Alexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact
that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a table apart, in eager
conversation with him about something. But he noticed that to the rest
of the party this appeared something striking and improper, and for
that reason it seemed to him too to be improper. He made up his mind
that he must speak of it to his wife.
On reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his study, as he usually
did, seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on the Papacy at
the place where he had laid the paper-knife in it, and read till one
o’clock, just as he usually did. But from time to time he rubbed his
high forehead and shook his head, as though to drive away something. At
his usual time he got up and made his toilet for the night. Anna
Arkadyevna had not yet come in. With a book under his arm he went
upstairs. But this evening, instead of his usual thoughts and
meditations upon official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his
wife and something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his
usual habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down
the rooms with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not go to
bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful for him first to think
thoroughly over the position that had just arisen.
When Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind that he must talk to
his wife about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple matter. But
now, when he began to think over the question that had just presented
itself, it seemed to him very complicated and difficult.
Alexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his
notions was an insult to one’s wife, and one ought to have confidence
in one’s wife. Why one ought to have confidence—that is to say,
complete conviction that his young wife would always love him—he did
not ask himself. But he had no experience of lack of confidence,
because he had confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to
have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful
feeling and that one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he
felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and
irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch
was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife’s
loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very
irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his
life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres,
having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had
stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he
experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing
a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is
broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself,
the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had
lived. For the first time the question presented itself to him of the
possibility of his wife’s loving someone else, and he was horrified at
it.
He did not undress, but walked up and down with his regular tread over
the resounding parquet of the dining-room, where one lamp was burning,
over the carpet of the dark drawing-room, in which the light was
reflected on the big new portrait of himself hanging over the sofa, and
across her boudoir, where two candles burned, lighting up the portraits
of her parents and woman friends, and the pretty knick-knacks of her
writing-table, that he knew so well. He walked across her boudoir to
the bedroom door, and turned back again. At each turn in his walk,
especially at the parquet of the lighted dining-room, he halted and
said to himself, “Yes, this I must decide and put a stop to; I must
express my view of it and my decision.” And he turned back again. “But
express what—what decision?” he said to himself in the drawing-room,
and he found no reply. “But after all,” he asked himself before turning
into the boudoir, “what has occurred? Nothing. She was talking a long
while with him. But what of that? Surely women in society can talk to
whom they please. And then, jealousy means lowering both myself and
her,” he told himself as he went into her boudoir; but this dictum,
which had always had such weight with him before, had now no weight and
no meaning at all. And from the bedroom door he turned back again; but
as he entered the dark drawing-room some inner voice told him that it
was not so, and that if others noticed it that showed that there was
something. And he said to himself again in the dining-room, “Yes, I
must decide and put a stop to it, and express my view of it....” And
again at the turn in the drawing-room he asked himself, “Decide how?”
And again he asked himself, “What had occurred?” and answered,
“Nothing,” and recollected that jealousy was a feeling insulting to his
wife; but again in the drawing-room he was convinced that something had
happened. His thoughts, like his body, went round a complete circle,
without coming upon anything new. He noticed this, rubbed his forehead,
and sat down in her boudoir.
There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case lying at
the top and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly changed. He
began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the
first time he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas,
her desires, and the idea that she could and should have a separate
life of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste to dispel
it. It was the chasm which he was afraid to peep into. To put himself
in thought and feeling in another person’s place was a spiritual
exercise not natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this
spiritual exercise as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.
“And the worst of it all,” thought he, “is that just now, at the very
moment when my great work is approaching completion” (he was thinking
of the project he was bringing forward at the time), “when I stand in
need of all my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid
worry should fall foul of me. But what’s to be done? I’m not one of
those men who submit to uneasiness and worry without having the force
of character to face them.
“I must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my mind,”
he said aloud.
“The question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing in
her soul, that’s not my affair; that’s the affair of her conscience,
and falls under the head of religion,” he said to himself, feeling
consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of
regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred.
“And so,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, “questions as to her
feelings, and so on, are questions for her conscience, with which I can
have nothing to do. My duty is clearly defined. As the head of the
family, I am a person bound in duty to guide her, and consequently, in
part the person responsible; I am bound to point out the danger I
perceive, to warn her, even to use my authority. I ought to speak
plainly to her.” And everything that he would say tonight to his wife
took clear shape in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s head. Thinking over what he
would say, he somewhat regretted that he should have to use his time
and mental powers for domestic consumption, with so little to show for
it, but, in spite of that, the form and contents of the speech before
him shaped itself as clearly and distinctly in his head as a
ministerial report.
“I must say and express fully the following points: first, exposition
of the value to be attached to public opinion and to decorum; secondly,
exposition of religious significance of marriage; thirdly, if need be,
reference to the calamity possibly ensuing to our son; fourthly,
reference to the unhappiness likely to result to herself.” And,
interlacing his fingers, Alexey Alexandrovitch stretched them, and the
joints of the fingers cracked. This trick, a bad habit, the cracking of
his fingers, always soothed him, and gave precision to his thoughts, so
needful to him at this juncture.
There was the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door. Alexey
Alexandrovitch halted in the middle of the room.
A woman’s step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexey Alexandrovitch,
ready for his speech, stood compressing his crossed fingers, waiting to
see if the crack would not come again. One joint cracked.
Already, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he was aware that
she was close, and though he was satisfied with his speech, he felt
frightened of the explanation confronting him....