preparing to cry. And he too was softened; he snatched
her plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.
‘Dear friend!’ she said in a voice breaking with
emotion. ‘You ought not to give way to grief. Your
sorrow is a great one, but you ought to find consolation.’
‘I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!’
said Alexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still
gazing into her brimming eyes. ‘My position is so awful
because I can find nowhere, I cannot find within me
strength to support me.’
‘You will find support; seek it—not in me, though I
beseech you to believe in my friendship,’ she said, with a
sigh. ‘Our support is love, that love that He has
vouchsafed us. His burden is light,’ she said, with the look
of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. ‘He will
be your support and your succor.’
Although there was in these words a flavor of that
sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that
new mystical fervor which had lately gained ground in
Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch
disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear this
now.
‘I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now
I understand nothing.’
‘Dear friend,’ repeated Lidia Ivanovna.
‘It’s not the loss of what I have not now, it’s not that!’
pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch. ‘I do not grieve for that.
But I cannot help feeling humiliated before other people
for the position I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can’t
help it, I can’t help it.’
‘Not you it was performed that noble act of
forgiveness, at which I was moved to ecstasy, and
everyone else too, but He, working within your heart,’
said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes rapturously,
‘and so you cannot be ashamed of your act.’
Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking
his hands, he cracked his fingers.
‘One must know all the facts,’ he said in his thin voice.
‘A man’s strength has its limits, countess, and I have
reached my limits. The whole day I have had to be
making arrangements, arrangements about household
matters arising’ (he emphasized the word arising) ‘from my
new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the
accounts.... These pinpricks have stabbed me to the heart,
and I have not the strength to bear it. At dinner...
yesterday, I was almost getting up from the dinner table. I
could not bear the way my son looked at me. He did not
ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I
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could not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look
at me, but that is not all....’ Alexey Alexandrovitch would
have referred to the bill that had been brought him, but
his voice shook, and he stopped. That bill on blue paper,
for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush of
self-pity.
‘I understand, dear friend,’ said Lidia Ivanovna. ‘I
understand it all. Succor and comfort you will find not in
me, though I have come only to aid you if I can. If I
could take from off you all these petty, humiliating
cares...I understand that a woman’s word, a woman’s
superintendence is needed. You will intrust it to me?’
Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed
her hand.
‘Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical
affairs are not my strong point. But I will set to work. I
will be your housekeeper. Don’t thank me. I do it not
from myself..’
‘I cannot help thanking you.’
‘But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of
which you spoke—being ashamed of what is the
Christian’s highest glory: *he who humbles himself shall
be exalted*. And you cannot thank me. You must thank
Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone we find
peace, consolation, salvation, and love,’ she said, and
turning her eyes heavenwards, she began praying, as
Alexey Alexandrovitch gathered from her silence.
Alexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those
expressions which had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at
least exaggerated, now seemed to him natural and
consolatory. Alexey Alexandrovitch had disliked this new
enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was interested
in religion primarily in its political aspect, and the new
doctrine which ventured upon several new interpretations,
just because it paved the way to discussion and analysis,
was in principle disagreeable to him. He had hitherto
taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to this new
doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had
been carried away by it, he had never argued, but by
silence had assiduously parried her attempts to provoke
him into argument. Now for the first time he heard her
words with pleasure, and did not inwardly oppose them.
‘I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds
and for your words,’ he said, when she had finished
praying.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more pressed both her
friend’s hands.
‘Now I will enter upon my duties,’ she said with a
smile after a pause, as she wiped away the traces of tears. ‘I
am going to Seryozha. Only in the last extremity shall I
apply to you.’ And she got up and went out.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha’s part of
the house, and dropping tears on the scared child’s cheeks,
she told him that his father was a saint and his mother was
dead.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did
actually take upon herself the care of the organization and
management of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s household. But
she had not overstated the case when saying that practical
affairs were not her strong point. All her arrangements had
to be modified because they could not be carried out, and
they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
valet, who, though no one was aware of the fact, now
managed Karenin’s household, and quietly and discreetly
reported to his master while he was dressing all it was
necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna’s help was
none the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral
support in the consciousness of her love and respect for
him, and still more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in
that she almost turned him to Christianity—that is, from
an indifferent and apathetic believer she turned him into
an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation
of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of
late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch
to believe in this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like
Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared their views,
was completely devoid of vividness of imagination, that
spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked
by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs
be in harmony with other conceptions, and with actual
fact. He saw nothing impossible and inconceivable in the
idea that death, though existing for unbelievers, did not
exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the most
perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself the
judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was
experiencing complete salvation here on earth.
It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this
conception of his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey
Alexandrovitch, and he knew that when, without the
slightest idea that his forgiveness was the action of a higher
power, he had surrendered directly to the feeling of
forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now when he
was thinking every instant that Christ was in his heart, and
that in signing official papers he was doing His will. But
for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a necessity to think in
that way; it was such a necessity for him in his humiliation
to have some elevated standpoint, however imaginary,
from which, looked down upon by all, he could look
down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to
his delusion of salvation.
Chapter 23
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and
sentimental girl, been married to a wealthy man of high
rank, an extremely good-natured, jovial, and extremely
dissipated rake. Two months after marriage her husband
abandoned her, and her impassioned protestations of
affection he met with a sarcasm and even hostility that
people knowing the count’s good heart, and seeing no
defects in the sentimental Lidia, were at loss to explain.
Though they were divorced and lived apart, yet whenever
the husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her
with the same malignant irony, the cause of which was
incomprehensible.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna had long given up being in
love with her husband, but from that time she had never
given up being in love with someone. She was in love
with several people at once, both men and women; she
had been in love with almost everyone who had been
particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with
all the new princes and princesses who married into the
imperial family; she had been in love with a high dignitary
of the Church, a vicar, and a parish priest; she had been in
love with a journalist, three Slavophiles, with Komissarov,
with a minister, a doctor, an English missionary and
Karenin. All these passions constantly waning or growing
more ardent, did not prevent her from keeping up the
most extended and complicated relations with the court
and fashionable society. But from the time that after
Karenin’s trouble she took him under her special
protection, from the time that she set to work in Karenin’s
household looking after his welfare, she felt that all her
other attachments were not the real thing, and that she
was now genuinely in love, and with no one but Karenin.
The feeling she now experienced for him seemed to her
stronger than any of her former feelings. Analyzing her
feeling, and comparing it with former passions, she
distinctly perceived that she would not have been in love
with Komissarov if he had not saved the life of the Tsar,
that she would not have been in love with Ristitch-
Kudzhitsky if there had been no Slavonic question, but
that she loved Karenin for himself, for his lofty,
uncomprehended soul, for the sweet—to her—high notes
of his voice, for his drawling intonation, his weary eyes,
his character, and his soft white hands with their swollen
veins. She was not simply overjoyed at meeting him, but
she sought in his face signs of the impression she was
making on him. She tried to please him, not by her words
only, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that she
now lavished more care on her dress than before. She
caught herself in reveries on what might have been, if she
had not been married and he had been free. She blushed
with emotion when he came into the room, she could not
repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable to
her.
For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had
been in a state of intense excitement. She had learned that
Anna and Vronsky were in Petersburg. Alexey
Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing her, he must be
saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful
woman was in the same town with him, and that he might
meet her any minute.
Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to
what those infamous people, as she called Anna and
Vronsky, intended doing, and she endeavored so to guide
every movement of her friend during those days that he
could not come across them. The young adjutant, an
acquaintance of Vronsky, through whom she obtained her
information, and who hoped through Countess Lidia
Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told her that they had
finished their business and were going away next day.
Lidia Ivanovna had already begun to calm down, when
the next morning a note was brought her, the handwriting
of which she recognized with horror. It was the
handwriting of Anna Karenina. The envelope was of paper
as thick as bark; on the oblong yellow paper there was a
huge monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent.
‘Who brought it?’
‘A commissionaire from the hotel.’
It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could
sit down to read the letter. Her excitement brought on an
attack of asthma, to which she was subject. When she had
recovered her composure, she read the following letter in
French:
‘Madame la Comtesse,
‘The Christian feelings with which your heart is filled
give me the, I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you.
I am miserable at being separated from my son. I entreat
permission to see him once before my departure. Forgive
me for recalling myself to your memory. I apply to you
and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch, simply because I do
not wish to cause that generous man to suffer in
remembering me. Knowing your friendship for him, I
know you will understand me. Could you send Seryozha
to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour,
or will you let me know when and where I could see him
away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing
the magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot
conceive the craving I have to see him, and so cannot
conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me.
Anna.’
Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia
Ivanovna: its contents and the allusion to magnanimity,
and especially its free and easy—as she considered—tone.
‘Say that there is no answer,’ said Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, and immediately opening her blotting-book,
she wrote to Alexey Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see
him at one o’clock at the levee.
‘I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject.
There we will arrange where to meet. Best of all at my
house, where I will order tea as you like it. Urgent. He
lays the cross, but He gives the strength to bear it,’ she
added, so as to give him some slight preparation. Countess
Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some two or three letters a
day to Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed that form of
communication, which gave opportunity for a refinement
and air of mystery not afforded by their personal
interviews.
Chapter 24
The levee was drawing to a close. People met as they
were going away, and gossiped of the latest news, of the
newly bestowed honors and the changes in the positions
of the higher functionaries.
‘If only Countess Marya Borissovna were Minister of
War, and Princess Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-
Chief,’ said a gray-headed, little old man in a goldembroidered
uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of
honor who had questioned him about the new
appointments.
‘And me among the adjutants,’ said the maid of honor,
smiling.
‘You have an appointment already. You’re over the
ecclesiastical department. And your assistant’s Karenin.’
‘Good-day, prince!’ said the little old man to a man
who came up to him.
‘What were you saying of Karenin?’ said the prince.
‘He and Putyatov have received the Alexander
Nevsky.’
‘I thought he had it already.’
‘No. Just look at him,’ said the little old man, pointing
with his embroidered hat to Karenin in a court uniform
with the new red ribbon across his shoulders, standing in
the doorway of the hall with an influential member of the
Imperial Council. ‘Pleased and happy as a brass farthing,’
he added, stopping to shake hands with a handsome
gentleman of the bedchamber of colossal proportions.
‘No; he’s looking older,’ said the gentleman of the
bedchamber.
‘From overwork. He’s always drawing up projects
nowadays. He won’t let a poor devil go nowadays till he’s
explained it all to him under heads.’
‘Looking older, did you say? Il fait des passions. I
believe Countess Lidia Ivanovna’s jealous now of his wife.’
‘Oh, come now, please don’t say any harm of Countess
Lidia Ivanovna.’
‘Why, is there any harm in her being in love with
Karenin?’
‘But is it true Madame Karenina’s here?’
‘Well, not here in the palace, but in Petersburg. I met
her yesterday with Alexey Vronsky, bras dessous, bras
dessous, in the Morsky.’
‘C’est un homme qui n’a pas...’ the gentleman of the
bedchamber was beginning, but he stopped to make
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room, bowing, for a member of the Imperial family to
pass.
Thus people talked incessantly of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, finding fault with him and laughing at
him, while he, blocking up the way of the member of the
Imperial Council he had captured, was explaining to him
point by point his new financial project, never
interrupting his discourse for an instant for fear he should
escape.
Almost at the same time that his wife left Alexey
Alexandrovitch there had come to him that bitterest
moment in the life of an official—the moment when his
upward career comes to a full stop. This full stop had
arrived and everyone perceived it, but Alexey
Alexandrovitch himself was not yet aware that his career
was over. Whether it was due to his feud with Stremov,
or his misfortune with his wife, or simply that Alexey
Alexandrovitch had reached his destined limits, it had
become evident to everyone in the course of that year that
his career was at an end. He still filled a position of
consequence, he sat on many commissions and
committees, but he was a man whose day was over, and
from whom nothing was expected. Whatever he said,
whatever he proposed, was heard as though it were
something long familiar, and the very thing that was not
needed. But Alexey Alexandrovitch was not aware of this,
and, on the contrary, being cut off from direct
participation in governmental activity, he saw more clearly
than ever the errors and defects in the action of others, and
thought it his duty to point out means for their correction.
Shortly after his separation from his wife, he began writing
his first note on the new judicial procedure, the first of the
endless series of notes he was destined to write in the
future.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not merely fail to observe
his hopeless position in the official world, he was not
merely free from anxiety on this head, he was positively
more satisfied than ever with his own activity.
‘He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong
to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is
married careth for the things that are of the world, how he
may please his wife,’ says the Apostle Paul, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch, who was now guided in every action by
Scripture, often recalled this text. It seemed to him that
ever since he had been left without a wife, he had in these
very projects of reform been serving the Lord more
zealously than before.
The unmistakable impatience of the member of the
Council trying to get away from him did not trouble
Alexey Alexandrovitch; he gave up his exposition only
when the member of the Council, seizing his chance
when one of the Imperial family was passing, slipped away
from him.
Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch looked down,
collecting his thoughts, then looked casually about him
and walked towards the door, where he hoped to meet
Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
‘And how strong they all are, how sound physically,’
thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully
built gentleman of the bedchamber with his well-combed,
perfumed whiskers, and at the red neck of the prince,
pinched by his tight uniform. He had to pass them on his
way. ‘Truly is it said that all the world is evil,’ he thought,
with another sidelong glance at the calves of the
gentleman of the bedchamber.
Moving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch
bowed with his customary air of weariness and dignity to
the gentleman who had been talking about him, and
looking towards the door, his eyes sought Countess Lidia
Ivanovna.
‘Ah! Alexey Alexandrovitch!’ said the little old man,
with a malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when
Karenin was on a level with them, and was nodding with
a frigid gesture, ‘I haven’t congratulated you yet,’ said the
old man, pointing to his newly received ribbon.
‘Thank you,’ answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. ‘What
an EXQUISITE day to-day,’ he added, laying emphasis in
his peculiar way on the word EXQUISITE.
That they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did
not expect anything but hostility from them; he was used
to that by now.
Catching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia
Ivanovna jutting out above her corset, and her fine
pensive eyes bidding him to her, Alexey Alexandrovitch
smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and went
towards her.
Lidia Ivanovna’s dress had cost her great pains, as
indeed all her dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress
was now quite the reverse of that she had pursued thirty
years before. Then her desire had been to adorn herself
with something, and the more adorned the better. Now,
on the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so
inconsistent with her age and her figure, that her one
anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between these
adornments and her own exterior should not be too
appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was
concerned she succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive.
For him she was the one island not only of goodwill to
him, but of love in the midst of the sea of hostility and
jeering that surrounded him.
Passing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as
naturally to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.
‘I congratulate you,’ she said to him, her eyes on his
ribbon.
Suppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his
shoulders, closing his eyes, as though to say that that could
not be a source of joy to him. Countess Lidia Ivanovna
was very well aware that it was one of his chief sources of
satisfaction, though he never admitted it.
‘How is our angel?’ said Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
meaning Seryozha.
‘I can’t say I was quite pleased with him,’ said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes.
‘And Sitnikov is not satisfied with him.’ (Sitnikov was the
tutor to whom Seryozha’s secular education had been
intrusted.) ‘As I have mentioned to you, there’s a sort of
coldness in him towards the most important questions
which ought to touch the heart of every man and every
child....’ Alexey Alexandrovitch began expounding his
views on the sole question that interested him besides the
service—the education of his son.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Ivanovna’s
help had been brought back anew to life and activity, he
felt it his duty to undertake the education of the son left
on his hands. Having never before taken any interest in
educational questions, Alexey Alexandrovitch devoted
some time to the theoretical study of the subject. After
reading several books on anthropology, education, and
didactics, Alexey Alexandrovitch drew up a plan of
education, and engaging the best tutor in Petersburg to
superintend it, he set to work, and the subject continually
absorbed him.
‘Yes, but the heart. I see in him his father’s heart, and
with such a heart a child cannot go far wrong,’ said Lidia
Ivanovna with enthusiasm.
‘Yes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It’s all I can
do.’
‘You’re coming to me,’ said Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
after a pause; ‘we have to speak of a subject painful for
you. I would give anything to have spared you certain
memories, but others are not of the same mind. I have
received a letter from HER. SHE is here in Petersburg.’
Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered at the allusion to his
wife, but immediately his face assumed the deathlike
rigidity which expressed utter helplessness in the matter.
‘I was expecting it,’ he said.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna looked at him ecstatically, and
tears of rapture at the greatness of his soul came into her
eyes.
Chapter 25
When Alexey Alexandrovitch came into the Countess
Lidia Ivanovna’s snug little boudoir, decorated with old
china and hung with portraits, the lady herself had not yet
made her appearance.
She was changing her dress.
A cloth was laid on a round table, and on it stood a
china tea service and a silver spirit-lamp and tea kettle.
Alexey Alexandrovitch looked idly about at the endless
familiar portraits which adorned the room, and sitting
down to the table, he opened a New Testament lying
upon it. The rustle of the countess’s silk skirt drew his
attention off.
‘Well now, we can sit quietly,’ said Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, slipping hurriedly with an agitated smile
between the table and the sofa, ‘and talk over our tea.’
After some words of preparation, Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, breathing hard and flushing crimson, gave into
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s hands the letter she had received.
After reading the letter, he sat a long while in silence.
‘I don’t think I have the right to refuse her,’ he said,
timidly lifting his eyes.
‘Dear friend, you never see evil in anyone!’
‘On the contrary, I see that all is evil. But whether it is
just..’
His face showed irresolution, and a seeking for counsel,
support, and guidance in a matter he did not understand.
‘No,’ Countess Lidia Ivanovna interrupted him; ‘there
are limits to everything. I can understand immorality,’ she
said, not quite truthfully, since she never could understand
that which leads women to immorality; ‘but I don’t
understand cruelty: to whom? to you! How can she stay in
the town where you are? No, the longer one lives the
more one learns. And I’m learning to understand your
loftiness and her baseness.’
‘Who is to throw a stone?’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
unmistakably pleased with the part he had to play. ‘I have
forgiven all, and so I cannot deprive her of what is exacted
by love in her—by her love for her son...’
‘But is that love, my friend? Is it sincere? Admitting
that you have forgiven—that you forgive—have we the
right to work on the feelings of that angel? He looks on
her as dead. He prays for her, and beseeches God to have
mercy on her sins. And it is better so. But now what will
he think?’
‘I had not thought of that,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
evidently agreeing.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna hid her face in her hands and
was silent. she was praying.
‘If you ask my advice,’ she said, having finished her
prayer and uncovered her face, ‘I do not advise you to do
this. Do you suppose I don’t see how you are suffering,
how this has torn open your wounds? But supposing that,
as always, you don’t think of yourself, what can it lead
to?—to fresh suffering for you, to torture for the child. If
there were a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not
to wish for it herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I
advise not, and if you will intrust it to me, I will write to
her.’
And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess
Lidia Ivanovna sent the following letter in French:
‘Dear Madame,
‘To be reminded of you might have results for your son
in leading to questions on his part which could not be
answered without implanting in the child’s soul a spirit of
censure towards what should be for him sacred, and
therefore I beg you to interpret your husband’s refusal in
the spirit of Christian love. I pray to Almighty God to
have mercy on you.
Countess Lidia.’
This letter attained the secret object which Countess
Lidia Ivanovna had concealed from herself. It wounded
Anna to the quick.
For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning
home from Lidia Ivanovna’s, could not all that day
concentrate himself on his usual pursuits, and find that
spiritual peace of one saved and believing which he had
felt of late.
The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned
against him, and towards whom he had been so saintly, as
Countess Lidia Ivanovna had so justly told him, ought not
to have troubled him; but he was not easy; he could not
understand the book he was reading; he could not drive
away harassing recollections of his relations with her, of
the mistake which, as it now seemed, he had made in
regard to her. The memory of how he had received her
confession of infidelity on their way home from the races
(especially that he had insisted only on the observance of
external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured
him like a remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of
the letter he had written her; and most of all, his
forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and his care of the
other man’s child made his heart burn with shame and
remorse.
And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt
now, as he reviewed all his past with her, recalling the
awkward words in which, after long wavering, he had
made her an offer.
‘But how have I been to blame?’ he said to himself.
And this question always excited another question in
him—whether they felt differently, did their loving and
marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys...these
gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves. And
there passed before his mind a whole series of these
mettlesome, vigorous, self- confident men, who always
and everywhere drew his inquisitive attention in spite of
himself. He tried to dispel these thoughts, he tried to
persuade himself that he was not living for this transient
life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was peace
and love in his heart.
But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life
made, as it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured
him as though the eternal salvation in which he believed
had no existence. But this temptation did not last long,
and soon there was reestablished once more in Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s soul the peace and the elevation by
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Anna Karenina
1132 of 1759
virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to
remember.
Chapter 26
‘Well, Kapitonitch?’ said Seryozha, coming back rosy
and good- humored from his walk the day before his
birthday, and giving his overcoat to the tall old hall porter,
who smiled down at the little person from the height of
his long figure. ‘Well, has the bandaged clerk been here
today? Did papa see him?’
‘He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out,
I announced him,’ said the hall porter with a goodhumored
wink. ‘Here, I’ll take it off.’
‘Seryozha!’ said the tutor, stopping in the doorway
leading to the inner rooms. ‘Take it off yourself.’ But
Seryozha, though he heard his tutor’s feeble voice, did not
pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the hall
porter’s belt, and gazing into his face.
‘Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?’
The hall porter nodded his head affirmatively. The
clerk with his face tied up, who had already been seven
times to ask some favor of Alexey Alexandrovitch,
interested both Seryozha and the hall porter. Seryozha had
come upon him in the hall, and had heard him plaintively
beg the hall porter to announce him, saying that he and
his children had death staring them in the face.
Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in
the hall, took great interest in him.
‘Well, was he very glad?’ he asked.
‘Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked
away.’
‘And has anything been left?’ asked Seryozha, after a
pause.
‘Come, sir,’ said the hall-porter; then with a shake of
his head he whispered, ‘Something from the countess.’
Seryozha understood at once that what the hall porter
was speaking of was a present from Countess Lidia
Ivanovna for his birthday.
‘What do you say? Where?’
‘Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must
be too!’
‘How big? Like this?’
‘Rather small, but a fine thing.’
‘A book.’
‘No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is
calling you,’ said the porter, hearing the tutor’s steps
approaching, and carefully taking away from his belt the
little hand in the glove half pulled off, he signed with his
head towards the tutor.
‘Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!’ answered Seryozha
with that --- and loving smile which always won over the
conscientious Vassily Lukitch.
Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful
for him to be able to help sharing with his friend the
porter the family good fortune of which he had heard
during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia
Ivanovna’s niece. This piece of good news seemed to him
particularly important from its coming at the same time
with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own
gladness at toys having come for him. It seemed to
Seryozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to
be glad and happy.
‘You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky
today?’
‘To be sure I do! People have been already to
congratulate him.’
‘And is he glad?’
‘Glad at the Tsar’s gracious favor! I should think so! It’s
a proof he’s deserved it,’ said the porter severely and
seriously.
Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the
porter, which he had thoroughly studied in every detail,
especially the chin that hung down between the gray
whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha, who saw
him only from below.
‘Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?’
The porter’s daughter was a ballet dancer.
‘When is she to come on week-days? They’ve their
lessons to learn too. And you’ve your lesson, sir; run
along.’
On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting
down to his lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that
what had been brought him must be a machine. ‘What do
you think?’ he inquired.
But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the
necessity of learning the grammar lesson for the teacher,
who was coming at two.
‘No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,’ he asked
suddenly, when he was seated at their work table with the
book in his hands, ‘what is greater than the Alexander
Nevsky? You know papa’s received the Alexander
Nevsky?’
Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater
than the Alexander Nevsky.
‘And higher still?’
‘Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.’
‘And higher than the Andrey?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What, you don’t know?’ and Seryozha, leaning on his
elbows, sank into deep meditation.
His meditations were of the most complex and diverse
character. He imagined his father’s having suddenly been
presented with both the Vladimir and the Andrey today,
and in consequence being much better tempered at his
lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown up, he
would himself receive all the orders, and what they might
invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order
were invented, he would win it. They would make a
higher one still, and he would immediately win that too.
The time passed in such meditations, and when the
teacher came, the lesson about the adverbs of place and
time and manner of action was not ready, and the teacher
was not only displeased, but hurt. This touched Seryozha.
He felt he was not to blame for not having learned the
lesson; however much he tried, he was utterly unable to
do that. As long as the teacher was explaining to him, he
believed him and seemed to comprehend, but as soon as
he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect and
to understand that the short and familiar word ‘suddenly’ is
an adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he
had disappointed the teacher.
He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in
silence at the book.
‘Mihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?’ he asked all,
of a sudden.
‘You’d much better be thinking about your work.
Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It’s a
day like any other on which one has to do one’s work.’
Seryozha looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty
beard, at his spectacles, which had slipped down below the
ridge on his nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he
heard nothing of what the teacher was explaining to him.
He knew that the teacher did not think what he said; he
felt it from the tone in which it was said. ‘But why have
they all agreed to speak just in the same manner always the
dreariest and most useless stuff? Why does he keep me off;
why doesn’t he love me?’ he asked himself mournfully,
and could not think of an answer.
Chapter 27
After the lesson with the grammar teacher came his
father’s lesson. While waiting for his father, Seryozha sat at
the table playing with a penknife, and fell to dreaming.
Among Seryozha’s favorite occupations was searching for
his mother during his walks. He did not believe in death
generally, and in her death in particular, in spite of what
Lidia Ivanovna had told him and his father had confirmed,
and it was just because of that, and after he had been told
she was dead, that he had begun looking for her when out
for a walk. Every woman of full, graceful figure with dark
hair was his mother. At the sight of such a woman such a
feeling of tenderness was stirred within him that his breath
failed him, and tears came into his eyes. And he was on
the tiptoe of expectation that she would come up to him,
would lift her veil. All her face would be visible, she
would smile, she would hug him, he would sniff her
fragrance, feel the softness of her arms, and cry with
happiness, just as he had one evening lain on her lap while
she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her white, ringcovered
fingers. Later, when he accidentally learned from
his old nurse that his mother was not dead, and his father
and Lidia Ivanovna had explained to him that she was
dead to him because she was wicked (which he could not
possibly believe, because he loved her), he went on
seeking her and expecting her in the same way. That day
in the public gardens there had been a lady in a lilac veil,
whom he had watched with a throbbing heart, believing it
to be she as she came towards them along the path. The
lady had not come up to them, but had disappeared
somewhere. That day, more intensely than ever, Seryozha
felt a rush of love for her, and now, waiting for his father,
he forgot everything, and cut all round the edge of the
table with his penknife, staring straight before him with
sparkling eyes and dreaming of her.
‘Here is your papa!’ said Vassily Lukitch, rousing him.
Seryozha jumped up and went up to his father, and
kissing his hand, looked at him intently, trying to discover
signs of his joy at receiving the Alexander Nevsky.
‘Did you have a nice walk?’ said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, sitting down in his easy chair, pulling the
volume of the Old Testament to him and opening it.
Although Alexey Alexandrovitch had more than once told
Seryozha that every Christian ought to know Scripture
history thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible himself
during the lesson, and Seryozha observed this.
‘Yes, it was very nice indeed, papa,’ said Seryozha,
sitting sideways on his chair and rocking it, which was
forbidden. ‘I saw Nadinka’ (Nadinka was a niece of Lidia
Ivanovna’s who was being brought up in her house). ‘She
told me you’d been given a new star. Are you glad, papa?’
‘First of all, don’t rock your chair, please,’ said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. ‘And secondly, it’s not the reward that’s
precious, but the work itself. And I could have wished
you understood that. If you now are going to work, to
study in order to win a reward, then the work will seem
hard to you; but when you work’ (Alexey Alexandrovitch,
as he spoke, thought of how he had been sustained by a
sense of duty through the wearisome labor of the
morning, consisting of signing one hundred and eighty
papers), ‘loving your work, you will find your reward in
it.’
Seryozha’s eyes, that had been shining with gaiety and
tenderness, grew dull and dropped before his father’s gaze.
This was the same long-familiar tone his father always
took with him, and Seryozha had learned by now to fall in
with it. His father always talked to him—so Seryozha
felt—as though he were addressing some boy of his own
imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly
unlike himself. And Seryozha always tried with his father
to act being the story-book boy.
‘You understand that, I hope?’ said his father.
‘Yes, papa,’ answered Seryozha, acting the part of the
imaginary boy.
The lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses
out of the Gospel and the repetition of the beginning of
the Old Testament. The verses from the Gospel Seryozha
knew fairly well, but at the moment when he was saying
them he became so absorbed in watching the sharply
protruding, bony knobbiness of his father’s forehead, that
he lost the thread, and he transposed the end of one verse
and the beginning of another. So it was evident to Alexey
Alexandrovitch that he did not understand what he was
saying, and that irritated him.
He frowned, and began explaining what Seryozha had
heard many times before and never could remember,
because he understood it too well, just as that ‘suddenly’ is
an adverb of manner of action. Seryozha looked with
scared eyes at his father, and could think of nothing but
whether his father would make him repeat what he had
said, as he sometimes did. And this thought so alarmed
Seryozha that he now understood nothing. But his father
did not make him repeat it, and passed on to the lesson
out of the Old Testament. Seryozha recounted the events
themselves well enough, but when he had to answer
questions as to what certain events prefigured, he knew
nothing, though he had already been punished over this
lesson. The passage at which he was utterly unable to say
anything, and began fidgeting and cutting the table and
swinging his chair, was where he had to repeat the
patriarchs before the Flood. He did not know one of
them, except Enoch, who had been taken up alive to
heaven. Last time he had remembered their names, but
now he had forgotten them utterly, chiefly because Enoch
was the personage he liked best in the whole of the Old
Testament, and Enoch’s translation to heaven was
connected in his mind with a whole long train of thought,
in which he became absorbed now while he gazed with
fascinated eyes at his father’s watch-chain and a halfunbuttoned
button on his waistcoat.
In death, of which they talked to him so often,
Seryozha disbelieved entirely. He did not believe that
those he loved could die, above all that he himself would
die. That was to him something utterly inconceivable and
impossible. But he had been told that all men die; he had
asked people, indeed, whom he trusted, and they too, had
confirmed it; his old nurse, too, said the same, though
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reluctantly. But Enoch had not died, and so it followed
that everyone did not die. ‘And why cannot anyone else
so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?’ thought
Seryozha. Bad people, that is those Seryozha did not like,
they might die, but the good might all be like Enoch.
‘Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?’
‘Enoch, Enos—‘
‘But you have said that already. This is bad, Seryozha,
very bad. If you don’t try to learn what is more necessary
than anything for a Christian,’ said his father, getting up,
‘whatever can interest you? I am displeased with you, and
Piotr Ignatitch’ (this was the most important of his
teachers) ‘is displeased with you.... I shall have to punish
you.’
His father and his teacher were both displeased with
Seryozha, and he certainly did learn his lessons very badly.
But still it could not be said he was a stupid boy. On the
contrary, he was far cleverer than the boys his teacher held
up as examples to Seryozha. In his father’s opinion, he did
not want to learn what he was taught. In reality he could
not learn that. He could not, because the claims of his
own soul were more binding on him than those claims his
father and his teacher made upon him. Those claims were
in opposition, and he was in direct conflict with his
education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but he
knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it
as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love
he let no one into his soul. His teachers complained that
he would not learn, while his soul was brimming over
with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from
Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily
Lukitch, but not from his teachers. The spring his father
and his teachers reckoned upon to turn their mill-wheels
had long dried up at the source, but its waters did their
work in another channel.
His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to
see Nadinka, Lidia Ivanovna’s niece; but this punishment
turned out happily for Seryozha. Vassily Lukitch was in a
good humor, and showed him how to make windmills.
The whole evening passed over this work and in dreaming
how to make a windmill on which he could turn
himself—clutching at the sails or tying himself on and
whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha did not think all
the evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly
remembered her, and prayed in his own words that his
mother tomorrow for his birthday might leave off hiding
herself and come to him.
‘Vassily Lukitch, do you know what I prayed for
tonight extra besides the regular things?’
‘That you might learn your lessons better?’
‘No.’
‘Toys?’
‘No. You’ll never guess. A splendid thing; but it’s a
secret! When it comes to pass I’ll tell you. Can’t you
guess!’
‘No, I can’t guess. You tell me,’ said Vassily Lukitch
with a smile, which was rare with him. ‘Come, lie down,
I’m putting out the candle.’
‘Without the candle I can see better what I see and
what I prayed for. There! I was almost telling the secret!’
said Seryozha, laughing gaily.
When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and
felt his mother. She stood over him, and with loving eyes
caressed him. But then came windmills, a knife,
everything began to be mixed up, and he fell asleep.
Chapter 28
On arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at
one of the best hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower story,
Anna above with her child, its nurse, and her maid, in a
large suite of four rooms.
On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother’s.
There he found his mother, who had come from Moscow
on business. His mother and sister-in-law greeted him as
usual: they asked him about his stay abroad, and talked of
their common acquaintances, but did not let drop a single
word in allusion to his connection with Anna. His brother
came the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own
accord asked him about her, and Alexey Vronsky told him
directly that he looked upon his connection with Madame
Karenina as marriage; that he hoped to arrange a divorce,
and then to marry her, and until then he considered her as
much a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell
their mother and his wife so.
‘If the world disapproves, I don’t care,’ said Vronsky;
‘but if my relations want to be on terms of relationship
with me, they will have to be on the same terms with my
wife.’
The elder brother, who had always a respect for his
younger brother’s judgment, could not well tell whether
he was right or not till the world had decided the
question; for his part he had nothing against it, and with
Alexey he went up to see Anna.
Before his brother, as before everyone, Vronsky
addressed Anna with a certain formality, treating her as he
might a very intimate friend, but it was understood that his
brother knew their real relations, and they talked about
Anna’s going to Vronsky’s estate.
In spite of all his social experience Vronsky was, in
consequence of the new position in which he was placed,
laboring under a strange misapprehension. One would
have thought he must have understood that society was
closed for him and Anna; but now some vague ideas had
sprung up in his brain that this was only the case in oldfashioned
days, and that now with the rapidity of modern
progress (he had unconsciously become by now a partisan
of every sort of progress) the views of society had changed,
and that the question whether they would be received in
society was not a foregone conclusion. ‘Of course,’ he
thought, ‘she would not be received at court, but intimate
friends can and must look at it in the proper light.’ One
may sit for several hours at a stretch with one’s legs crossed
in the same position, if one knows that there’s nothing to
prevent one’s changing one’s position; but if a man knows
that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then
cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain
towards the spot to which one would like to draw them.
This was what Vronsky was experiencing in regard to the
world. Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that
the world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether
the world had not changed by now and would not receive
them. But he very quickly perceived that though the
world was open for him personally, it was closed for Anna.
Just as in the game of cat and mouse, the hands raised for
him were dropped to bar the way for Anna.
One of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom
Vronsky saw was his cousin Betsy.
‘At last!’ she greeted him joyfully. ‘And Anna? How
glad I am! Where are you stopping? I can fancy after your
delightful travels you must find our poor Petersburg
horrid. I can fancy your honeymoon in Rome. How
about the divorce? Is that all over?’
Vronsky noticed that Betsy’s enthusiasm waned when
she learned that no divorce had as yet taken place.
‘People will throw stones at me, I know,’ she said, ‘but
I shall come and see Anna; yes, I shall certainly come. You
won’t be here long, I suppose?’
And she did certainly come to see Anna the same day,
but her tone was not at all the same as in former days. She
unmistakably prided herself on her courage, and wished
Anna to appreciate the fidelity of her friendship. She only
stayed ten minutes, talking of society gossip, and on
leaving she said:
‘You’ve never told me when the divorce is to be?
Supposing I’m ready to fling my cap over the mill, other
starchy people will give you the cold shoulder until you’re
married. And that’s so simple nowadays. Ca se fait. So
you’re going on Friday? Sorry we shan’t see each other
again.’
From Betsy’s tone Vronsky might have grasped what
he had to expect from the world; but he made another
effort in his own family. His mother he did not reckon
upon. He knew that his mother, who had been so
enthusiastic over Anna at their first acquaintance, would
have no mercy on her now for having ruined her son’s
career. But he had more hope of Varya, his brother’s wife.
He fancied she would not throw stones, and would go
simply arid directly to see Anna, and would receive her in
her own house.
The day after his arrival Vronsky went to her, and
finding her alone, expressed his wishes directly.
‘You know, Alexey,’ she said after hearing him, ‘how
fond I am of you, and how ready I am to do anything for
you; but I have not spoken, because I knew I could be of
no use to you and to Anna Arkadyevna,’ she said,
articulating the name ‘Anna Arkadyevna’ with particular
care. ‘Don’t suppose, please, that I judge her. Never;
perhaps in her place I should have done the same. I don’t
and can’t enter into that,’ she said, glancing timidly at his
gloomy face. ‘But one must call things by their names.
You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to
rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that I
CANNOT do so. I have daughters growing up, and I
must live in the world for my husband’s sake. Well, I’m
ready to come and see Anna Arkadyevna: she will
understand that I can’t ask her here, or I should have to do
so in such a way that she would not meet people who
look at things differently; that would offend her. I can’t
raise her..’
‘Oh, I don’t regard her as fallen more than hundreds of
women you do receive!’ Vronsky interrupted her still
more gloomily, and he got up in silence, understanding
that his sister-in-law’s decision was not to be shaken.
‘Alexey! don’t be angry with me. Please understand
that I’m not to blame,’ began Varya, looking at him with a
timid smile.
‘I’m not angry with you,’ he said still as gloomily; ‘but
I’m sorry in two ways. I’m sorry, too, that this means
breaking up our friendship—if not breaking up, at least
weakening it. You will understand that for me, too, it
cannot be otherwise.’
And with that he left her.
Vronsky knew that further efforts were useless, and that
he had to spend these few days in Petersburg as though in
a strange town, avoiding every sort of relation with his
own old circle in order not to be exposed to the
annoyances and humiliations which were so intolerable to
him. One of the most unpleasant features of his position in
Petersburg was that Alexey Alexandrovitch and his name
seemed to meet him everywhere. He could not begin to
talk of anything without the conversation turning on
Alexey Alexandrovitch; he could not go anywhere
without risk of meeting him. So at least it seemed to
Vronsky, just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that
he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his sore
finger on everything.
Their stay in Petersburg was the more painful to
Vronsky that he perceived all the time a sort of new mood
that he could not understand in Anna. At one time she
would seem in love with him, and then she would
become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She was
worrying over something, and keeping something back
from him, and did not seem to notice the humiliations
which poisoned his existence, and for her, with her
delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.
Chapter 29
One of Anna’s objects in coming back to Russia had
been to see her son. From the day she left Italy the
thought of it had never ceased to agitate her. And as she
got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and importance of
this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She did
not even put to herself the question how to arrange it. It
seemed to her natural and simple to see her son when she
should be in the same town with him. But on her arrival
in Petersburg she was suddenly made distinctly aware of
her present position in society, and she grasped the fact
that to arrange this meeting was no easy matter.
She had now been two days in Petersburg. The
thought of her son never left her for a single instant, but
she had not yet seen him. To go straight to the house,
where she might meet Alexey Alexandrovitch, that she felt
she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance
and insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her
husband—that it made her miserable to think of doing;
she could only be at peace when she did not think of her
husband. To get a glimpse of her son out walking, finding
out where and when he went out, was not enough for
her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so
much she must say to him, she so longed to embrace him,
to kiss him. Seryozha’s old nurse might be a help to her
and show her what to do. But the nurse was not now
living in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house. In this
uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had
slipped by.
Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexey
Alexandrovitch and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna
decided on the third day to write to her a letter, which
cost her great pains, and in which she intentionally said
that permission to see her son must depend on her
husband’s generosity. She knew that if the letter were
shown to her husband, he would keep up his character of
magnanimity, and would not refuse her request.
The commissionaire who took the letter had brought
her back the most cruel and unexpected answer, that there
was no answer. She had never felt so humiliated as at the
moment when, sending for the commissionaire, she heard
from him the exact account of how he had waited, and
how afterwards he had been told there was no answer.
Anna felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her
point of view Countess Lidia Ivanovna was right. Her
suffering was the more poignant that she had to bear it in
solitude. She could not and would not share it with
Vronsky. She knew that to him, although he was the
primary cause of her distress, the question of her seeing
her son would seem a matter of very little consequence.
She knew that he would never be capable of
understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his
cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate
him. And she dreaded that more than anything in the
world, and so she hid from him everything that related to
her son. Spending the whole day at home she considered
ways of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to
write to her husband. She was just composing this letter
when she was handed the letter from Lidia Ivanovna. The
countess’s silence had subdued and depressed her, but the
letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so
exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her
passionate, legitimate tenderness for her son, that she
turned against other people and left off blaming herself.
‘This coldness—this pretense of feeling!’ she said to
herself. ‘They must needs insult me and torture the child,
and I am to submit to it! Not on any consideration! She is
worse than I am. I don’t lie, anyway.’ And she decided on
the spot that next day, Seryozha’s birthday, she would go
straight to her husband’s house, bribe or deceive the
servants, but at any cost see her son and overturn the
hideous deception with which they were encompassing
the unhappy child.
She went to a toy shop, bought toys and thought over
a plan of action. She would go early in the morning at
eight o’clock, when Alexey Alexandrovitch would be
certain not to be up. She would have money in her hand
to give the hall porter and the footman, so that they
should let her in, and not raising her veil, she would say
that she had come from Seryozha’s godfather to
congratulate him, and that she had been charged to leave
the toys at his bedside. She had prepared everything but
the words she should say to her son. Often as she had
dreamed of it, she could never think of anything.
The next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, Anna
got out of a hired sledge and rang at the front entrance of
her former home.
‘Run and see what’s wanted. Some lady,’ said
Kapitonitch, who, not yet dressed, in his overcoat and
galoshes, had peeped out of the window and seen a lady in
a veil standing close up to the door. His assistant, a lad
Anna did not know, had no sooner opened the door to
her than she came in, and pulling a three-rouble note out
of her muff put it hurriedly into his hand.
‘Seryozha—Sergey Alexeitch,’ she said, and was going
on. Scrutinizing the note, the porter’s assistant stopped her
at the second glass door.
‘Whom do you want?’ he asked.
She did not hear his words and made no answer.
Noticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady,
Kapitonitch went out to her, opened the second door for
her, and asked her what she was pleased to want.
‘From Prince Skorodumov for Sergey Alexeitch,’ she
said.
‘His honor’s not up yet,’ said the porter, looking at her
attentively.
Anna had not anticipated that the absolutely unchanged
hall of the house where she had lived for nine years would
so greatly affect her. Memories sweet and painful rose one
after another in her heart, and for a moment she forgot
what she was here for.
‘Would you kindly wait?’ said Kapitonitch, taking off
her fur cloak.
As he took off the cloak, Kapitonitch glanced at her
face, recognized her, and made her a low bow in silence.
‘Please walk in, your excellency,’ he said to her.
She tried to say something, but her voice refused to
utter any sound; with a guilty and imploring glance at the
old man she went with light, swift steps up the stairs. Bent
double, and his galoshes catching in the steps, Kapitonitch
ran after her, trying to overtake her.
‘The tutor’s there; maybe he’s not dressed. I’ll let him
know.’
Anna still mounted the familiar staircase, not
understanding what the old man was saying.
‘This way, to the left, if you please. Excuse its not
being tidy. His honor’s in the old parlor now,’ the hall
porter said, panting. ‘Excuse me, wait a little, your
excellency; I’ll just see,’ he said, and overtaking her, he
opened the high door and disappeared behind it. Anna
stood still waiting. ‘He’s only just awake,’ said the hall
porter, coming out. And at the very instant the porter said
this, Anna caught the sound of a childish yawn. From the
sound of this yawn alone she knew her son and seemed to
see him living before her eyes.
‘Let me in; go away!’ she said, and went in through the
high doorway. On the right of the door stood a bed, and
sitting up in the bed was the boy. His little body bent
forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he was stretching
and still yawning. The instant his lips came together they
curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he
slowly and deliciously rolled back again.
‘Seryozha!’ she whispered, going noiselessly up to him.
When she was parted from him, and all this latter time
when she had been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she
had pictured him as he was at four years old, when she had
loved him most of all. Now he was not even the same as
when she had left him; he was still further from the fouryear-
old baby, more grown and thinner. How thin his
face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How
he had changed since she left him! But it was he with his
head, his lips, his soft neck and broad little shoulders.
‘Seryozha!’ she repeated just in the child’s ear.
He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tangled
head from side to side as though looking for something,
and opened his eyes. Slowly and inquiringly he looked for
several seconds at his mother standing motionless before
him, then all at once he smiled a blissful smile, and
shutting his eyes, rolled not backwards but towards her
into her arms.
‘Seryozha! my darling boy!’ she said, breathing hard and
putting her arms round his plump little body. ‘Mother!’ he
said, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch her hands
with different parts of him.
Smiling sleepily still with closed eyes, he flung fat little
arms round her shoulders, rolled towards her, with the
delicious sleepy warmth and fragrance that is only found in
children, and began rubbing his face against her neck and
shoulders.
‘I know,’ he said, opening his eyes; ‘it’s my birthday
today. I knew you’d come. I’ll get up directly.’
And saying that he dropped asleep.
Anna looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had
grown and changed in her absence. She knew, and did not
know, the bare legs so long now, that were thrust out
below the quilt, those short-cropped curls on his neck in
which she had so often kissed him. She touched all this
and could say nothing; tears choked her.
‘What are you crying for, mother?’ he said, waking
completely up. ‘Mother, what are you crying for?’ he
cried in a tearful voice.
‘I won’t cry...I’m crying for joy. It’s so long since I’ve
seen you. I won’t, I won’t,’ she said, gulping down her
tears and turning away. ‘Come, it’s time for you to dress
now,’ she added, after a pause, and, never letting go his
hands, she sat down by his bedside on the chair, where his
clothes were put ready for him.
‘How do you dress without me? How...’ she tried to
begin talking simply and cheerfully, but she could not, and
again she turned away.
‘I don’t have a cold bath, papa didn’t order it. And
you’ve not seen Vassily Lukitch? He’ll come in soon.
Why, you’re sitting on my clothes!’
And Seryozha went off into a peal of laughter. She
looked at him and smiled.
‘Mother, darling, sweet one!’ he shouted, flinging
himself on her again and hugging her. It was as though
only now, on seeing her smile, he fully grasped what had
happened.
‘I don’t want that on,’ he said, taking off her hat. And
as it were, seeing her afresh without her hat, he fell to
kissing her again.
‘But what did you think about me? You didn’t think I
was dead?’
‘I never believed it.’
‘You didn’t believe it, my sweet?’
‘I knew, I knew!’ he repeated his favorite phrase, and
snatching the hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed
the open palm to his mouth and kissed it.
Chapter 30
Meanwhile Vassily Lukitch had not at first understood
who this lady was, and had learned from their
conversation that it was no other person than the mother
who had left her husband, and whom he had not seen, as
he had entered the house after her departure. He was in
doubt whether to go in or not, or whether to
communicate with Alexey Alexandrovitch. Reflecting
finally that his duty was to get Seryozha up at the hour
fixed, and that it was therefore not his business to consider
who was there, the mother or anyone else, but simply to
do his duty, he finished dressing, went to the door and
opened it.
But the embraces of the mother and child, the sound of
their voices, and what they were saying, made him change
his mind.
He shook his head, and with a sigh he closed the door.
‘I’ll wait another ten minutes,’ he said to himself, clearing
his throat and wiping away tears.
Among the servants of the household there was intense
excitement all this time. All had heard that their mistress
had come, and that Kapitonitch had let her in, and that
she was even now in the nursery, and that their master
always went in person to the nursery at nine o’clock, and
every one fully comprehended that it was impossible for
the husband and wife to meet, and that they must prevent
it. Korney, the valet, going down to the hall porter’s
room, asked who had let her in, and how it was he had
done so, and ascertaining that Kapitonitch had admitted
her and shown her up, he gave the old man a talking-to.
The hall porter was doggedly silent, but when Korney told
him he ought to be sent away, Kapitonitch darted up to
him, and waving his hands in Korney’s face, began:
‘Oh yes, to be sure you’d not have let her in! After ten
years’ service, and never a word but of kindness, and there
you’d up and say, ‘Be off, go along, get away with you!’
Oh yes, you’re a shrewd one at politics, I dare say! You
don’t need to be taught how to swindle the master, and to
filch fur coats!’
‘Soldier!’ said Korney contemptuously, and he turned
to the nurse who was coming in. ‘Here, what do you
think, Marya Efimovna: he let her in without a word to
anyone,’ Korney said addressing her. ‘Alexey
Alexandrovitch will be down immediately—and go into
the nursery!’
‘A pretty business, a pretty business!’ said the nurse.
‘You, Korney Vassilievitch, you’d best keep him some
way or other, the master, while I’ll run and get her away
somehow. A pretty business!’
When the nurse went into the nursery, Seryozha was
telling his mother how he and Nadinka had had a fall in
sledging downhill, and had turned over three times. She
was listening to the sound of his voice, watching his face
and the play of expression on it, touching his hand, but
she did not follow what he was saying. She must go, she
must leave him,—this was the only thing she was thinking
and feeling. She heard the steps of Vassily Lukitch coming
up to the door and coughing; she heard, too, the steps of
the nurse as she came near; but she sat like one turned to
stone, incapable of beginning to speak or to get up.
‘Mistress, darling!’ began the nurse, going up to Anna
and kissing her hands and shoulders. ‘God has brought joy
indeed to our boy on his birthday. You aren’t changed
one bit.’
‘Oh, nurse dear, I didn’t know you were in the house,’
said Anna, rousing herself for a moment.
‘I’m not living here, I’m living with my daughter. I
came for the birthday, Anna Arkadyevna, darling!’
The nurse suddenly burst into tears, and began kissing
her hand again.
Seryozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his
mother by one hand and his nurse by the other, pattered
on the rug with his fat little bare feet. The tenderness
shown by his beloved nurse to his mother threw him into
an ecstasy.
‘Mother! She often comes to see me, and when she
comes...’ he was beginning, but he stopped, noticing that
the nurse was saying something in a whisper to his
mother, and that in his mother’s face there was a look of
dread and something like shame, which was so strangely
unbecoming to her.
She went up to him.
‘My sweet!’ she said.
She could not say good-bye, but the expression on her
face said it, and he understood. ‘Darling, darling Kootik!’
she used the name by which she had called him when he
was little, ‘you won’t forget me? You...’ but she could not
say more.
How often afterwards she thought of words she might
have said. But now she did not know how to say it, and
could say nothing. But Seryozha knew all she wanted to
say to him. He understood that she was unhappy and
loved him. He understood even what the nurse had
whispered. He had caught the words ‘always at nine
o’clock,’ and he knew that this was said of his father, and
that his father and mother could not meet. That he
understood, but one thing he could not understand—why
there should be a look of dread and shame in her face?...
She was not in fault, but she was afraid of him and
ashamed of something. He would have liked to put a
question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he did
not dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he felt for
her. Silently he pressed close to her and whispered, ‘Don’t
go yet. He won’t come just yet.’
The mother held him away from her to see what he
was thinking, what to say to him, and in his frightened
face she read not only that he was speaking of his father,
but, as it were, asking her what he ought to think about
his father.
‘Seryozha, my darling,’ she said, ‘love him; he’s better
and kinder than I am, and I have done him wrong. When
you grow up you will judge.’
‘There’s no one better than you!...’ he cried in despair
through his tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he
began squeezing her with all his force to him, his arms
trembling with the strain.
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‘My sweet, my little one!’ said Anna, and she cried as
weakly and childishly as he.
At that moment the door opened. Vassily Lukitch came
in.
At the other door there was the sound of steps, and the
nurse in a scared whisper said, ‘He’s coming,’ and gave
Anna her hat.
Seryozha sank onto the bed and sobbed, hiding his face
in his hands. Anna removed his hands, once more kissed
his wet face, and with rapid steps went to the door. Alexey
Alexandrovitch walked in, meeting her. Seeing her, he
stopped short and bowed his head.
Although she had just said he was better and kinder
than she, in the rapid glance she flung at him, taking in his
whole figure in all its details, feelings of repulsion and
hatred for him and jealousy over her son took possession
of her. With a swift gesture she put down her veil, and,
quickening her pace, almost ran out of the room.
She had not time to undo, and so carried back with
her, the parcel of toys she had chosen the day before in a
toy shop with such love and sorrow.
Chapter 31
As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and
long as she had been thinking of it and preparing herself
for it, she had not in the least expected that seeing him
would affect her so deeply. On getting back to her lonely
rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while
understand why she was there. ‘Yes, it’s all over, and I am
again alone,’ she said to herself, and without taking off her
hat she sat down in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her
eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table between the
windows, she tried to think.
The French maid brought from abroad came in to
suggest she should dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and
said, ‘Presently.’ A footman offered her coffee. ‘Later on,’
she said.
The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in
her best, came in with her, and brought her to Anna. The
plump, well-fed little baby, on seeing her mother, as she
always did, held out her fat little hands, and with a smile
on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a float,
bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her
embroidered skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible
not to smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold
out a finger for her to clutch, crowing and prancing all
over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she sucked
into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Anna
did, and took her in her arms and made her dance, and
kissed her fresh little cheek and bare little elbows; but at
the sight of this child it was plainer than ever to her that
the feeling she had for her could not be called love in
comparison with what she felt for Seryozha. Everything in
this baby was charming, but for some reason all this did
not go deep to her heart. On her first child, though the
child of an unloved father, had been concentrated all the
love that had never found satisfaction. Her baby girl had
been born in the most painful circumstances and had not
had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had
been
concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little girl
everything was still in the future, while Seryozha was by
now almost a personality, and a personality dearly loved.
In him there was a conflict of thought and feeling; he
understood her, he loved her, he judged her, she thought,
recalling his words and his eyes. And she was forever—not
physically only but spiritually—divided from him, and it
was impossible to set this right.
She gave the baby back to the nurse, let her go, and
opened the locket in which there was Seryozha’s portrait
when he was almost of the same age as the girl. She got
up, and, taking off her hat, took up from a little table an
album in which there were photographs of her son at
different ages. She wanted to compare them, and began
taking them out of the album. She took them all out
except one, the latest and best photograph. In it he was in
a white smock, sitting astride a chair, with frowning eyes
and smiling lips. It was his best, most characteristic
expression. With her little supple hands, her white,
delicate fingers, that moved with a peculiar intensity
today, she pulled at a corner of the photograph, but the
photograph had caught somewhere, and she could not get
it out. There was no paper knife on the table, and so,
pulling out the photograph that was next to her son’s (it
was a photograph of Vronsky taken at Rome in a round
hat and with long hair), she used it to push out her son’s
photograph. ‘Oh, here is he!’ she said, glancing at the
portrait of Vronsky, and she suddenly recalled that he was
the cause of her present misery. She had not once thought
of him all the morning. But now, coming all at once upon
that manly, noble face, so familiar and so dear to her, she
felt a sudden rush of love for him.
‘But where is he? How is it he leaves me alone in my
misery?’ she thought all at once with a feeling of reproach,
forgetting she had herself kept from him everything
concerning her son. She sent to ask him to come to her
immediately; with a throbbing heart she awaited him,
rehearsing to herself the words in which she would tell
him all, and the expressions of love with which he would
console her. The messenger returned with the answer that
he had a visitor with him, but that he would come
immediately, and that he asked whether she would let him
bring with him Prince Yashvin, who had just arrived in
Petersburg. ‘He’s not coming alone, and since dinner
yesterday he has not seen me,’ she thought; ‘he’s not
coming so that I could tell him everything, but coming
with Yashvin.’ And all at once a strange idea came to her:
what if he had ceased to love her?
And going over the events of the last few days, it
seemed to her that she saw in everything a confirmation of
this terrible idea. The fact that he had not dined at home
yesterday, and the fact that he had insisted on their taking
separate sets of rooms in Petersburg, and that even now he
was not coming to her alone, as though he were trying to
avoid meeting her face to face.
‘But he ought to tell me so. I must know that it is so. If
I knew it, then I know what I should do,’ she said to
herself, utterly unable to picture to herself the position she
would be in if she were convinced of his not caring for
her. She thought he had ceased to love her, she felt close
upon despair, and consequently she felt exceptionally alert.
She rang for her maid and went to her dressing room. As
she dressed, she took more care over her appearance than
she had done all those days, as though he might, if he had
grown cold to her, fall in love with her again because she
had dressed and arranged her hair in the way most
becoming to her.
She heard the bell ring before she was ready. When she
went into the drawing room it was not he, but Yashvin,
who met her eyes. Vronsky was looking through the
photographs of her son, which she had forgotten on the
table, and he made no haste to look round at her.
‘We have met already,’ she said, putting her little hand
into the huge hand of Yashvin, whose bashfulness was so
queerly out of keeping with his immense frame and coarse
face. ‘We met last year at the races. Give them to me,’ she
said, with a rapid movement snatching from Vronsky the
photographs of her son, and glancing significantly at him
with flashing eyes. ‘Were the races good this year? Instead
of them I saw the races in the Corso in Rome. But you
don’t care for life abroad,’ she said with a cordial smile. ‘I
know you and all your tastes, though I have seen so little
of you.’
‘I’m awfully sorry for that, for my tastes are mostly
bad,’ said Yashvin, gnawing at his left mustache.
Having talked a little while, and noticing that Vronsky
glanced at the clock, Yashvin asked her whether she
would be staying much longer in Petersburg, and
unbending his huge figure reached after his cap.
‘Not long, I think,’ she said hesitatingly, glancing at
Vronsky.
‘So then we shan’t meet again?’
‘Come and dine with me,’ said Anna resolutely, angry
it seemed with herself for her embarrassment, but flushing
as she always did when she defined her position before a
fresh person. ‘The dinner here is not good, but at least you
will see him. There is no one of his old friends in the
regiment Alexey cares for as he does for you.’
‘Delighted,’ said Yashvin with a smile, from which
Vronsky could see that he liked Anna very much.
Yashvin said good-bye and went away; Vronsky stayed
behind.
‘Are you going too?’ she said to him.
‘I’m late already,’ he answered. ‘Run along! I’ll catch
you up in a moment,’ he called to Yashvin.
She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes
off him, gazed at him while she ransacked her mind for
the words to say that would keep him.
‘Wait a minute, there’s something I want to say to
you,’ and taking his broad hand she pressed it on her neck.
‘Oh, was it right my asking him to dinner?’
‘You did quite right,’ he said with a serene smile that
showed his even teeth, and he kissed her hand.
‘Alexey, you have not changed to me?’ she said,
pressing his hand in both of hers. ‘Alexey, I am miserable
here. When are we going away?’
‘Soon, soon. You wouldn’t believe how disagreeable
our way of living here is to me too,’ he said, and he drew
away his hand.
‘Well, go, go!’ she said in a tone of offense, and she
walked quickly away from him.
Chapter 32
When Vronsky returned home, Anna was not yet
home. Soon after he had left, some lady, so they told him,
had come to see her, and she had gone out with her. That
she had gone out without leaving word where she was
going, that she had not yet come back, and that all the
morning she had been going about somewhere without a
word to him—all this, together with the strange look of
excitement in her face in the morning, and the
recollection of the hostile tone with which she had before
Yashvin almost snatched her son’s photographs out of his
hands, made him serious. He decided he absolutely must
speak openly with her. And he waited for her in her
drawing room. But Anna did not return alone, but
brought with her her old unmarried aunt, Princess
Oblonskaya. This was the lady who had come in the
morning, and with whom Anna had gone out shopping.
Anna appeared not to notice Vronsky’s worried and
inquiring expression, and began a lively account of her
morning’s shopping. He saw that there was something
working within her; in her flashing eyes, when they rested
for a moment on him, there was an intense concentration,
and in her words and movements there was that nervous
rapidity and grace which, during the early period of their
intimacy, had so fascinated him, but which now so
disturbed and alarmed him.
The dinner was laid for four. All were gathered
together and about to go into the little dining room when
Tushkevitch made his appearance with a message from
Princess Betsy. Princess Betsy begged her to excuse her
not having come to say good-bye; she had been
indisposed, but begged Anna to come to her between halfpast
six and nine o’clock. Vronsky glanced at Anna at the
precise limit of time, so suggestive of steps having been
taken that she should meet no one; but Anna appeared not
to notice it.
‘Very sorry that I can’t come just between half-past six
and nine,’ she said with a faint smile.
‘The princess will be very sorry.’
‘And so am I.’
‘You’re going, no doubt, to hear Patti?’ said
Tushkevitch.
‘Patti? You suggest the idea to me. I would go if it
were possible to get a box.’
‘I can get one,’ Tushkevitch offered his services.
‘I should be very, very grateful to you,’ said Anna. ‘But
won’t you dine with us?’
Vronsky gave a hardly perceptible shrug. He was at a
complete loss to understand what Anna was about. What
had she brought the old Princess Oblonskaya home for,
what had she made Tushkevitch stay to dinner for, and,
most amazing of all, why was she sending him for a box?
Could she possibly think in her position of going to Patti’s
benefit, where all the circle of her acquaintances would
be? He looked at her with serious eyes, but she responded
with that defiant, half-mirthful, half-desperate look, the
meaning of which he could not comprehend. At dinner
Anna was in aggressively high spirits—she almost flirted
both with Tushkevitch and with Yashvin. When they got
up from dinner and Tushkevitch had gone to get a box at
the opera, Yashvin went to smoke, and Vronsky went
down with him to his own rooms. After sitting there for
some time he ran upstairs. Anna was already dressed in a
low-necked gown of light silk and velvet that she had had
made in Paris, and with costly white lace on her head,
framing her face, and particularly becoming, showing up
her dazzling beauty.
‘Are you really going to the theater?’ he said, trying not
to look at her.
‘Why do you ask with such alarm?’ she said, wounded
again at his not looking at her. ‘Why shouldn’t I go?’
She appeared not to understand the motive of his
words.
‘Oh, of course, there’s no reason whatever,’ he said,
frowning.
‘That’s just what I say,’ she said, willfully refusing to see
the irony of his tone, and quietly turning back her long,
perfumed glove.
‘Anna, for God’s sake! what is the matter with you?’ he
said, appealing to her exactly as once her husband had
done.
‘I don’t understand what you are asking.’
‘You know that it’s out of the question to go.’
‘Why so? I’m not going alone. Princess Varvara has
gone to dress, she is going with me.’
He shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and
despair.
‘But do you mean to say you don’t know?...’ he began.
‘But I don’t care to know!’ she almost shrieked. ‘I don’t
care to. Do I regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it
were all to do again from the beginning, it would be the
same. For us, for you and for me, there is only one thing
that matters, whether we love each other. Other people
we need not consider. Why are we living here apart and
not seeing each other? Why can’t I go? I love you, and I
don’t care for anything,’ she said in Russian, glancing at
him with a peculiar gleam in her eyes that he could not
understand. ‘If you have not changed to me, why don’t
you look at me?’
He looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and
full dress, always so becoming to her. But now her beauty
and elegance were just what irritated him.
‘My feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I
entreat you,’ he said again in French, with a note of tender
supplication in his voice, but with coldness in his eyes.
She did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of
his eyes, and answered with irritation:
‘And I beg you to explain why I should not go.’
‘Because it might cause you...’ he hesitated.
‘I don’t understand. Yashvin n’est pas compromettant,
and Princess Varvara is no worse than others. Oh, here she
is!’
Chapter 33
Vronsky for the first time experienced a feeling of
anger against Anna, almost a hatred for her willfully
refusing to understand her own position. This feeling was
aggravated by his being unable to tell her plainly the cause
of his anger. If he had told her directly what he was
thinking, he would have said:
‘In that dress, with a princess only too well known to
everyone, to show yourself at the theater is equivalent not
merely to acknowledging your position as a fallen woman,
but is flinging down a challenge to society, that is to say,
cutting yourself off from it forever.’
He could not say that to her. ‘But how can she fail to
see it, and what is going on in her?’ he said to himself. He
felt at the same time that his respect for her was
diminished while his sense of her beauty was intensified.
He went back scowling to his rooms, and sitting down
beside Yashvin, who, with his long legs stretched out on a
chair, was drinking brandy and seltzer water, he ordered a
glass of the same for himself.
‘You were talking of Lankovsky’s Powerful. That’s a
fine horse, and I would advise you to buy him,’ said
Yashvin, glancing at his comrade’s gloomy face. ‘His hindquarters
aren’t quite first-rate, but the legs and head—one
couldn’t wish for anything better.’
‘I think I will take him,’ answered Vronsky.
Their conversation about horses interested him, but he
did not for an instant forget Anna, and could not help
listening to the sound of steps in the corridor and looking
at the clock on the chimney piece.
‘Anna Arkadyevna gave orders to announce that she has
gone to the theater.’
Yashvin, tipping another glass of brandy into the
bubbling water, drank it and got up, buttoning his coat.
‘Well, let’s go,’ he said, faintly smiling under his
mustache, and showing by this smile that he knew the
cause of Vronsky’s gloominess, and did not attach any
significance to it.
‘I’m not going,’ Vronsky answered gloomily.
‘Well, I must, I promised to. Good-bye, then. If you
do, come to the stalls; you can take Kruzin’s stall,’ added
Yashvin as he went out.
‘No, I’m busy.’
‘A wife is a care, but it’s worse when she’s not a wife,’
thought Yashvin, as he walked out of the hotel.
Vronsky, left alone, got up from his chair and began
pacing up and down the room.
‘And what’s today? The fourth night.... Yegor and his
wife are there, and my mother, most likely. Of course all
Petersburg’s there. Now she’s gone in, taken off her cloak
and come into the light. Tushkevitch, Yashvin, Princess
Varvara,’ he pictured them to himself.... ‘What about me?
Either that I’m frightened or have given up to
Tushkevitch the right to protect her? From every point of
view—stupid, stupid!... And why is she putting me in such
a position?’ he said with a gesture of despair.
With that gesture he knocked against the table, on
which there was standing the seltzer water and the
decanter of brandy, and almost upset it. He tried to catch
it, let it slip, and angrily kicked the table over and rang.
‘If you care to be in my service,’ he said to the valet
who came in, ‘you had better remember your duties. This
shouldn’t be here. You ought to have cleared away.’
The valet, conscious of his own innocence, would have
defended himself, but glancing at his master, he saw from
his face that the only thing to do was to be silent, and
hurriedly threading his way in and out, dropped down on
the carpet and began gathering up the whole and broken
glasses and bottles.
‘That’s not your duty; send the waiter to clear away,
and get my dress coat out.’
Vronsky went into the theater at half-past eight. The
performance was in full swing. The little old box-keeper,
recognizing Vronsky as he helped him off with his fur
coat, called him ‘Your Excellency,’ and suggested he
should not take a number but should simply call Fyodor.
In the brightly lighted corridor there was no one but the
box-opener and two attendants with fur cloaks on their
arms listening at the doors. Through the closed doors
came the sounds of the discreet staccato accompaniment of
the orchestra, and a single female voice rendering
distinctly a musical phrase. The door opened to let the
box-opener slip through, and the phrase drawing to the
end reached Vronsky’s hearing clearly. But the doors were
closed again at once, and Vronsky did not hear the end of
the phrase and the cadence of the accompaniment, though
he knew from the thunder of applause that it was over.
When he entered the hall, brilliantly lighted with
chandeliers and gas jets, the noise was still going on. On
the stage the singer, bowing and smiling, with bare
shoulders flashing with diamonds, was, with the help of
the tenor who had given her his arm, gathering up the
bouquets that were flying awkwardly over the footlights.
Then she went up to a gentleman with glossy pomaded
hair parted down the center, who was stretching across the
footlights holding out something to her, and all the public
in the stalls as well as in the boxes was in excitement,
craning forward, shouting and clapping. The conductor in
his high chair assisted in passing the offering, and
straightened his white tie. Vronsky walked into the middle
of the stalls, and, standing still, began looking about him.
That day less than ever was his attention turned upon the
familiar, habitual surroundings, the stage, the noise, all the
familiar, uninteresting, particolored herd of spectators in
the packed theater.
There were, as always, the same ladies of some sort
with officers of some sort in the back of the boxes; the
same gaily dressed women—God knows who—and
uniforms and black coats; the same dirty crowd in the
upper gallery; and among the crowd, in the boxes and in
the front rows, were some forty of the REAL people. And
to those oases Vronsky at once directed his attention, and
with them he entered at once into relation.
The act was over when he went in, and so he did not
go straight to his brother’s box, but going up to the first
row of stalls stopped at the footlights with Serpuhovskoy,
who, standing with one knee raised and his heel on the
footlights, caught sight of him in the distance and
beckoned to him, smiling.
Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided
looking in her direction. But he knew by the direction of
people’s eyes where she was. He looked round discreetly,
but he was not seeking her; expecting the worst, his eyes
sought for Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey
Alexandrovitch was not in the theater that evening.
‘How little of the military man there is left in you!’
Serpuhovskoy was saying to him. ‘A diplomat, an artist,
something of that sort, one would say.’
‘Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a
black coat,’ answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking
out his opera glass.
‘Well, I’ll own I envy you there. When I come back
from abroad and put on this,’ he touched his epaulets, ‘I
regret my freedom.’
Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky’s
career, but he liked him as before, and was now
particularly cordial to him.
‘What a pity you were not in time for the first act!’
Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera glass
from the stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a
turban and a bald old man, who seemed to wave angrily in
the moving opera glass, Vronsky suddenly caught sight of
Anna’s head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling in the
frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from
him. She was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was
saying something to Yashvin. The setting of her head on
her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained
excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face
reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in
Moscow. But he felt utterly different towards her beauty
now. In his feeling for her now there was no element of
mystery, and so her beauty, though it attracted him even
more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of
injury. She was not looking in his direction, but Vronsky
felt that she had seen him already.
When Vronsky turned the opera glass again in that
direction, he noticed that Princess Varvara was particularly
red, and kept laughing unnaturally and looking round at
the next box. Anna, folding her fan and tapping it on the
red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and obviously
did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box.
Yashvin’s face wore the expression which was common
when he was losing at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left
end of his mustache further and further into his mouth,
and cast sidelong glances at the next box.
In that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Vronsky
knew them, and knew that Anna was acquainted with
them. Madame Kartasova, a thin little woman, was
standing up in her box, and, her back turned upon Anna,
she was putting on a mantle that her husband was holding
for her. Her face was pale and angry, and she was talking
excitedly. Kartasov, a fat, bald man, was continually
looking round at Anna, while he attempted to soothe his
wife. When the wife had gone out, the husband lingered a
long while, and tried to catch Anna’s eye, obviously
anxious to bow to her. But Anna, with unmistakable
intention, avoided noticing him, and talked to Yashvin,
whose cropped head was bent down to her. Kartasov went
out without making his salutation, and the box was left
empty.
Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed
between the Kartasovs and Anna, but he saw that
something humiliating for Anna had happened. He knew
this both from what he had seen, and most of all from the
face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve
to carry through the part she had taken up. And in
maintaining this attitude of external composure she was
completely successful. Anyone who did not know her and
her circle, who had not heard all the utterances of the
women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and
amazement, that she should show herself in society, and
show herself so conspicuously with her lace and her
beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness of
this woman without a suspicion that she was undergoing
the sensations of a man in the stocks.
Knowing that something had happened, but not
knowing precisely what, Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing
anxiety, and hoping to find out something, he went
towards his brother’s box. Purposely choosing the way
round furthest from Anna’s box, he jostled as he came out
against the colonel of his old regiment talking to two
acquaintances. Vronsky heard the name of Madame
Karenina, and noticed how the colonel hastened to address
Vronsky loudly by name, with a meaning glance at his
companions.
‘Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment?
We can’t let you off without a supper. You’re one of the
old set,’ said the colonel of his regiment.
‘I can’t stop, awfully sorry, another time,’ said Vronsky,
and he ran upstairs towards his brother’s box.
The old countess, Vronsky’s mother, with her steelgray
curls, was in his brother’s box. Varya with the young
Princess Sorokina met him in the corridor.
Leaving the Princess Sorokina with her mother, Varya
held out her hand to her brother-in-law, and began
immediately to speak of what interested him. She was
more excited than he had ever seen her.
‘I think it’s mean and hateful, and Madame Kartasova
had no right to do it. Madame Karenina...’ she began.
‘But what is it? I don’t know.’
‘What? you’ve not heard?’
‘You know I should be the last person to hear of it.’
‘There isn’t a more spiteful creature than that Madame
Kartasova!’
‘But what did she do?’
‘My husband told me.... She has insulted Madame
Karenina. Her husband began talking to her across the
box, and Madame Kartasova made a scene. She said
something aloud, he says, something insulting, and went
away.’
‘Count, your maman is asking for you,’ said the young
Princess Sorokina, peeping out of the door of the box.
‘I’ve been expecting you all the while,’ said his mother,
smiling sarcastically. ‘You were nowhere to be seen.’
Her son saw that she could not suppress a smile of
delight.
‘Good evening, maman. I have come to you,’ he said
coldly.
‘Why aren’t you going to faire la cour a Madame
Karenina?’ she went on, when Princess Sorokina had
moved away. ‘Elle fait sensation. On oublie la Patti pour
elle.’
‘Maman, I have asked you not to say anything to me of
that,’ he answered, scowling.
‘I’m only saying what everyone’s saying.’
Vronsky made no reply, and saying a few words to
Princess Sorokina, he went away. At the door he met his
brother.
‘Ah, Alexey!’ said his brother. ‘How disgusting! Idiot of
a woman, nothing else.... I wanted to go straight to her.
Let’s go together.’
Vronsky did not hear him. With rapid steps he went
downstairs; he felt that he must do something, but he did
not know what. Anger with her for having put herself and
him in such a false position, together with pity for her
suffering, filled his heart. He went down, and made
straight for Anna’s box. At her box stood Stremov, talking
to her.
‘You came in late, I think, and have missed the best
song,’ Anna said to Vronsky, glancing ironically, he
thought, at him.
‘I am a poor judge of music,’ he said, looking sternly at
her.
‘Like Prince Yashvin,’ she said smiling, ‘who considers
that Patti sings too loud.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, her little hand in its long glove
taking the playbill Vronsky picked up, and suddenly at that
instant her lovely face quivered. She got up and went into
the interior of the box.
Noticing in the next act that her box was empty,
Vronsky, rousing indignant ‘hushes’ in the silent audience,
went out in the middle of a solo and drove home.
Anna was already at home. When Vronsky went up to
her, she was in the same dress as she had worn at the
theater. She was sitting in the first armchair against the
wall, looking straight before her. She looked at him, and
at once resumed her former position.
‘Anna,’ he said.
‘You, you are to blame for everything!’ she cried, with
tears of despair and hatred in her voice, getting up.
‘I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would
be unpleasant...’
‘Unpleasant!’ she cried—‘hideous! As long as I live I
shall never forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside
me.’
‘A silly woman’s chatter,’ he said: ‘but why risk it, why
provoke?..’
‘I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me
to this. If you had loved me..’
‘Anna! How does the question of my love come in?’
‘Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as
I am!...’ she said, looking at him with an expression of
terror.
He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He
assured her of his love because he saw that this was the
only means of soothing her, and he did not reproach her
in words, but in his heart he reproached her.
And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him
so vulgar that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in
eagerly, and gradually became calmer. The next day,
completely reconciled, they left for the country.
PART SIX
Chapter 1
Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her
children at Pokrovskoe, at her sister Kitty Levin’s. The
house on her own estate was quite in ruins, and Levin and
his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with
them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the
arrangement. He said he was very sorry his official duties
prevented him from spending the summer in the country
with his family, which would have been the greatest
happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came
down to the country from time to time for a day or two.
Besides the Oblonskys, with all their children and their
governess, the old princess too came to stay that summer
with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to watch
over her inexperienced daughter in her INTERESTING
CONDITION. Moreover, Varenka, Kitty’s friend abroad,
kept her promise to come to Kitty when she was married,
and stayed with her friend. All of these were friends or
relations of Levin’s wife. And though he liked them all, he
rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was
smothered by this influx of the ‘Shtcherbatsky element,’ as
he called it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed
with him only Sergey Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of
the Koznishev and not the Levin stamp, so that the Levin
spirit was utterly obliterated.
In the Levins’ house, so long deserted, there were now
so many people that almost all the rooms were occupied,
and almost every day it happened that the old princess,
sitting down to table, counted them all over, and put the
thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate table.
And Kitty, with her careful housekeeping, had no little
trouble to get all the chickens, turkeys, and geese, of
which so many were needed to satisfy the summer
appetites of the visitors and children.
The whole family were sitting at dinner. Dolly’s
children, with their governess and Varenka, were making
plans for going to look for mushrooms. Sergey Ivanovitch,
who was looked up to by all the party for his intellect and
learning, with a respect that almost amounted to awe,
surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about
mushrooms.
‘Take me with you. I am very fond of picking
mushrooms,’ he said, looking at Varenka; ‘I think it’s a
very nice occupation.’
‘Oh, we shall be delighted,’ answered Varenka,
coloring a little. Kitty exchanged meaningful glances with
Dolly. The proposal of the learned and intellectual Sergey
Ivanovitch to go looking for mushrooms with Varenka
confirmed certain theories of Kitty’s with which her mind
had been very busy of late. She made haste to address
some remark to her mother, so that her look should not
be noticed. After dinner Sergey Ivanovitch sat with his
cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, and while he
took part in a conversation he had begun with his brother,
he watched the door through which the children would
start on the mushroom-picking expedition. Levin was
sitting in the window near his brother.
Kitty stood beside her husband, evidently awaiting the
end of a conversation that had no interest for her, in order
to tell him something.
‘You have changed in many respects since your
marriage, and for the better,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch,
smiling to Kitty, and obviously little interested in the
conversation, ‘but you have remained true to your passion
for defending the most paradoxical theories.’
‘Katya, it’s not good for you to stand,’ her husband said
to her, putting a chair for her and looking significantly at
her.
‘Oh, and there’s no time either,’ added Sergey
Ivanovitch, seeing the children running out.
At the head of them all Tanya galloped sideways, in her
tightly- drawn stockings, and waving a basket and Sergey
Ivanovitch’s hat, she ran straight up to him.
Boldly running up to Sergey Ivanovitch with shining
eyes, so like her father’s fine eyes, she handed him his hat
and made as though she would put it on for him, softening
her freedom by a shy and friendly smile.
‘Varenka’s waiting,’ she said, carefully putting his hat
on, seeing from Sergey Ivanovitch’s smile that she might
do so.
Varenka was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow
print gown, with a white kerchief on her head.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming, Varvara Andreevna,’ said
Sergey Ivanovitch, finishing his cup of coffee, and putting
into their separate pockets his handkerchief and cigar-case.
‘And how sweet my Varenka is! eh?’ said Kitty to her
husband, as soon as Sergey Ivanovitch rose. She spoke so
that Sergey Ivanovitch could hear, and it was clear that she
meant him to do so. ‘And how good-looking she is—such
a refined beauty! Varenka!’ Kitty shouted. ‘Shall you be in
the mill copse? We’ll come out to you.’
‘You certainly forget your condition, Kitty,’ said the
old princess, hurriedly coming out at the door. ‘You
mustn’t shout like that.’
Varenka, hearing Kitty’s voice and her mother’s
reprimand, went with light, rapid steps up to Kitty. The
rapidity of her movement, her flushed and eager face,
everything betrayed that something out of the common
was going on in her. Kitty knew what this was, and had
been watching her intently. She called Varenka at that
moment merely in order mentally to give her a blessing
for the important event which, as Kitty fancied, was
bound to come to pass that day after dinner in the wood.
‘Varenka, I should be very happy if a certain something
were to happen,’ she whispered as she kissed her.
‘And are you coming with us?’ Varenka said to Levin
in confusion, pretending not to have heard what had been
said.
‘I am coming, but only as far as the threshing-floor, and
there I shall stop.’
‘Why, what do you want there?’ said Kitty.
‘I must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to
check the invoice,’ said Levin; ‘and where will you be?’
‘On the terrace.’
Chapter 2
On the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the
party. They always liked sitting there after dinner, and that
day they had work to do there too. Besides the sewing and
knitting of baby clothes, with which all of them were
busy, that afternoon jam was being made on the terrace by
a method new to Agafea Mihalovna, without the addition
of water. Kitty had introduced this new method, which
had been in use in her home. Agafea Mihalovna, to whom
the task of jam-making had always been intrusted,
considering that what had been done in the Levin
household could not be amiss, had nevertheless put water
with the strawberries, maintaining that the jam could not
be made without it. She had been caught in the act, and
was now making jam before everyone, and it was to be
proved to her conclusively that jam could be very well
made without water.
Agafea Mihalovna, her face heated and angry, her hair
untidy, and her thin arms bare to the elbows, was turning
the preserving-pan over the charcoal stove, looking darkly
at the raspberries and devoutly hoping they would stick
and not cook properly. The princess, conscious that
Agafea Mihalovna’s wrath must be chiefly directed against
her, as the person responsible for the raspberry jammaking,
tried to appear to be absorbed in other things and
not interested in the jam, talked of other matters, but cast
stealthy glances in the direction of the stove.
‘I always buy my maids’ dresses myself, of some cheap
material,’ the princess said, continuing the previous
conversation. ‘Isn’t it time to skim it, my dear?’ she added,
addressing Agafea Mihalovna. ‘There’s not the slightest
need for you to do it, and it’s hot for you,’ she said,
stopping Kitty.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Dolly, and getting up, she carefully
passed the spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to
time shook off the clinging jam from the spoon by
knocking it on a plate that was covered with yellow-red
scum and blood-colored syrup. ‘How they’ll enjoy this at
tea-time!’ she thought of her children, remembering how
she herself as a child had wondered how it was the grownup
people did not eat what was best of all—the scum of
the jam.
‘Stiva says it’s much better to give money.’ Dolly took
up meanwhile the weighty subject under discussion, what
presents should be made to servants. ‘But..’
‘Money’s out of the question!’ the princess and Kitty
exclaimed with one voice. ‘They appreciate a present..’
‘Well, last year, for instance, I bought our Matrona
Semyenovna, not a poplin, but something of that sort,’
said the princess.
‘I remember she was wearing it on your nameday.’
‘A charming pattern—so simple and refined,—I should
have liked it myself, if she hadn’t had it. Something like
Varenka’s. So pretty and inexpensive.’
‘Well, now I think it’s done,’ said Dolly, dropping the
syrup from the spoon.
‘When it sets as it drops, it’s ready. Cook it a little
longer, Agafea Mihalovna.’
‘The flies!’ said Agafea Mihalovna angrily. ‘It’ll be just
the same,’ she added.
‘Ah! how sweet it is! don’t frighten it!’ Kitty said
suddenly, looking at a sparrow that had settled on the step
and was pecking at the center of a raspberry.
‘Yes, but you keep a little further from the stove,’ said
her mother.
‘A propos de Varenka,’ said Kitty, speaking in French,
as they had been doing all the while, so that Agafea
Mihalovna should not understand them, ‘you know,
mamma, I somehow expect things to be settled today.
You know what I mean. How splendid it would be!’
‘But what a famous matchmaker she is!’ said Dolly.
‘How carefully and cleverly she throws them together!..’
‘No; tell me, mamma, what do you think?’
‘Why, what is one to think? He’ (HE meant Sergey
Ivanovitch) ‘might at any time have been a match for
anyone in Russia; now, of course, he’s not quite a young
man, still I know ever so many girls would be glad to
marry him even now.... She’s a very nice girl, but he
might..’
‘Oh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for
her too, nothing better could be imagined. In the first
place, she’s charming!’ said Kitty, crooking one of her
fingers.
‘He thinks her very attractive, that’s certain,’ assented
Dolly.
‘Then he occupies such a position in society that he has
no need to look for either fortune or position in his wife.
All he needs is a good, sweet wife—a restful one.’
‘Well, with her he would certainly be restful,’ Dolly
assented.
‘Thirdly, that she should love him. And so it is...that is,
it would be so splendid!...I look forward to seeing them
coming out of the forest—and everything settled. I shall
see at once by their eyes. I should be so delighted! What
do you think, Dolly?’
‘But don’t excite yourself. It’s not at all the thing for
you to be excited,’ said her mother.
‘Oh, I’m not excited, mamma. I fancy he will make her
an offer today.’
‘Ah, that’s so strange, how and when a man makes an
offer!... There is a sort of barrier, and all at once it’s
broken down,’ said Dolly, smiling pensively and recalling
her past with Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘Mamma, how did papa make you an offer?’ Kitty
asked suddenly.
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