Anna Karennina

by Leo Tolstoy

PART FIVE

Chapter XXI.
From the moment when Alexei Alexandrovich understood from his interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevich that all that was expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so distraught that he could come to no decision by himself; he did not know himself what he wanted now, and, putting himself in the hands of those who were so pleased to interest themselves in his affairs, he met everything with unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left his house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she should dine with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly comprehended his position, and was appalled by it.
Most difficult of all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way connect and reconcile his past with the present. It was not the past when he had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition from that past to a knowledge of his wife's unfaithfulness he had already lived through miserably; that state had been painful, but he could understand it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the hopeless position- incomprehensible to himself- in which he felt himself now. He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other man's child with what was now the case- with the fact that, seemingly in return for all this, he now found himself alone, put to shame, a laughingstock, needed by no one, and despised by everyone.
For the first two days after his wife's departure Alexei Alexandrovich received petitioners and his head clerk, drove to the committee, and went down to dinner in the dining room as usual. Without giving himself a reason for what he was doing, he strained every nerve of his being for those two days, simply to preserve an appearance of composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries about the disposition of Anna Arkadyevna's rooms and belongings, he had exercised immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had occurred was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events, and he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him any signs of despair. But on the second day after her departure, when Kornei gave him a bill from a fashionable draper's shop, which Anna had forgotten to pay, and announced that the shopman was waiting, Alexei Alexandrovich told him to show the man up.
"Excuse me, Your Excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if you direct us to apply to Her Excellency, would you graciously oblige us with her address?"
Alexei Alexandrovich pondered, as it seemed to the shopman, and all at once, turning round, he sat down to the table. Burying his head in his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, made several attempts to speak, and stopped short.
Kornei, perceiving his master's emotion, asked the shopman to call another time. Left alone, Alexei Alexandrovich realized that he had not the strength to keep up the role of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.
He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the faces of the shopman and of Kornei and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during these two days. He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a mangled dog, yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the unequal struggle.
His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Peterburg there was not a human being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed, he had not such a one in the whole world.
Alexei Alexandrovich grew up an orphan. There were two brothers. They did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexei Alexandrovich was ten years old. The property was a small one. Their uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing, at one time a favorite of the late Czar, had brought them up.
On completing his high school and university courses with medals, Alexei Alexandrovich had, with his uncle's aid, immediately started in a prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high school and the university, and afterward in the service, Alexei Alexandrovich had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had died shortly after Alexei Alexandrovich's marriage.
While he was governor of a province, Anna's aunt, a wealthy provincial lady, had brought him- middle-aged as he was, though young for a governor- together with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a position that he had either to declare himself or to leave town. Alexei Alexandrovich hesitated a great while. There were at the time as many reasons for the step as against it, and there was no overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of abstaining when in doubt. But Anna's aunt had through a common acquaintance insinuated that he had already compromised the girl, and that he was in honor bound to propose to her. He proposed, and concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he was capable.
The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need of intimate relations with others. And now, among all his acquaintances, he had not one friend. He had plenty of so-called connections, but no friendships. Alexei Alexandrovich had plenty of people whom he could invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he could appeal in any public affair he was concerned about, whose interest he could reckon upon for anyone he wished to help, with whom he could candidly discuss other people's business and affairs of state. But his relations with these people were confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain routine from which it was impossible to depart. There was one man, a comrade of his at the university, with whom he had become friendly later, and with whom he could have spoken of a personal sorrow; but this friend had a post in the Department of Education in a remote part of Russia. Of the people in Peterburg the most intimate and most likely were his head clerk and his doctor.
Mikhail Vassilievich Sludin, the head clerk, was a straightforward, intelligent, goodhearted and conscientious man, and Alexei Alexandrovich was aware of his personal good will. But their five years of official work together seemed to have put a barrier between them that cut off warmer relations.
After signing the papers brought him, Alexei Alexandrovich had sat for a long while in silence, glancing at Mikhail Vassilievich, and several times he attempted to speak, but could not. He had already prepared the phrase: "You have heard of my trouble?" But he ended by saying as usual: "So you'll get this ready for me?" and with that dismissed him.
The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him; but there had long existed a silent understanding between them that both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.
Of his women friends, foremost among them Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Alexei Alexandrovich never thought. All women, simply as women, were terrible and distasteful to him.
Chapter XXII.
Alexei Alexandrovich had forgotten the Countess Lidia Ivanovna but she had not forgotten him. At the bitterest moment of his lonely despair she came to him, and, without waiting to be announced, walked straight into his study. She found him as he was sitting with his head in both hands.
"F'ai force la consigne," she said, walking in with rapid steps and breathing hard with excitement and rapid exertion. "I have heard all! Alexei Alexandrovich! Dear friend!" she went on, warmly squeezing his hand in both of hers and gazing with her fine pensive eyes into his.
Alexei Alexandrovich, frowning, got up, and, disengaging his hand, moved a chair up for her.
"Won't you sit down, Countess? I'm seeing no one because I'm unwell, Countess," he said, and his lips twitched.
"Dear friend!" repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking her eyes off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner corners, describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow face becoming still uglier, but Alexei Alexandrovich felt that she was sorry for him and was 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 Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 Alexei Alexandrovich 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 Peterburg, and which seemed to Alexei Alexandrovich 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 no longer have; it's not that!" pursued Alexei Alexandrovich. "I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help feeling ashamed before other people for the position I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can't help it- I can't help it."
"It was not you who 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."
Alexei Alexandrovich knit his brows, and, crooking his hands, he cracked his fingers.
"One must know all the details," he said in his high 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 could not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is not all..." Alexei Alexandrovich 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 Alexei Alexandrovich squeezed her hand.
"Together we will take care of Seriozha. 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 heavenward, she began praying, as Alexei Alexandrovich gathered from her silence.
Alexei Alexandrovich 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. Alexei Alexandrovich 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 squeezed both of 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 Seriozha. Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you." And she got up and went out.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seriozha'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 Alexei Alexandrovich'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 Kornei, Alexei Alexandrovich'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 the latter was dressing, all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna's help was none the less real; she gave Alexei Alexandrovich moral support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more (as it was soothing to her to believe) by having almost turned him to Christianity- that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she had turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in Peterburg. It was easy for Alexei Alexandrovich to believe in this teaching. Alexei Alexandrovich, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and others who shared their views, was completely devoid of profundity of imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the ideas evoked by the imagination become so actual that they must needs be in harmony with other ideas, and with reality itself. He saw nothing impossible and absurd 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, there was therefore 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 Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 Alexei Alexandrovich 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 XXIII.
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and enthusiastic girl, been married to a wealthy man of high rank, a very good-natured, jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. One month after marriage her husband abandoned her, and her enthusiastic protestations of affection he met with an irony and even hostility which people, knowing the Count's good heart, and seeing no defects in the enthusiastic Lidia, were at a 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 one archbishop, one vicar, and one parish priest; she had been in love with one journalist, three Slavophils, with Komissarov, with one minister, one doctor, one 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 had taken him under special protection, from the time that she had 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 Czar; that she would not have been in love with Ristich-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 Peterburg. Alexei Alexandrovich 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 shocking 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 might not come across them. The young adjutant, a friend 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 bast; 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 Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 Seriozha 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 Alexei Alexandrovich 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 Alexei Alexandrovich. She enjoyed that form of communication, which gave opportunity for a refinement and air of mystery not afforded by their personal interviews.
Chapter XXIV.
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 Vatkovsky were Commander in Chief," said a gray-headed, little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of honor who had questioned him about the new appointments.
"And if I were one of 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 Putiatov have received the order of Alexandre 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 brass," 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 Peterburg. I met her yesterday with Alexei Vronsky, bras dessus, bras dessous, on the Morskaia."
"C'est un homme qui n'a pas..." the gentleman of the bedchamber was beginning, but he stopped to make room, bowing, for a member of the Imperial family to pass.
Thus people talked incessantly of Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 Alexei Alexandrovich 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 Alexei Alexandrovich 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 Alexei Alexandrovich had reached his predestined 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 Alexei Alexandrovich 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.
Alexei Alexandrovich 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 married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife; he that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord," says the Apostle Paul, and Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 ever.
The unmistakable impatience of the member of the Council trying to get away from him did not trouble Alexei Alexandrovich; 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, Alexei Alexandrovich looked down, collecting his thoughts, then looked casually about him and walked toward the door, where he hoped to meet Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
"And how strong they all are- how sound physically," thought Alexei Alexandrovich, looking at the powerfully built gentleman of the bedchamber with his well-groomed, 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, Alexei Alexandrovich bowed with his customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had been talking about him, and, looking toward the door, his eyes sought Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
"Ah! Alexei Alexandrovich!" said the little old man, with a malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when Karenin had come up to 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 Alexei Alexandrovich. "What an exquisite day today," 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 summoning him to her, Alexei Alexandrovich smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and went toward 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 what 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 Alexei Alexandrovich was concerned she succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the one island not only of good will 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 Seriozha.
"I can't say I was quite pleased with him," said Alexei Alexandrovich, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. "And Sitnikov is not satisfied with him." (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom Seriozha's secular education had been intrusted.) "As I have mentioned to you, there's a sort of coldness in him toward the most important questions which ought to touch the heart of every man and every child...." Alexei Alexandrovich began expounding his views on the sole question that interested him outside the service- the education of his son.
When Alexei Alexandrovich, 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, Alexei Alexandrovich devoted some time to the theoretical study of the subject. After reading several books on anthropology, education, and didactics, Alexei Alexandrovich drew up a plan of education, and, engaging the best tutor in Peterburg 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 Peterburg."
Alexei Alexandrovich 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 XXV.
When Alexei Alexandrovich 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 teakettle and spirit lamp. Alexei Alexandrovich 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 Alexei Alexandrovich'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 cast a stone?" said Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 soul 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 Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 it herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise against it, and if you will intrust it to me, I will write to her."
And Alexei Alexandrovich consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna sent the following letter in French:
"Dear Madame- To be reminded of you might result in your son's asking questions, which could not be answered without implanting in the child's soul a spirit of censure toward 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, Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 toward 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 his having insisted only on the observance of external decorum, and not having 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, seared his heart with shame and remorse.
And just the same feeling of shame and remorse he felt now, as he reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in which, after long wavering, he proposed to her.
"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 succulent, 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 Alexei Alexandrovich's soul the peace and the loftiness by virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to remember.
Chapter XXVI.
"Well, Kapitonich?" said Seriozha, coming back rosy and good-humored from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his Russian plaited 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 official been here today? Did papa see him?"
"He saw him. The minute the head clerk came out, I announced him," said the hall porter with a good-humored wink. "Here, I'll take it off."
"Seriozha!" said his Slavonic tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the inner rooms. "Take it off yourself." But Seriozha, though he heard the tutor's feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the hall porter's shoulder knot and gazing into his face.
"Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?"
The hall porter nodded his head affirmatively.
The bandaged official, who had already been seven times to ask some favor of Alexei Alexandrovich, interested both Seriozha and the hall porter. Seriozha 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 Seriozha, 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 for me?" asked Seriozha, after a pause.
"Come, sir," said the hall porter; then with a shake of his head he whispered: "Something from the Countess."
Seriozha understood at once that what the hall porter was speaking of was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his birthday.
"You don't say? Where?"
"Kornei 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-something else. Run along, run along, Vassilii Lukich is calling you," said the porter, hearing the tutor's steps approaching, and, carefully taking away from his shoulder knot the little hand in the glove half-pulled off, he indicated with his head Lukich, the tutor.
"Vassilii Lukich, I'm coming in one tiny minute!" answered Seriozha with gay and loving smile which always won over the careful Vassilii Lukich.
Seriozha 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 from Lidia Ivanovna's niece during his walk in the public gardens. This piece of good news seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same time with the joy of the bandaged official, and his own joy at toys having come for him. It seemed to Seriozha that this was a day on which everyone ought to be glad and happy.
"You know papa's received the order of Alexandre Nevsky today?"
"To be sure I do! People have already been here to congratulate him."
"And is he glad?"
"Glad at the Czar's gracious favor? I should think so! It's a proof he's deserved it," said the porter sternly and seriously.
Seriozha fell to musing, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially at his chin, which hung down between the gray whiskers- never seen by anyone but Seriozha, 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 weekdays? They've their lessons to learn, too. And you've your lesson, sir; run along."
On coming into the room Seriozha, instead of sitting down to his lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought him must be a toy railway. "What do you think?" he inquired.
But Vassilii Lukich 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, Vassilii Lukich," he asked suddenly, when he was seated at their worktable with the book in his hands, "what is greater than the Alexandre Nevsky? You know papa's received the Alexandre Nevsky?"
Vassilii Lukich replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Alexandre Nevsky.
"And higher still?"
"Well, highest of all is the Andrei Pervozvanny."
"And higher than the Andrei?"
"I don't know."
"What- you don't know?" And Seriozha, leaning on his elbows, sank into deep meditation.
His meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He imagined his father's having been suddenly presented with both the Vladimir and the Andrei 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 might be invented higher than the Andrei. 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 Seriozha. He felt he was not to blame for not having learned the lesson; however much he tried, he was utterly unable to do it. 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, and he was anxious to comfort him.
He chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the book.
"Mikhail Ivanich, 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."
Seriozha 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 had 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 XXVII.
After the lesson with the teacher of grammar came his father's lesson. While waiting for his father, Seriozha sat at the table playing with a penknife, and fell to musing. Among Seriozha'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 stirred within him that his breath failed him, and tears came into his eyes. And he was on tiptoe with 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, ring-covered 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 her as she came toward them along the path. The lady had not come up to them, but had disappeared somewhere. That day, more intensely than ever, Seriozha 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 thinking of her.
"Here is your papa," Vassilii Lukich diverted him.
Seriozha 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 Alexandre Nevsky.
"Did you have a good walk?" said Alexei Alexandrovich, sitting down in his easy chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament to him and opening it. Although Alexei Alexandrovich had more than once told Seriozha that every Christian ought to know Scripture history thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible himself during the lesson, and Seriozha observed this.
"Yes, it was very good indeed, papa," said Seriozha, 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 Alexei Alexandrovich. "And secondly, it's not the reward that's precious, but the work itself. And I could have wished you had 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" (Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 for it."
Seriozha's eyes hitherto 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 Seriozha had learned by now to fall in with it. His father always talked to him- so Seriozha felt- as though he were addressing some boy of his own imagination, one of those boys who exist in books, utterly unlike himself. And Seriozha always tried, before his father, to pretend being this storybook boy.
"You understand that, I hope?" said his father.
"Yes, papa," answered Seriozha, acting the part of the imaginary boy.
The lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses out of the Evangel and the repetition of the beginning of the Old Testament. The verses from the Evangel Seriozha 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. It was evident to Alexei Alexandrovich that he did not understand what he was saying, and this irritated him.
He frowned, and began explaining what Seriozha 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. Seriozha 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 Seriozha 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. Seriozha 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 tell of 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 half-unbuttoned button on his waistcoat.
In death, of which they talked to him so often, Seriozha 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 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 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 Seriozha. Bad people- that is, those Seriozha did not like- 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. Seriozha, very bad. If you don't try to learn what is most necessary of all for a Christian," said his father, getting up, "whatever can interest you? I am displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatich" (this was the chief pedagogue) "is displeased with you.... I shall have to punish you."
His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seriozha, 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 Seriozha. 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 that those claims his father and his teacher made upon him. Those claims were in opposition, and he was in direct conflict with his governors.
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 Kapitonich, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassilii Lukich- but not from his teachers. The spring his father and his teachers reckoned upon to turn their mill wheels had long oozed at another place, and its waters did their work there.
His father punished Seriozha by not letting him go to see Nadinka, Lidia Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out happily for Seriozha. Vassilii Lukich 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 wings or tying himself on and whirling round. Of his mother Seriozha did not think all the evening, but, when he had gone to bed, he suddenly remembered her, and prayed in his own words that tomorrow his mother, in time for his birthday, might leave off hiding herself and come to him.
"Vassilii Lukich, do you know what I prayed for tonight- extra beside 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 Vassilii Lukich 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 Seriozha, laughing gaily.
When the candle was taken away, Seriozha heard his mother and felt her presence. She stood over him, and her loving gaze caressed him. But then came windmills- a penknife- everything became confused, and he fell asleep.
Chapter XXVIII.
On arriving in Peterburg, 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 next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him about her, and Alexei 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 Alexei 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 old-fashioned 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 of their reception by society was far from decided. "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 toward 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 Peterburg 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 Peterburg 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 cast a stone 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 news, 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 Varia, his brother's wife. He fancied she would not cast a stone, and would go simply and 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, Alexei," 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 having 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.
"Alexei! Don't be angry with me. Please understand that I'm not to blame," began Varia, looking at him with a timid smile.
"I'm not angry with you," he said still as gloomily; "but this is doubly painful to me. 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 Peterburg 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 Peterburg was that Alexei Alexandrovich and his name seemed to meet him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of anything without the conversation turning on Alexei Alexandrovich, 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 against everything.
Their stay in Peterburg was the more painful to Vronsky because he perceived all the time a sort of new mood he could not understand in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and the next 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 which for her, with her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.
Chapter XXIX.
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 seeing him had never ceased to agitate her. And, as she got nearer to Peterburg, the delight and importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She did not even put to herself the problem of 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 Peterburg 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 Peterburg. 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 Alexei Alexandrovich- 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- the thought of doing that made her miserable; 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. Seriozha's old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the nurse was not now living in Alexei Alexandrovich's house. In this uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped by.
Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexei Alexandrovich and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write 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 magnanimity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he would keep up his role 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 commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had waited, and how afterward 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 since 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 is simulation 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, Seriozha's birthday, she would go straight to her husband's house, bribe the servants, deceive the people, but at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy child.
She went to a toyshop, bought toys, and thought over a plan of action. She would go early in the morning at eight o'clock, when Alexei Alexandrovich 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, without raising her veil, she would say that she had come from Seriozha'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 she 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 coach and rang at the front entrance of her former home.
"Run and see what's wanted. Some lady," said Kapitonich, 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.
"Seriozha- Sergei Alexeich," 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, Kapitonich went out to her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she was pleased to want.
"From Prince Skorodumov for Sergei Alexeich," she said.
"He'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 Kapitonich, taking off her fur cloak.
As he took off the cloak, Kapitonich 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, Kapitonich 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. He's in the former smoking room 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, 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.
"Seriozha!" she whispered, walking 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 farther than ever from the four-year-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.
"Seriozha!" she repeated, in the child's very ear.
He raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tousled head from side to side, as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Quietly 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 again, rolled not backward but toward her, into her arms.
"Seriozha! My darling boy!" she said, breathing hard and putting her arms around 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 his fat little arms round her shoulders, rolled toward 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 knew," 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; she knew 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 up completely. "Mother, what are you crying for?" he cried in a tearful voice.
"I?... 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 made an attempt to talk 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 Vassilii Lukich? He'll come in soon. Why, you're sitting on my clothes!"
And Seriozha 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 if 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 XXX.
Meanwhile Vassilii Lukich 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 Alexei Alexandrovich. Reflecting finally that his duty was to get Seriozha 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 Kapitonich had let her in, and that she was even now in the nursery, and everyone knew that their master always went in person to the nursery at nine o'clock, and everyone fully comprehended that it was impossible for the husband and wife to meet, and that they must prevent it. Kornei, 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 Kapitonich had admitted her and shown her up, he gave the old man a talking-to. The hall porter was doggedly silent, but when Kornei told him he ought to be sent packing Kapitonich darted up to him, and, shaking his hands in Kornei'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 raccoon fur coats!"
"Soldier!" said Kornei contemptuously, and he turned to the nurse who was coming in. "Here, what do you think, Maria Efimovna: he let her in without a word to anyone," Kornei said addressing her. "Alexei Alexandrovich will be down immediately- and will go into the nursery!"
"A pretty business, a pretty business!" said the nurse, "You, Kornei Vassilyevich- you'd best detain the master some way or other, while I'll run and get her away somehow. A pretty business!"
When the nurse went into the nursery, Seriozha was telling his mother how he and Nadinka had had a fall in tobogganing 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 Vassilii Lukich 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 speaking or rising.
"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 haven'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 fell to kissing her hand again.
Seriozha, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one hand and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his chubby 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-by, 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 afterward she thought of words she might have said. But now she did not know what to say, and could say nothing. But Seriozha 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 at fault, but she was afraid of his father 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 pitied 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 whether he was thinking, what he said to her, 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.
"Seriozha, 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.
"My sweet, my little one!" said Anna, and she cried as weakly and childishly as he.
At that moment the door opened; Vassilii Lukich 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.
Seriozha sank on 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. Alexei Alexandrovich 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 for 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 toyshop with such love and sorrow.
Chapter XXXI.
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, "Later on." A footman offered her coffee. "Later on," she said.
The Italian nurse, after taking 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 chubby 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 pinafore, 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