Anna Karenina
for, he went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at
four. Going into the hall he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery
and a bear fur cape, holding a white fur cloak.
“Who is here?” asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskaya,” the groom answered, and it
seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.
During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed that
his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest
in him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed with
difficulty concealing their mirth at something; the same mirth that he
had perceived in the lawyer’s eyes, and just now in the eyes of this
groom. Everyone seemed, somehow, hugely delighted, as though they had
just been at a wedding. When they met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment
they inquired after his wife’s health. The presence of Princess
Tverskaya was unpleasant to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories
associated with her, and also because he disliked her, and he went
straight to the nursery. In the day nursery Seryozha, leaning on the
table with his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily.
The English governess, who had during Anna’s illness replaced the
French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She hurriedly
got up, curtseyed, and pulled Seryozha.
Alexey Alexandrovitch stroked his son’s hair, answered the governess’s
inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of the
baby.
“The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir.”
“But she is still in pain,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening to
the baby’s screaming in the next room.
“I think it’s the wet-nurse, sir,” the Englishwoman said firmly.
“What makes you think so?” he asked, stopping short.
“It’s just as it was at Countess Paul’s, sir. They gave the baby
medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse
had no milk, sir.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few seconds
he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown
back, stiffening itself in the nurse’s arms, and would not take the
plump breast offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the
double hushing of the wet-nurse and the other nurse, who was bending
over her.
“Still no better?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“She’s very restless,” answered the nurse in a whisper.
“Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk,” he said.
“I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“Who’s one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill....” said the nurse
discontentedly.
The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words
there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his position.
The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse,
with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse’s
arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.
“You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse,” said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse,
frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to
herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of
doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey
Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.
“Luckless child!” said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking
up and down with it.
Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering
face watched the nurse walking to and fro.
When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and
the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey
Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the
baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face
gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the
skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out
of the room.
In the dining-room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in
to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being
anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humor he had no
wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But
his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so,
overcoming his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he
walked over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help
overhearing a conversation he did not want to hear.
“If he hadn’t been going away, I could have understood your answer and
his too. But your husband ought to be above that,” Betsy was saying.
“It’s not for my husband; for myself I don’t wish it. Don’t say that!”
answered Anna’s excited voice.
“Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself
on your account....”
“That’s just why I don’t want to.”
With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped
and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be
undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up
to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.
Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black
curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died
out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she
dropped her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in
the height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over
her head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway
stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt,
was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her
head, she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.
“Ah!” she said, as though surprised. “I’m very glad you’re at home. You
never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven’t seen you ever since
Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it—your anxiety. Yes, you’re
a wonderful husband!” she said, with a meaning and affable air, as
though she were bestowing an order of magnanimity on him for his
conduct to his wife.
Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife’s hand,
asked how she was.
“Better, I think,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“But you’ve rather a feverish-looking color,” he said, laying stress on
the word “feverish.”
“We’ve been talking too much,” said Betsy. “I feel it’s selfishness on
my part, and I am going away.”
She got up, but Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand.
“No, wait a minute, please. I must tell you ... no, you.” she turned to
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with
crimson. “I won’t and can’t keep anything secret from you,” she said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.
“Betsy’s been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to say
good-bye before his departure for Tashkend.” She did not look at her
husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, however
hard it might be for her. “I told her I could not receive him.”
“You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,”
Betsy corrected her.
“Oh, no, I can’t receive him; and what object would there....” She
stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he did not
look at her). “In short, I don’t wish it....”
Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.
Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand with big
swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious effort to control
herself she pressed his hand.
“I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but....” he said,
feeling with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide easily
and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before Princess Tverskaya,
who to him stood for the incarnation of that brute force which would
inevitably control him in the life he led in the eyes of the world, and
hinder him from giving way to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He
stopped short, looking at Princess Tverskaya.
“Well, good-bye, my darling,” said Betsy, getting up. She kissed Anna,
and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,” said
Betsy, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special warmth
shaking hands with him once more. “I am an outsider, but I so love her
and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive him. Alexey Vronsky
is the soul of honor, and he is going away to Tashkend.”
“Thank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the question of
whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must decide herself.”
He said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and reflected
immediately that whatever his words might be, there could be no dignity
in his position. And he saw this by the suppressed, malicious, and
ironical smile with which Betsy glanced at him after this phrase.
Chapter 20
Alexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing-room, and went
to his wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps she sat up
hastily in her former attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He
saw she had been crying.
“I am very grateful for your confidence in me.” He repeated gently in
Russian the phrase he had said in Betsy’s presence in French, and sat
down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian, using the Russian
“thou” of intimacy and affection, it was insufferably irritating to
Anna. “And I am very grateful for your decision. I, too, imagine that
since he is going away, there is no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky
to come here. However, if....”
“But I’ve said so already, so why repeat it?” Anna suddenly interrupted
him with an irritation she could not succeed in repressing. “No sort of
necessity,” she thought, “for a man to come and say good-bye to the
woman he loves, for whom he was ready to ruin himself, and has ruined
himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort of necessity!” she
compressed her lips, and dropped her burning eyes to his hands with
their swollen veins. They were rubbing each other.
“Let us never speak of it,” she added more calmly.
“I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to
see....” Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.
“That my wish coincides with your own,” she finished quickly,
exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he
would say.
“Yes,” he assented; “and Princess Tverskaya’s interference in the most
difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She especially....”
“I don’t believe a word of what’s said about her,” said Anna quickly.
“I know she really cares for me.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played nervously
with the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that
torturing sensation of physical repulsion for which she blamed herself,
though she could not control it. Her only desire now was to be rid of
his oppressive presence.
“I have just sent for the doctor,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?”
“No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn’t enough milk.”
“Why didn’t you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway” (Alexey
Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that “anyway”), “she’s a baby,
and they’re killing her.” She rang the bell and ordered the baby to be
brought her. “I begged to nurse her, I wasn’t allowed to, and now I’m
blamed for it.”
“I don’t blame....”
“Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn’t I die!” And she broke into
sobs. “Forgive me, I’m nervous, I’m unjust,” she said, controlling
herself, “but do go away....”
“No, it can’t go on like this,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself