Anna Karenina
the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that
all is over, and then I will decide what I’m to do!...”
In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the
entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he
believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to
his own room. So then everything was over.
And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of
bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of
gaining the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession
of her heart was waging with him.
Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or
not getting a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter. The one
thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out her
usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the
whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she
began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love
her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by
the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice
of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it,
while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would
be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. “How could I say
such cruel things to her?” he would say. “How could I go out of the
room without saying anything to her? But now she is no more. She has
gone away from us forever. She is....” Suddenly the shadow of the
screen wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other
shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, for an instant the
shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted
forward, wavered, commingled, and all was darkness. “Death!” she
thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long while she could
not realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands
could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of the one
that had burned down and gone out. “No, anything—only to live! Why, I
love him! Why, he loves me! This has been before and will pass,” she
said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling
down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his
room.
He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and
holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now
when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could
not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he
would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that
before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him that he
had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went
back, and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a
heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite lost
consciousness.
In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had
recurred several times in her dreams, even before her connection with
Vronsky. A little old man with unkempt beard was doing something bent
down over some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she, as
she always did in this nightmare (it was what made the horror of it),
felt that this peasant was taking no notice of her, but was doing
something horrible with the iron—over her. And she waked up in a cold
sweat.
When she got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in
mist.
“There was a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I
had a headache, and he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we’re going
away; I must see him and get ready for the journey,” she said to
herself. And learning that he was in his study, she went down to him.
As she passed through the drawing-room she heard a carriage stop at the
entrance, and looking out of the window she saw the carriage, from
which a young girl in a lilac hat was leaning out giving some direction
to the footman ringing the bell. After a parley in the hall, someone
came upstairs, and Vronsky’s steps could be heard passing the
drawing-room. He went rapidly downstairs. Anna went again to the
window. She saw him come out onto the steps without his hat and go up
to the carriage. The young girl in the lilac hat handed him a parcel.
Vronsky, smiling, said something to her. The carriage drove away, he
ran rapidly upstairs again.
The mists that had shrouded everything in her soul parted suddenly. The
feelings of yesterday pierced the sick heart with a fresh pang. She
could not understand now how she could have lowered herself by spending
a whole day with him in his house. She went into his room to announce
her determination.
“That was Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They came and brought me
the money and the deeds from maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday. How
is your head, better?” he said quietly, not wishing to see and to
understand the gloomy and solemn expression of her face.
She looked silently, intently at him, standing in the middle of the
room. He glanced at her, frowned for a moment, and went on reading a
letter. She turned, and went deliberately out of the room. He still
might have turned her back, but she had reached the door, he was still
silent, and the only sound audible was the rustling of the note paper
as he turned it.
“Oh, by the way,” he said at the very moment she was in the doorway,
“we’re going tomorrow for certain, aren’t we?”
“You, but not I,” she said, turning round to him.
“Anna, we can’t go on like this....”
“You, but not I,” she repeated.
“This is getting unbearable!”
“You ... you will be sorry for this,” she said, and went out.
Frightened by the desperate expression with which these words were
uttered, he jumped up and would have run after her, but on second
thoughts he sat down and scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar—as he
thought it—threat of something vague exasperated him. “I’ve tried
everything,” he thought; “the only thing left is not to pay attention,”
and he began to get ready to drive into town, and again to his mother’s
to get her signature to the deeds.
She heard the sound of his steps about the study and the dining-room.
At the drawing-room he stood still. But he did not turn in to see her,
he merely gave an order that the horse should be given to Voytov if he
came while he was away. Then she heard the carriage brought round, the
door opened, and he came out again. But he went back into the porch
again, and someone was running upstairs. It was the valet running up
for his gloves that had been forgotten. She went to the window and saw
him take the gloves without looking, and touching the coachman on the
back he said something to him. Then without looking up at the window he
settled himself in his usual attitude in the carriage, with his legs
crossed, and drawing on his gloves he vanished round the corner.
Chapter 27
“He has gone! It is over!” Anna said to herself, standing at the
window; and in answer to this statement the impression of the darkness
when the candle had flickered out, and of her fearful dream mingling
into one, filled her heart with cold terror.
“No, that cannot be!” she cried, and crossing the room she rang the
bell. She was so afraid now of being alone, that without waiting for
the servant to come in, she went out to meet him.
“Inquire where the count has gone,” she said. The servant answered that
the count had gone to the stable.
“His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage would
be back immediately.”
“Very good. Wait a minute. I’ll write a note at once. Send Mihail with
the note to the stables. Make haste.”
She sat down and wrote:
“I was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For God’s sake come! I’m
afraid.”
She sealed it up and gave it to the servant.
She was afraid of being left alone now; she followed the servant out of
the room, and went to the nursery.
“Why, this isn’t it, this isn’t he! Where are his blue eyes, his sweet,
shy smile?” was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little
girl with her black, curly hair instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle
of her ideas she had expected to see in the nursery. The little girl
sitting at the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with
a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitch-black eyes.
Answering the English nurse that she was quite well, and that she was
going to the country tomorrow, Anna sat down by the little girl and
began spinning the cork to show her. But the child’s loud, ringing
laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Vronsky so vividly that
she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went away. “Can it be
all over? No, it cannot be!” she thought. “He will come back. But how
can he explain that smile, that excitement after he had been talking to
her? But even if he doesn’t explain, I will believe. If I don’t
believe, there’s only one thing left for me, and I can’t.”
She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. “By now he has
received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more....
But what if he doesn’t come? No, that cannot be. He mustn’t see me with
tear-stained eyes. I’ll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or
not?” she asked herself. And she could not remember. She felt her head
with her hand. “Yes, my hair has been done, but when I did it I can’t
in the least remember.” She could not believe the evidence of her hand,
and went up to the pier-glass to see whether she really had done her
hair. She certainly had, but she could not think when she had done it.
“Who’s that?” she thought, looking in the looking-glass at the swollen
face with strangely glittering eyes, that looked in a scared way at
her. “Why, it’s I!” she suddenly understood, and looking round, she
seemed all at once to feel his kisses on her, and twitched her
shoulders, shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed
it.
“What is it? Why, I’m going out of my mind!” and she went into her
bedroom, where Annushka was tidying the room.
“Annushka,” she said, coming to a standstill before her, and she stared
at the maid, not knowing what to say to her.
“You meant to go and see Darya Alexandrovna,” said the girl, as though
she understood.
“Darya Alexandrovna? Yes, I’ll go.”
“Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. He’s coming, he’ll be
here soon.” She took out her watch and looked at it. “But how could he
go away, leaving me in such a state? How can he live, without making it
up with me?” She went to the window and began looking into the street.
Judging by the time, he might be back now. But her calculations might
be wrong, and she began once more to recall when he had started and to
count the minutes.
At the moment when she had moved away to the big clock to compare it
with her watch, someone drove up. Glancing out of the window, she saw
his carriage. But no one came upstairs, and voices could be heard
below. It was the messenger who had come back in the carriage. She went
down to him.
“We didn’t catch the count. The count had driven off on the lower city
road.”
“What do you say? What!...” she said to the rosy, good-humored Mihail,
as he handed her back her note.
“Why, then, he has never received it!” she thought.
“Go with this note to Countess Vronskaya’s place, you know? and bring
an answer back immediately,” she said to the messenger.
“And I, what am I going to do?” she thought. “Yes, I’m going to
Dolly’s, that’s true or else I shall go out of my mind. Yes, and I can
telegraph, too.” And she wrote a telegram. “I absolutely must talk to
you; come at once.” After sending off the telegram, she went to dress.