Chapter 25

 

 

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FEELING that they were entirely reconciled, next morning Anna began actively to make preparations for their move, Though it was not settled whether they would go on the Monday or on the Tuesday, as each the night before had yielded to the other’s wish, Anna made all ready for their start, feeling now quite indifferent whether they went a day sooner or later. She stood in her room before an open trunk, sorting clothes, when he came in earlier than usual and ready dressed.

 

‘I will go to maman at once. She can send me the money through Egorov and I shall be ready to go to-morrow,’ said he.

 

Good as the mood she was in might be, the reference to the move to the country pricked her.

 

‘Oh no, I shall not be ready myself,’ she said, and immediately thought: ‘So it was possible to arrange things as I wished!’ — ‘No, do as you wished to. Go to the dining-room. I will come directly. I will only sort out these things that are not wanted,’ she said, placing some more articles on the heap of old clothes already piled up on Annushka’s arms.

 

Vronsky was eating his beefsteak when she entered the dining-room.

 

‘You would hardly believe how disgusting these rooms have become to me!’ she said, sitting down to her coffee beside him. ‘There is nothing worse than these furnished apartments! They are expressionless and soulless. This clock, the curtains, and, above all, the wall-papers are a nightmare! I think of Vozdvizhensk as of a Promised Land. You are not sending off the horses yet?’

 

‘No, they will follow us. Are you driving out anywhere?’

 

‘I wanted to go to the Wilsons, to take her a dress. So it is decided that we go to-morrow?’ she said in a cheerful voice; but suddenly her face changed.

 

Vronsky’s valet came in to fetch a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing odd in his receiving a telegram, but, as if wishing to hide something from her, he told the man that the receipt was in his study and hastily turned to her, saying:

 

‘I shall certainly get everything ready to-morrow.’

 

‘From whom was the telegram?’ she asked, not listening to him.

 

‘From Stiva,’ he replied reluctantly.

 

‘Why didn’t you show it me? What secret can Stiva have from me?’

 

Vronsky called back the valet and told him to bring the telegram.

 

‘I did not wish to show it you, because Stiva has a passion for telegraphing. What is the use of telegraphing when nothing has been settled?’

 

‘About the divorce?’

 

‘Yes, but he wires: “Could get no answer. Promises a decisive answer soon.” But read it yourself.’

 

Anna took the telegram with trembling hands and saw exactly what Vronsky had said, but at the end were added the words: ‘Little hope, but I’ll do everything possible and impossible.’

 

‘I said yesterday that it is all the same to me when I get the divorce, or even whether I get it at all,’ she said, flushing. ‘There was no need at all to conceal it from me.’ And she thought: ‘In the same way he may hide and is hiding from me his correspondence with women.’

 

‘Oh, Yashvin wanted to come this morning with Voytov,’ said Vronsky. ‘It seems he has won from Pevtsov all and even more than Pevtsov can pay — about sixty thousand roubles.’

 

‘But why do you imagine,’ said she, irritated at his intimating to her so obviously, by this change of subject, that he saw she was losing her temper, ‘that this news interests me so much that it is necessary to conceal it? I said that I don’t want to think about it, and I wish that you were as little interested in it as I am.’

 

‘It interests me because I like definiteness,’ he replied.

 

‘Definiteness depends not on forms, but on love,’ she said, growing more and more irritated not at his words but at the tone of cool tranquillity with which he spoke. ‘Why do you want it?’

 

‘Oh God! Again about love!’ he thought with a wry face.

 

‘Don’t you know why? For your own sake and for that of the children we may have!’ said he.

 

‘We shan’t have any.’

 

‘That’s a great pity,’ he said.

 

‘You want it for the children, but you don’t think of me,’ she pursued, quite forgetting or not hearing that he said: ‘for your own sake and for the children.’

 

The possibility of having children had long been a subject of dispute, and it irritated her. She explained his desire to have children as showing that he did not value her beauty.

 

‘Oh, I said for your sake! Most of all for your sake,’ he repeated, his face contorted as with pain, ‘because I am convinced that a great deal of your irritability is due to our indefinite position.’

 

‘Yes, there it is! Now he has stopped pretending, and all his cold hatred for me is apparent,’ she thought, not listening to his words, but gazing with horror at the cold and cruel judge who looked out of his eyes provokingly.

 

‘That is not the reason,’ she said, ‘and I can’t even understand how what you call my “irritability” can be caused by that; I am entirely in your power. What indefiniteness of position is there? Quite the contrary!’

 

‘I am very sorry you don’t wish to understand me,’ he interrupted, stubbornly intent on expressing his thought. ‘The indefiniteness consists in your imagining that I am free.’

 

‘You may be perfectly at rest on that matter!’ she rejoined, and turning away she began to drink her coffee.

 

She took her cup, sticking out her little finger, and raised it to her mouth. After a few sips she glanced at him, and from the expression of his face clearly realized that her hand, her movement, and the sound made by her lips were repulsive to him.

 

‘It is perfectly indifferent to me what your mother thinks and whom she wishes to marry you to,’ she went on, putting down her cup with a trembling hand.

 

‘But we are not talking about that.’

 

‘Yes, about that very thing! And believe me, a heartless woman, be she old or young, your mother or a stranger, does not interest me, and I don’t want to have anything to do with her.’

 

‘Anna, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother.’

 

‘A woman whose heart has not divined wherein her son’s happiness and honour lies has no heart!’

 

‘I repeat my request that you should not speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I respect!’ said he, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.

 

She did not reply. Looking intently at his face and hands, she remembered their reconciliation the day before and his passionate caresses in all their details. ‘Just such caresses he has lavished, and wants to lavish, on other women,’ she thought.

 

‘You don’t love your mother! It’s all words, words, words!’ she said, looking at him with hatred.

 

‘If that’s so, we must . . .’

 

‘Decide . . . and I have decided,’ she said and was about to go away, but just then Yashvin entered. Anna said ‘Good morning,’ and stopped.

 

Why, when a storm was raging within her and she felt that she was at a turning-point which might lead to terrible consequences — why she need, at that moment, dissemble before a stranger who sooner or later would know all about it, she did not know: but immediately calming the storm within her, she sat down again and began talking to the visitor.

 

‘Well? How are your affairs? Has the money been paid?’ she asked Yashvin.

 

‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think I shall get it all, and on Wednesday I must go. And you?’ asked Yashvin, looking at Vronsky with half-closed eyes and evidently divining that there had been a quarrel.

 

‘The day after to-morrow, I believe,’ replied Vronsky.

 

‘But you have been meaning to go for a long time past?’

 

‘Yes, but now it’s decided,’ said Anna, looking straight into Vronsky’s eyes with an expression that told him he must not think of the possibility of a reconciliation.

 

‘Is it possible you are not sorry for that unfortunate Pevtsov?’ she said, continuing her conversation with Yashvin.

 

‘I never asked myself, Anna Arkadyevna, whether I am sorry or not. You see, my whole fortune is here,’ and he pointed to a side pocket, ‘and now I am a rich man; but I shall go to the club tonight and shall perhaps leave it a beggar. You see, he who sits down to play against me, wishes to leave me without a shirt, and I treat him the same! So we struggle, and therein lies the pleasure!’

 

‘But supposing you were married? How would your wife feel about it?’ asked Anna.

 

Yashvin laughed.

 

‘I expect that’s why I never married, and never meant to.’

 

‘How about Helsingfors?’ said Vronsky, joining in the conversation, and he glanced at Anna who had smiled. Meeting his look, her face suddenly assumed a coldly severe expression, as if to say: ‘It is not forgotten. It is still the same!’

 

‘Is it possible you were ever in love?’ she asked Yashvin.

 

‘Oh heavens! How many times! But, you see, some men find it possible to sit down to cards and yet to be able always to leave when the time comes for an assignation! Now I can engage in love-making, but always so as not to be late for cards in the evening. That’s how I manage.’

 

‘No, I am not asking about that, but about the real thing.’ She was going to say Helsingfors, but did not want to repeat the word Vronsky had used.

 

Voytov, who was buying a horse from Vronsky, arrived, and Anna rose and left the room.

 

Before leaving the house Vronsky came to her room. She wished to pretend to be looking for something on the table, but feeling ashamed of the pretence, looked straight into his face with a cold expression.

 

‘What do you want?’ she asked in French.

 

‘Gambetta’s certificate; I have sold him,’ he replied in a tone which said more clearly than words: ‘I have no time for explanations, and they would lead to nothing.’

 

‘I am not at all in the wrong toward her,’ he thought. ‘If she wants to punish herself, tant pis pour elle! [so much the worse for her!]’ But, as he was going out, he thought she said something, and suddenly his heart ached with pity for her.

 

‘What, Anna?’

 

‘Nothing,’ she answered, in the same cold quiet manner.

 

‘If it’s nothing, then tant pis!’ he thought, again chilled. Turning away, he went out. As he was going out he caught sight in a looking-glass of her pale face and trembling lips. He even wished to stop and say a comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he had thought of anything to say. All that day he spent away from home, and when he returned late at night the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and asked him not to go to her room.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 26

 

 

 

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NEVER before had they been at enmity for a whole day. This was the first time it had been so, and this was not even a quarrel. It was an evident acknowledgment of complete estrangement. How could he look at her as he had looked when he came into the room for the certificate? Look at her, see that her heart was torn by despair, and go out in silence with that calmly indifferent look? Not only had he cooled toward her, but he hated her because he loved another woman — that was clear.

 

And recalling all the cruel words he had uttered, Anna invented other words which he evidently had wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew more and more exasperated.

 

‘I do not hold you,’ he might have said. ‘You may go where you please. You probably did not wish to be divorced from your husband so that you could go back to him. Go back! If you need money, I will give you some. How many roubles do you want?’

 

All the cruellest words that a coarse man could say, he, in her imagination, said to her, and she did not forgive him for them any more than if he had really said them.

 

‘And was it not last night that he, an honourable and truthful man, swore he loved me? Have I not often before despaired needlessly?’ she said to herself immediately after.

 

All that day, except when she went to the Wilsons — which took her about two hours — Anna passed in doubting whether all was over or whether there was still hope of a reconciliation, and whether she ought to leave at once or to see him again. She waited for him all day, and in the evening when she went to her room, having left word for him that she had a headache, she thought: ‘If he comes in spite of the maid’s message, it means that he still loves me. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I am to do. . . !’

 

At night she heard his carriage stop, heard him ring, heard his steps, and his voice talking to the maid. He believed what he was told, did not want to learn more, and went to his room! So all was over!

 

And death, as the sole means of reviving love for herself in his heart, of punishing him, and of gaining the victory in that contest which an evil spirit in her heart was waging against him, presented itself clearly and vividly to her.

 

Now it was all the same whether they went to Vozdvizhensk or not, whether she got a divorce or not — it was all useless. All she wanted was to punish him.

 

When she poured out her usual dose of opium and thought that she need only drink the whole phial in order to die, it seemed to her so easy and simple that she again began thinking with pleasure of how he would suffer, repent, and love her memory when it was too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, looking at the stucco cornice under the ceiling by the light of a single burnt-down candle, and at the shadow of the screen which fell on it, and she vividly imagined what he would feel when she was no more, when she was for him nothing but a memory. ‘How could I say those cruel words to her?’ he would say. ‘How could I leave the room without saying anything? But now she is no more! She has gone from us for ever! She is there . . .’ Suddenly the shadow of the screen began to move and spread over the whole of the cornice, the whole ceiling. Other shadows rushed toward it from another side; for an instant they rushed together, but then again they spread with renewed swiftness, flickered, and all was darkness. ‘Death!’ she thought. And such terror came upon her that it was long before she could realize where she was and with trembling hand could find the matches to light another candle in the place of the one that had burnt down and gone out. ‘No — anything, only to live! Why, I love him! And he loves me! All this has been, but will pass,’ she said, feeling that tears of joy at this return to life were running down her cheeks. And, to escape from her fears, she hastily went to him in his study.

 

He was sleeping in the study and was sound asleep. She came up, and holding the light above him looked at him long. Now, when he was asleep, she loved him so that she could not restrain tears of tenderness while looking at him; but she knew that if he were to wake he would look at her with a cold expression, conscious of his own integrity, and that before telling him of her love she must prove to him that he was to blame toward her. Without waking him she returned to her room, and after a second dose of opium toward morning she fell into a heavy but troubled sleep, without ever ceasing to be conscious of herself.

 

In the morning a terrible nightmare, which had come to her several times even before her union with Vronsky, repeated itself and woke her. An old man with a tangled beard was leaning over some iron and doing something, while muttering senseless words in French; and as always in that nightmare (this was what made it terrible) she felt this peasant was paying no attention to her but was doing something dreadful to her with the iron. And she awoke in a cold perspiration.

 

When she got up, the previous day appeared in her memory as in a fog.

 

There had been a quarrel. It was what had happened several times before. ‘I said I had a headache, and he did not come to see me. To-morrow we shall leave. I must see him and get ready for the move,’ she thought. And hearing that he was in the study she went to him. As she passed through the drawing-room she heard a vehicle stop at the front door, and, looking out of the window, she saw a young girl in a lilac hat leaning out of the carriage window and giving an order to the footman who was ringing at the front door. After some talking in the hall, some one came upstairs and she heard Vronsky’s step outside the drawing-room. He was going quickly downstairs. Again Anna went to the window. There he was on the steps, without a hat, going down to the carriage. The young girl in the lilac hat handed him a parcel. Vronsky said something to her and smiled. The carriage rolled away; he ran rapidly upstairs again.

 

The fog that had obscured everything within her was suddenly dissipated. Yesterday’s feelings wrung her aching heart with fresh pain. She could not now understand how she could have humiliated herself so as to remain a whole day with him in his house. She went to his study to announce to him her decision.

 

‘It was the Princess Sorokina with her daughter who came to bring me the money and documents from maman. I could not get them yesterday. How is your head — better?’ he said quietly, not wishing to see or understand the gloomy and solemn look on her face.

 

She stood silent in the middle of the room, looking at him intently. He glanced at her, frowned for an instant, and continued to read a letter. She turned, and slowly moved from the room. He could still call her back, but she reached the door and he remained silent, and only the rustle of the paper as he turned a page was heard.

 

‘Oh, by the way — ’ he said when she was already in the doorway — ‘we are definitely going to-morrow, aren’t we?’

 

‘You, but not I,’ she said, turning round toward him.

 

‘Anna, it is impossible to live like this . . .’

 

‘You, but not I,’ she repeated.

 

‘This is becoming intolerable!’

 

‘You . . . you will repent of this!’ she said and left him.

 

Alarmed by the despairing look with which she had said these words, he jumped up, intending to run after her, but, recollecting himself, he sat down again, tightly clenching his teeth and frowning. This — as it seemed to him — unbecoming and indefinite threat irritated him. ‘I have tried everything,’ he thought, ‘the only thing left is to pay no attention,’ and he began getting ready to drive to town, and to go again to his mother’s to obtain her signature to a power of attorney.

 

She heard the sound of his steps in the study and dining-room. He paused at the drawing-room door. But he did not return to her; he only gave an order that they should let Voytov have the horse in his absence. Then she heard the carriage drive up and the door open, and he went out again. But now he re-entered the hall, and some one ran upstairs. It was his valet, who had come for the gloves his master had forgotten. She went back to the window and saw him take the gloves without looking, and, having touched the coachman’s back with his hand, say something to him. Then, without turning to look up at the window, he sat down in the carriage in his usual posture, crossing one leg over the other, and, putting on a glove, disappeared round the corner.