Anna Karenina
While he was governor of a province, Anna’s aunt, a wealthy provincial
lady, had thrown him—middle-aged as he was, though young for a
governor—with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a
position that he had either to declare himself or to leave the town.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation. 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 make her an offer. He made the offer, 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. Alexey Alexandrovitch 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 made friends 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 Petersburg the most intimate and most possible
were his chief secretary and his doctor.
Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a
straightforward, intelligent, good-hearted, and conscientious man, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of his personal goodwill. 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, Alexey Alexandrovitch had sat for
a long while in silence, glancing at Mihail Vassilievitch, 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 taciturn understanding between them that
both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.
Of his women friends, foremost amongst them Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
Alexey Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply as women, were
terrible and distasteful to him.
Chapter 22
Alexey Alexandrovitch 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.
“_J’ai forcé la consigne_,” she said, walking in with rapid steps and
breathing hard with excitement and rapid exercise. “I have heard all!
Alexey Alexandrovitch! Dear friend!” she went on, warmly squeezing his
hand in both of hers and gazing with her fine pensive eyes into his.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, frowning, got up, and disengaging his hand,
moved her a chair.
“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 became
still uglier, but Alexey Alexandrovitch 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 Alexey
Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her brimming
eyes. “My position is so awful because I can find nowhere, I cannot
find within me strength to support me.”
“You will find support; seek it—not in me, though I beseech you to
believe in my friendship,” she said, with a sigh. “Our support is love,
that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light,” she said,
with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. “He will
be your support and your succor.”
Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental emotion
at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had
lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey
Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear
this now.
“I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I understand
nothing.”
“Dear friend,” repeated Lidia Ivanovna.
“It’s not the loss of what I have not now, it’s not that!” pursued
Alexey Alexandrovitch. “I do not grieve for that. But I cannot help
feeling humiliated before other people for the position I am placed in.
It is wrong, but I can’t help it, I can’t help it.”
“Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which I was
moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working within your
heart,” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her eyes rapturously,
“and so you cannot be ashamed of your act.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands, he
cracked his fingers.
“One must know all the facts,” he said in his thin voice. “A man’s
strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my limits. The
whole day I have had to be making arrangements, arrangements about
household matters arising” (he emphasized the word _arising_) “from my
new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the accounts....
These pinpricks have stabbed me to the heart, and I have not the
strength to bear it. At dinner ... yesterday, I was almost getting up
from the dinner-table. I could not bear the way my son looked at me. He
did not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could
not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is
not all....” Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the bill that
had been brought him, but his voice shook, and he stopped. That bill on
blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush
of self-pity.
“I understand, dear friend,” said Lidia Ivanovna. “I understand it all.
Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I have come only to
aid you if I can. If I could take from off you all these petty,
humiliating cares ... I understand that a woman’s word, a woman’s
superintendence is needed. You will intrust it to me?”
Silently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.
“Together we will take care of Seryozha. Practical affairs are not my
strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your housekeeper. Don’t
thank me. I do it not from myself....”
“I cannot help thanking you.”
“But, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you
spoke—being ashamed of what is the Christian’s highest glory: _he who
humbles himself shall be exalted_. And you cannot thank me. You must
thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone we find peace,
consolation, salvation, and love,” she said, and turning her eyes
heavenwards, she began praying, as Alexey Alexandrovitch gathered from
her silence.
Alexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those expressions which
had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least exaggerated, now seemed
to him natural and consolatory. Alexey Alexandrovitch had disliked this
new enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was interested in
religion primarily in its political aspect, and the new doctrine which
ventured upon several new interpretations, just because it paved the
way to discussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him.
He had hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to this
new doctrine, and with Countess Lidia Ivanovna, who had been carried
away by it, he had never argued, but by silence had assiduously parried
her attempts to provoke him into argument. Now for the first time he
heard her words with pleasure, and did not inwardly oppose them.
“I am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for your
words,” he said, when she had finished praying.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna once more pressed both her friend’s hands.
“Now I will enter upon my duties,” she said with a smile after a pause,
as she wiped away the traces of tears. “I am going to Seryozha. Only in
the last extremity shall I apply to you.” And she got up and went out.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna went into Seryozha’s part of the house, and
dropping tears on the scared child’s cheeks, she told him that his
father was a saint and his mother was dead.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna kept her promise. She did actually take upon
herself the care of the organization and management of Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s household. But she had not overstated the case when
saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her
arrangements had to be modified because they could not be carried out,
and they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch’s valet, who,
though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Karenin’s household,
and quietly and discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing
all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Ivanovna’s help was
none the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support in the
consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as it
was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to
Christianity—that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she
turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new
interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of
late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in
this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Ivanovna indeed, and
others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of
imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions
evoked by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in
harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw nothing
impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death, though existing
for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that, as he was possessed
of the most perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself the
judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing
complete salvation here on earth.
It is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this conception of
his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he knew
that when, without the slightest idea that his forgiveness was the
action of a higher power, he had surrendered directly to the feeling of
forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now when he was thinking
every instant that Christ was in his heart, and that in signing
official papers he was doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it
was a necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him
in his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however imaginary,
from which, looked down upon by all, he could look down on others, that
he clung, as to his one salvation, to his delusion of salvation.
Chapter 23
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had, as a very young and sentimental girl,
been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely good-natured,