by Leo Tolstoy
'Poor baby!' said the nanny, hushing the baby and continuing to walk.
Alexei Alexandrovich sat down on a chair and with a suffering, downcast face watched the nanny pacing back and forth.
When the baby, finally quieted, was lowered into the deep crib, and the nanny straightened the pillow and backed away, Alexei Alexandrovich got up and, walking with difficulty on tiptoe, went over to look. For a minute he stood silently with the same downcast face, but suddenly a smile, moving the hair and skin of his forehead, showed on his face, and he left the room just as quietly.
In the dining room he rang and told the servant who came to send for the doctor again. He was vexed with his wife for not taking care of this lovely baby, and he did not want to go to her in this irritated mood, nor did he want to see Princess Betsy; but his wife might wonder why he did not come to her as usual, and therefore he made an effort and went to her bedroom. Going over the soft carpet to her door, he inadvertently heard a conversation he did not want to hear.
'If he weren't going away, I would understand your refusal and his as well. But your husband ought to be above that,' Betsy was saying.
'I don't want it, not for my husband's sake but for my own. Don't say it!' Anna's agitated voice replied.
'Yes, but you can't not want to say goodbye to a man who shot himself on account of you ...'
'That's why I don't want to.'
Alexei Alexandrovich stopped with a frightened and guilty expression and was about to go back unnoticed. But, considering that it would be unworthy of him, he turned again and, coughing, went towards the bedroom. The voices fell silent and he went in.
Anna, in a grey dressing gown, her short-cropped black hair growing again like a thick brush on her round head, was sitting on the couch. As always at the sight of her husband, the animation on her face suddenly vanished; she bowed her head and glanced round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed after the very latest fashion, in a hat that hovered somewhere over her head like a lampshade over a lamp, and in a dove-grey dress with sharp diagonal stripes going one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting by Anna. Holding her flat, tall figure erect and bowing her head, she met Alexei Alexandrovich with a mocking smile.
'Ah!' she said, as if surprised. 'I'm very glad you're home. You don't show yourself anywhere, and I haven't seen you since Anna became ill. I've heard all about your attentiveness. Yes, you are an amazing husband!' she said with a meaningful and benign look, as though conferring an order of magnanimity on him for his behaviour towards his wife.
Alexei Alexandrovich bowed coldly and, after kissing his wife's hand, asked about her health.
'I think I'm better,' she said, avoiding his eyes.
'But your face seems to have a feverish colour,' he said, emphasizing the word 'feverish'.
'We've talked too much,' said Betsy. 'I feel it's been egoism on my part, and I'm leaving.'
She stood up, but Anna, suddenly blushing, quickly seized her hand.
'No, stay a moment, please. I must tell you ... no, you,' she turned to Alexei Alexandrovich, and the crimson spread over her neck and forehead. 'I cannot and do not wish to keep anything concealed from you,' she said.
Alexei Alexandrovich cracked his fingers and bowed his head.
'Betsy was saying that Count Vronsky wished to come here and say goodbye before he leaves for Tashkent.' She was not looking at her husband and was obviously hurrying to say everything, difficult as it was for her. 'I said I could not receive him.'
'You said, my friend, that it would depend on Alexei Alexandrovich,' Betsy corrected her.
'But no, I cannot receive him, and there's no point in ...' She suddenly stopped and glanced questioningly at her husband (he was not looking at her). 'In short, I don't want to ...'
Alexei Alexandrovich stirred and was about to take her hand.
Her first impulse was to pull her hand away from his moist hand with its big, swollen veins as it sought hers, but with an obvious effort she took it.
'I am very grateful for your confidence, but...' he said, feeling with embarrassment and vexation that what he could resolve easily and clearly in himself, he could not discuss in front of Princess Tverskoy, who was for him an embodiment of that crude force which was to guide his life in the eyes of the world and which prevented him from giving himself to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He stopped, looking at Princess Tverskoy.
'Well, goodbye, my lovely,' said Betsy, getting up. She kissed Anna and went out. Alexei Alexandrovich saw her off.
'Alexei Alexandrovich! I know you to be a truly magnanimous man,' said Betsy, stopping in the small drawing room and pressing his hand once more especially firmly. T am an outsider, but I love her and respect you so much that I will allow myself this advice. Receive him. Alexei Vronsky is the embodiment of honour, and he's leaving for Tashkent.'
'Thank you, Princess, for your concern and advice. But my wife will decide for herself the question of whether she can or cannot receive someone.'
He said this, out of habit, with a dignified raising of eyebrows, and at once reflected that, whatever his words might be, there could be no dignity in his position. And this he saw in the restrained, spiteful and mocking smile with which Betsy looked at him after his phrase.
XX
Alexei Alexandrovich bowed to Betsy in the reception room and went back to his wife. She was lying down, but, hearing his footsteps, hastily sat up in her former position and looked at him in fear. He saw that she had been crying.
'I am very grateful for your confidence in me.' He meekly repeated in Russian the phrase he had spoken in French when Betsy was there, and sat down next to her. When he spoke in Russian and used the intimate form of address, it was irrepressibly annoying to Anna. 'And I am very grateful for your decision. I, too, suppose that, since he's leaving, there's no need for Count Vronsky to come here. However ...'
'But I've already said it, so why repeat it?' Anna suddenly interrupted him with an annoyance she had no time to restrain. 'No need,' she thought, 'for a man to come and say goodbye to the woman he loves, for whom he wanted to destroy and did destroy himself, and who cannot live without him. No need at all!' She pressed her lips together and lowered her shining eyes to his hands with their swollen veins, which were slowly rubbing each other.
'Let's not ever talk about it,' she added more calmly.
'I've left it for you to decide this question, and I'm very glad to see ...' Alexei Alexandrovich began.
'That my wish coincides with yours,' she quickly finished, annoyed that he spoke so slowly, while she knew beforehand everything he was going to say.
'Yes,' he said, 'and Princess Tverskoy meddles quite inappropriately in the most difficult family matters. In particular, she ...'
'I don't believe anything they say about her,' Anna said quickly. 'I know that she sincerely loves me.'
Alexei Alexandrovich sighed and fell silent. She played anxiously with the tassels of her dressing gown, glancing at him with that painful feeling of physical revulsion towards him for which she reproached herself and which she could not overcome. She now wished for only one thing - to be rid of his hateful presence.
'I've just sent for the doctor,' said Alexei Alexandrovich.
'I'm well - what do I need the doctor for?'
'No, the little one is crying, and they say the wet nurse doesn't have enough milk.' 'Then why didn't you let me nurse her when I begged to? Anyway' (Alexei Alexandrovich understood the meaning of this 'anyway'), 'she's a baby, and they'll be the death of her.' She rang and ordered the baby to be brought. 'I asked to nurse her, they didn't let me, and now I'm being reproached.'
'I'm not reproaching you ...'
'Yes, you are! My God! Why didn't I die!' And she burst into sobs. 'Forgive me, I'm annoyed, I'm not being fair,' she said, recovering. 'But do go ...'
'No, it cannot remain like this,' Alexei Alexandrovich said resolutely to himself, after leaving his wife.
The impossibility of his
position in the eyes of the world, and his wife's hatred of him, and generally the power of that crude, mysterious force which, contrary to his inner mood, guided his life, demanding the carrying out of its will and a change in his relations with his wife, had never before been presented to him with such obviousness as now. He saw clearly that his wife and the whole of society demanded something of him, but precisely what, he could not understand. He felt how, in response to it, a spiteful feeling arose in his soul that destroyed his peace and all the worthiness of his deed. He considered that for Anna it would be better to break connections with Vronsky, but if they all regarded it as impossible, he was even prepared to allow these relations again, so long as the children were not disgraced and he was not deprived of them or forced to change his position. Bad as that was, it would still be better than a break-up, which would put her in a hopeless, shameful position and deprive him of everything he loved. But he felt powerless. He knew beforehand that everything was against him and that he would not be allowed to do what now seemed to him so natural and good, but would be forced to do what was bad but seemed to them the proper thing.
XXI
Betsy had not yet had time to leave the reception room when Stepan Arkadyich, just come from Yeliseev's,[18] where fresh oysters had been delivered, met her in the doorway.
'Ah, Princess! What a happy meeting!' he began. 'And I was just at your place.' 'A momentary meeting, because I'm on my way out,' said Betsy, smiling and putting on a glove.
'Wait, Princess, before you put your glove on, let me kiss your little hand. I'm grateful for nothing so much as the return of old fashions, such as the kissing of hands.' He kissed Betsy's hand. 'When shall we see each other?'
'You don't deserve it,' Betsy replied, smiling.
'No, I deserve it very much, because I've become a most serious man. I settle not only my own but other people's family affairs,' he said with a meaningful look on his face.
'Ah, I'm very glad!' Betsy replied, understanding at once that he was talking about Anna. And going back to the reception room, they stood in a corner. 'He'll be the death of her,' Betsy said in a meaningful whisper. 'It's impossible, impossible ...'
'I'm very glad you think so,' said Stepan Arkadyich, shaking his head with a grave and painfully compassionate look on his face. 'I've come to Petersburg on account of that.'
'The whole town is talking about it,' she said. 'This is an impossible situation. She's wasting away. He doesn't understand that she's one of those women who can't trifle with their feelings. One of two things: he must either take her away, act energetically, or give her a divorce. But this is stifling her.'
'Yes, yes ... precisely ...' Oblonsky said, sighing. 'That's why I've come. That is, not essentially for that... I've been made a gentleman of the chamber, so I must show my gratitude. But above all, this has got to be settled.'
'Well, God help you!' said Betsy.
Having seen Princess Betsy to the front hall and kissed her hand above the glove, where the pulse beats, and having told her a heap of such unseemly drivel that she no longer knew whether to laugh or be angry, Stepan Arkadyich went to his sister. He found her in tears.
Despite the ebulliently merry mood he was in, Stepan Arkadyich naturally changed at once to the compassionate, poetically agitated tone that suited her mood. He asked about her health and how she had spent the night.
'Very, very badly. And the afternoon, and the morning, and all days past and to come,' she said.
'I think you're surrendering to dejection. You must shake yourself up, look at life straight on. I know it's hard, but...' 'I've heard that women love people even for their vices,' Anna suddenly began, 'but I hate him for his virtues. I cannot live with him. You understand, the look of him affects me physically, I get beside myself. I cannot, cannot live with him. What am I to do? I was unhappy and thought it was impossible to be more unhappy, but I could not have imagined the terrible state I live in now. Would you believe that, though I know he's a good and excellent man and I'm not worth his fingernail, I hate him even so? I hate him for his magnanimity. And I have nothing left, except...'
She was about to say 'death', but Stepan Arkadyich did not let her finish.
'You're ill and annoyed,' he said. 'Believe me, you exaggerate terribly. There's nothing so dreadful in it.'
And Stepan Arkadyich smiled. No one in Stepan Arkadyich's place, having to deal with such despair, would have allowed himself to smile (a smile would seem crude), but in his smile there was so much kindness and almost feminine tenderness that it could not be offensive. His quiet words and smiles worked softeningly and soothingly, like almond butter. And Anna soon felt it.
'No, Stiva,' she said. 'I'm lost, lost! Worse than lost. I'm not lost yet, I can't say it's all ended, on the contrary, I feel that it hasn't ended. I'm like a tightened string that's about to snap. It hasn't ended . .. and it will end horribly.'
'Never mind, the string can be gently loosened. There's no situation that has no way out.'
'I've been thinking and thinking. There's only one ...'
Again he understood from her frightened eyes that this one way out, in her opinion, was death, and he did not let her finish.
'Not at all,' he said, 'excuse me. You can't see your situation as I can see it. Allow me to tell you frankly my opinion.' Again he warily smiled his almond-butter smile. 'I'll begin from the beginning: you married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married without love or not knowing what love is. That was a mistake, let's assume.'
'A terrible mistake!' said Anna.
'But I repeat: it's an accomplished fact. Then you had, let's say, the misfortune to fall in love with someone other than your husband. That is a misfortune, but it's also an accomplished fact. And your husband has accepted and forgiven it.' He paused after each sentence, expecting her to object, but she made no reply. 'That's so. The question now is: can you go on living with your husband? Do you want that? Does he want it?'
'I don't know, I don't know anything.'
'But you said yourself that you can't stand him.'
'No, I didn't. I take it back. I don't know anything, I don't understand anything.'
'Yes, but excuse me ...'
'You can't understand. I feel I'm flying headlong into some abyss, but I mustn't try to save myself. And I can't.'
'Never mind, we'll hold something out and catch you. I understand you, I understand that you can't take it upon yourself to speak your wish, your feeling.'
'There's nothing I wish for, nothing ... only that it should all end.'
'But he sees it and knows it. And do you really think it's less burdensome for him than for you? You suffer, he suffers, and what on earth can come of it? Whereas a divorce would resolve everything.' Stepan Arkadyich, not without effort, spoke his main thought and looked at her meaningfully.
She made no reply and shook her cropped head negatively. But by the expression on her face, which suddenly shone with its former beauty, he saw that she did not want it only because to her it seemed an impossible happiness.
'I'm terribly sorry for you both! And how happy I'd be if I could settle it!' Stepan Arkadyich said, now with a bolder smile. 'No, don't say anything! If only God grants me to speak as I feel. I'll go to him.'
Anna looked at him with pensive, shining eyes and said nothing.
XXII
Stepan Arkadyich, with that somewhat solemn face with which he usually took the presiding chair in his office, entered Alexei Alexandrovich's study. Alexei Alexandrovich, his hands behind his back, was pacing the room and thinking about the same thing that Stepan Arkadyich had talked about with his wife.
'Am I disturbing you?' said Stepan Arkadyich, who, on seeing his brother-in-law, experienced what was for him an unaccustomed feeling of embarrassment. To hide this embarrassment he produced a cigarette case with a new-fangled clasp he had just bought, sniffed the leather and took out a cigarette.
'No. Is there something you need?' Alexei Alexandrovich replied reluctan
tly.
'Yes, I'd like ... I need to dis ... yes, to discuss something with you,' said Stepan Arkadyich, surprised at this unaccustomed feeling of timidity.
It was so unexpected and strange a feeling that Stepan Arkadyich did not believe it was the voice of his conscience, telling him that what he intended to do was bad. Stepan Arkadyich made an effort and conquered the timidity that had come over him.
'I hope you believe in my love for my sister and in my sincere attachment and respect for you,' he said, blushing.
Alexei Alexandrovich stopped and made no reply, but Stepan Arkadyich was struck by the look of the submissive victim on his face.
'I intended ... I wanted to talk with you about my sister and your mutual situation,' said Stepan Arkadyich, still struggling with his unaccustomed shyness.
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled sadly, looked at his brother-in-law and, without replying, went over to the desk, took from it the beginning of a letter and handed it to him.
'I think continually of the same thing. And this is what I've begun to write, supposing that I will say it better in writing and that my presence annoys her,' he said, handing him the letter.