Having spent all that day at the hotel considering how she might see her son, she resolved to write to her husband. She had already composed the letter when she received Lydia Ivanovna’s reply. The Countess’s silence had made her feel humble, but the letter and what she read between its lines so irritated her, its malevolence seemed so revolting when compared with her passionate and legitimate love for her son, that she became indignant with others and ceased to blame herself.

 

‘That coldness, that pretence of feeling!’ she said to herself. ‘They want to wound me and torture the child, and shall I submit to them? Not on any account! She is worse than I. Anyhow, I don’t lie!’ And there and then she resolved that next day, Serezha’s birthday, she would go straight to her husband’s house, and would bribe the servants or deceive them, but would at any cost see her son and destroy that monstrous falsehood with which they surrounded the unfortunate child.

 

She drove to a toyshop, purchased a lot of toys, and devised a plan of action. She would go early in the morning, at about eight, when Karenin would certainly not be up. She would have ready in her hand some money to give to the hall-porter and the footman, in order that they should let her in. Without raising her veil she would say she had been sent by Serezha’s god-father to wish him many happy returns of the day and that she was to put the toys by his bedside. The only thing she did not prepare was what she would say to her son. Much as she thought about that she could not prepare the words.

 

Next morning Anna went alone, and at eight o’clock got out of the hired carriage and rang the bell at the front door of the house which used to be her home.

 

‘Go and see what it is. It’s some lady,’ said Kapitonich, who was not yet dressed, and in overcoat and goloshes peeped from the window at the veiled lady standing close to the door. His assistant, a lad whom Anna did not know, had hardly opened the door when she entered, and taking a three-rouble note from her muff hastily thrust it into his hand.

 

‘Serezha . . . Sergey Alexeyich!’ she said, and walked on. After examining the note the porter’s assistant stopped her at the inner glass door.

 

‘Whom do you want?’ he asked.

 

She did not hear his words, and made no reply.

 

Noticing the stranger’s confusion, Kapitonich himself came out, admitted her, and inquired what she wanted.

 

‘I come from Prince Skorodumov to see Sergey Alexeyich,’ said she.

 

‘He is not up yet,’ said the hall-porter, carefully scrutinizing her face.

 

Anna had not foreseen at all that the totally unaltered appearance of the hall of the house where she had lived for nine years would so deeply affect her. One memory after another, both joyful and painful, rose in her mind, and for a moment she forgot why she had come.

 

‘Would you like to wait?’ said Kapitonich, helping her off with her cloak.

 

Having done so he glanced again at her face and, recognizing her, silently bowed low.

 

‘Come in, Your Excellency,’ he said.

 

She wished to speak, but her voice refused to utter a sound; with a look of guilty entreaty at the old man she went with light steps up the stairs. Bending forward and catching the steps with his goloshes, Kapitonich ran after her, trying to overtake her.

 

‘The tutor may be there and not yet dressed. I will announce you.’

 

Anna continued to ascend the familiar steps without understanding what the old man was saying.

 

‘This way, please! To the left! Please excuse its not being quite clean. He has been moved to the old sitting-room now,’ said the hall-porter, panting. ‘Allow me! Please wait a little, Your Excellency. I’ll just look in,’ he said, having overtaken her. He opened a big door and vanished behind it. Anna paused and waited. ‘He’s only just woken up,’ said the porter when he came out again.

 

Just as he spoke Anna heard the sounds of a child yawning; she recognized her son by the sound of the yawn and pictured him vividly before her.

 

‘Let me in, let me in!’ she cried, and entered at the big door. To the right of the door stood a bed on which sat the boy, his nightshirt unbuttoned, bending his little body backward, stretching himself and finishing his yawn. At the moment when his lips were closing they extended into a blissful sleepy smile, and with that smile he again fell slowly and sweetly backwards.

 

‘Serezha!’ she whispered, drawing nearer with inaudible steps.

 

During the time they had been parted and under the influence of that gush of love which she had felt for him of late she had always imagined him as a little fellow of four, the age when she had loved him best. Now he was not even as she had left him; he was still further removed from the four-year-old child; he had grown still more and had got thinner. What did it mean? How thin his face was! How short his hair! How long his arms! How changed since she had left him! But still it was he: the slope of the head was his, the lips were his, the soft neck and the broad shoulders.

 

‘Serezha!’ she repeated, just above the child’s ear.

 

He raised himself again on his elbow, moved his tousled head from side to side as if seeking for something, and opened his eyes. Silently and questioningly he gazed for a few moments at his mother, who stood motionless before him; then suddenly smiling blissfully, he closed his heavy eyelids and fell once more, not backwards, but forwards into her arms.

 

‘Serezha, my dear little boy!’ she uttered, catching her breath and embracing his plump little body.

 

‘Mama!’ he muttered, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch them with different parts of his body.

 

Sleepily smiling with closed eyes, he moved his plump hands from the back of his bed to her shoulders, leaning against her and enveloping her in that sweet scent of sleepiness and warmth which only children possess, and began rubbing himself against her neck and shoulder.

 

‘I knew!’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘To-day is my birthday. I knew you would come! I’ll get up directly . . .’

 

While saying this he was again falling asleep.

 

Anna watched him with greedy eyes. She noticed how he had grown and changed during her absence. She recognized and yet did not quite recognize his bare legs, now so big, which he had freed from the blanket, and his cheeks, now grown thinner, and the short locks of hair at the back of his head, where she had so often kissed him. She touched it all, and could not speak: tears were choking her.

 

‘What are you crying about, Mama?’ he asked, now quite awake. ‘Mama, what are you crying about?’ he exclaimed in a fretful voice.

 

‘I won’t cry . . . I am crying for joy! It is so long since I saw you. I won’t, I won’t,’ she said, swallowing her tears and turning away. ‘But it’s time for you to get dressed,’ she said after a pause when she had recovered; and without releasing his hands she sat down by his bed on a chair on which his clothes were lying ready.

 

‘How do you dress without me? How do you . . .’ She tried to speak simply and cheerfully, but could not, and turned away again.

 

‘I don’t wash with cold water. Papa says I mustn’t. You have not seen Vasily Lukich? He will come presently. And you are sitting on my clothes!’

 

And Serezha burst out laughing. She looked at him and smiled.

 

‘Mama! Dearest, darling!’ he shouted, again throwing himself upon her, and embracing her, as if he only now, having seen her smile, clearly realized what had happened.

 

‘You don’t want that,’ he said, taking off her bonnet; and on seeing her without it, he began kissing her again as though he had only just seen her.

 

‘Well, and what did you think about me? You did not think I was dead?’

 

‘I never believed it!’

 

‘You didn’t believe it, my darling?’

 

‘I knew! I knew!’ he cried, repeating his favourite phrase, and seizing her hand, which was caressing his hair, he pressed her palm to his mouth, covering it with kisses.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 30

 

 

 

—>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<—

 

 

 

MEANWHILE Vasily Lukich, who had not at first understood who the lady was, having realized from what he heard that she was the mother who had left her husband and whom he, having come to the house only after she had left it, had never seen, hesitated whether to go in or not, or whether to tell Karenin. Having at last concluded that his duty was to get Serezha up at the appointed time, and that therefore he need not consider who was sitting there — the boy’s mother or anyone else — but that he must do his duty, he dressed, went up to the door, and opened it.

 

But the caresses of the mother and son, the sound of their voices and what they were saying, made him change his mind.

 

He shook his head, sighed, and closed the door again. ‘I will wait another ten minutes,’ he said to himself, coughing and wiping away his tears.

 

Meanwhile among the servants there was great commotion. They all knew that the mistress had come, that Kapitonich had admitted her, and that she was now in the nursery. But the master always went to the nursery before nine, and they all understood that a meeting between him and his wife was inconceivable and must be prevented. Korney, the valet, went down into the hall-porter’s room to inquire who had let her in, and hearing that it was Kapitonich who had done so, he reprimanded the old man. The hall-porter remained obstinately silent; but when the valet said he ‘ought to get the sack,’ Kapitonich rushed at Korney and, flourishing his hands about before Korney’s face, began to speak out:

 

‘Yes, I daresay you would not have let her in! I’ve been in service here ten years, and have had nothing but kindness: you had better go up and tell her, “You be off, please!” You’re an artful one, you are! You’d better look after yourself and how to fleece the master of fur coats!’

 

‘Soldier!’ said Korney, contemptuously, and turned to the nurse who had just entered. ‘Now, judge for yourself Mary Efimovna,’ he said to her. ‘He’s let her in without telling anybody; and Alexis Alexandrovich will be ready in a minute and will go to the nursery.’

 

‘Dear! Dear! What a business!’ said the nurse. ‘You must detain him somehow, Korney Vasilich — the master, I mean! And I’ll run and get her out of the way. What a business!’

 

When the nurse entered, Serezha was just telling his mother how he and Nadenka fell down together when ice-hilling, and turned three somersaults. She was listening to the sound of his voice, saw his face and the play of his features, felt his hands, but did not understand what he was saying. She must go away, must leave him — that was all she thought and felt. She heard Vasily Lukich’s step as he came to the door and coughed, and then the steps of the nurse as she entered; but she sat as if turned to stone, powerless to speak or rise.

 

‘Madam, dear!’ the nurse began, coming up to Anna and kissing her hands and shoulders. ‘What joy God has sent our little one on his birthday! And you have not changed at all.’

 

‘Oh, nurse dear, I did not know you were in the house,’ said Anna, rousing herself for a moment.

 

‘I don’t live here; I live with my daughter, and have only come to wish him many happy returns, Anna Arkadyevna, dear!’

 

Suddenly the nurse burst into tears and again began to kiss Anna’s hand.

 

Serezha, with bright eyes and beaming smile, holding his mother with one hand and his nurse with the other, jumped with his plump bare feet on to the carpet. The tenderness of his beloved nurse for his mother sent him into raptures.

 

‘Mama! She often comes to see me, and when she comes . . .’ he began, but stopped, noticing that his nurse was whispering something in his mother’s ear, and that a look of fear and of something like shame, that did not at all suit her face, appeared there.

 

She came up to him and said, ‘My darling!’

 

She could not say good-bye, but the expression of her face said it and he understood. ‘Darling, darling Kutik!’ she said, calling him by the pet name she used when he was quite little, ‘you won’t forget me? You . . .’ but she could say no more.

 

How many things she thought of later that she might have said! But now she did not know what to say and could not speak. But Serezha understood all she wanted to tell him. He understood that she was unhappy and that she loved him. He had even understood what the nurse had said in a whisper. He had caught the words ‘always before nine o’clock,’ and he understood that they referred to his father and that his mother and father must not meet. This he had grasped, but he could not make out why that look of fear and shame appeared on her face. . . . She could not have done wrong, and yet seemed afraid and ashamed of something. He wanted to ask a question which would clear up his doubts, but dared not; he saw that she suffered and he was sorry for her. He pressed against her in silence, and then whispered:

 

‘Don’t go — he is not coming yet!’

 

His mother moved him away from her, to see whether he really believed what he was saying; and in the frightened look on his face she saw not only that he was speaking about his father, but that he was, as it were, asking her what he ought to think of him.

 

‘Serezha, my darling!’ she said, ‘love him! He is better and kinder than I am, and I am to blame toward him. When you are grown up you will be able to judge.’

 

‘There is nobody better than you! . . .’ he cried out in desperation through his tears, and seizing her by her shoulders he hugged her with all his might, his arms trembling with the effort.

 

‘Darling little one!’ said Anna, and began to cry in the same weak and childlike way as he.

 

At that moment the door opened and Vasily Lukich entered.

 

Steps were heard approaching the other door, and the nurse said in a frightened whisper, ‘Coming! . . .’ and handed Anna her bonnet.

 

Serezha sank down on his bed and began to sob, hiding his face in his hands. Anna moved the hands away, kissed him again on his wet face, and went rapidly out. Karenin was advancing toward her. When he saw her, he stopped and bowed his head.

 

Despite what she had just said, — that he was better and kinder than she was — after casting at him a rapid glance which took in his whole figure to the minutest detail, she was seized by a feeling of loathing and anger toward him and of jealousy for her son. She swiftly let down her veil and with quickened steps almost ran out of the room.

 

She had not had time even to unwrap the toys she had chosen with so much love and sadness the day before, and she took them back with her.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 31

 

 

 

—>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<—

 

 

 

GREATLY as Anna had desired to see her son, and long as she had thought of and prepared herself for the interview, she had not at all expected that it would affect her so powerfully. On returning to her lonely suite in the hotel she could not for a long time understand why she was there. ‘Yes, it is all ended and I am alone again,’ she said to herself; and without taking off her bonnet she sat down in an easy-chair by the fireplace. With her eyes fixed on a bronze clock, standing on a table between the windows, she began pondering.

 

The French maid, whom she had brought from abroad, came and asked whether she would not dress. She looked at her in astonishment and replied, ‘Later.’ A waiter offered her coffee. ‘Later,’ she said.

 

The Italian nurse, having smartened up the baby girl, came in and held her out to Anna. The plump, well-nourished baby, as usual when she saw her mother, turned her little hands — so fat that they looked as if the wrists had threads tied tightly round them — palms downward and, smiling with her toothless mouth, began waving them as a fish moves its fins, making the starched folds of her embroidered frock rustle. It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the little thing; impossible not to hold out a finger to her, which she caught, screaming and wriggling the whole surface of her little body; impossible not to approach one’s lips to her mouth and let her draw them in, her way of kissing. And Anna did all these things. She took her in her arms, dandled her, and kissed her fresh cheek and bare elbows; but, at the sight of this child, she realized still more clearly that what she felt for her could not even be called love in comparison with her feeling for Serezha. Everything about this baby was sweet, but for some reason she did not grip the heart. Upon the first child, though by an unloved man, all Anna’s unsatisfied capacity for loving was lavished; but the girl was born under most trying conditions and had not received a hundredth part of the care given to the first child. Besides, everything about the baby was still prospective, while Serezha was already an individual and a beloved one; thoughts and feelings struggling in his mind; he understood and loved and judged her, she thought, recalling his words and looks. And from him she was for ever sundered, not only physically but spiritually, and there was no remedy for it.

 

She returned the baby to its nurse, sent them away, and opened a locket with Serezha’s portrait as a baby about the same age as the little girl. Rising, she removed her bonnet and took from the table an album in which were photographs of her son at different ages. She wanted to compare these likenesses and began drawing them out of the album. She took them all out but one, the last and best of the photographs. He was there in a white shirt, astride a chair, his brows frowning while his mouth smiled. This was his most characteristic and best expression. She caught hold of a corner of this photo several times with her deft little hand, the slender white fingers of which moved with special strenuousness that day, but each time they slipped and she could not get the picture out. There was no knife on the table, and she drew out the photo next to it (one, taken in Rome, of Vronsky with long hair and wearing a round hat), and with it pushed out her son’s photo. ‘Yes, there he is!’ she said with a glance at Vronsky’s likeness, and suddenly remembered that he was the cause of her present grief. She had not called him to mind all that morning; but now, having caught sight of that manly, noble face, so familiar and dear to her, she felt an unexpected flow of love toward him.

 

‘But where is he? How can he leave me alone in my anguish?’ she suddenly thought with a sense of reproach, forgetting that she herself had hidden from him all that concerned her son. She sent to ask him to come up to her at once. She awaited him, thinking with a sinking heart of the words in which she would tell him everything and of the expressions of his love which would comfort her. The servant returned with the reply that he had a visitor, but would come up at once, and wished to know whether he might bring with him Prince Yashvin, who had just arrived in Petersburg. ‘So he won’t come alone,’ she thought, ‘he won’t come so that I can tell him everything, but will bring Yashvin. . . .’ And suddenly a strange idea crossed her mind: what if he had ceased to love her?

 

Going over in her mind the events of the last few days, she thought she perceived in everything a confirmation of that dreadful thought: in the fact that he had not dined at home the day before, and that he had insisted on having separate apartments while in Petersburg, and that even now he was not coming alone, perhaps to avoid a tête-à-tête with her.

 

‘But he must tell me. I must know it! If I know it, then I know what I shall do,’ she told herself, powerless to imagine the position she would find herself in when she was convinced of his indifference. She imagined that he had ceased to love her, and she was almost in despair: which roused in her a feeling of peculiar excitement. She rang for her maid, and going into the dressing-room paid more attention to her toilet than she had done all these days, as if, having ceased to love her, his love might be recalled by her wearing the dress and having her hair done in the style most becoming to her.

 

She heard the bell before she was ready. When she entered the drawing-room not his eyes but Yashvin’s met hers. Vronsky was examining her son’s photos, which she had forgotten on the table, and did not hurry to look at her.

 

‘We are acquainted,’ she said, placing her little hand in the enormous hand of the embarrassed Yashvin, whose confusion did not seem to accord with his huge figure and rough face. ‘We have been acquainted since last year’s races. . . . Let me have them,’ she added, with a rapid movement taking from Vronsky the photos he was looking at, and glancing at him impressively with glistening eyes. ‘Were the races good this year? I saw the races on the Corso in Rome instead! But of course you don’t care for life abroad,’ she went on with a pleasant smile. ‘I know you and know all your tastes, though we have met so seldom.’

 

‘I am very sorry to hear it, for my tastes are mostly bad,’ said Yashvin, biting the left side of his moustache.

 

After a short talk, noticing that Vronsky looked at the clock, Yashvin asked her whether she would be staying long in Petersburg, and straightening his immense body picked up his cap.

 

‘Not long, I think,’ she replied with embarrassment, glancing at Vronsky.

 

‘Then we shall not meet again?’ said Yashvin, rising; and then turning to Vronsky he asked, ‘Where are you dining?’

 

‘Come and dine with me,’ said Anna resolutely, as if vexed with herself for her embarrassment, yet blushing as she always did when she revealed her position to a fresh person. ‘The dinners here are not good, but at any rate you will see one another. Of all his regimental friends Alexis liked you best.’

 

‘I shall be very pleased,’ said Yashvin, with a smile which showed Vronsky that he liked Anna very much.

 

Yashvin bowed and went out. Vronsky remained behind.

 

‘You are going too?’ she asked.

 

‘I am late as it is,’ he answered. ‘Go on! I shall catch you up in a minute!’ he shouted to Yashvin.

 

She took his hand and looked fixedly at him, trying to think of something to say to prevent his leaving her.

 

‘Wait — I have something to tell you,’ she said, and raising his short hand she pressed it to her neck. ‘Was it wrong of me to ask him to dinner?’

 

‘You have done very well,’ he replied, showing his compact row of teeth in a calm smile, and kissing her hand.

 

‘Alexis, you have not changed toward me?’ she asked, squeezing his hand in both hers. ‘Alexis, I am in torment here! When are we going?’

 

‘Soon, very soon! You would hardly believe how trying our life here is to me too,’ he said, drawing away his hand.

 

‘Well, then go! Go!’ she said in an offended tone, and quickly left him.