Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
Though Anna had obstinately and angrily contradicted Vronsky when he told her that her position was impossible, yet in the bottom of her heart she felt that it was false and dishonorable, and she longed with all her soul to escape from it. When, in a moment of agitation, she avowed all to her husband as they were returning from the races, notwithstanding the pain which it cost her, she felt glad. After Alekseï Aleksandrovitch left her, she kept repeating to herself that she was glad, that now all was explained, and that henceforth there would be at least no more need of falsehood and deception. It seemed to her indubitable that now her position would be henceforth determined. It might be bad, but it would be definite, and there would be an end to lying and equivocation. The pain which her words had cost her husband and herself would have its compensation, she thought, in the fact that now all would be definite.
That very evening Vronsky came to see her, but she did not tell him what had taken place between her husband and herself, although it was needful to tell him, in order that the affair might be definitely settled.
The next morning, when she awoke, her first memory was of the words that she had spoken to her husband; and they seemed to her so odious, that she could not imagine now how she could have brought herself to say such strange brutal words, and she could not conceive what the result of them would be. But the words were irrevocable, and Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had departed without replying.
"I have seen Vronsky since, and I did not tell him. Even at the moment he went away, I wanted to hold him back and to tell him; but I postponed it because I felt how strange it was that I did not tell him at the first moment. Why did I have the desire, and yet not speak?"
And, in reply to this question, the hot flush of shame kindled in her face. She realized that it was shame that kept her from speaking. Her position, which the evening before had seemed to her so clear, suddenly presented itself as very far from clear, as inextricable. She began to fear the dishonor about which she had not thought before. When she considered what her husband might do to her, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. It occurred to her that at any instant the steward [1] might appear to drive her out of house and home, and that her shame might be proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she could go if they drove her from home, and she found no answer.
When she thought of Vronsky, she imagined that he did not love her, and that he was already beginning to tire of her, and that she could not impose herself on him, and she felt angry with him. It seemed to her that the words which she spoke to her husband, and which she incessantly repeated to herself, were spoken so that everybody could hear them, and had heard them. She could not bring herself to look in the faces of those with whom she lived. She could not bring herself to ring for her maid, and still less to go down and meet her son and his governess.
The maid came, and stood long at the door, listening; finally she decided to go to her without a summons. Anna looked at her questioningly, and in her terror she blushed. The maid apologized for coming, saying that she thought she heard the bell. She brought a gown and a note. The note was from Betsy. Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalova and the Baroness Stolz with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and the old man Stremof, were coming to her house that morning for a game of croquet. "Come and look on, please, as a study of manners. I shall expect you," was the conclusion of the note.
Anna read the letter, and sighed profoundly.
"Nothing, nothing, I need nothing," said she to Annushka, who was arranging the brushes and toilet articles on her dressing-table. "Go away. I will dress myself immediately, and come down. I need nothing."
Annushka went out; yet Anna did not begin to dress, but sat in the same attitude, with bent head and folded hands; and occasionally she would shiver, and begin to make some gesture, to say something, and then fall back into Hstlessness again. She kept saying, "Bozhe moï! Bozhe moï!"[2] but the words had no meaning in her mind. The thought of seeking a refuge from her situation in religion, although she never doubted the faith in which she had been trained, seemed to her as strange as to go and ask help of Alekseï Aleksandrovitch himself. She knew beforehand that the refuge offered by religion was possible only by the absolute renunciation of all that constituted for her the meaning of life. She suffered, and was frightened besides, by a sensation that was new to her experience hitherto, and which seemed to her to take possession of her inmost soul. She seemed to feel double, just as sometimes eyes, when weary, see double. She knew not what she feared, what she desired. She knew not whether she feared and desired what had passed or what was to come, and what she desired she did not know.
"Oh! what am I doing?" she cried, suddenly feeling a pain in both temples; and she discovered that she had taken her hair in her two hands, and was pulling it. She got up, and began to walk the floor.
"The coffee is served, and Mamzel and Serozha are waiting," said Annushka, coming in again, and finding her mistress in the same condition as before.
"Serozha? what is Serozha doing," suddenly asked Anna, remembering, for the first time that morning, the existence of her son,
"He has been naughty, I think," said Annushka, with a smile.
"How naughty?"
"You had some peaches in the corner cupboard; he took one, and ate it on the sly, it seems."
The thought of her son suddenly called Anna from the impassive state in which she had been sunk. She remembered the partly sincere, though somewhat exaggerated, rôle of devoted mother, which she had taken on herself for a number of years, and she felt with joy that in this relationship she had a standpoint independent of her relation to her husband and Vronsky. This standpoint was—her son. In whatever situation she might be placed, she could not give him up. Her husband might drive her from him, and put her to shame; Vronsky might turn his back on her, and resume his former independent life,—and here again she thought of him with a feeling of anger and reproach,—but she could not leave her son. She had an aim in life; and she must act, act so as to safeguard this relation toward her son, so that they could not take him from her. She must act as speedily as possible before they took him from her. She must take her son and go off. That was the one thing which she now had to do. She must calm herself, and get away from this tormenting situation. The very thought of an action having reference to her son, and of going away with him anywhere, anywhere, already gave her consolation.
She dressed in haste, went down-stairs, and with firm steps entered the drawing-room, where, as usual, she found lunch ready, and Serozha and the governess waiting for her. Serozha, all in white, was standing near a table under the mirror, with the expression of concentrated attention which she knew so well, and in which he resembled his father. Bending over, he was busy with some flowers which he had brought in.
The governess had a very stern expression. Serozha, as soon as he saw his mother, uttered a sharp cry, which was a frequent custom of his,—"Ah, mamma!" Then he stopped, undecided whether to throw down the flowers and run to his mother, and let the flowers go, or to finish his bouquet and take it to her.
The governess bowed, and began a long and circumstantial account of the naughtiness that Serozha had committed; but Anna did not hear her. She was thinking whether she should take her with them.
"No, I will not," she decided; "I will go alone with my son."
"Yes, that was very naughty," said Anna; and, taking the boy by the shoulder, she looked with a gentle, not angry, face at the confused but happy boy, and kissed him. "Leave him with me," said she to the wondering governess; and, not letting go his arm, she sat down at the table where the coffee was waiting.
"Mamma .... I .... I .... did n't ...." stammered Serozha, trying to judge by his mother's expression what fate was in store for him for having pilfered the peach.
"Serozha," she said, as soon as the governess had left the room, "that was naughty. You will not do it again, will you?.... Do you love me?"
She felt that the tears were standing in her eyes. "Why can I not love him?" she asked herself, studying the boy's frightened and yet happy face. "And can he join with his father to punish me? Will he not have pity on me?"
The tears began to course down her face; and, in order to hide them, she rose up quickly, and hastened, almost ran, to the terrace.
Clear, cool weather had succeeded the stormy rains of the last few days. In spite of the warm sun which shone on the thick foliage of the trees, it was cool in the shade.
She shivered both from the coolness and from the sentiment of fear which in the cool air seized her with new force.
"Go, go and find Mariette," said she to Serozha, who had followed her; and then she began to walk up and down on the straw carpet which covered the terrace. "Will they not forgive me?" she asked herself. "Will they not understand that all this could not possibly have been otherwise?"
As she stopped and looked at the top of the aspens waving in the wind, with their freshly washed leaves glittering brightly in the cool sunbeams, it seemed to her that they would not forgive her, that all, that everything, would be as pitiless toward her as that sky and that foliage. And again she felt that mysterious sense in her inmost soul that she was in a dual state.
"I must not, must not think," she said to herself. "I must have courage. Where shall I go? When? Whom shall I take? Yes! to Moscow by the evening train, with Annushka and Serozha and only the most necessary things. But first I must write to them both."
She hurried back into the house to her boudoir, sat down at the table, and wrote her husband:—
After what has passed, I cannot longer remain in your house. I am going away, and I shall take my son. I do not know the laws, and so I do not know with which of his parents the child should remain; but I take him with me, because I cannot live without him. Be magnanimous; let me have him.
Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally; but this appeal to a magnanimity which she had never seen in him, and the need of ending her letter with something affecting, brought her to a halt.
"I cannot speak of my fault and my repentance, because ...." Again she stopped, unable to find the right words to express her thoughts. "No," she said, "nothing more is necessary;" and, tearing up this letter, she began another, from which she left out any appeal to his generosity, and sealed it.
She had to write a second letter, to Vronsky.
"I have confessed to my husband," she began; and she sat long wrapped in thought, without being able to write more. That was so coarse, so unfeminine!" And then, what can I write to him?" she asked herself. Again the crimson of shame mantled her face as she remembered how calm he was, and she felt so vexed with him that she tore the sheet of paper with its one phrase into little bits. "I cannot write," she said to herself; and, closing her desk, she went up-stairs, told the governess and the domestics that she was going to Moscow that evening, and instantly began to make her preparations.