Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part One/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
When Anna entered, Dolly was sitting in her little reception-room, with a plump light-haired lad, the image of his father, who was learning a lesson from a French reading-book. The boy was reading aloud, and at the same time twisting and trying to pull from his jacket a button which was hanging loose. His mother had many times reproved him, but the plump little hand kept returning to the button. At last she had to take the button off, and put it in her pocket.
"Keep your hands still, Grisha," said she, and again took up the bed-quilt on which she had been long at work, and which always came handy at trying moments. She worked nervously, jerking her fingers and counting the stitches. Though she had sent word to her husband, the day before, that his sister's arrival made no difference to her, nevertheless, she was ready to receive her, and was waiting for her impatiently.
Dolly was absorbed by her woes,—absolutely swallowed up by them. But she did not forget that her sister-in-law, Anna, was the wife of one of the important personages of Petersburg,—a Petersburg grande dame. And, owing to this fact, she did not carry out what she had said to her husband; in other words, she did not forget that her sister was coming.
"After all, Anna is not to blame," she said to herself. "I know nothing about her that is not good, and our relations have always been good and friendly."
To be sure, as far as she could recall the impressions made on her by the Karenins, at Petersburg, their home did not seem to her entirely pleasant; there was something false in the whole manner of their family life.
"But why should I not receive her? Provided, only, that she does not take it into her head to console me," thought Dolly. "I know what these Christian exhortations, consolations, and justifications mean; I have gone over them all a thousand times, and they amount to nothing."
Dolly had spent these last days alone with her children. She did not care to speak to any one about her sorrow, and under the load of it she could not talk about indifferent matters. She knew that some way or other she should have to open her heart to Anna, and at one moment the thought that she could open her heart delighted her; and then again she was angry because she must speak of her humiliations before his sister, and listen to her ready-made phrases of exhortation and consolation.
She had been expecting every moment to see her sister-in-law appear, and had been watching the clock; but, as often happens in such cases, she became so absorbed in her thoughts that she did not hear the door bell. Hearing light steps and the rustling of a gown, she looked up, and involuntarily her jaded face expressed, not pleasure, but surprise. She arose, and threw her arms round her sister-in-law.
"Why! have you come already?" she cried, kissing her.
"Dolly, how glad I am to see you!"
"And I am glad to see you," replied Dolly, with a faint smile, and trying to read, by the expression of Anna's face, how much she knew. "She knows all," was her thought, as she saw the look of compassion on her features. "Well! let us go up-stairs; I will show you to your room," she went on to say, trying to postpone, as long as possible, the time for explanations.
"Is this Grisha? Heavens! how he has grown!" said Anna, kissing him. Then, not taking her eyes from Dolly, she added, with a blush, "No, please let us not go yet."
She took off her handkerchief and her hat, and when it caught in the locks of her dark curly hair she shook her head and released it.
"How brilliantly happy and healthy you look," said Dolly, almost enviously.
"I?".... exclaimed Anna. "Ah!.... Heavens! Tania! is that you, the playmate of my little Serozha?" said she, speaking to a little girl who came running in. She took her by the hand, and kissed her. "What a charming little girl! Charming! But you must show them all to me."
She recalled not only the name, the year, and the month of each, but their characteristics and their little ailments, and Dolly could not help feeling touched.
"Come! let us go and see them," said she; "but Vasya is having her nap now; it's too bad."
After they had seen the children, they came back to the sitting-room alone for coffee. Anna drew the tray toward her, and then she pushed it away.
"Dolly," said she, "he has told me."
Dolly looked at Anna coldly. She now expected some expression of hypocritical sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the kind.
"Dolly, my dear," she said, "I do not intend to speak to you in defense of him, nor to console you; it is impossible. But, dushenka, dear heart, I am sorry, sorry for you with all my soul!"
Under her long lashes her brilliant eyes suddenly filled with tears. She drew closer, and with her energetic little hand seized the hand of her sister-in-law. Dolly did not repulse her, but her face still preserved its forlorn expression.
"It is impossible to console me. After what has happened, all is over for me, all is lost."
And she had hardly said these words ere her face suddenly softened a little. Anna lifted to her lips the thin, dry hand that she held, and kissed it.
"But, Dolly, what is to be done? what is to be done? What is the best way to act in this frightful condition of things? We must think about it."
"All is over! Nothing can be done!" Dolly replied. "And, what is worse than all, you must understand it, is that I cannot leave him! the children! I am chained to him I and I cannot live with him! It is torture to see him!"
"Dolly, galubchik, he has told me; but I should like to hear your side of the story. Tell me all."
Dolly looked at her with a questioning expression. Sympathy and the sincerest affection were depicted in Anna's face.
"I should like to," she suddenly said. "But I shall tell you everything from the very beginning. You know how I was married. With the education that maman gave me, I was not only innocent, I was stupid. I did not know anything. I know they said husbands told their wives all about their past lives; but Stiva"—she corrected herself,—"Stepan Arkadyevitch never told me anything. You would not believe it, but, up to the present time, I supposed that I was the only woman with whom he was acquainted. Thus I lived eight years. You see, I not only never suspected him of being unfaithful to me, but I believed such a thing to be impossible. And with such ideas, imagine how I suffered when I suddenly learned all this horror—all this dastardliness. .... Understand me. To believe absolutely in his honor " .... continued Dolly, struggling to keep back her sobs, "and suddenly to find a letter .... a letter from him to his mistress, to the governess of my children. No; this is too cruel!" She hastily took out her handkerchief, and hid her face in it. "I might have been able to admit a moment of temptation," she continued, after a moment's pause; "but this hypocrisy, this continual attempt to deceive me .... and for whom? .... To continue to be my husband, and yet have her.... It is frightful; you cannot comprehend...."
"Oh, yes! I comprehend; I comprehend, my dear Dolly," said Anna, squeezing her hand.
"And do you imagine that he appreciates all the horror of my situation?" continued Dolly. "Certainly not; he is happy and contented."
"Oh, no!" interrupted Anna, warmly. "He is thoroughly repentant; he is overwhelmed with remorse...."
"Is he capable of remorse?" demanded Dolly, scrutinizing her sister-in-law's face.
"Yes; I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for him. We both of us know him. He is kind; but he is proud, and now he is so humiliated! What touched me most"—Anna knew well enough that this would touch Dolly also—"are the two things that pained him: In the first place, he was ashamed for the children; and secondly, because, loving you .... yes, yes, loving you more than any one else in the world,"—she added vehemently, to prevent Dolly from interrupting her,—"he has wounded you grievously, has almost killed you. ' No, no, she will never forgive me! ' he keeps saying all the time."
Dolly looked straight beyond her sister as she listened.
"Yes, I understand that his position is terrible. The guilty suffers more than the innocent,—if he knows that he is the cause of all the unhappiness. But how can I forgive him? How can I be his wife again after she has.... For me to live with him henceforth would be torment all the more because I still love what I used to love in him ...."
And the sobs prevented her from speaking.
But as if on purpose, each time, after she had become a little calmer, she began again to speak of what hurt her most cruelly.
"She is young, you see, she is pretty," she went on to say. "Do you realize, Anna, for whom I have sacrificed my youth, my beauty? For him and his children! I have worn myself out in his service, I have given him the best that I had; and now, of course, some one younger and fresher than I am is more pleasing to him. They have, certainly, discussed me between them,—or, worse, have insulted me with their silence, do you understand?"
And again her jealousy flamed up in her eyes.
"And after this he will tell me.... What! could I believe it? No, never! it is all over, all that gave me recompense for my sufferings, for my sorrows
Would you believe it? just now I was teaching Grisha. It used to be a pleasure to me; now it is a torment. Why should I take the trouble? Why have I children? It is terrible, because my whole soul is in revolt; instead of love, tenderness, I am filled with nothing but hate, yes, hate! I could kill him and ...."
"Dushenka! Dolly! I understand you; but don't torment yourself so! You are too excited, too angry, to see things in their right light."
Dolly grew calmer, and for a few moments neither spoke.
"What is to be done, Anna? Consider and help me. I have thought of everything, but I cannot see any way out of it."
Anna herself did not see any, but her heart responded to every word, to every expression in her sister-in-law's face.
"I will tell you one thing," said she at last. "I am his sister; I know his character, his peculiarity of forgetting everything,"—she touched her forehead,—"this peculiarity of his which is so conducive to sudden temptation, but also to repentance. At the present moment, he does not understand how it was possible for him to have done what he did."
"Not so! He does understand and he did understand," interrupted Dolly. "But I .... you forget me; .... does that make the pain less for me?"
"Wait! when he made his confession to me, I acknowledge that I did not appreciate the whole horror of your position. I saw only him and the fact that the family was broken up. I was sorry for him; but now that I have been talking with you, I, as a woman, look on it in a different light. I see your suffering, and I cannot tell you how sorry I am. But, Dolly, dushenka, while I fully appreciate your misfortune, there is one thing which I do not know: I do not know.... I do not know to what degree you still love him. You alone can tell whether you love him enough to forgive him. If you do, then forgive him."
"No," began Dolly; but Anna interrupted her, kissing her hand again.
"I know the world better than you do," she said. "I know how such men as Stiva look on these things. You say that they have discussed you between them. Don't you believe it. These men can be unfaithful to their marriage vows, but their homes and their wives remain no less sacred in their eyes. Between these women and their families, they draw a line of demarcation which is never crossed. I cannot understand how it can be, but so it is."
"Yes, but he has kissed her...."
"Wait, Dolly, dushenka! I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he used to come to me and talk about you with tears in his eyes. I know to what a poetic height he raised you, and I know that the longer he lived with you the more he admired you. We always have smiled at his habit of saying at every opportunity, 'Dolly is an extraordinary woman.' You have been, and you always will be, an object of adoration in his eyes, and this passion is not a defection of his heart ...."
"But supposing this defection should be repeated?"
"It is impossible, as I think ...."
"Yes, but would you have forgiven him?"
"I don't know; I can't say ....Yes, I could," said Anna, after a moment's thought, apprehending the gravity of the situation and weighing it in her mental scales. "I could, I could, I could! Yes, I could forgive him, but I should not be the same; but I should forgive him, and I should forgive him in such a way as to show that the past was forgotten, absolutely forgotten." ....
"Well! of course," interrupted Dolly, impetuously, as if she was saying what she had said many times to herself—"otherwise it would not be forgiveness. If you forgive, it must be absolutely, absolutely.—Well! let me show you to your room," said she, rising, and throwing her arm around her sister-in-law.
"My dear, how glad I am that you came. My heart is already lighter, much lighter."