.
‘Bravo, Vronsky!’ he heard shouts from a knot of
men—he knew they were his friends in the regiment—
who were standing at the obstacle. He could not fail to
recognize Yashvin’s voice though he did not see him.
‘O my sweet!’ he said inwardly to Frou-Frou, as he
listened for what was happening behind. ‘He’s cleared it!’
he thought, catching the thud of Gladiator’s hoofs behind
him. There remained only the last ditch, filled with water
and five feet wide. Vronsky did not even look at it, but
anxious to get in a long way first began sawing away at the
reins, lifting the mare’s head and letting it go in time with
her paces. He felt that the mare was at her very last reserve
of strength; not her neck and shoulders merely were wet,
but the sweat was standing in drops on her mane, her
head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short, sharp
gasps. But he knew that she had strength left more than
enough for the remaining five hundred yards. It was only
from feeling himself nearer the ground and from the
peculiar smoothness of his motion that Vronsky knew
how greatly the mare had quickened her pace. She flew
over the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it
like a bird; but at the same instant Vronsky, to his horror,
felt that he had failed to keep up with the mare’s pace, that
he had, he did not know how, made a fearful,
unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the saddle.
All at once his position had shifted and he knew that
something awful had happened. He could not yet make
out what had happened, when the white legs of a chestnut
horse flashed by close to him, and Mahotin passed at a
swift gallop. Vronsky was touching the ground with one
foot, and his mare was sinking on that foot. He just had
time to free his leg when she fell on one side, gasping
painfully, and, making vain efforts to rise with her delicate,
soaking neck, she fluttered on the ground at his feet like a
shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Vronsky had
broken her back. But that he only knew much later. At
that moment he knew only that Mahotin had down
swiftly by, while he stood staggering alone on the muddy,
motionless ground, and Frou-Frou lay gasping before him,
bending her head back and gazing at him with her
exquisite eyes. Still unable to realize what had happened,
Vronsky tugged at his mare’s reins. Again she struggled all
over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the saddle
heaving, she rose on her front legs but unable to lift her
back, she quivered all over and again fell on her side. With
a face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling, and
his cheeks white, Vronsky kicked her with his heel in the
stomach and again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not
stir, but thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply
gazed at her master with her speaking eyes.
‘A—a—a!’ groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head.
‘Ah! what have I done!’ he cried. ‘The race lost! And my
fault! shameful, unpardonable! And the poor darling,
ruined mare! Ah! what have I done!’
A crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers
of his regiment, ran up to him. To his misery he felt that
he was whole and unhurt. The mare had broken her back,
and it was decided to shoot her. Vronsky could not answer
questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and
without picking up his cap that had fallen off, walked
away from the race course, not knowing where he was
going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time in his
life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune
beyond remedy, and caused by his own fault.
Yashvin overtook him with his cap, and led him home,
and half an hour later Vronsky had regained his selfpossession.
But the memory of that race remained for long
in his heart, the cruelest and bitterest memory of his life.
Chapter 26
The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his
wife had remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in
the fact that he was more busily occupied than ever. As in
former years, at the beginning of the spring he had gone
to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his health,
deranged by the winter’s work that every year grew
heavier. And just as always he returned in July and at once
fell to work as usual with increased energy. As usual, too,
his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of town,
while he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their
conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya’s he had
never spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his
jealousies, and that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry
was the most convenient tone possible for his present
attitude to his wife. He was a little colder to his wife. He
simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her for that
first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his
attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing
more. ‘You would not be open with me,’ he seemed to
say, mentally addressing her; ‘so much the worse for you.
Now you may beg as you please, but I won’t be open
with you. So much the worse for you!’ he said mentally,
like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a
fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, ‘Oh,
very well then! you shall burn for this!’ This man, so
subtle and astute in official life, did not realize all the
senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not
realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his
actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed
up in his heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings
towards his family, that is, his wife and son. He who had
been such a careful father, had from the end of that winter
become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him
just the same bantering tone he used with his wife. ‘Aha,
young man!’ was the greeting with which he met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he
had never in any previous year had so much official
business as that year. But he was not aware that he sought
work for himself that year, that this was one of the means
for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings
towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them,
which became more terrible the longer they lay there. If
anyone had had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch
what he thought of his wife’s behavior, the mild and
peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no
answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any
man who should question him on that subject. For this
reason there positively came into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone
inquired after his wife’s health. Alexey Alexandrovitch did
not want to think at all about his wife’s behavior, and he
actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all.
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s permanent summer villa was
in Peterhof, and the Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a
rule to spend the summer there, close to Anna, and
constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna
declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna
Arkadyevna’s, and in conversation with Alexey
Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability of Anna’s close
intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch
sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be
above suspicion, and from that time began to avoid
Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He did not want to see, and did
not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances
on his wife, he did not want to understand, and did not
understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted on
staying at Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not far
from the camp of Vronsky’s regiment. He did not allow
himself to think about it, and he did not think about it;
but all the same though he never admitted it to himself,
and had no proofs, not even suspicious evidence, in the
bottom of his heart he knew beyond all doubt that he was
a deceived husband, and he was profoundly miserable
about it.
How often during those eight years of happy life with
his wife Alexey Alexandrovitch had looked at other men’s
faithless wives and other deceived husbands and asked
himself: ‘How can people descend to that? how is it they
don’t put an end to such a hideous position?’ But now,
when the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so
far from thinking of putting an end to the position that he
would not recognize it at all, would not recognize it just
because it was too awful, too unnatural.
Since his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch
had twice been at their country villa. Once he dined
there, another time he spent the evening there with a
party of friends, but he had not once stayed the night
there, as it had been his habit to do in previous years.
The day of the races had been a very busy day for
Alexey Alexandrovitch; but when mentally sketching out
the day in the morning, he made up his mind to go to
their country house to see his wife immediately after
dinner, and from there to the races, which all the Court
were to witness, and at which he was bound to be present.
He was going to see his wife, because he had determined
to see her once a week to keep up appearances. And
besides, on that day, as it was the fifteenth, he had to give
his wife some money for her expenses, according to their
usual arrangement.
With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he
thought all this about his wife, he did not let his thoughts
stray further in regard to her.
That morning was a very full one for Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The evening before, Countess Lidia
Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet by a celebrated traveler
in China, who was staying in Petersburg, and with it she
enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler himself, as
he was an extremely interesting person from various points
of view, and likely to be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch
had not had time to read the pamphlet through in the
evening, and finished it in the morning. Then people
began arriving with petitions, and there came the reports,
interviews, appointments, dismissals, apportionment of
rewards, pensions, grants, notes, the workaday round, as
Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that always took up so
much time. Then there was private business of his own, a
visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his
property. The steward did not take up much time. He
simply gave Alexey Alexandrovitch the money he needed
together with a brief statement of the position of his
affairs, which was not altogether satisfactory, as it had
happened that during that year, owing to increased
expenses, more had been paid out than usual, and there
was a deficit. But the doctor, a celebrated Petersburg
doctor, who was an intimate acquaintance of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of time. Alexey
Alexandrovitch had not expected him that day, and was
surprised at his visit, and still more so when the doctor
questioned him very carefully about his health, listened to
his breathing, and tapped at his liver. Alexey
Alexandrovitch did not know that his friend Lidia
Ivanovna, noticing that he was not as well as usual that
year, had begged the doctor to go and examine him. ‘Do
this for my sake,’ the Countess Lidia Ivanovna had said to
him.
‘I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess,’ replied the
doctor.
‘A priceless man!’ said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey
Alexandrovitch. He found the liver considerably enlarged,
and the digestive powers weakened, while the course of
mineral waters had been quite without effect. He
prescribed more physical exercise as far as possible, and as
far as possible less mental strain, and above all no worry—
in other words, just what was as much out of Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s power as abstaining from breathing.
Then he withdrew, leaving in Alexey Alexandrovitch an
unpleasant sense that something was wrong with him, and
that there was no chance of curing it.
As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet
on the staircase an acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was
secretary of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department. They
had been comrades at the university, and though they
rarely met, they thought highly of each other and were
excellent friends, and so there was no one to whom the
doctor would have given his opinion of a patient so freely
as to Sludin.
‘How glad I am you’ve been seeing him!’ said Sludin.
‘He’s not well, and I fancy.... Well, what do you think of
him?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin’s
head to his coachman to bring the carriage round. ‘It’s just
this,’ said the doctor, taking a finger of his kid glove in his
white hands and pulling it, ‘if you don’t strain the strings,
and then try to break them, you’ll find it a difficult job;
but strain a string to its very utmost, and the mere weight
of one finger on the strained string will snap it. And with
his close assiduity, his conscientious devotion to his work,
he’s strained to the utmost; and there’s some outside
burden weighing on him, and not a light one,’ concluded
the doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly. ‘Will you be
at the races?’ he added, as he sank into his seat in the
carriage.
‘Yes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time,’ the
doctor responded vaguely to some reply of Sludin’s he had
not caught.
Directly after the doctor, who had taken up so much
time, came the celebrated traveler, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch, by means of the pamphlet he had only
just finished reading and his previous acquaintance with
the subject, impressed the traveler by the depth of his
knowledge of the subject and the breadth and
enlightenment of his view of it.
At the same time as the traveler there was announced a
provincial marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with
whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had to have some
conversation. After his departure, he had to finish the daily
routine of business with his secretary, and then he still had
to drive round to call on a certain great personage on a
matter of grave and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch
only just managed to be back by five o’clock, his dinnerhour,
and after dining with his secretary, he invited him to
drive with him to his country villa and to the races.
Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey
Alexandrovitch always tried nowadays to secure the
presence of a third person in his interviews with his wife.
Chapter 27
Anna was upstairs, standing before the looking glass,
and, with Annushka’s assistance, pinning the last ribbon on
her gown when she heard carriage wheels crunching the
gravel at the entrance.
‘It’s too early for Betsy,’ she thought, and glancing out
of the window she caught sight of the carriage and the
black hat of Alexey Alexandrovitch, and the ears that she
knew so well sticking up each side of it. ‘How unlucky!
Can he be going to stay the night?’ she wondered, and the
thought of all that might come of such a chance struck her
as so awful and terrible that, without dwelling on it for a
moment, she went down to meet him with a bright and
radiant face; and conscious of the presence of that spirit of
falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come to know
of late, she abandoned herself to that spirit and began
talking, hardly knowing what she was saying.
‘Ah, how nice of you!’ she said, giving her husband her
hand, and greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family,
with a smile. ‘You’re staying the night, I hope?’ was the
first word the spirit of falsehood prompted her to utter;
‘and now we’ll go together. Only it’s a pity I’ve promised
Betsy. She’s coming for me.’
Alexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Betsy’s name.
‘Oh, I’m not going to separate the inseparables,’ he said
in his usual bantering tone. ‘I’m going with Mihail
Vassilievitch. I’m ordered exercise by the doctors too. I’ll
walk, and fancy myself at the springs again.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ said Anna. ‘Would you like tea?’
She rang.
‘Bring in tea, and tell Seryozha that Alexey
Alexandrovitch is here. Well, tell me, how have you
been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you’ve not been to see me
before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace,’ she said,
turning first to one and then to the other.
She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and
too fast. She was the more aware of this from noticing in
the inquisitive look Mihail Vassilievitch turned on her that
he was, as it were, keeping watch on her.
Mihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.
She sat down beside her husband.
‘You don’t look quite well,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘the doctor’s been with me today and
wasted an hour of my time. I feel that some one of our
friends must have sent him: my health’s so precious, it
seems.’