Anna Karenina
his soul. His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his
soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from
Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but
not from his teachers. The spring his father and his teachers reckoned
upon to turn their mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its
waters did their work in another channel.
His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to see Nadinka,
Lidia Ivanovna’s niece; but this punishment turned out happily for
Seryozha. Vassily Lukitch 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
sails or tying himself on and whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha
did not think all the evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly
remembered her, and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow
for his birthday might leave off hiding herself and come to him.
“Vassily Lukitch, do you know what I prayed for tonight extra besides
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 Vassily Lukitch 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 Seryozha, laughing gaily.
When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and felt his mother. She
stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him. But then came
windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed up, and he fell
asleep.
Chapter 28
On arriving in Petersburg, 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
the next morning to see Vronsky, and of his own accord asked him about
her, and Alexey 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 Alexey 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 whether they would
be received in society was not a foregone conclusion. “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 towards 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 Petersburg 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 Petersburg 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 throw stones 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 gossip, 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. _Ça 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
Varya, his brother’s wife. He fancied she would not throw stones, 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, Alexey,” 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 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.
“Alexey! don’t be angry with me. Please understand that I’m not to
blame,” began Varya, looking at him with a timid smile.
“I’m not angry with you,” he said still as gloomily; “but I’m sorry in
two ways. 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 Petersburg 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
Petersburg was that Alexey Alexandrovitch and his name seemed to meet
him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of anything without the
conversation turning on Alexey Alexandrovitch; 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 on everything.
Their stay in Petersburg was the more painful to Vronsky that he
perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not understand
in Anna. At one time she would seem in love with him, and then 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 for her, with
her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.
Chapter 29
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 it had never ceased to
agitate her. And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and
importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She
did not even put to herself the question 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 Petersburg 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 Petersburg. 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 Alexey Alexandrovitch, 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—that it
made her miserable to think of doing; 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. Seryozha’s
old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the nurse
was not now living in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s house. In this
uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped by.
Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexey Alexandrovitch and
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write to 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
generosity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he
would keep up his character 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 the
commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had
waited, and how afterwards he had been told there was no answer. Anna