and contented.’
‘Oh, no!’ Anna interposed quickly. ‘He’s to be pitied,
he’s weighed down by remorse..’
‘Is he capable of remorse?’ Dolly interrupted, gazing
intently into her sister-in-law’s face.
‘Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without
feeling sorry for him. We both know him. He’s goodhearted,
but he’s proud, and now he’s so humiliated. What
touched me most...’ (and here Anna guessed what would
touch Dolly most) ‘he’s tortured by two things: that he’s
ashamed for the children’s sake, and that, loving you—yes,
yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,’ she hurriedly
interrupted Dolly, who would have answered— ‘he has
hurt you, pierced you to the heart. ‘No, no, she cannot
forgive me,’ he keeps saying.’
Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as
she listened to her words.
‘Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it’s worse for
the guilty than the innocent,’ she said, ‘if he feels that all
the misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive
him, how am I to be his wife again after her? For me to
live with him now would be torture, just because I love
my past love for him..’
And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set
design, each time she was softened she began to speak
again of what exasperated her.
‘She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,’ she went on. ‘Do
you know, Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone,
taken by whom? By him and his children. I have worked
for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of
course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him.
No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they
were silent. Do you understand?’
Again her eyes glowed with hatred.
‘And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe
him? Never! No, everything is over, everything that once
made my comfort, the reward of my work, and my
sufferings.... Would you believe it, I was teaching Grisha
just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture.
What have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children
here? What’s so awful is that all at once my heart’s turned,
and instead of love and tenderness, I have nothing but
hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him.’
‘Darling Dolly, I understand, but don’t torture yourself.
You are so distressed, so overwrought, that you look at
many things mistakenly.’
Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were
silent.
‘What’s to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I
have thought over everything, and I see nothing.’
Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded
instantly to each word, to each change of expression of her
sister-in-law.
‘One thing I would say,’ began Anna. ‘I am his sister, I
know his character, that faculty of forgetting everything,
everything’ (she waved her hand before her forehead),
‘that faculty for being completely carried away, but for
completely repenting too. He cannot believe it, he cannot
comprehend now how he can have acted as he did.’
‘No; he understands, he understood!’ Dolly broke in.
‘But I...you are forgetting me...does it make it easier for
me?’
‘Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not
realize all the awfulness of your position. I saw nothing
but him, and that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for
him, but after talking to you, I see it, as a woman, quite
differently. I see your agony, and I can’t tell you how
sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, I fully realize your
sufferings, only there is one thing I don’t know; I don’t
know...I don’t know how much love there is still in your
heart for him. That you know—whether there is enough
for you to be able to forgive him. If there is, forgive him!’
‘No,’ Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short,
kissing her hand once more.
‘I know more of the world than you do,’ she said. ‘I
know how met like Stiva look at it. You speak of his
talking of you with her. That never happened. Such men
are unfaithful, but their home and wife are sacred to them.
Somehow or other these women are still looked on with
contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for
their family. They draw a sort of line that can’t be crossed
between them and their families. I don’t understand it, but
it is so.’
‘Yes, but he has kissed her..’
‘Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love
with you. I remember the time when he came to me and
cried, talking of you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his
feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived
with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know
we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every
word: ‘Dolly’s a marvelous woman.’ You have always
been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this has
not been an infidelity of the heart..’
‘But if it is repeated?’
‘It cannot be, as I understand it..’
‘Yes, but could you forgive it?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t judge.... Yes, I can,’ said Anna,
thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her
thought and weighing it in her inner balance, she added:
‘Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could forgive it. I could not
be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and forgive it as
though it had never been, never been at all..’
‘Oh, of course,’ Dolly interposed quickly, as though
saying what she had more than once thought, ‘else it
would not be forgiveness. If one forgives, it must be
completely, completely. Come, let us go; I’ll take you to
your room,’ she said, getting up, and on the way she
embraced Anna. ‘My dear, how glad I am you came. It
has made things better, ever so much better.