Anna Karennina

by Leo Tolstoy

PART FOUR

Chapter XI.
Everyone took part in the conversation except Kitty and Levin. At first, when they were talking of the influence that one people has on another, there rose to Levin's mind what he had to say on the subject. But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest for him. It even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to talk of what was of no use to anyone. Kitty, too, one would have supposed, should have been interested in what they were saying of the rights and education of women. How often she had mused on the subject, thinking of her friend abroad, Varenka, of her painful state of dependence; how often she had wondered about herself as to what would become of her if she did not marry, and how often she had argued with her sister about it! But now it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but a sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.
At first Levin, in answer to Kitty's question how he could have seen her last year in the carriage, told her that he had been coming home from the mowing along the highroad and had met her.
"It was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only just awake. Your maman was asleep in her corner. It was an exquisite morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be in the four-in-hand. It was a splendid set of four horses with bells, and in a second you flashed by, and I saw you at the window- you were sitting, like this; holding the strings of your cap in both hands, and in awfully deep thought about something," he said, smiling. "How I should like to know what you were thinking about then! Something important?"
"Wasn't I dreadfully untidy?" she wondered, but seeing the smile of ecstasy these reminiscences called up, she felt that the impression she had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed with delight:
"Really I don't remember."
"How nicely Turovtsin laughs!" said Levin, admiring his humid eyes and heaving chest.
"Have you known him long?" asked Kitty.
"Oh, everyone knows him!"
"And I see you think he's a horrid man?"
"Not horrid, but there's nothing in him."
"Oh, you're wrong! And you must give up thinking so directly!" said Kitty. "I used to have a very poor opinion of him too, but he's an awfully fine and wonderfully goodhearted man. He has a heart of gold."
"How could you find out what sort of heart he has?"
"We are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon after... you came to see us," she said, with a guilty and at the same time a confiding smile, "all Dolly's children had scarlatina, and he happened to come to see her. And only fancy," she said in a whisper, "he felt so sorry for her that he stayed and began to help her look after the children. Yes, and for three weeks he stopped with them, and looked after the children like a nurse."
"I am telling Konstantin Dmitrievich about Turovtsin and the scarlatina," she said, bending over to her sister.
"Yes, it was wonderful, noble!" said Dolly, glancing toward Turovtsin, who had become aware they were talking of him, and smiling gently to him. Levin glanced once more at Turovtsin, and wondered how it was he had not realized all this man's goodness before.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and I'll never think ill of people again!" he said gaily, genuinely expressing what he felt at the moment.
Chapter XII.
Connected with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in marriage, improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergei Ivanovich and Stepan Arkadyevich carefully drew him off them.
When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did not follow them, but, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich, began to expound the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and by public opinion.
Stepan Arkadyevich went hurriedly up to Alexei Alexandrovich and offered him a cigar.
"No, I don't smoke," Alexei Alexandrovich answered calmly, and, as though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.
"I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of things," he said, and would have gone on to the drawing room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the conversation, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich.
"You heard, perhaps, about Priachnikov?" said Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him. "Vassia Priachnikov," he said, with a good-natured smile on his moist, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexei Alexandrovich, "they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him."
Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyevich felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall at any moment on Alexei Alexandrovich's sore spot. He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexei Alexandrovich himself inquired, with curiosity:
"What did Priachnikov fight about?"
"His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!"
"Ah!" said Alexei Alexandrovich indifferently, and, lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing room.
"How glad I am you have come," Dolly said with a frightened smile, meeting him in the outer drawing room. "I must talk to you. Let's sit here."
Alexei Alexandrovich, with the same expression of indifference, due to his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly.
"It's fortunate," said he, "especially as I meant to ask you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow."
Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna's innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend.
"Alexei Alexandrovich," she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the face, "I asked you about Anna; you made me no answer. How is she?"
"She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna," replied Alexei Alexandrovich, without looking at her.
"Alexei Alexandrovich, forgive me, I have no right... But I love Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? What fault do you find with her?"
Alexei Alexandrovich frowned, and, almost closing his eyes, dropped his head.
"I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?" he said, without looking her in the face, but eying with displeasure Shcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing room.
"I don't believe it, I don't believe it- I can't believe it!" Dolly said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She rose quickly and laid her hand on Alexei Alexandrovich's sleeve. "We shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please."
Dolly's agitation had an effect on Alexei Alexandrovich. He got up and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down at a table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.
"I don't- I don't believe it!" Dolly said, trying to catch his glance, still avoiding her.
"One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna," said he, with an emphasis on the word facts.
"But what has she done?" said Darya Alexandrovna. "What, precisely, has she done?"
"She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That's what she has done," said he.
"No, no, it can't be! No, for God's sake, you are mistaken," said Dolly, putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to signify to her and himself the firmness of his conviction; but this warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.
"It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs her husband of the fact- informs him that eight years of her life, and a son, are all a mistake, and that she wants to begin life anew," he said angrily, with a snort.
"Anna and sin- I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!"
"Darya Alexandrovna," he said, now looking straight into Dolly's kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite of himself, "I would give a great deal for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy."
He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in the innocence of her friend began to waver.
"Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are resolved on a divorce?"
"I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me to do."
"Nothing else to do, nothing else to do..." she replied, with tears in her eyes. "Oh no, don't say there's nothing else to do!" she said.
"What is horrible in a misfortune of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other- in loss, in death- bear one's trouble in peace, but that one must act," said he, as though guessing her thought. "One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can't live a trois."
"I understand, I quite understand that," said Dolly, and her head sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. "But wait a little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?"
"I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna- I have thought a great deal," said Alexei Alexandrovich. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him with all her heart. "That indeed was what I did when she herself made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would not regard the least request- that she should observe decorum," he said, getting heated. "One may save anyone who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to her salvation, what's to be done?"
"Anything, only not divorce!" answered Darya Alexandrovna.
"But what is anything?"
"No, it is awful! She will be no one's wife; she will be lost!"
"What can I do?" said Alexei Alexandrovich, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife's last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. "I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going," he said, getting up.
"No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy I would have thrown up everything, I would myself... But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on... I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!"
Alexei Alexandrovich heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill loud voice:
"Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is kin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!" he said, with tears of hatred in his voice.
"Love those that hate you..." Darya Alexandrovna whispered, timorously.
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but it could not be applied to his case.
"Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to bear in his own grief!" And, regaining his self-possession, Alexei Alexandrovich quietly took leave and went away.
Chapter XIII.
When they rose from the table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into the drawing room; but he was afraid she might dislike this, as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and, without looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in the drawing room.
He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he had made her- always to think well of all men, and to like everyone always. The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov saw a sort of special principle, called by him the choral principle. Levin did not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a special attitude of his own, both admitting yet not admitting the significance of the Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply trying to reconcile and soften their differences. He was not in the least interested in what he said himself, and even less so in what they said; all he wanted was that they and everyone should be happy and contented. He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing room, and then began moving across, and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt her eyes fixed on him, and her smile, and he could not help turning round. She was standing in the doorway with Shcherbatsky, looking at Levin.
"I thought you were going toward the piano," said he, going up to her. "That's something I miss in the country- music."
"No; we only came to fetch you, and I thank you," she said, rewarding him with a smile that was like a gift, "for coming. What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know."
"Yes; that's true," said Levin; "it generally happens that one argues warmly simply because one can't make out what one's opponent wants to prove."
Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at the realization that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of suddenly grasping in a discussion what it was his opponent liked and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at last what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his position. He tried to say this.
She knit her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to illustrate his meaning, she understood at once.
"I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is precious to him, then one can..."
She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of the most complex ideas.
Shcherbatsky moved away from them, and Kitty, going up to a card table, sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing diverging circles over the new green cloth.
They began again on the subject that had been started at dinner- the liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman's duties in a family. He supported this view by the fact that no family can get on without women to help; that in every family, poor or rich, there are and must be nurses, either relations or hired.
"No," said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more bravely with her truthful eyes; "a girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she herself..."
At the hint he understood her.
"Oh, yes," he said. "Yes, yes, yes- you're right; you're right!"
And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner about the liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an old maid's existence and its humiliation in Kitty's heart; and loving her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up his arguments.
A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness.
"Ah! I've scribbled all over the table!" she said, and, laying down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.
"What! Shall I be left alone- without her?" he thought with horror, and he took the chalk. "Wait a minute," he said, sitting down to the table. "I've long wanted to ask you one thing."
He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.
"Please, ask it."
"Here," he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w, y, t, m: i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant, "When you told me: it could never be, did that mean never, or then?" There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words.
She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, "Is it what I think it is?"
"I understand," she said, flushing.
"What is this word?" he said, pointing to the n that stood for never.
"It means never," she said; "but that's not true!"
He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, t, i, c, n, a, d.
Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich when she caught sight of the two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking upward at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant, "Then I could not answer differently."
He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.
"Only then?"
"Yes," her smile answered.
"And n... And now?" he asked.
"Well, read this. I'll tell you what I should like- should like so much!" She wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h. This meant, "If you could forget and forgive what happened."
He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, "I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you."
She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.
"I understand," she said in a whisper.
He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and without asking him, "Is it this?" took the chalk and at once answered.
For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could not supply the words she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he wrote three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, "Yes."
"You're playing secretaire?" said the old Prince. "But we must really be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater."
Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.
In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.
Chapter XIV.
When Kitty had gone and Levin was left alone, he felt such uneasiness without her and such an impatient longing to get as quickly as possible to tomorrow morning, when he would see her again and be plighted to her forever, that he felt afraid, as though of death, of those fourteen hours that he had to get through without her. It was essential for him to be with someone to talk to, so as not to be left alone; to deceive time. Stepan Arkadyevich would have been the companion most congenial to him, but he was going out, he said, to a soiree- in reality to the ballet. Levin only had time to tell him he was happy, and that he loved him, and would never, never forget what he had done for him. The eyes and the smile of Stepan Arkadyevich showed Levin that he comprehended that feeling fittingly.
"Oh, so it's not time to die yet?" said Stepan Arkadyevich, pressing Levin's hand with emotion.
"N-n-no!" said Levin.
Darya Alexandrovna too, as she said good-by to him, gave him a sort of congratulation, saying, "How glad I am you have met Kitty again! One must value old friends." Levin did not like these words of Darya Alexandrovna's. She could not understand how lofty and beyond her it all was, and she ought not to have dared to allude to it. Levin said good-by to them, but, not to be left alone, he attached himself to his brother.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to a meeting."
"Well, I'll come with you. May I?"
"What for? Yes, come along," said Sergei Ivanovich, smiling. "What is the matter with you today?"
"With me? Happiness is the matter with me!" said Levin, letting down the window of the carriage they were driving in. "You don't mind? It's so stifling. Happiness is all that's the matter with me! Why is it you have never married?"
Sergei Ivanovich smiled.
"I am very glad- she seems a lovely gi..." Sergei Ivanovich was beginning.
"Don't say it! Don't say it!" shouted Levin, clutching at the collar of his fur coat with both hands, and muffling him up in it. "She's a lovely girl" were such simple, humble words, so out of harmony with his feeling.
Sergei Ivanovich laughed outright a merry laugh, which was rare with him.
"Well, anyway, I may say that I'm very glad of it."
"That you may do tomorrow, tomorrow- and say no more! Nothing, nothing- silence," said Levin, and muffling him once more in his fur coat, he added: "I do like you so! Well, is it possible for me to be present at the meeting?"
"Of course it is."
"What is your discussion about today?" asked Levin, never ceasing smiling.
They arrived at the meeting. Levin heard the secretary hesitatingly read the minutes which he obviously did not himself understand; but Levin saw from this secretary's face what a good, fine, kindhearted person he was. This was evident from his confusion and embarrassment in reading the minutes. Then the discussion began. They were disputing about the reckoning off of certain sums and the laying of certain pipes, and Sergei Ivanovich was very cutting to two members, and said something at great length with an air of triumph; and another member, scribbling something on a bit of paper, began timidly at first, but afterward answered him very viciously and delightfully. And then Sviiazhsky (he was there also) said something too, very handsomely and nobly. Levin listened to them, and saw clearly that this reckoning off of sums and these pipes were not anything real, and that they were not at all angry, but were all the finest, kindest people, and everything was as happy and charming as possible among them. They did no harm to anyone, and were all enjoying it. What struck Levin was that he could see through them all today, and from little, almost imperceptible signs knew the soul of each, and saw distinctly that they were all good at heart. And they were all extremely fond of Levin in particular that day. This was evident from the way they spoke to him, from the friendly, affectionate way even those whom he did not know looked at him.
"Well, are you contented with it?" Sergei Ivanovich asked him.
"Very much. I never supposed it was so interesting, nice, capital!"
Sviiazhsky went up to Levin and invited him to come round to tea with him. Levin was utterly at a loss to comprehend or recall what it was he had disliked in Sviiazhsky, what he had failed to find in him. He was a clever and wonderfully goodhearted man.
"Most delighted," he said, and asked after his wife and sister-in-law. And from a queer association of ideas, because in his imagination the idea of Sviiazhsky's sister-in-law was connected with marriage, it occurred to him that there was no one to whom he could more suitably speak of his happiness, than to Sviiazhsky's wife and sister-in-law, and he was very glad to go to see them.
Sviiazhsky questioned him about his improvements on his estate, presupposing, as he always did, that there was no possibility of doing anything not done already in Europe, and now this did not in the least annoy Levin. On the contrary, he felt that Sviiazhsky was right, that the whole business was of little value, and he saw the wonderful suavity and consideration with which Sviiazhsky avoided fully expressing his correct view. The ladies of the Sviiazhsky household were particularly delightful. It seemed to Levin that they knew all about it already, and sympathized with him, saying nothing merely out of delicacy. He stayed with them one hour, two, three, talking of all sorts of subjects, but implied in it the only thing that filled his heart, and did not observe that he was boring them dreadfully, and that it was long past their bedtime. Sviiazhsky went with him into the hall, yawning and wondering at the strange humor his friend was in. It was past one o'clock. Levin went back to his hotel, and was dismayed at the thought that all alone now with his impatience he had ten hours still left to get through. The servant, whose turn it was to be up all night, lighted his candles, and would have gone away, but Levin stopped him. This servant, Iegor, whom Levin had not noticed before, struck him as a very intelligent, excellent, and, above all, a goodhearted man.
"Well, Iegor, it's hard work not sleeping, isn't it?"
"What's to be done! It's part of our work, you see. In a gentleman's house it's easier; but then here one makes more."
It appeared that Iegor had a family- three boys and a daughter, a seamstress, whom he wanted to marry to a cashier in a saddler's shop.
Levin, on hearing this, informed Iegor that, in his opinion, in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.
Iegor listened attentively, and obviously quite took in Levin's idea, but by way of assent to it he enunciated, greatly to Levin's surprise, the observation that when he had lived with good masters he had always been satisfied with his masters, and now was perfectly satisfied with his employer, though he was a Frenchman.
"Wonderfully goodhearted fellow!" thought Levin.
"Well, but you yourself, Iegor, when you got married, did you love your wife?"
"Ay! And why not?" responded Iegor.
And Levin saw that Iegor too was in an excited state and intending to express all his most heartfelt emotions.
"My life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up..." he was beginning with flashing eyes, apparently catching Levin's enthusiasm, just as people catch yawning.
But at that moment a ring was heard. Iegor departed, and Levin was left alone. He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had refused tea and supper at Sviiazhsky's, but he was incapable of thinking of supper. He had not slept the previous night, but was incapable of thinking of sleep either. His room was cold, but he was oppressed by heat. He opened both the movable panes in his windows and sat down on the table opposite the open panes. Over the snow-covered roofs could be seen a decorated cross, with chains, and above it the rising triangle of Auriga, with the yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the cross, then at the star, drank in the fresh freezing air that flowed evenly into the room, and followed as though in a dream the images and memories that rose in his imagination. At four o'clock he heard steps in the passage and peeped out of the door. It was the gambler Miaskin, whom he knew, coming from the club. He walked gloomily, frowning and coughing. "Poor, unlucky fellow!" thought Levin, and tears came into his eyes from love and pity for this man. He would have talked with him, and tried to comfort him, but remembering that he had nothing but his shirt on, he changed his mind and sat down again at the open pane to bathe in the cold air and gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross, silent, but full of meaning for him, and the mounting lurid yellow star. At six o'clock there was a noise of people polishing the floors, and church bells ringing to some divine service, and Levin felt that he was beginning to get frozen. He closed the pane, washed, dressed, and went out into the street.
Chapter XV.
The streets were still empty. Levin went to the house of the Shcherbatskys. The visitors' doors were closed and everything was asleep. He walked back, went into his room again, and asked for coffee. The day servant, not Iegor this time, brought it to him. Levin would have entered into conversation with him, but a bell rang for the servant, and he went out. Levin tried to drink coffee and take a bite of a roll, but his mouth was quite at a loss what to do with the roll. Levin, rejecting the roll, put on his coat and went out again for a walk. It was nine o'clock when he reached the Shcherbatskys' steps the second time. In the house they were only just up, and the cook came out to go marketing. He had to get through at least two hours more.
All that night and morning Levin lived perfectly unconsciously, and felt perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life. He had eaten nothing for a whole day, he had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours undressed in the frozen air, and felt not only fresher and stronger than ever, but felt utterly independent of his body; he moved without muscular effort, and felt as if he could do anything. He was convinced he could fly upward or lift the corner of the house, if need be. He spent the remainder of the time in the street, incessantly looking at his watch and gazing about him.
And what he saw then, he never saw again after. Especially the children going to school, the blue-gray doves fluttering down from the roofs to the pavement, and the little loaves covered with flour, set out by an unseen hand, touched him. Those loaves, those doves, and those two boys were not of this earth. It all happened at the same time: a boy ran toward a dove and glanced smiling at Levin; the dove, with a whir of her wings, darted away, flashing in the sun, amid grains of snow that quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a smell of fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were set out. All of this together was so extraordinarily resplendent that Levin laughed and cried with delight. Going a long way round by Gazetny Lane and Kislovka, he went back again to the hotel, and, putting his watch before him, sat down to wait for twelve o'clock. In the next room they were talking about some sort of machines, and swindling, and coughing their morning coughs. They did not realize that the hand was near twelve. The hand reached it. Levin went out on the steps. The sleigh drivers clearly knew all about it. They crowded round Levin with happy faces, quarreling among themselves, and offering their services. Trying not to offend the other sleigh drivers, and promising to drive with them too, Levin took one and told him to drive to the Shcherbatskys'. The sleigh driver was splendid in a white shirt collar, sticking out over his overcoat and into his strong, full-blooded red neck. The sleigh was high and comfortable, and altogether such a one as Levin never drove in after, and the horse was a good one, and tried to gallop yet didn't seem to move. The driver knew the Shcherbatskys' house, and drew up at the entrance, squaring his arms and saying a "Whoa!" especially indicative of respect for his fare. The Shcherbatskys' hall porter certainly knew all about it. This was evident from the smile in his eyes and the way he said:
"Well, it's a long while since you've been to see us, Konstantin Dmitrievich!"
Not only did he know all about it, but he was unmistakably delighted and making efforts to conceal his joy. Looking into his kindly old eyes, Levin realized even something new in his happiness.
"Are they up?"
"Pray walk in! Leave it here," said he, smiling, as Levin would have come back to take his hat. That meant something.
"To whom shall I announce your honor?" asked the footman.
The footman, though a young man, and one of the new school of footmen- a dandy- was a very kindhearted, good fellow, and he too knew all about it.
"The Princess... the Prince... the young Princess..." said Levin.
The first person he saw was Mademoiselle Linon. She walked across the room, and her ringlets and her face were beaming. He had barely spoken to her, when suddenly he heard the rustle of a skirt at the door, and Mademoiselle Linon vanished from Levin's eyes, and a joyful terror came over him at the nearness of his happiness. Mademoiselle Linon was in great haste, and, leaving him, went out at the other door. Directly she had gone out, swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss, his life, his own self- what was best in himself, what he had so long sought and longed for- was quickly, so quickly approaching him. She did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to float toward him.
He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by the same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love. She stopped close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and dropped on his shoulders.
She had done all she could- she had run up to him and given herself up entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her, and pressed his lips to her mouth, which sought his kiss.
She too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all the morning.
Her mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy in her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be the first to tell him her happiness and his. She had got ready to see him alone, and had been delighted at the idea, and had been shy and ashamed, and did not know herself what she was to do. She had heard his steps and voice, and had waited at the door for Mademoiselle Linon to go. Mademoiselle Linon had gone away. Without thinking, without asking herself how and what, she had gone up to him, and did as she was doing.
"Let us go to mamma!" she said, taking him by the hand. For a long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he felt that tears of happiness were welling up. He took her hand and kissed it.
"Can it be true?" he said at last in a choked voice. "I can't believe you love me, dear!"
She smiled at that "dear," and at the timidity with which he glanced at her.
"Yes!" she said significantly, deliberately. "I am so happy!"
Without letting go his hand, she went into the drawing room. The Princess, seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to cry, and then immediately began to laugh, and, with a vigorous step Levin had not expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head, kissed him, wetting his cheeks with her tears.
"So it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad... Kitty!"
"You've not been long settling things," said the old Prince, trying to seem unmoved; but Levin noticed that his eyes were wet when he turned to him. "I've long- always- wished for this!" said the Prince, taking Levin by the arm and drawing him toward himself. "Even when this little featherhead fancied..."
"Papa!" shrieked Kitty, and shut his mouth with her hands.
"Well, I won't!" he said. "I'm very, very... plea... Oh, what a fool I am...."
He embraced Kitty, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and made the sign of the cross over her.
And there came over Levin a new feeling of love for this man, the old Prince, till then so little known to him, when he saw how slowly and tenderly Kitty kissed his muscular hand.
Chapter XVI.
The Princess was sitting in her armchair, silent and smiling; the Prince sat down beside her. Kitty stood by her father's chair, still holding his hand. All were silent.
The Princess was the first to put everything into words, and to translate all thoughts and feelings into practical questions. And all felt equally strange and painful for the first minute.
"When is it to be? We must have the benediction and announcement. And when's the wedding to be? What do you think, Alexandre?
"Here he is," said the old Prince, pointing to Levin- "he's the principal person in the matter."
"When?" said Levin blushing. "Tomorrow. If you ask me, I should say, the benediction today, and the wedding tomorrow."
"Come, mon cher, that's nonsense!"
"Well, in a week."
"He's quite mad."
"No, why so?"
"Well, upon my word!" said the mother, smiling, delighted at this haste. "How about the trousseau?"
"Will there really be a trousseau and all that?" Levin thought with horror. "But can the trousseau and the benediction and all that- can it spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!" He glanced at Kitty and noticed that she was not in the least, not in the very least, disturbed by the idea of the trousseau. "Then it must be all right," he thought.
"Oh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like," he said apologetically.
"We'll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can take place now. That's very well."
The Princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have gone away, but he held her back, embraced her, and tenderly, as a young lover, kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were obviously muddled for a moment, and did not quite know whether it was they who were in love again or their daughter. When the Prince and the Princess had gone, Levin went up to his betrothed and took her hand. He was self-possessed now and could speak, and he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But he did not say at all what he had to say.
"How I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my heart I was always sure," he said. "I believe that it was ordained."
"And I?" she said. "Even when..." She stopped and went on again, looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, "Even when I thrust my happiness from me. I always loved you only, but I was carried away. I ought to tell you... Can you forgive it?"
"Perhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so much. I ought to tell you..."
This was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had resolved from the first to tell her two things- that he was not chaste as she was, and that he was not a believer. It was agonizing, but he considered he ought to tell her both these facts.
"No, not now, later!" he said.
"Very well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I'm not afraid of anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled."
He added:
"Settled that you'll take me whatever I may be- you won't give me up? Yes?"
"Yes, yes."
Their conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who with an affected but tender smile came to congratulate her favorite pupil. Before she had gone, the servants came in with their congratulations. Then relations arrived, and there began that state of blissful absurdity from which Levin did not emerge till the day after his wedding. Levin was in a continual state of awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness went on increasing all the while. He felt continually that a great deal was being expected of him- what, he did not know; and he did everything he was told, and it all gave him happiness. He had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything that had ever happened.
"Now we shall have sweetmeats to eat," said Mademoiselle Linon- and Levin drove off to buy sweetmeats.
"Well, I'm very glad," said Sviiazhsky. "I advise you to get the bouquets from Fomin's."
"Oh, are they wanted?" And he drove to Fomin's.
His brother recommended lending money to him, as he would have so many expenses, presents to give...
"Oh, are presents wanted?" And he galloped to Foulde's.
And at the confectioner's, and at Fomin's, and at Foulde's he saw that he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and prided themselves on his happiness, just as everyone did whom he had to do with during those days. What was extraordinary was that everyone not only liked him, but even people previously unsympathetic, cold, and callous, were enthusiastic over him, gave way to him in everything, treated his feelings with tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond perfection. Kitty too felt the same thing. When Countess Nordstone ventured to hint that she had hoped for something better, Kitty was so angry and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world could be better than Levin, that Countess Nordstone had to admit it, and in Kitty's presence never met Levin without a smile of ecstatic admiration.
The confession he had promised was the one painful incident of this time. He consulted the old Prince, and with his sanction gave Kitty his diary, in which there was written the confession that tortured him. He had written this diary at the time with a view to his future wife. Two things caused him anguish: his lack of purity and his lack of faith. His confession of unbelief passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his soul she saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. The other confession set her weeping bitterly.
Levin, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He knew that between him and her there could not be, and should not be, any secrets, and so he had decided that so it must be. But he had not realized what an effect it would have on her, he had not put himself in her place. It was only when the same evening he came to their house before the theater, went into her room, and saw her tearstained, pitiful, sweet face, miserable with the suffering he had caused and nothing could undo, that he felt the abyss that separated his shameful past from her dovelike purity, and was appalled at what he had done.
"Take them, take these dreadful books!" she said, pushing away the notebooks lying before her on the table. "Why did you give them me? No, it was better anyway," she added, touched by his despairing face. "But it's awful, awful!"
His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.
"You can't forgive me," he whispered.
"Yes, I forgive you; but it's horrible!"
But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not shatter it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him; but from that time, more than ever, he considered himself unworthy of her, morally bowed down lower than ever before her, and prized more highly than ever his undeserved happiness.
Chapter XVII.
Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had taken place during and after dinner, Alexei Alexandrovich returned to his solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna's words about forgiveness had aroused in him nothing but annoyance. The applicability or nonapplicability of the Christian precept to his own case was too difficult a question to be discussed lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexei Alexandrovich in the negative. Of all that had been said, what stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured Turovtsin: "Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!" Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from politeness they had not expressed it.
"But the matter is settled; it's useless thinking about it," Alexei Alexandrovich told himself. And thinking of nothing but the journey before him, and the revision work he had to do, he went into his room and asked the porter who escorted him where his man was; the porter said that the man had just gone out. Alexei Alexandrovich ordered tea to be sent him, sat down to the table, and, taking the schedule, began considering the route of his journey.
"Two telegrams," said his valet, coming into the room. "I beg your pardon, Your Excellency; I'd just stepped out this very minute."
Alexei Alexandrovich took the telegrams and opened them. The first telegram was the announcement of Stremov's appointment to the very post Karenin had coveted. Alexei Alexandrovich flung the telegram down, and, flushing, got up and began to pace up and down the room. "Quos vult perdere dementat," he said, meaning by quos the persons responsible for this appointment. He was not so much annoyed at not receiving the post, as at having been so conspicuously passed over; but it was incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the wordy phrasemonger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How could they fail to see they were ruining themselves, lowering their prestige by this appointment?
"Something else in the same line," he said to himself bitterly, opening the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her name, written in blue pencil, "Anna," was the first thing that caught his eye. "I am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall die easier with your forgiveness," he read. He smiled contemptuously, and flung down the telegram. That this was a trick and a fraud, of that- he thought for the first minute- there could be no doubt.
"There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her confinement. Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their aim? To legitimize the child, to compromise me, and prevent a divorce," he thought. "But something was said in it: I am dying..." He read the telegram again, and suddenly the plain meaning of what was said in it struck him. "And if it is true?" he said to himself. "If it is true that in the moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely penitent, and I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would not only be cruel, and everyone would blame me, but it would be stupid on my part."
"Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Peterburg," he said to his servant.
Alexei Alexandrovich decided that he would go to Peterburg and see his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing and go away again. If she were really in danger, and wished to see him before her death, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and pay her the last duties if he came too late.
All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.
With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in the train, in the early fog of Peterburg, Alexei Alexandrovich drove through the deserted Nevsky Prospect, and stared straight before him, without thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night cabmen, street sweepers sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping for. He drove up to the steps. A hackney sleigh, and a coach with its coachman asleep, stood at the entrance. As he went into the entry, Alexei Alexandrovich seemed to get out his resolution from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its meaning ran: "If it's a trick, then calm contempt and departure. If truth, do what is seemly."
The porter opened the door before Alexei Alexandrovich rang. The porter, Kapitonich, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie, and in slippers.
"How is your mistress?"
"She was confined yesterday, successfully."
Alexei Alexandrovich stopped short and turned white. He felt distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death.
"And how is she?"
Kornei in his morning apron ran downstairs.
"Very ill," he answered. "There was a consultation yesterday, and the doctor's here now."
"Take my things," said Alexei Alexandrovich, and, feeling some relief at the news that there was still hope of her death, he went into the hall.
On the hatstand there was a military overcoat. Alexei Alexandrovich noticed it and asked:
"Who is here?"
"The doctor, the midwife, and Count Vronsky."
Alexei Alexandrovich went into the inner rooms.
In the drawing room there was no one; at the sound of his steps the midwife came out of Anna's boudoir, in a cap with lilac ribbons.
She went up to Alexei Alexandrovich, and with the familiarity given by the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him toward the bedroom.
"Thank God you've come! She keeps on talking about you, and nothing but you," she said.
"Make haste with the ice!" the doctor's peremptory voice came from the bedroom.
Alexei Alexandrovich went into the boudoir. At her table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor's voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexei Alexandrovich. Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head into his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up and said:
"She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your power, only let me be here... though I am at your disposal. I..."
Alexei Alexandrovich, seeing Vronsky's tears, felt a rush of that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people's sufferings, and, turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door, without hearing the rest of the words. From the bedroom came the sound of Anna's voice saying something. Her voice was lively, animated, with exceedingly distinct intonations. Alexei Alexandrovich went into the bedroom, and walked up to the bed. She was lying with her face turned toward him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands thrust out from the cuffs of her dressing gown were playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation.
"Because Alexei- I am speaking of Alexei Alexandrovich (what a strange and awful thing that both are Alexeis, isn't it?)- Alexei would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive... But why doesn't he come? He's so good, he doesn't know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what pangs! Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her- my little girl! Oh, very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it's better in fact. He'll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the nurse."
"Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!" said the midwife, trying to attract her attention to Alexei Alexandrovich.
"Oh, what nonsense!" Anna went on, not seeing her husband. "No, give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won't forgive me, because you don't know him. No one knows him. I'm the only one, and it was hard for me even. I ought to know his eyes- Seriozha has just such eyes- and I can't bear to see them because of it. Has Seriozha had his dinner? I know everyone will forget to do it. He would not forget. Seriozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be asked to sleep with him."
All of a sudden she shrank back, and was silent; and in terror, as though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to her face. She had seen her husband.
"No, no!" she began. "I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death. Alexei, come here. I am in a hurry, because I've no time, I haven't long left to live; the fever will begin directly and I shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it all- I see it all!"
Alexei Alexandrovich's wrinkled face wore an expression of suffering; he took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he could not utter it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on struggling with his emotion, and only now and then glanced at her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and exultant tenderness as he had never yet seen in them.
"Wait a minute, you don't know... Stay a little, stay!..." She stopped, as though collecting her ideas. "Yes," she began, "yes, yes, yes! This is what I wanted to say. Don't be surprised at me. I'm still the same... But there is another woman in me- I'm afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her that used to be. That woman isn't myself. Now I'm my real self. I'm dying now, I know I shall die- ask him. Even now I feel- see here, the weights on my feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers- see how huge they are! But this will soon be all over... Only one thing I want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I'm terrible, but my nurse would tell me- the holy martyr- what was her name? She was worse. And I'll go to Rome; there's a wilderness, and there I shall be no trouble to anyone, only I'll take Seriozha and the little one.... No, you can't forgive me! I know, it can't be forgiven! No, no, go away, you're too good!" She held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed him away with the other.
The nervous agitation of Alexei Alexandrovich kept increasing, and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did not think that the Christian law, which he had been all his life trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his enemies; but a joyous feeling of love and forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his head, which was beginning to grow bald, moved toward him, and with defiant pride lifted up her eyes.
"That is he. I knew him! Now, good-by, everyone, good-by!... They've come again; why don't they go away?... Oh, take these fur coats off me!"
The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes.
"Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I want nothing more.... Why doesn't he come?" she said, turning to the door, toward Vronsky. "Do come, do come! Give him your hand."
Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid his face in his hands.
"Uncover your face- look at him! He's a saint," she said. "Oh! uncover your face, do uncover it!" she said angrily. "Alexei Alexandrovich, do uncover his face! I want to see him."
Alexei Alexandrovich took Vronsky's hands and drew them away from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it.
"Give him your hand. Forgive him."
Alexei Alexandrovich gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.
"Thank God, thank God!" she said, "now everything is ready. Only to stretch my legs a little. There, that's capital. How badly these flowers are done- not a bit like a violet," she said, pointing to the hangings. "My God, my God! when will it end? Give me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my God, my God!"
And she tossed about on the bed.
The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost without pulse.
The end was expected every minute.
Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and Alexei Alexandrovich, meeting him in the hall, said: "Better stay, she might ask for you," and himself led him to his wife's boudoir. Toward morning there was a return again of excitement, rapid thought and talk, and again it ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same thing, and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexei Alexandrovich went into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and, closing the door, sat down opposite him.
"Alexei Alexandrovich," said Vronsky, feeling that a statement of the situation was coming, "I can't speak, I can't understand. Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me."
He would have risen; but Alexei Alexandrovich took him by the hand and said:
"I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings, the feelings that have guided me, and will guide me, so that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I won't conceal from you that in beginning this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more- I longed for her death. But..." He paused, pondering whether to disclose or not to disclose his feelings. "But I saw her and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!"
Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them impressed Vronsky.
"This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the laughingstock of the world- I will not abandon her, and I will never utter a word of reproach to you," Alexei Alexandrovich went on. "My duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away."
He got up, and sobs cut short his words. Vronsky too was getting up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under his brows. He did not understand Alexei Alexandrovich's feeling, but he felt that it was something higher, and even unattainable for him with his view of life.
Chapter XVIII.
After the conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich, Vronsky went out on the steps of the Karenins' house and stood still, with difficulty remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk or drive. He felt disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of all possibility of washing away his humiliation. He felt thrust out of the beaten track along which he had so proudly and lightly walked till then. All the habits and rules of his life that had seemed so firm, had turned out suddenly false and inapplicable. The betrayed husband, who had figured till that time as a pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat ludicrous obstacle to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her herself, elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle that husband had shown himself- not malignant, not false, not ludicrous- but kind and straightforward and grand. Vronsky could not but feel this, and the roles were suddenly reversed. Vronsky felt the other's elevation and his own abasement, the other's truth and his own falsehood. He felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his deceit. But this sense of his own humiliation before the man he had unjustly despised made up only a small part of his misery. He felt unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Anna, which had seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very soul, and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And now, when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her forever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful position when Alexei Alexandrovich had pulled his hands away from his humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Karenins' house like one distraught, and did not know what to do.
"A hack, sir?" asked the porter.
"Yes- a hack."
On getting home, after three sleepless nights, Vronsky, without undressing, lay prone on the sofa, clasping his hands and laying his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories, and ideas of the strangest description followed one another with extraordinary rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine he had poured out for the patient and spilled out of the spoon; then the midwife's white hands; then the queer posture of Alexei Alexandrovich on the floor beside the bed.
"To sleep! To forget!" he said to himself with the serene confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did begin to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness. The waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over his head, when all at once it seemed as though a violent shock of electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got on his knees in a fright. His eyes were wide open as though he had never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the flabbiness in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.
"You may trample me in the mud," he heard Alexei Alexandrovich's words and saw him standing before him, and saw Anna's face with its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and tenderness not at him but at Alexei Alexandrovich; he saw his own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexei Alexandrovich had taken his hands away from his face. He stretched out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same position and shut his eyes.
"To sleep! To sleep!" he repeated to himself. But with his eyes shut he saw more distinctly than ever Anna's face as it had been on the memorable evening before the races.
"This cannot, and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled? How can we be reconciled?" he said aloud, and unconsciously began to repeat these words. This repetition of words checked the rising of fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for long. Again, in extraordinarily rapid succession, his best moments rose before his mind, and then his recent humiliation. "Take away his hands," Anna's voice was saying. He takes away his hands and feels the shame-struck and idiotic expression of his face.
He was still lying down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of fresh images. He listened, and heard words repeated in a strange, mad whisper: "You did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it. You did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it."
"What's this? Am I going out of my mind?" he said to himself "Perhaps. What makes men go out of their minds- what makes men shoot themselves?" he answered himself, and, opening his eyes, he saw with wonder an embroidered cushion beside him, worked by Varia, his brother's wife. He touched the tassel of the cushion, and tried to think of Varia, of when he had seen her last. But to think of anything extraneous was an agonizing effort. "No, I must sleep!" He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He jumped up and sat down. "That's all over for me," he said to himself. "I must think what to do. What is left?" His mind rapidly ran through his life apart from his love of Anna.
"Ambition? Serpukhovskoy? Society? The Court?" He could not come to a pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his coat, undid his belt, and, uncovering his hairy chest to breathe more freely, walked up and down the room. "This is how people go mad," he repeated, "and how they shoot themselves... to escape humiliation," he added slowly.
He went to the door and closed it, and then with fixed eyes and clenched teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked it about, turned it to a loaded barrel, and sank into thought. For two minutes, his head bent forward with an expression of an intense effort of thought, he stood with the revolver in his hand, motionless, thinking. "Of course," he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous, and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion. In reality this "of course," so convincing to him, was simply the result of repeating exactly the same circle of memories and images through which he had already passed ten times during the last hour. There were the same memories of happiness lost forever, the same conception of the senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. There was the same sequence of these images and emotions too.
"Of course," he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and, putting the revolver to the left side of his chest, and twitching vigorously with his whole hand, as though squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest knocked him down. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about him in astonishment. He did not recognize his room, as he looked up from the ground at the bent legs of the table, at the wastepaper basket, and the tigerskin rug. The hurried, creaking steps of his servant coming through the drawing room brought him to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tigerskin rug and on his arm, he knew he had shot himself.
"Idiotic! Missed!" he said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver was close beside him- he was groping farther off. Still groping for it, he stretched out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his balance, fell over, streaming with blood.
The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves, was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An hour later Varia, his brother's wife, had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.
Chapter XIX.
The mistake made by Alexei Alexandrovich, when preparing to see his wife, in having overlooked the possibility that her repentance might be sincere, and that he might forgive her, and she might not die- this mistake was two months after his return from Moscow brought home to him in all its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that, until the day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known his own heart. At his sick wife's bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and, most of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insolvable while he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.
He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him of his despairing action. He felt more for his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his child, and who was neglected during her mother's illness, and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her; and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long while, so that the nurse and wet nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite used to his presence. Sometimes, for half an hour at a stretch, he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the plump little hands with clenched fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and bridge of the nose with the back of their palms. At such moments particularly Alexei Alexandrovich had a sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing that ought to be changed.
But, as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone was looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.
When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed away, Alexei Alexandrovich began to notice that Anna was afraid of him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face. She seemed to be wanting, yet not daring, to tell him something; and, as though foreseeing that their present relations could not continue, she seemed to be expecting something from him.
Toward the end of February Anna's baby daughter, who had also been named Anna, happened to fall ill. Alexei Alexandrovich was in the nursery in the morning, and leaving orders for the doctor to be sent for, he went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at four. Going into the hall he saw a handsome footman, in a gallooned livery and a bear-fur cape, holding a white fur cloak.
"Who is here?" asked Alexei Alexandrovich.
"Princess Elizaveta Fiodorovna Tverskaia," the footman answered, and it seemed to Alexei Alexandrovich that the fellow grinned.
During all this difficult time Alexei Alexandrovich had noticed that his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest in him and his wife. He observed all these acquaintances with difficulty concealing their mirth at something- the same mirth that he had perceived in the lawyer's eyes, and, just now, in the eyes of this footman. Everyone seemed, somehow, hugely delighted, as though just come from a wedding. When they met him, they inquired with ill-disguised enjoyment after his wife's health.
The presence of Princess Tverskaia was unpleasant to Alexei Alexandrovich from the memories associated with her, and also because he disliked her, and he went straight to the nursery. In the day nursery Seriozha, leaning on the table with his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily. The English governess, who had during Anna's illness replaced the French one, was sitting near the boy, knitting mignardise. She hurriedly got up, curtsied, and pulled Seriozha.
Alexei Alexandrovich stroked his son's hair, answered the governess's inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of the baby.
"The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir."
"But she is still in pain," said Alexei Alexandrovich, listening to the baby's screaming in the next room.
"I think it's the wet nurse, sir," the Englishwoman said firmly.
"What makes you think so?" he asked, stopping short.
"It's just as it was at Countess Paul's, sir. They gave the baby medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the wet nurse had no milk, sir."
Alexei Alexandrovich pondered, and after standing still a few seconds he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown back, stiffening itself in the nurse's arms, and would not take the plump breast offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the double hushing of the wet nurse and the other nurse, who was bending over her.
"Still no better?" said Alexei Alexandrovich.
"She's very restless," answered the nurse in a whisper.
"Miss Edwards says that perhaps the wet nurse has no milk," he said.
"I think so too, Alexei Alexandrovich."
"Then why didn't you say so?"
"Who's one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna is still ill..." said the nurse discontentedly.
The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words there seemed to Alexei Alexandrovich an allusion to his position.
The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and choking. The nurse, with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet nurse's arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.
"You must ask the doctor to examine the wet nurse," said Alexei Alexandrovich.
The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and, covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexei Alexandrovich saw a sneer at his position.
"Luckless child," said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking up and down with it.
Alexei Alexandrovich sat down, and with a despondent and suffering face watched the nurse walking to and fro.
When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexei Alexandrovich got up, and, walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile that moved his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out of the room.
In the dining room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being anxious about this charming baby, and in this vexed humor he had no wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so, overcoming his disinclination, he went toward her bedroom. As he walked over the soft rug toward the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he did not want to hear.
"If he hadn't been going away, I could have understood your refusal and his too. But your husband ought to be above that," Betsy was saying.
"It's not for my husband- it's for myself I don't wish it. Don't say that!" answered Anna's excited voice.
"Yes, but you must care to say good-by to a man who has shot himself on your account...."
"That's just why I don't want to."
With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexei Alexandrovich stopped and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be undignified, he turned back again, and, clearing his throat, he approached the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.
Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The animation died out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered over her head like a shade on a lamp, in a dove-colored dress with crude oblique stripes, slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head, she greeted Alexei Alexandrovich with an ironical smile.
"Ah!" she said, as though surprised. "I'm very glad you're at home. You never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven't seen you ever since Anna has been il