The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had
remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he was
more busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of
the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his
health, deranged by the winter’s work that every year grew heavier. And
just as always he returned in July and at once fell to work as usual
with increased energy. As usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer
to a villa out of town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date
of their conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya’s he had
never spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies, and
that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most convenient
tone possible for his present attitude to his wife. He was a little
colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her
for that first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his
attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. “You
would not be open with me,” he seemed to say, mentally addressing her;
“so much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I won’t
be open with you. So much the worse for you!” he said mentally, like a
man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a
rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall burn
for this!” This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not
realize all the senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did
not realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his
actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart
that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that
is, his wife and son. He who had been such a careful father, had from
the end of that winter become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted
to him just the same bantering tone he used with his wife. “Aha, young
man!” was the greeting with which he met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any
previous year had so much official business as that year. But he was
not aware that he sought work for himself that year, that this was one
of the means for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his
feelings towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them, which
became more terrible the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the
right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife’s
behavior, the mild and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made
no answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any man who
should question him on that subject. For this reason there positively
came into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face a look of haughtiness and
severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife’s health. Alexey
Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his wife’s behavior,
and he actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all.
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s permanent summer villa was in Peterhof, and the
Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the summer there, close
to Anna, and constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna
declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna Arkadyevna’s, and
in conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability
of Anna’s close intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch
sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be above
suspicion, and from that time began to avoid Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
He did not want to see, and did not see, that many people in society
cast dubious glances on his wife; he did not want to understand, and
did not understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted on
staying at Tsarskoe, where Betsy was staying, and not far from the camp
of Vronsky’s regiment. He did not allow himself to think about it, and
he did not think about it; but all the same though he never admitted it
to himself, and had no proofs, not even suspicious evidence, in the
bottom of his heart he knew beyond all doubt that he was a deceived
husband, and he was profoundly miserable about it.
How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey
Alexandrovitch had looked at other men’s faithless wives and other
deceived husbands and asked himself: “How can people descend to that?
how is it they don’t put an end to such a hideous position?” But now,
when the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so far from thinking
of putting an end to the position that he would not recognize it at
all, would not recognize it just because it was too awful, too
unnatural.
Since his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch had twice been at
their country villa. Once he dined there, another time he spent the
evening there with a party of friends, but he had not once stayed the
night there, as it had been his habit to do in previous years.
The day of the races had been a very busy day for Alexey
Alexandrovitch; but when mentally sketching out the day in the morning,
he made up his mind to go to their country house to see his wife
immediately after dinner, and from there to the races, which all the
Court were to witness, and at which he was bound to be present. He was
going to see his wife, because he had determined to see her once a week
to keep up appearances. And besides, on that day, as it was the
fifteenth, he had to give his wife some money for her expenses,
according to their usual arrangement.
With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he thought all this
about his wife, he did not let his thoughts stray further in regard to
her.
That morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The evening
before, Countess Lidia Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet by a celebrated
traveler in China, who was staying in Petersburg, and with it she
enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler himself, as he was an
extremely interesting person from various points of view, and likely to
be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch had not had time to read the pamphlet
through in the evening, and finished it in the morning. Then people
began arriving with petitions, and there came the reports, interviews,
appointments, dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions, grants,
notes, the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that
always took up so much time. Then there was private business of his
own, a visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his property.
The steward did not take up much time. He simply gave Alexey
Alexandrovitch the money he needed together with a brief statement of
the position of his affairs, which was not altogether satisfactory, as
it had happened that during that year, owing to increased expenses,
more had been paid out than usual, and there was a deficit. But the
doctor, a celebrated Petersburg doctor, who was an intimate
acquaintance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of time.
Alexey Alexandrovitch had not expected him that day, and was surprised
at his visit, and still more so when the doctor questioned him very
carefully about his health, listened to his breathing, and tapped at
his liver. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not know that his friend Lidia
Ivanovna, noticing that he was not as well as usual that year, had
begged the doctor to go and examine him. “Do this for my sake,” the
Countess Lidia Ivanovna had said to him.
“I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess,” replied the doctor.
“A priceless man!” said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch. He
found the liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive powers
weakened, while the course of mineral waters had been quite without
effect. He prescribed more physical exercise as far as possible, and as
far as possible less mental strain, and above all no worry—in other
words, just what was as much out of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s power as
abstaining from breathing. Then he withdrew, leaving in Alexey
Alexandrovitch an unpleasant sense that something was wrong with him,
and that there was no chance of curing it.
As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet on the staircase an
acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was secretary of Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s department. They had been comrades at the university,
and though they rarely met, they thought highly of each other and were
excellent friends, and so there was no one to whom the doctor would
have given his opinion of a patient so freely as to Sludin.
“How glad I am you’ve been seeing him!” said Sludin. “He’s not well,
and I fancy.... Well, what do you think of him?”
“I’ll tell you,” said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin’s head to his
coachman to bring the carriage round. “It’s just this,” said the
doctor, taking a finger of his kid glove in his white hands and pulling
it, “if you don’t strain the strings, and then try to break them,
you’ll find it a difficult job; but strain a string to its very utmost,
and the mere weight of one finger on the strained string will snap it.
And with his close assiduity, his conscientious devotion to his work,
he’s strained to the utmost; and there’s some outside burden weighing
on him, and not a light one,” concluded the doctor, raising his
eyebrows significantly. “Will you be at the races?” he added, as he
sank into his seat in the carriage.
“Yes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time,” the doctor
responded vaguely to some reply of Sludin’s he had not caught.
Directly after the doctor, who had taken up so much time, came the
celebrated traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of the
pamphlet he had only just finished reading and his previous
acquaintance with the subject, impressed the traveler by the depth of
his knowledge of the subject and the breadth and enlightenment of his
view of it.
At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial
marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey
Alexandrovitch had to have some conversation. After his departure, he
had to finish the daily routine of business with his secretary, and
then he still had to drive round to call on a certain great personage
on a matter of grave and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch only
just managed to be back by five o’clock, his dinner-hour, and after
dining with his secretary, he invited him to drive with him to his
country villa and to the races.
Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch
always tried nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his
interviews with his wife.