Anna Karenina
one of the guests in French of the valet, while Vronsky, frowning, read
the letter.
The letter was from Anna. Before he read the letter, he knew its
contents. Expecting the elections to be over in five days, he had
promised to be back on Friday. Today was Saturday, and he knew that the
letter contained reproaches for not being back at the time fixed. The
letter he had sent the previous evening had probably not reached her
yet.
The letter was what he had expected, but the form of it was unexpected,
and particularly disagreeable to him. “Annie is very ill, the doctor
says it may be inflammation. I am losing my head all alone. Princess
Varvara is no help, but a hindrance. I expected you the day before
yesterday, and yesterday, and now I am sending to find out where you
are and what you are doing. I wanted to come myself, but thought better
of it, knowing you would dislike it. Send some answer, that I may know
what to do.”
The child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself. Their daughter
ill, and this hostile tone.
The innocent festivities over the election, and this gloomy, burdensome
love to which he had to return struck Vronsky by their contrast. But he
had to go, and by the first train that night he set off home.
Chapter 32
Before Vronsky’s departure for the elections, Anna had reflected that
the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left home,
might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to her, and
resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear the
parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had
looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had wounded her,
and before he had started her peace of mind was destroyed.
In solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which had expressed
his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same
point—the sense of her own humiliation. “He has the right to go away
when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He
has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do
it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a cold, severe
expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it
has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal,” she
thought. “That glance shows the beginning of indifference.”
And though she felt sure that a coldness was beginning, there was
nothing she could do, she could not in any way alter her relations to
him. Just as before, only by love and by charm could she keep him. And
so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by morphine at
night, could she stifle the fearful thought of what would be if he
ceased to love her. It is true there was still one means; not to keep
him—for that she wanted nothing more than his love—but to be nearer to
him, to be in such a position that he would not leave her. That means
was divorce and marriage. And she began to long for that, and made up
her mind to agree to it the first time he or Stiva approached her on
the subject.
Absorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the five
days that he was to be at the elections.
Walks, conversation with Princess Varvara, visits to the hospital, and,
most of all, reading—reading of one book after another—filled up her
time. But on the sixth day, when the coachman came back without him,
she felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the thought of
him and of what he was doing there, just at that time her little girl
was taken ill. Anna began to look after her, but even that did not
distract her mind, especially as the illness was not serious. However
hard she tried, she could not love this little child, and to feign love
was beyond her powers. Towards the evening of that day, still alone,
Anna was in such a panic about him that she decided to start for the
town, but on second thoughts wrote him the contradictory letter that
Vronsky received, and without reading it through, sent it off by a
special messenger. The next morning she received his letter and
regretted her own. She dreaded a repetition of the severe look he had
flung at her at parting, especially when he knew that the baby was not
dangerously ill. But still she was glad she had written to him. At this
moment Anna was positively admitting to herself that she was a burden
to him, that he would relinquish his freedom regretfully to return to
her, and in spite of that she was glad he was coming. Let him weary of
her, but he would be here with her, so that she would see him, would
know of every action he took.
She was sitting in the drawing-room near a lamp, with a new volume of
Taine, and as she read, listening to the sound of the wind outside, and
every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. Several times she had
fancied she heard the sound of wheels, but she had been mistaken. At
last she heard not the sound of wheels, but the coachman’s shout and
the dull rumble in the covered entry. Even Princess Varvara, playing
patience, confirmed this, and Anna, flushing hotly, got up; but instead
of going down, as she had done twice before, she stood still. She
suddenly felt ashamed of her duplicity, but even more she dreaded how
he might meet her. All feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was
only afraid of the expression of his displeasure. She remembered that
her child had been perfectly well again for the last two days. She felt
positively vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her
letter was sent off. Then she thought of him, that he was here, all of
him, with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting
everything, she ran joyfully to meet him.
“Well, how is Annie?” he said timidly from below, looking up to Anna as
she ran down to him.
He was sitting on a chair, and a footman was pulling off his warm
over-boot.
“Oh, she is better.”
“And you?” he said, shaking himself.
She took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never
taking her eyes off him.
“Well, I’m glad,” he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress,
which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many
times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she so
dreaded settled upon his face.
“Well, I’m glad. And are you well?” he said, wiping his damp beard with
his handkerchief and kissing her hand.
“Never mind,” she thought, “only let him be here, and so long as he’s
here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me.”
The evening was spent happily and gaily in the presence of Princess
Varvara, who complained to him that Anna had been taking morphine in
his absence.
“What am I to do? I couldn’t sleep.... My thoughts prevented me. When
he’s here I never take it—hardly ever.”
He told her about the election, and Anna knew how by adroit questions
to bring him to what gave him most pleasure—his own success. She told
him of everything that interested him at home; and all that she told
him was of the most cheerful description.
But late in the evening, when they were alone, Anna, seeing that she
had regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful
impression of the glance he had given her for her letter. She said:
“Tell me frankly, you were vexed at getting my letter, and you didn’t
believe me?”
As soon as she had said it, she felt that however warm his feelings
were to her, he had not forgiven her for that.
“Yes,” he said, “the letter was so strange. First, Annie ill, and then
you thought of coming yourself.”
“It was all the truth.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it.”
“Yes, you do doubt it. You are vexed, I see.”
“Not for one moment. I’m only vexed, that’s true, that you seem somehow
unwilling to admit that there are duties....”
“The duty of going to a concert....”
“But we won’t talk about it,” he said.
“Why not talk about it?” she said.
“I only meant to say that matters of real importance may turn up. Now,
for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow to arrange about the
house.... Oh, Anna, why are you so irritable? Don’t you know that I
can’t live without you?”
“If so,” said Anna, her voice suddenly changing, “it means that you are
sick of this life.... Yes, you will come for a day and go away, as men
do....”
“Anna, that’s cruel. I am ready to give up my whole life.”
But she did not hear him.
“If you go to Moscow, I will go too. I will not stay here. Either we
must separate or else live together.”
“Why, you know, that’s my one desire. But for that....”
“We must get a divorce. I will write to him. I see I cannot go on like
this.... But I will come with you to Moscow.”
“You talk as if you were threatening me. But I desire nothing so much
as never to be parted from you,” said Vronsky, smiling.
But as he said these words there gleamed in his eyes not merely a cold
look, but the vindictive look of a man persecuted and made cruel.
She saw the look and correctly divined its meaning.
“If so, it’s a calamity!” that glance told her. It was a moment’s
impression, but she never forgot it.
Anna wrote to her husband asking him about a divorce, and towards the
end of November, taking leave of Princess Varvara, who wanted to go to
Petersburg, she went with Vronsky to Moscow. Expecting every day an
answer from Alexey Alexandrovitch, and after that the divorce, they now
established themselves together like married people.
PART SEVEN
Chapter 1
The Levins had been three months in Moscow. The date had long passed on
which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of people learned
in such matters, Kitty should have been confined. But she was still
about, and there was nothing to show that her time was any nearer than
two months ago. The doctor, the monthly nurse, and Dolly and her
mother, and most of all Levin, who could not think of the approaching
event without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy. Kitty was the
only person who felt perfectly calm and happy.
She was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of love
for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing already,
and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by now
altogether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life
independently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but at
the same time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy.
All the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her, so
attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was everything
presented to her, that if she had not known and felt that it must all
soon be over, she could not have wished for a better and pleasanter
life. The only thing that spoiled the charm of this manner of life was
that her husband was not here as she loved him to be, and as he was in
the country.
She liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the country.
In the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his guard, as though he
were afraid someone would be rude to him, and still more to her. At
home in the country, knowing himself distinctly to be in his right
place, he was never in haste to be off elsewhere. He was never
unoccupied. Here in town he was in a continual hurry, as though afraid
of missing something, and yet he had nothing to do. And she felt sorry
for him. To others, she knew, he did not appear an object of pity. On
the contrary, when Kitty looked at him in society, as one sometimes
looks at those one loves, trying to see him as if he were a stranger,
so as to catch the impression he must make on others, she saw with a
panic even of jealous fear that he was far indeed from being a pitiable
figure, that he was very attractive with his fine breeding, his rather
old-fashioned, reserved courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and