by Leo Tolstoy
But Alexei Alexandrovich did not feel this and, on the contrary, being removed from direct participation in government activity, now saw more
* He's a success with the ladies,
* Arm in arm.
* He's a man who has no . . .
clearly than before the shortcomings and faults in the work of others and considered it his duty to point out the means for correcting them. Soon after his separation from his wife, he began writing a proposal about the new courts, the first in an endless series of totally unnecessary proposals which he was to write on all branches of administration.
Alexei Alexandrovich not only did not notice his hopeless position in the official world or feel upset by it, but was more satisfied with his activity than ever.
'He that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife, he that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord,' said the apostle Paul,[37] and Alexei Alexandrovich, who was now guided by the Scriptures in all things, often recalled this text. It seemed to him that since he had been left without a wife, he had, by these very projects, served the Lord more than before.
The obvious impatience of the Council member, who wished to get away from him, did not embarrass Alexei Alexandrovich; he stopped explaining only when the member, seizing his chance when a person of the tsar's family passed, slipped away from him.
Left alone, Alexei Alexandrovich bowed his head, collecting his thoughts, then looked around absentmindedly and went to the door, where he hoped to meet Countess Lydia Ivanovna.
'And how strong and physically fit they are,' Alexei Alexandrovich thought, looking at the powerful gentleman of the bedchamber with his brushed-up, scented side-whiskers and at the red neck of the prince in his tight-fitting uniform, whom he had to pass by. 'It is rightly said that all is evil in the world,' he thought again, casting another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman of the bedchamber.
Moving his feet unhurriedly, Alexei Alexandrovich, with his usual look of weariness and dignity, bowed to these gentlemen who had been talking about him and, looking through the doorway, sought Countess Lydia Ivanovna with his eyes.
'Ah! Alexei Alexandrovich!' said the little old man, his eyes glinting maliciously, as Karenin came abreast of them and nodded his head with a cold gesture. 'I haven't congratulated you yet,' he said, pointing to his newly received sash.
'Thank you,' Alexei Alexandrovich replied. 'What a beautiful day today,' he added, especially emphasizing the word 'beautiful', as was his habit.
That they laughed at him he knew, but he did not expect anything except hostility from them; he was already used to it.
Catching sight of the yellow shoulders rising from the corset of Countess Lydia Ivanovna, who was coming through the door, and of her beautiful, pensive eyes summoning him, Alexei Alexandrovich smiled, revealing his unfading white teeth, and went up to her.
Lydia Ivanovna's toilette had cost her much trouble, as had all her toilettes of late. The purpose of it was now quite the opposite of the one she had pursued thirty years ago. Then she had wanted to adorn herself with something, and the more the better. Now, on the contrary, the way she felt obliged to adorn herself was so unsuited to her years and figure that her only concern was that the contrast of the adornments with her appearance should not be too terrible. And as far as Alexei Alexandrovich was concerned, she achieved it and looked attractive to him. For him she was the one island not only of kindly disposition but of love amidst the sea of hostility and mockery that surrounded him.
Passing between the rows of mocking eyes, he was naturally drawn to her amorous eyes, as a plant is to the light.
'Congratulations,' she said to him, indicating the sash with her eyes.
Suppressing a smile of satisfaction, he shrugged his shoulders and closed his eyes, as if to say it was no cause for rejoicing. Countess Lydia Ivanovna knew very well that it was one of his chief joys, though he would never admit it.
'How is our angel?' asked Countess Lydia Ivanovna, meaning Seryozha.
'I can't say I'm entirely pleased with him,' Alexei Alexandrovich said, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. 'And Sitnikov is not pleased with him either.' (Sitnikov was the teacher entrusted with Seryozha's secular education.) 'As I told you, there is some coldness in him towards those very chief questions which ought to touch the soul of every person and every child.' Alexei Alexandrovich began to explain his thoughts about the only question that interested him apart from the service - his son's education.
When Alexei Alexandrovich, with the help of Lydia Ivanovna, returned anew to life and action, he felt it his duty to occupy himself with the education of the son left on his hands. Never having concerned himself with questions of education before, Alexei Alexandrovich devoted some time to the theoretical study of the subject. And, after reading several books on anthropology, pedagogy and didactics, he made himself a plan of education and, inviting the best pedagogue in Petersburg for guidance, got down to business. And this business occupied him constantly.
'Yes, but his heart? I see his father's heart in him, and with such a heart a child cannot be bad,' Countess Lydia Ivanovna said rapturously.
'Yes, perhaps ... As for me, I am fulfilling my duty. That is all I can do.'
'You shall come to my house,' Countess Lydia Ivanovna said after a pause, 'we must talk about a matter that is sad for you. I'd have given anything to deliver you from certain memories, but other people do not think that way. I have received a letter from her. She is here, in Petersburg.'
Alexei Alexandrovich gave a start at the mention of his wife, but his face at once settled into that dead immobility which expressed his utter helplessness in the matter.
'I was expecting that,' he said.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna looked at him rapturously, and tears of admiration at the grandeur of his soul came to her eyes.
XXV
When Alexei Alexandrovich entered Countess Lydia Ivanovna's small, cosy boudoir, filled with antique porcelain and hung with portraits, the hostess herself was not there. She was changing.
On a round table covered with a tablecloth stood a Chinese tea service and a silver spirit-lamp tea-kettle. Alexei Alexandrovich absentmindedly glanced around at the numberless familiar portraits that adorned the boudoir, and, sitting down at the desk, opened the Gospel that lay on it. The rustle of the countess's silk dress diverted him.
'Well, there, now we can sit down quietly,' Countess Lydia Ivanovna said with a nervous smile, hurriedly squeezing between the table and the sofa, 'and have a talk over tea.'
After a few words of preparation, Countess Lydia Ivanovna, breathing heavily and flushing, handed Alexei Alexandrovich the letter she had received.
Having read the letter, he was silent for a long time.
'I don't suppose I have the right to refuse her,' he said, timidly raising his eyes.
'My friend! You see no evil in anyone!'
'On the contrary, I see that everything is evil. But is it fair?...'
There was indecision in his face, a seeking for counsel, support and guidance in a matter incomprehensible to him.
'No,' Countess Lydia Ivanovna interrupted him. 'There is a limit to everything. I can understand immorality,' she said, not quite sincerely, because she never could understand what led women to immorality, 'but I do not understand cruelty - and to whom? To you! How can she stay in the same town with you? No, live and learn. And I am learning to understand your loftiness and her baseness.'
'And who will throw the stone?'[38] said Alexei Alexandrovich, obviously pleased with his role. 'I forgave everything and therefore cannot deprive her of what for her is a need of love - love for her son ...'
'But is it love, my friend? Is it sincere? Granted, you forgave, you forgive ... but do we have the right to influence the soul of this angel? He considers her dead. He prays for her and asks God to forgive her sins .. . And it's better that way. Otherwise what will he think?'
'I hadn't thought of that,' said Alexei Alexandrovich, obviously agreeing.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna covered her face with her hands and remained silent. She was praying.
'If you ask my advice,' she said, finishing her prayer and uncovering her face, 'I advise you not to do it. Can't I see how you're suffering, how it has opened all your wounds? But suppose you forget about yourself, as always. What can it lead to? To new sufferings on your part, to torment for the child? If there's anything human left in her, she herself should not wish for that. No, I have no hesitation in advising against it, and, if you allow me, I will write to her.'
Alexei Alexandrovich consented, and Countess Lydia Ivanovna wrote the following letter in French:
Dear Madam: A reminder of you may lead to questions on the part of your son which could not be answered without instilling into the child's soul a spirit of condemnation of what should be holy for him, and therefore I beg you to take your husband's refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray the Almighty to be merciful to you.
Countess Lydia.
This letter achieved the secret goal that Countess Lydia Ivanovna had concealed from herself. It offended Anna to the depths of her soul.
Alexei Alexandrovich, for his part, on returning home from Lydia Ivanovna's, was unable for the rest of the day to give himself to his usual occupations and find that peace of mind of a saved and believing man which he had felt before.
The memory of the wife who was so guilty before him and before whom he was so saintly, as Countess Lydia Ivanovna had rightly told him, should not have upset him; yet he was not at peace: he could not understand the book he was reading, could not drive away the painful memories of his relations with her, of those mistakes that he, as it now seemed to him, had made regarding her. The memory of how he had received her confession of unfaithfulness on the way back from the races (and in particular that he had demanded only external propriety from her and had made no challenge to a duel), tormented him like remorse. The memory of the letter he had written her also tormented him, and in particular his forgiveness, needed by no one, and his taking care of another man's child, burned his heart with shame and remorse.
And he now experienced exactly the same sense of shame and remorse, going over all his past with her and remembering the awkward words with which, after long hesitation, he had proposed to her.
'But in what am I to blame?' he said to himself. And this question always called up another question in him - whether they feel differently, love differently, marry differently, these other people, these Vronskys and Oblonskys . .. these gentlemen of the bedchamber with their fat calves. And he pictured a whole line of these juicy, strong, undoubting people, who, against his will, had always and everywhere attracted his curious attention. He drove these thoughts away; he tried to convince himself that he lived not for this temporary life here and now but for eternal life, and that there was peace and love in his soul. Yet the fact that in this temporary, negligible life he had made, as it seemed to him, some negligible mistakes tormented him as though that eternal salvation in which he believed did not exist. But this temptation did not last long, and soon the tranquillity and loftiness were restored in Alexei Alexandrovich's soul thanks to which he was able to forget what he did not want to remember.
XXVI
'Well, Kapitonych?' said Seryozha, red-cheeked and merry, coming back from a walk on the eve of his birthday and giving his pleated jacket to the tall old hall porter, who smiled down at the little fellow from his great height. 'Did the bandaged official come today? Did papa receive him?'
'He did. As soon as the manager came out, I announced him,' the porter said with a merry wink. 'I'll take it off, if you please.'
'Seryozha!' said the Slav tutor,[39] pausing in the inside doorway. 'Take it off yourself.'
But Seryozha, though he heard the tutor's weak voice, paid no attention. He stood holding on to the porter's sash and looking into his face.
'And did papa do what he wanted him to?'
The porter nodded affirmatively.
The bandaged official, who had already come seven times to petition Alexei Alexandrovich for something, interested both Seryozha and the hall porter. Seryozha had come upon him once in the front hall and had heard him pitifully asking the porter to announce him, saying that he and his children were sure to die.
Since then Seryozha had taken an interest in the official, having met him in the front hall another time.
'And was he very glad?' he asked.
'How could he not be! He was all but skipping when he left.'
'And has anything come?' asked Seryozha, after a pause.
'Well, sir,' the porter said in a whisper, shaking his head, 'there's something from the countess.'
Seryozha understood at once that the porter was talking about a present for his birthday from Countess Lydia Ivanovna.
'Is there really? Where?'
'Kornei took it to your papa's. Must be something nice!'
'How big is it? Like this?'
'A bit smaller, but it's nice.'
'A book?'
'No, a thing. Go, go, Vassily Lukich is calling,' the porter said, hearing the steps of the approaching tutor and, carefully unclasping the little hand in the half-removed glove that was holding on to his sash, he winked and nodded towards Vunich.
'Coming, Vassily Lukich!' Seryozha answered with that merry and loving smile that always won over the dutiful Vassily Lukich.
Seryozha was too merry, everything was too happy, for him not to tell his friend the porter about another family joy, which he had learned of during his walk in the Summer Garden from Countess Lydia Ivanovna's niece. This joy seemed especially important to him, as it fell in with the joy of the official and his own joy about the toys that had come. It seemed to Seryozha that this was a day when everybody must be glad and merry.
'You know papa got the Alexander Nevsky?'
'How could I not know? People have already come to congratulate him.'
'And is he glad?'
'How could he not be glad of the tsar's favour! He must have deserved it,' the porter said sternly and seriously.
Seryozha reflected, peering into the porter's face, which he had studied in the smallest detail, particularly his chin, hanging between grey side-whiskers, which no one saw except Seryozha, because he always looked at it from below.
'Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?'
The porter's daughter was a ballet dancer.
'When could she come on weekdays? They've also got to study. And you, too, sir. Off you go!'
When he came to his room, instead of sitting down to his lessons, Seryozha told his tutor his guess that what had been brought must be an engine. 'What do you think?' he asked.
But Vassily Lukich thought only that the grammar lesson had to be learned for the teacher, who was to come at two o'clock.
'No, but just tell me, Vassily Lukich,' he asked suddenly, already sitting at his desk and holding the book in his hands, 'what's bigger than the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa got the Alexander Nevsky?'
Vassily Lukich replied that the Vladimir was bigger than the Alexander Nevsky.
'And higher?'
'The highest of all is Andrew the First-called.'[40]
'And higher than Andrew?'
'I don't know.'
'What, even you don't know?' And Seryozha, leaning on his elbow, sank into reflection.
His reflections were most complex and varied. He imagined how his father would suddenly get both the Vladimir and the Andrew, and how as a result of that he would be much kinder today at the lesson, and how he himself, when he grew up, would get all the decorations, and the one they would invent that was higher than the Andrew. No sooner would they invent it than he would deserve it. They would invent a still higher one, and he would also deserve it at once.
The time passed in such reflections, and when the teacher came, the lesson about the adverbial modifiers of time, place and
manner was not prepared, and the teacher was not only displeased but also saddened. The teacher's sadness touched Seryozha. He did not feel himself to blame for not having learned the lesson; but try as he might, he was quite unable to do it: while the teacher was explaining it to him, he believed and seemed to understand, but once he was on his own, he was simply unable to remember and understand that such a short and clear word as 'thus' was an adverbial modifier of manner. But all the same he was sorry that he had made his teacher sad and wanted to comfort him.
He chose a moment when the teacher was silently looking in the book.