Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
No one except Alekseï Aleksandrovitch's most intimate friends suspected that this apparently cold and sober-minded man had one weakness absolutely contradictory to the general consistency of his character. He could not look with indifference at a child or a woman who was weeping. The sight of tears caused him to lose his self-control, and destroyed for him his reasoning faculties. The manager of his chancelry and his secretary understood this, and warned women who came to present petitions not to allow their feelings to overcome them unless they wanted to injure their prospects.
"He will fly into a passion, and will not listen to you," they said. And it was a fact that the trouble which the sight of weeping caused Alekseï Aleksandrovitch was expressed by hasty irritation. "I cannot, I cannot do anything for you. Please leave me," he would exclaim, as a general thing, in such cases.
When, on their way back from the races, Anna confessed her relations with Vronsky, and, immediately afterwards covering her face with her hands, burst into tears, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, in spite of his anger against his wife, was conscious at the same time of that deep, soul-felt emotion welling up which the sight of tears always caused him. Knowing this, and knowing that any expression of it would be incompatible with the situation, he endeavored to restrain any sign of agitation, and therefore he neither moved nor looked at her; hence arose that strange appearance of death-like rigidity in his face which so impressed Anna.
When they reached home, he helped her from the carriage; and, having made a great effort, he left her with ordinary politeness, saying only those words which would not oblige him to follow any course. He simply said that on the morrow he would let her know his decision.
His wife's words, confirming his worst suspicions, caused a keen pain in his heart; and this pain was made still keener by the strange sensation of physical pity for her, caused by the sight of her tears. Yet, as he sat alone in his carriage, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, to his surprise and pleasure, was conscious of an absolute freedom, not only from that sense of pity, but also from the doubts and the pangs of jealousy which had of late been tormenting him.
He experienced the feelings of a man who has been suffering for a long time from the toothache. After one terrible moment of agony, and the sensation of something enormous—greater than the head itself—which is wrenched out of the jaw, the patient, hardly able to believe in his good fortune, suddenly discovers that the pain that has been poisoning his life so long has ceased, and that he can live and think and interest himself in something besides his aching tooth.
This feeling Alekseï Aleksandrovitch now experienced. The pain had been strange and terrible. But now it was over. He felt that he could live again, and think of something besides his wife.
"Without honor, without heart, without religion, an abandoned woman! I have always known this and I have always seen it, though out of pity for her I tried to shut my eyes to it," he said to himself.
And it really seemed to him that he had always seen this. He recalled many details of their past lives; and things which had once seemed innocent in his eyes, now clearly came up as proofs that she had always been corrupt.
"I made a mistake when I joined my life to hers; but my mistake was not my fault, and therefore I ought not to be unhappy. I am not the guilty one," said he, "but she is. But I have nothing more to do with her. She does not exist for me."....
All that would befall her as well as his son, toward whom also his feelings underwent a similar change, now ceased to occupy him. The only thing that did occupy him now was the question how to make his escape from this wretched crisis in a manner at once wise, correct, and honorable for himself, and having cleared himself from the mud with which she had spattered him by her fall, how he would henceforth pursue his own path of honorable, active, and useful life.
"Must I make myself wretched because a wretched woman has committed a crime? All I want is to find the best way out from this situation to which she has brought me. And I will find it," he added, getting more and more indignant. "I am not the first, nor the last."
And not speaking of the historical examples, beginning with La Belle Hélène of Menelaus, which had recently been brought to all their memories by Offenbach's opera, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch went over in his mind a whole series of contemporary episodes, where husbands of the highest position had been obliged to mourn the faithlessness of their wives.
"Daryalof, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanof, Count Paskudin, Dramm, .... yes, even Dramm, honorable, industrious man as he is, .... Semenof, Chagin, Sigonin. Admit that they cast unjust ridicule on these men; as for me, I never saw anything except their misfortune, and I always pitied them," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch to himself, although this was not so, and he had never sympathized with misfortune of this sort, and had only plumed himself the more as he had heard of wives deceiving their husbands.
"This is a misfortune which is likely to strike any one, and now it has struck me. The only thing is to know how to find the best way of settling the difficulty."
And he began to recall the different ways in which these men, finding themselves in such a position as he was, had behaved.
"Daryalof fought a duel ...."
Dueling had often been a subject of consideration to Alekseï Aleksandrovitch when he was a young man, and for the reason that physically he was a timid man and he knew it. He could not think without a shudder of having a pistol leveled at him, and never in his life had he practised with firearms. This instinctive horror had in early life caused him often to think about dueling and to imagine himself obliged to expose his life to this danger.
Afterward, when he had attained success and a high social position, he had got out of the way of such thoughts; but his habit of mind now reasserted itself, and his timidity, owing to his cowardice, was so great that Alekseï Aleksandrovitch long deliberated about the matter, turning it over on all sides, and questioning the expediency of a duel, although he knew perfectly well that in any case he would never fight.
"Undoubtedly the state of our society is still so sav- age," he said,—"though it is not so in England,—that very many ...."
And in these many, to whom such a solution was satisfactory, there were some for whose opinions Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had the very highest regard. "Looking at the duel from its good side, to what result does it lead? Let us suppose that I send a challenge!"
And Alekseï Aleksandrovitch went on to draw a vivid picture of the night that he would spend after the challenge; and he imagined the pistol aimed at him, and shuddered, and realized that he could never do such a thing,
"Let us suppose that I challenge him to a duel; let us suppose that I learn how to shoot," he forced himself to think, "that I am standing, that I pull the trigger," he said to himself, shutting his eyes, "and it happens that I kill him;" and he shook his head, to drive away these absurd notions.
"What sense would there be in causing a man's death, in order to settle my relations to a sinful woman and her son? Even then I should have to decide what I ought to do with her. But suppose—and this is vastly more likely to happen—that I am the one killed or wounded. I, an innocent man, the victim, killed or wounded? Still more absurd! But, moreover, would not the challenge to a duel on my part be a dishonorable action, certain as I am beforehand that my friends would never allow me to fight a duel? would never permit the life of a government official, who is so indispensable to Russia, to be exposed to danger? What would happen? This would happen, that I, knowing in advance that the matter would never result in any danger, should seem to people to be anxious to win notoriety by a challenge. It would be dishonorable, it would be false, it would be an act of deception to others and to myself. A duel is not to be thought of, and no one expects it of me. My sole aim should be to preserve my reputation, and not to suffer any unnecessary interruption of my activity."
The service of the State, always important in the eyes of Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, now appeared to him of extraordinary importance.
Having decided against the duel, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch began to discuss the question of divorce—a second expedient which had been employed by several of the men whom he had in mind. Calling to mind all the well-known examples of divorce—and there had been many in the very highest circles of society, as he well knew—he could not name a single case where the aim of the divorce had been such as he proposed. The husband in each case had sold or given up the faithless wife; and the guilty party, who had no right to a second marriage, had entered into relations, imagined to be sanctioned, with a new husband.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch saw that, in his case at least, legal divorce, whereby the faithless wife would be repudiated, was impossible. He saw that the complicated conditions of his life precluded the possibility of those coarse proofs which the law demanded for the establishment of a wife's guilt; he saw that the distinguished refinement of his life precluded the public use of such proofs, even if they existed, and that the public use of these proofs would cause him to fall lower in public opinion than the guilty wife.
Divorce could only end in a scandalous lawsuit, which would be a godsend to his enemies and to lovers of gossip, and would degrade him from his high position in society. His principal object, the determination of his position with the least possible confusion, would not be attained by a divorce.
Divorce, moreover, broke off all intercourse between wife and husband, and united her to her paramour. Now in Alekseï Aleksandrovitch's heart, in spite of the scornful indifference which he affected to feel toward his wife, there still remained one very keen sentiment, and that was his unwillingness for her, unhindered, to unite her lot with Vronsky, so that her fault would turn out to her advantage.
This possible contingency was so painful to Alekseï Aleksandrovitch that, merely at the thought of it, he bellowed with mental pain; and he got up from his seat, changed his place in the carriage, and for a long time, darkly scowling, wrapped his woolly plaid around his thin and chilly legs.
"Besides formal divorce," he said to himself, as, growing a little calmer, he continued his deliberations, "it would be possible to act as Karibanof, Paskudin, and that gentle Dramm have done; that is to say, I could separate from my wife." But this measure had almost the same disadvantages as the other: it was practically to throw his wife into Vronsky's arms.
"No; it is impossible—impossible," he said aloud, again trying to wrap himself up in his plaid. "I cannot be unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy."
The feeling of jealousy which had tormented him while he was still ignorant had passed away when by his wife's words the aching tooth had been pulled; but this feeling was replaced by a different one,—the desire not only that she should not triumph, but that she should receive the reward for her sin. He did not express it, but in the depths of his soul he desired that she should be punished for the way in which she had destroyed his peace and honor.
After once more passing in review the conditions of the duel, the divorce, and the separation, and once more rejecting them, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch came to the conclusion that there was only one way to escape from his trouble, and that was to keep his wife under his protection, shielding his misfortune from the eyes of the world, employing all possible means to break off the illicit relationship, and, above all—though he did not avow it to himself—punishing his wife's fault.
"I must let her know that, in the cruel situation into which she has brought our family, I have come to the conclusion that the status quo is the only way that seems advisable for both sides, and that I will agree to preserve it under the strenuous condition that she on her part fulfil my will, and break off all relations with her paramour."
For the bolstering of this resolution when once he had finally adopted it, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch brought up one convincing argument: "Only by acting in this manner do I conform absolutely with the law of religion," said he to himself; "only by this reasoning do I refuse to send away the adulterous woman; and I give her the chance of amending her ways, and likewise,—painful as it will be to me,—I consecrate a part of my powers to her regeneration and salvation."
Though Alekseï Aleksandrovitch knew that he could have no moral influence over his wife, and that the attempts which he should make to reform his wife would have no other outcome than falsehood; although during the trying moments that he had been living, he had not for an instant thought of finding his guidance in religion,—yet now, when he felt that his determination was in accordance with religion, this religious sanction of his resolution gave him full comfort and a certain share of satisfaction. He was consoled with the thought that in such a trying period of his life no one would have the right to say that he had not acted in conformity to the religion whose banner he bore aloft in the midst of coolness and indifference.
As he went over in his mind the remotest contingencies, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch even saw no reason why his relations with his wife should not remain pretty much as they had always been. Of course, it would be impossible for him to feel great confidence in her; but he saw no reason why he should ruin his whole life, and suffer personally, because she was a bad and faithless wife.
"Yes, time will pass," he said to himself, "time which solves all problems; and our relations will be brought into the old order, so that I shall not feel the disorder that has broken up the current of my life. She must be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I do not see why I must be unhappy too."