And he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men who had

been in the same position that he was in.

“Daryalov fought a duel....”

The duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey

Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a coward,

and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not

without horror contemplate the idea of a pistol aimed at himself, and

had never made use of any weapon in his life. This horror had in his

youth set him pondering on dueling, and picturing himself in a position

in which he would have to expose his life to danger. Having attained

success and an established position in the world, he had long ago

forgotten this feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted

itself, and dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that

Alexey Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of

dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel, though he

was fully aware beforehand that he would never under any circumstances

fight one.

“There’s no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it’s not the same

in England) that very many”—and among these were those whose opinion

Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued—“look favorably on the duel;

but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out,” Alexey

Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he

would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he

shuddered, and knew that he never would do it—“suppose I call him out.

Suppose I am taught,” he went on musing, “to shoot; I press the

trigger,” he said to himself, closing his eyes, “and it turns out I

have killed him,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook

his head as though to dispel such silly ideas. “What sense is there in

murdering a man in order to define one’s relation to a guilty wife and

son? I should still just as much have to decide what I ought to do with

her. But what is more probable and what would doubtless occur—I should

be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the

victim—killed or wounded. It’s even more senseless. But apart from

that, a challenge to fight would be an act hardly honest on my side.

Don’t I know perfectly well that my friends would never allow me to

fight a duel—would never allow the life of a statesman, needed by

Russia, to be exposed to danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that

the matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my

simply trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a challenge.

That would be dishonest, that would be false, that would be deceiving

myself and others. A duel is quite irrational, and no one expects it of

me. My aim is simply to safeguard my reputation, which is essential for

the uninterrupted pursuit of my public duties.” Official duties, which

had always been of great consequence in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s eyes,

seemed of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering

and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to divorce—another

solution selected by several of the husbands he remembered. Passing in

mental review all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty

of them in the very highest society with which he was very familiar),

Alexey Alexandrovitch could not find a single example in which the

object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these instances

the husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the

very party which, being in fault, had not the right to contract a fresh

marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a

self-styled husband. In his own case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a

legal divorce, that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would

be repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex

conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife’s

guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain

refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being brought

forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward such proofs

would damage him in the public estimation more than it would her.

An attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal, which

would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and attacks on

his high position in society. His chief object, to define the position

with the least amount of disturbance possible, would not be attained by

divorce either. Moreover, in the event of divorce, or even of an

attempt to obtain a divorce, it was obvious that the wife broke off all

relations with the husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in

spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now

felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch

still had one feeling left in regard to her—a disinclination to see her

free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime would be to

her advantage. The mere notion of this so exasperated Alexey

Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his mind he groaned with

inward agony, and got up and changed his place in the carriage, and for

a long while after, he sat with scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and

bony legs in the fleecy rug.

“Apart from formal divorce, One might still do like Karibanov,

Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram—that is, separate from one’s wife,”

he went on thinking, when he had regained his composure. But this step

too presented the same drawback of public scandal as a divorce, and

what was more, a separation, quite as much as a regular divorce, flung

his wife into the arms of Vronsky. “No, it’s out of the question, out

of the question!” he said again, twisting his rug about him again. “I

cannot be unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy.”

The feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period of

uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had been

with agony extracted by his wife’s words. But that feeling had been

replaced by another, the desire, not merely that she should not be

triumphant, but that she should get due punishment for her crime. He

did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the bottom of his heart he

longed for her to suffer for having destroyed his peace of mind—his

honor. And going once again over the conditions inseparable from a

duel, a divorce, a separation, and once again rejecting them, Alexey

Alexandrovitch felt convinced that there was only one solution,—to keep

her with him, concealing what had happened from the world, and using

every measure in his power to break off the intrigue, and still

more—though this he did not admit to himself—to punish her. “I must

inform her of my conclusion, that thinking over the terrible position

in which she has placed her family, all other solutions will be worse

for both sides than an external _status quo_, and that such I agree to

retain, on the strict condition of obedience on her part to my wishes,

that is to say, cessation of all intercourse with her lover.” When this

decision had been finally adopted, another weighty consideration

occurred to Alexey Alexandrovitch in support of it. “By such a course

only shall I be acting in accordance with the dictates of religion,” he

told himself. “In adopting this course, I am not casting off a guilty

wife, but giving her a chance of amendment; and, indeed, difficult as

the task will be to me, I shall devote part of my energies to her

reformation and salvation.”

Though Alexey Alexandrovitch was perfectly aware that he could not

exert any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt at

reformation could lead to nothing but falsity; though in passing

through these difficult moments he had not once thought of seeking

guidance in religion, yet now, when his conclusion corresponded, as it

seemed to him, with the requirements of religion, this religious

sanction to his decision gave him complete satisfaction, and to some

extent restored his peace of mind. He was pleased to think that, even

in such an important crisis in life, no one would be able to say that

he had not acted in accordance with the principles of that religion

whose banner he had always held aloft amid the general coolness and

indifference. As he pondered over subsequent developments, Alexey

Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with his wife

should not remain practically the same as before. No doubt, she could

never regain his esteem, but there was not, and there could not be, any

sort of reason that his existence should be troubled, and that he

should suffer because she was a bad and faithless wife. “Yes, time will

pass; time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be

reestablished,” Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself; “so far

reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the

continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to

blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.”

Chapter 14

As he neared Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovitch not only adhered

entirely to his decision, but was even composing in his head the letter

he would write to his wife. Going into the porter’s room, Alexey

Alexandrovitch glanced at the letters and papers brought from his

office, and directed that they should be brought to him in his study.

“The horses can be taken out and I will see no one,” he said in answer

to the porter, with a certain pleasure, indicative of his agreeable

frame of mind, emphasizing the words, “see no one.”

In his study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and

stopped at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had already

been lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He cracked his knuckles

and sat down, sorting out his writing appurtenances. Putting his elbows

on the table, he bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began

to write, without pausing for a second. He wrote without using any form

of address to her, and wrote in French, making use of the plural

“_vous_,” which has not the same note of coldness as the corresponding

Russian form.

“At our last conversation, I notified you of my intention to

communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that

conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am writing now

with the object of fulfilling that promise. My decision is as follows.

Whatever your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified

in breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power. The

family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of

one of the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has

done in the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I

am fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has

called forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in

eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the past. In

the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and your son.

All this I hope to discuss more in detail in a personal interview. As

the season is drawing to a close, I would beg you to return to

Petersburg as quickly as possible, not later than Tuesday. All

necessary preparations shall be made for your arrival here. I beg you

to note that I attach particular significance to compliance with this

request.

A. Karenin

“_P.S._—I enclose the money which may be needed for your expenses.”

He read the letter through and felt pleased with it, and especially

that he had remembered to enclose money: there was not a harsh word,

not a reproach in it, nor was there undue indulgence. Most of all, it

was a golden bridge for return. Folding the letter and smoothing it

with a massive ivory knife, and putting it in an envelope with the

money, he rang the bell with the gratification it always afforded him

to use the well arranged appointments of his writing-table.

“Give this to the courier to be delivered to Anna Arkadyevna tomorrow

at the summer villa,” he said, getting up.

“Certainly, your excellency; tea to be served in the study?”

Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be brought to the study, and

playing with the massive paper-knife, he moved to his easy chair, near

which there had been placed ready for him a lamp and the French work on

Egyptian hieroglyphics that he had begun. Over the easy chair there

hung in a gold frame an oval portrait of Anna, a fine painting by a

celebrated artist. Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at it. The

unfathomable eyes gazed ironically and insolently at him. Insufferably

insolent and challenging was the effect in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s eyes

of the black lace about the head, admirably touched in by the painter,

the black hair and handsome white hand with one finger lifted, covered

with rings. After looking at the portrait for a minute, Alexey

Alexandrovitch shuddered so that his lips quivered and he uttered the

sound “brrr,” and turned away. He made haste to sit down in his easy

chair and opened the book. He tried to read, but he could not revive

the very vivid interest he had felt before in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

He looked at the book and thought of something else. He thought not of

his wife, but of a complication that had arisen in his official life,

which at the time constituted the chief interest of it. He felt that he

had penetrated more deeply than ever before into this intricate affair,

and that he had originated a leading idea—he could say it without

self-flattery—calculated to clear up the whole business, to strengthen

him in his official career, to discomfit his enemies, and thereby to be

of the greatest benefit to the government. Directly the servant had set

the tea and left the room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the

writing-table. Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of

papers, with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took

a pencil from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report

relating to the present complication. The complication was of this

nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch’s characteristic quality as a politician,

that special individual qualification that every rising functionary

possesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition, his

reserve, his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made his career,

was his contempt for red tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his

direct contact, wherever possible, with the living fact, and his

economy. It happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had

set on foot an inquiry into the irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky

province, which fell under Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department, and was

a glaring example of fruitless expenditure and paper reforms. Alexey

Alexandrovitch was aware of the truth of this. The irrigation of these

lands in the Zaraisky province had been initiated by the predecessor of

Alexey Alexandrovitch’s predecessor. And vast sums of money had

actually been spent and were still being spent on this business, and

utterly unproductively, and the whole business could obviously lead to

nothing whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had perceived this at once on

entering office, and would have liked to lay hands on the Board of

Irrigation. But at first, when he did not yet feel secure in his

position, he knew it would affect too many interests, and would be

injudicious. Later on he had been engrossed in other questions, and had

simply forgotten the Board of Irrigation. It went of itself, like all

such boards, by the mere force of inertia. (Many people gained their

livelihood by the Board of Irrigation, especially one highly

conscientious and musical family: all the daughters played on stringed

instruments, and Alexey Alexandrovitch knew the family and had stood

godfather to one of the elder daughters.) The raising of this question

by a hostile department was in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s opinion a

dishonorable proceeding, seeing that in every department there were

things similar and worse, which no one inquired into, for well-known

reasons of official etiquette. However, now that the glove had been

thrown down to him, he had boldly picked it up and demanded the

appointment of a special commission to investigate and verify the

working of the Board of Irrigation of the lands in the Zaraisky

province. But in compensation he gave no quarter to the enemy either.

He demanded the appointment of another special commission to inquire

into the question of the Native Tribes Organization Committee. The

question of the Native Tribes had been brought up incidentally in the

Commission of the 2nd of June, and had been pressed forward actively by

Alexey Alexandrovitch as one admitting of no delay on account of the

deplorable condition of the native tribes. In the commission this

question had been a ground of contention between several departments.

The department hostile to Alexey Alexandrovitch proved that the

condition of the native tribes was exceedingly flourishing, that the

proposed reconstruction might be the ruin of their prosperity, and that

if there were anything wrong, it arose mainly from the failure on the

part of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department to carry out the measures

prescribed by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended to demand: First,

that a new commission should be formed which should be empowered to

investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot; secondly,

if it should appear that the condition of the native tribes actually

was such as it appeared to be from the official documents in the hands

of the committee, that another new scientific commission should be

appointed to investigate the deplorable condition of the native tribes

from the—(1) political, (2) administrative, (3) economic, (4)

ethnographical, (5) material, and (6) religious points of view;

thirdly, that evidence should be required from the rival department of

the measures that had been taken during the last ten years by that

department for averting the disastrous conditions in which the native

tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that that department

explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence before the committee,

from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864,

acted in direct contravention of the intent of the law T... Act 18, and

the note to Act 36. A flash of eagerness suffused the face of Alexey

Alexandrovitch as he rapidly wrote out a synopsis of these ideas for

his own benefit. Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and

sent a note to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain

necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room, he

glanced again at the portrait, frowned, and smiled contemptuously.

After reading a little more of the book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and

renewing his interest in it, Alexey Alexandrovitch went to bed at

eleven o’clock, and recollecting as he lay in bed the incident with his

wife, he saw it now in by no means such a gloomy light.

Chapter 15

Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted Vronsky

when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her

heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she

longed with her whole soul to change it. On the way home from the races

she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in

spite of the agony she had suffered in doing so, she was glad of it.

After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad,

that now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more

lying and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position

was now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but it

would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it.

The pain she had caused herself and her husband in uttering those words

would be rewarded now by everything being made clear, she thought. That

evening she saw Vronsky, but she did not tell him of what had passed

between her and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it

was necessary to tell him.

When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her mind was

what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed to her so

awful that she could not conceive now how she could have brought

herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine

what would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexey

Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying anything. “I saw Vronsky

and did not tell him. At the very instant he was going away I would

have turned him back and told him, but I changed my mind, because it

was strange that I had not told him the first minute. Why was it I

wanted to tell him and did not tell him?” And in answer to this

question a burning blush of shame spread over her face. She knew what

had kept her from it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position,

which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck

her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt

terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before.

Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible

ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the

house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked

herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and

she could not find an answer.

When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her,

that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not

offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed

to her that the words that she had spoken to her husband, and had

continually repeated in her imagination, she had said to everyone, and

everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look those of

her own household in the face. She could not bring herself to call her

maid, and still less go downstairs and see her son and his governess.

The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while, came

into her room of her own accord. Anna glanced inquiringly into her

face, and blushed with a scared look. The maid begged her pardon for

coming in, saying that she had fancied the bell rang. She brought her

clothes and a note. The note was from Betsy. Betsy reminded her that

Liza Merkalova and Baroness Shtoltz were coming to play croquet with

her that morning with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and old Stremov. “Come,

if only as a study in morals. I shall expect you,” she finished.

Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh.

“Nothing, I need nothing,” she said to Annushka, who was rearranging

the bottles and brushes on the dressing table. “You can go. I’ll dress

at once and come down. I need nothing.”

Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing, and sat in the same

position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and every now and then

she shivered all over, seemed as though she would make some gesture,

utter some word, and sank back into lifelessness again. She repeated

continually, “My God! my God!” But neither “God” nor “my” had any

meaning to her. The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion

was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch

himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she

had been brought up. She knew that the support of religion was possible

only upon condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole

meaning of life. She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm

at the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which she

found herself. She felt as though everything were beginning to be

double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double to

over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and

what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or

what was going to happen, and exactly what she longed for, she could

not have said.

“Ah, what am I doing!” she said to herself, feeling a sudden thrill of

pain in both sides of her head. When she came to herself, she saw that

she was holding her hair in both hands, each side of her temples, and

pulling it. She jumped up, and began walking about.

“The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,” said

Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same position.

“Seryozha? What about Seryozha?” Anna asked, with sudden eagerness,

recollecting her son’s existence for the first time that morning.

“He’s been naughty, I think,” answered Annushka with a smile.

“In what way?”

“Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I think he

slipped in and ate one of them on the sly.”

The recollection of her son suddenly roused Anna from the helpless

condition in which she found herself. She recalled the partly sincere,

though greatly exaggerated, rôle of the mother living for her child,

which she had taken up of late years, and she felt with joy that in the

plight in which she found herself she had a support, quite apart from

her relation to her husband or to Vronsky. This support was her son. In

whatever position she might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her

husband might put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky might grow

cold to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him

again with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son. She

had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this relation to

her son, so that he might not be taken from her. Quickly indeed, as

quickly as possible, she must take action before he was taken from her.

She must take her son and go away. Here was the one thing she had to do

now. She needed consolation. She must be calm, and get out of this

insufferable position. The thought of immediate action binding her to

her son, of going away somewhere with him, gave her this consolation.

She dressed quickly, went downstairs, and with resolute steps walked

into the drawing-room, where she found, as usual, waiting for her, the

coffee, Seryozha, and his governess. Seryozha, all in white, with his

back and head bent, was standing at a table under a looking-glass, and

with an expression of intense concentration which she knew well, and in

which he resembled his father, he was doing something to the flowers he

carried.

The governess had a particularly severe expression. Seryozha screamed

shrilly, as he often did, “Ah, mamma!” and stopped, hesitating whether

to go to greet his mother and put down the flowers, or to finish making

the wreath and go with the flowers.

The governess, after saying good-morning, began a long and detailed

account of Seryozha’s naughtiness, but Anna did not hear her; she was

considering whether she would take her with her or not. “No, I won’t

take her,” she decided. “I’ll go alone with my child.”

“Yes, it’s very wrong,” said Anna, and taking her son by the shoulder

she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance that

bewildered and delighted the boy, and she kissed him. “Leave him to

me,” she said to the astonished governess, and not letting go of her

son, she sat down at the table, where coffee was set ready for her.

“Mamma! I ... I ... didn’t....” he said, trying to make out from her

expression what was in store for him in regard to the peaches.

“Seryozha,” she said, as soon as the governess had left the room, “that

was wrong, but you’ll never do it again, will you?... You love me?”

She felt that the tears were coming into her eyes. “Can I help loving

him?” she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared and at the

same time delighted eyes. “And can he ever join his father in punishing

me? Is it possible he will not feel for me?” Tears were already flowing

down her face, and to hide them she got up abruptly and almost ran out

on to the terrace.

After the thunder showers of the last few days, cold, bright weather

had set in. The air was cold in the bright sun that filtered through

the freshly washed leaves.

She shivered, both from the cold and from the inward horror which had

clutched her with fresh force in the open air.

“Run along, run along to Mariette,” she said to Seryozha, who had

followed her out, and she began walking up and down on the straw

matting of the terrace. “Can it be that they won’t forgive me, won’t

understand how it all couldn’t be helped?” she said to herself.

Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving in

the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves in the

cold sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her, that everyone

and everything would be merciless to her now as was that sky, that

green. And again she felt that everything was split in two in her soul.

“I mustn’t, mustn’t think,” she said to herself. “I must get ready. To

go where? When? Whom to take with me? Yes, to Moscow by the evening

train. Annushka and Seryozha, and only the most necessary things. But

first I must write to them both.” She went quickly indoors into her

boudoir, sat down at the table, and wrote to her husband:—“After what

has happened, I cannot remain any longer in your house. I am going

away, and taking my son with me. I don’t know the law, and so I don’t

know with which of the parents the son should remain; but I take him

with me because I cannot live without him. Be generous, leave him to

me.”

Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal to his

generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and the necessity

of winding up the letter with something touching, pulled her up. “Of my

fault and my remorse I cannot speak, because....”

She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas. “No,” she said

to herself, “there’s no need of anything,” and tearing up the letter,

she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to generosity, and sealed

it up.

Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. “I have told my husband,”

she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write more. It was so

coarse, so unfeminine. “And what more am I to write to him?” she said

to herself. Again a flush of shame spread over her face; she recalled

his composure, and a feeling of anger against him impelled her to tear

the sheet with the phrase she had written into tiny bits. “No need of

anything,” she said to herself, and closing her blotting-case she went

upstairs, told the governess and the servants that she was going that

day to Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.

Chapter 16

All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters, gardeners, and

footmen going to and fro carrying out things. Cupboards and chests were

open; twice they had sent to the shop for cord; pieces of newspaper

were tossing about on the floor. Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up

rugs, had been carried down into the hall. The carriage and two hired

cabs were waiting at the steps. Anna, forgetting her inward agitation

in the work of packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing

her traveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle of

some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the window and saw Alexey

Alexandrovitch’s courier on the steps, ringing at the front door bell.

“Run and find out what it is,” she said, and with a calm sense of being

prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding her hands

on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet directed in Alexey

Alexandrovitch’s hand.

“The courier has orders to wait for an answer,” he said.

“Very well,” she said, and as soon as he had left the room she tore

open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded notes done

up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the letter and began

reading it at the end. “Preparations shall be made for your arrival

here ... I attach particular significance to compliance....” she read.

She ran on, then back, read it all through, and once more read the

letter all through again from the beginning. When she had finished, she

felt that she was cold all over, and that a fearful calamity, such as

she had not expected, had burst upon her.

In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband,

and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken.

And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she

had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her more awful than anything

she had been able to conceive.

“He’s right!” she said; “of course, he’s always right; he’s a

Christian, he’s generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one

understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can’t explain it.

They say he’s so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever;

but they don’t see what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has crushed

my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me—he

has not once even thought that I’m a live woman who must have love.

They don’t know how at every step he’s humiliated me, and been just as

pleased with himself. Haven’t I striven, striven with all my strength,

to find something to give meaning to my life? Haven’t I struggled to

love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time

came when I knew that I couldn’t cheat myself any longer, that I was

alive, that I was not to blame, that God has made me so that I must

love and live. And now what does he do? If he’d killed me, if he’d

killed him, I could have borne anything, I could have forgiven

anything; but, no, he.... How was it I didn’t guess what he would do?

He’s doing just what’s characteristic of his mean character. He’ll keep

himself in the right, while me, in my ruin, he’ll drive still lower to

worse ruin yet....”

She recalled the words from the letter. “You can conjecture what awaits

you and your son....” “That’s a threat to take away my child, and most

likely by their stupid law he can. But I know very well why he says it.

He doesn’t believe even in my love for my child, or he despises it

(just as he always used to ridicule it). He despises that feeling in

me, but he knows that I won’t abandon my child, that I can’t abandon my

child, that there could be no life for me without my child, even with

him whom I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from

him, I should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He

knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that.”

She recalled another sentence in the letter. “Our life must go on as it

has done in the past....” “That life was miserable enough in the old

days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all

that; he knows that I can’t repent that I breathe, that I love; he

knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to

go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he’s at home and is happy

in deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won’t give him that

happiness. I’ll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants

to catch me, come what may. Anything’s better than lying and deceit.”

“But how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am?...”

“No; I will break through it, I will break through it!” she cried,

jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to the

writing-table to write him another letter. But at the bottom of her

heart she felt that she was not strong enough to break through

anything, that she was not strong enough to get out of her old

position, however false and dishonorable it might be.

She sat down at the writing-table, but instead of writing she clasped

her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them, burst into tears,

with sobs and heaving breast like a child crying. She was weeping that

her dream of her position being made clear and definite had been

annihilated forever. She knew beforehand that everything would go on in

the old way, and far worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that

the position in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her

of so little consequence in the morning, that this position was

precious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange it

for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband and

child to join her lover; that however much she might struggle, she

could not be stronger than herself. She would never know freedom in

love, but would remain forever a guilty wife, with the menace of

detection hanging over her at every instant; deceiving her husband for

the sake of a shameful connection with a man living apart and away from

her, whose life she could never share. She knew that this was how it

would be, and at the same time it was so awful that she could not even

conceive what it would end in. And she cried without restraint, as

children cry when they are punished.

The sound of the footman’s steps forced her to rouse herself, and,

hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.

“The courier asks if there’s an answer,” the footman announced.

“An answer? Yes,” said Anna. “Let him wait. I’ll ring.”

“What can I write?” she thought. “What can I decide upon alone? What do

I know? What do I want? What is there I care for?” Again she felt that

her soul was beginning to be split in two. She was terrified again at

this feeling, and clutched at the first pretext for doing something

which might divert her thoughts from herself. “I ought to see Alexey”

(so she called Vronsky in her thoughts); “no one but he can tell me

what I ought to do. I’ll go to Betsy’s, perhaps I shall see him there,”

she said to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told him

the day before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya’s, he had

said that in that case he should not go either. She went up to the

table, wrote to her husband, “I have received your letter.—A.”; and,

ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.

“We are not going,” she said to Annushka, as she came in.

“Not going at all?”

“No; don’t unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I’m going

to the princess’s.”

“Which dress am I to get ready?”

Chapter 17

The croquet party to which the Princess Tverskaya had invited Anna was

to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two ladies were the

chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in

imitation of some imitation, _les sept merveilles du monde_. These

ladies belonged to a circle which, though of the highest society, was

utterly hostile to that in which Anna moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of

the most influential people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of

Liza Merkalova, was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s enemy in the political

world. From all these considerations Anna had not meant to go, and the

hints in Princess Tverskaya’s note referred to her refusal. But now

Anna was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Vronsky.

Anna arrived at Princess Tverskaya’s earlier than the other guests.

At the same moment as she entered, Vronsky’s footman, with

side-whiskers combed out like a _Kammerjunker_, went in too. He stopped

at the door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass. Anna recognized

him, and only then recalled that Vronsky had told her the day before

that he would not come. Most likely he was sending a note to say so.

As she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the footman,

pronouncing his “_r’s_” even like a _Kammerjunker_, say, “From the

count for the princess,” and hand the note.

She longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed to

turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go herself

to see him. But neither the first nor the second nor the third course

was possible. Already she heard bells ringing to announce her arrival

ahead of her, and Princess Tverskaya’s footman was standing at the open

door waiting for her to go forward into the inner rooms.

“The princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately. Would

you be pleased to walk into the garden?” announced another footman in

another room.

The position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as at

home—worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any step,

impossible to see Vronsky, and she had to remain here among outsiders,

in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But she was wearing a

dress that she knew suited her. She was not alone; all around was that

luxurious setting of idleness that she was used to, and she felt less

wretched than at home. She was not forced to think what she was to do.

Everything would be done of itself. On meeting Betsy coming towards her

in a white gown that struck her by its elegance, Anna smiled at her

just as she always did. Princess Tverskaya was walking with Tushkevitch

and a young lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in

the provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable princess.

There was probably something unusual about Anna, for Betsy noticed it

at once.

“I slept badly,” answered Anna, looking intently at the footman who

came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Vronsky’s note.

“How glad I am you’ve come!” said Betsy. “I’m tired, and was just

longing to have some tea before they come. You might go”—she turned to

Tushkevitch—“with Masha, and try the croquet ground over there where

they’ve been cutting it. We shall have time to talk a little over tea;

we’ll have a cozy chat, eh?” she said in English to Anna, with a smile,

pressing the hand with which she held a parasol.

“Yes, especially as I can’t stay very long with you. I’m forced to go

on to old Madame Vrede. I’ve been promising to go for a century,” said

Anna, to whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not

merely simple and natural in society, but a positive source of

satisfaction. Why she said this, which she had not thought of a second

before, she could not have explained. She had said it simply from the

reflection that as Vronsky would not be here, she had better secure her

own freedom, and try to see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old

Madame Vrede, whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other

people, she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned

out, had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Vronsky, she

could have thought of nothing better.

“No. I’m not going to let you go for anything,” answered Betsy, looking

intently into Anna’s face. “Really, if I were not fond of you, I should

feel offended. One would think you were afraid my society would

compromise you. Tea in the little dining-room, please,” she said, half

closing her eyes, as she always did when addressing the footman.

Taking the note from him, she read it.

“Alexey’s playing us false,” she said in French; “he writes that he

can’t come,” she added in a tone as simple and natural as though it

could never enter her head that Vronsky could mean anything more to

Anna than a game of croquet. Anna knew that Betsy knew everything, but,

hearing how she spoke of Vronsky before her, she almost felt persuaded

for a minute that she knew nothing.

“Ah!” said Anna indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the

matter, and she went on smiling: “How can you or your friends

compromise anyone?”

This playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great

fascination for Anna, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not

the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment

was contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted

her.

“I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope,” she said. “Stremov and Liza

Merkalova, why, they’re the cream of the cream of society. Besides,

they’re received everywhere, and _I_”—she laid special stress on the

I—“have never been strict and intolerant. It’s simply that I haven’t

the time.”

“No; you don’t care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey

Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee—that’s no affair of

ours. But in the world, he’s the most amiable man I know, and a devoted

croquet player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as

Liza’s lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off

the absurd position. He’s very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don’t know? Oh,

that’s a new type, quite new.”

Betsy said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored,

shrewd glance, Anna felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was

hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir.

“I must write to Alexey though,” and Betsy sat down to the table,

scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.

“I’m telling him to come to dinner. I’ve one lady extra to dinner with

me, and no man to take her in. Look what I’ve said, will that persuade

him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up,

please, and send it off?” she said from the door; “I have to give some

directions.”

Without a moment’s thought, Anna sat down to the table with Betsy’s

letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: “It’s essential for me to

see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o’clock.”

She sealed it up, and, Betsy coming back, in her presence handed the

note to be taken.

At tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little

drawing-room, the cozy chat promised by Princess Tverskaya before the

arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women. They

criticized the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell

upon Liza Merkalova.

“She’s very sweet, and I always liked her,” said Anna.

“You ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to

me after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says

you’re a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would

do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as

it is.”

“But do tell me, please, I never could make it out,” said Anna, after

being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not

asking an idle question, but that what she was asking was of more

importance to her than it should have been; “do tell me, please, what

are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he’s called? I’ve

met them so little. What does it mean?”

Betsy smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Anna.

“It’s a new manner,” she said. “They’ve all adopted that manner.

They’ve flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and

ways of flinging them.”

“Yes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?”

Betsy broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a

thing which rarely happened with her.

“You’re encroaching on Princess Myakaya’s special domain now. That’s

the question of an _enfant terrible_,” and Betsy obviously tried to

restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that

infectious laughter that people laugh who do not laugh often. “You’d

better ask them,” she brought out, between tears of laughter.

“No; you laugh,” said Anna, laughing too in spite of herself, “but I

never could understand it. I can’t understand the husband’s rôle in

it.”

“The husband? Liza Merkalova’s husband carries her shawl, and is always

ready to be of use. But anything more than that in reality, no one

cares to inquire. You know in decent society one doesn’t talk or think

even of certain details of the toilet. That’s how it is with this.”

“Will you be at Madame Rolandak’s fête?” asked Anna, to change the

conversation.

“I don’t think so,” answered Betsy, and, without looking at her friend,

she began filling the little transparent cups with fragrant tea.

Putting a cup before Anna, she took out a cigarette, and, fitting it

into a silver holder, she lighted it.

“It’s like this, you see: I’m in a fortunate position,” she began,

quite serious now, as she took up her cup. “I understand you, and I

understand Liza. Liza now is one of those naïve natures that, like

children, don’t know what’s good and what’s bad. Anyway, she didn’t

comprehend it when she was very young. And now she’s aware that the

lack of comprehension suits her. Now, perhaps, she doesn’t know on

purpose,” said Betsy, with a subtle smile. “But, anyway, it suits her.

The very same thing, don’t you see, may be looked at tragically, and

turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even

humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look at things too

tragically.”

“How I should like to know other people just as I know myself!” said

Anna, seriously and dreamily. “Am I worse than other people, or better?

I think I’m worse.”

“_Enfant terrible, enfant terrible!_” repeated Betsy. “But here they

are.”

Chapter 18

They heard the sound of steps and a man’s voice, then a woman’s voice

and laughter, and immediately thereafter there walked in the expected

guests: Sappho Shtoltz, and a young man beaming with excess of health,

the so-called Vaska. It was evident that ample supplies of beefsteak,

truffles, and Burgundy never failed to reach him at the fitting hour.

Vaska bowed to the two ladies, and glanced at them, but only for one

second. He walked after Sappho into the drawing-room, and followed her

about as though he were chained to her, keeping his sparkling eyes

fixed on her as though he wanted to eat her. Sappho Shtoltz was a

blonde beauty with black eyes. She walked with smart little steps in

high-heeled shoes, and shook hands with the ladies vigorously like a

man.

Anna had never met this new star of fashion, and was struck by her

beauty, the exaggerated extreme to which her dress was carried, and the

boldness of her manners. On her head there was such a superstructure of

soft, golden hair—her own and false mixed—that her head was equal in

size to the elegantly rounded bust, of which so much was exposed in

front. The impulsive abruptness of her movements was such that at every

step the lines of her knees and the upper part of her legs were

distinctly marked under her dress, and the question involuntarily rose

to the mind where in the undulating, piled-up mountain of material at

the back the real body of the woman, so small and slender, so naked in

front, and so hidden behind and below, really came to an end.

Betsy made haste to introduce her to Anna.

“Only fancy, we all but ran over two soldiers,” she began telling them

at once, using her eyes, smiling and twitching away her tail, which she

flung back at one stroke all on one side. “I drove here with Vaska....

Ah, to be sure, you don’t know each other.” And mentioning his surname

she introduced the young man, and reddening a little, broke into a

ringing laugh at her mistake—that is, at her having called him Vaska to

a stranger. Vaska bowed once more to Anna, but he said nothing to her.

He addressed Sappho: “You’ve lost your bet. We got here first. Pay up,”

said he, smiling.

Sappho laughed still more festively.

“Not just now,” said she.

“Oh, all right, I’ll have it later.”

“Very well, very well. Oh, yes.” She turned suddenly to Princess Betsy:

“I am a nice person ... I positively forgot it ... I’ve brought you a

visitor. And here he comes.” The unexpected young visitor, whom Sappho

had invited, and whom she had forgotten, was, however, a personage of

such consequence that, in spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on

his entrance.

He was a new admirer of Sappho’s. He now dogged her footsteps, like

Vaska.

Soon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with Stremov.

Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental, languid type of

face, and—as everyone used to say—exquisite enigmatic eyes. The tone of

her dark dress (Anna immediately observed and appreciated the fact) was

in perfect harmony with her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and

enervated as Sappho was smart and abrupt.

But to Anna’s taste Liza was far more attractive. Betsy had said to

Anna that she had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but when Anna

saw her, she felt that this was not the truth. She really was both

innocent and corrupt, but a sweet and passive woman. It is true that

her tone was the same as Sappho’s; that like Sappho, she had two men,

one young and one old, tacked onto her, and devouring her with their

eyes. But there was something in her higher than what surrounded her.

There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations.

This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary,

and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by

dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking

into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not

but love her. At the sight of Anna, her whole face lighted up at once

with a smile of delight.

“Ah, how glad I am to see you!” she said, going up to her. “Yesterday

at the races all I wanted was to get to you, but you’d gone away. I did

so want to see you, yesterday especially. Wasn’t it awful?” she said,

looking at Anna with eyes that seemed to lay bare all her soul.

“Yes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling,” said Anna, blushing.

The company got up at this moment to go into the garden.

“I’m not going,” said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to Anna.

“You won’t go either, will you? Who wants to play croquet?”

“Oh, I like it,” said Anna.

“There, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It’s delightful

to look at you. You’re alive, but I’m bored.”

“How can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in

Petersburg,” said Anna.

“Possibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored; but

we—I certainly—are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored.”

Sappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two young

men. Betsy and Stremov remained at the tea-table.

“What, bored!” said Betsy. “Sappho says they did enjoy themselves

tremendously at your house last night.”

“Ah, how dreary it all was!” said Liza Merkalova. “We all drove back to

my place after the races. And always the same people, always the same.

Always the same thing. We lounged about on sofas all the evening. What

is there to enjoy in that? No; do tell me how you manage never to be

bored?” she said, addressing Anna again. “One has but to look at you

and one sees, here’s a woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn’t

bored. Tell me how you do it?”

“I do nothing,” answered Anna, blushing at these searching questions.

“That’s the best way,” Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of fifty,

partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but with a

characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was his wife’s

niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her. On meeting Anna

Karenina, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch’s enemy in the government, he

tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the world, to be particularly

cordial with her, the wife of his enemy.

“‘Nothing,’” he put in with a subtle smile, “that’s the very best way.

I told you long ago,” he said, turning to Liza Merkalova, “that if you

don’t want to be bored, you mustn’t think you’re going to be bored.

It’s just as you mustn’t be afraid of not being able to fall asleep, if

you’re afraid of sleeplessness. That’s just what Anna Arkadyevna has

just said.”

“I should be very glad if I had said it, for it’s not only clever but

true,” said Anna, smiling.

“No, do tell me why it is one can’t go to sleep, and one can’t help

being bored?”

“To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to

work too.”

“What am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I can’t

and won’t knowingly make a pretense about it.”

“You’re incorrigible,” said Stremov, not looking at her, and he spoke

again to Anna. As he rarely met Anna, he could say nothing but

commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to when she was

returning to Petersburg, and how fond Countess Lidia Ivanovna was of

her, with an expression which suggested that he longed with his whole

soul to please her and show his regard for her and even more than that.

Tushkevitch came in, announcing that the party were awaiting the other

players to begin croquet.

“No, don’t go away, please don’t,” pleaded Liza Merkalova, hearing that

Anna was going. Stremov joined in her entreaties.

“It’s too violent a transition,” he said, “to go from such company to

old Madame Vrede. And besides, you will only give her a chance for

talking scandal, while here you arouse none but such different feelings

of the highest and most opposite kind,” he said to her.

Anna pondered for an instant in uncertainty. This shrewd man’s

flattering words, the naïve, childlike affection shown her by Liza

Merkalova, and all the social atmosphere she was used to,—it was all so

easy, and what was in store for her was so difficult, that she was for

a minute in uncertainty whether to remain, whether to put off a little

longer the painful moment of explanation. But remembering what was in

store for her alone at home, if she did not come to some decision,

remembering that gesture—terrible even in memory—when she had clutched

her hair in both hands—she said good-bye and went away.

Chapter 19

In spite of Vronsky’s apparently frivolous life in society, he was a

man who hated irregularity. In early youth in the Corps of Pages, he

had experienced the humiliation of a refusal, when he had tried, being

in difficulties, to borrow money, and since then he had never once put

himself in the same position again.

In order to keep his affairs in some sort of order, he used about five

times a year (more or less frequently, according to circumstances) to

shut himself up alone and put all his affairs into definite shape. This

he used to call his day of reckoning or _faire la lessive_.

On waking up the day after the races, Vronsky put on a white linen

coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he distributed about the

table moneys, bills, and letters, and set to work. Petritsky, who knew

he was ill-tempered on such occasions, on waking up and seeing his

comrade at the writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without

getting in his way.

Every man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of the

conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the complexity

of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is

something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never

supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of

personal affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Vronsky. And not

without inward pride, and not without reason, he thought that any other

man would long ago have been in difficulties, would have been forced to

some dishonorable course, if he had found himself in such a difficult

position. But Vronsky felt that now especially it was essential for him

to clear up and define his position if he were to avoid getting into

difficulties.

What Vronsky attacked first as being the easiest was his pecuniary

position. Writing out on note paper in his minute hand all that he

owed, he added up the amount and found that his debts amounted to

seventeen thousand and some odd hundreds, which he left out for the

sake of clearness. Reckoning up his money and his bank book, he found

that he had left one thousand eight hundred roubles, and nothing coming

in before the New Year. Reckoning over again his list of debts, Vronsky

copied it, dividing it into three classes. In the first class he put

the debts which he would have to pay at once, or for which he must in

any case have the money ready so that on demand for payment there could

not be a moment’s delay in paying. Such debts amounted to about four

thousand: one thousand five hundred for a horse, and two thousand five

hundred as surety for a young comrade, Venovsky, who had lost that sum

to a cardsharper in Vronsky’s presence. Vronsky had wanted to pay the

money at the time (he had that amount then), but Venovsky and Yashvin

had insisted that they would pay and not Vronsky, who had not played.

That was so far well, but Vronsky knew that in this dirty business,

though his only share in it was undertaking by word of mouth to be

surety for Venovsky, it was absolutely necessary for him to have the

two thousand five hundred roubles so as to be able to fling it at the

swindler, and have no more words with him. And so for this first and

most important division he must have four thousand roubles. The second

class—eight thousand roubles—consisted of less important debts. These

were principally accounts owing in connection with his race horses, to

the purveyor of oats and hay, the English saddler, and so on. He would

have to pay some two thousand roubles on these debts too, in order to

be quite free from anxiety. The last class of debts—to shops, to

hotels, to his tailor—were such as need not be considered. So that he

needed at least six thousand roubles for current expenses, and he only

had one thousand eight hundred. For a man with one hundred thousand

roubles of revenue, which was what everyone fixed as Vronsky’s income,

such debts, one would suppose, could hardly be embarrassing; but the

fact was that he was far from having one hundred thousand. His father’s

immense property, which alone yielded a yearly income of two hundred

thousand, was left undivided between the brothers. At the time when the

elder brother, with a mass of debts, married Princess Varya Tchirkova,

the daughter of a Decembrist without any fortune whatever, Alexey had

given up to his elder brother almost the whole income from his father’s

estate, reserving for himself only twenty-five thousand a year from it.

Alexey had said at the time to his brother that that sum would be

sufficient for him until he married, which he probably never would do.

And his brother, who was in command of one of the most expensive

regiments, and was only just married, could not decline the gift. His

mother, who had her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every

year twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had

reserved, and Alexey had spent it all. Of late his mother, incensed

with him on account of his love affair and his leaving Moscow, had

given up sending him the money. And in consequence of this, Vronsky,

who had been in the habit of living on the scale of forty-five thousand

a year, having only received twenty thousand that year, found himself

now in difficulties. To get out of these difficulties, he could not

apply to his mother for money. Her last letter, which he had received

the day before, had particularly exasperated him by the hints in it

that she was quite ready to help him to succeed in the world and in the

army, but not to lead a life which was a scandal to all good society.

His mother’s attempt to buy him stung him to the quick and made him

feel colder than ever to her. But he could not draw back from the

generous word when it was once uttered, even though he felt now,

vaguely foreseeing certain eventualities in his intrigue with Madame

Karenina, that this generous word had been spoken thoughtlessly, and

that even though he were not married he might need all the hundred

thousand of income. But it was impossible to draw back. He had only to

recall his brother’s wife, to remember how that sweet, delightful Varya

sought, at every convenient opportunity, to remind him that she

remembered his generosity and appreciated it, to grasp the

impossibility of taking back his gift. It was as impossible as beating

a woman, stealing, or lying. One thing only could and ought to be done,

and Vronsky determined upon it without an instant’s hesitation: to

borrow money from a money-lender, ten thousand roubles, a proceeding

which presented no difficulty, to cut down his expenses generally, and

to sell his race horses. Resolving on this, he promptly wrote a note to

Rolandak, who had more than once sent to him with offers to buy horses

from him. Then he sent for the Englishman and the money-lender, and

divided what money he had according to the accounts he intended to pay.

Having finished this business, he wrote a cold and cutting answer to

his mother. Then he took out of his notebook three notes of Anna’s,

read them again, burned them, and remembering their conversation on the

previous day, he sank into meditation.

Chapter 20

Vronsky’s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of

principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and

what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very

small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never

doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never

had a moment’s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. These

principles laid down as invariable rules: that one must pay a

cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie

to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but

one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may

give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and

not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he

adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could

hold his head up. Only quite lately in regard to his relations with

Anna, Vronsky had begun to feel that his code of principles did not

fully cover all possible contingencies, and to foresee in the future

difficulties and perplexities for which he could find no guiding clue.

His present relation to Anna and to her husband was to his mind clear

and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the code of

principles by which he was guided.

She was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him, and he

loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who had a right to

the same, or even more, respect than a lawful wife. He would have had

his hand chopped off before he would have allowed himself by a word, by

a hint, to humiliate her, or even to fall short of the fullest respect

a woman could look for.

His attitude to society, too, was clear. Everyone might know, might

suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any did so, he was

ready to force all who might speak to be silent and to respect the

non-existent honor of the woman he loved.

His attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. From the moment

that Anna loved Vronsky, he had regarded his own right over her as the

one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a superfluous and

tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable position, but how could

that be helped? The one thing the husband had a right to was to demand

satisfaction with a weapon in his hand, and Vronsky was prepared for

this at any minute.

But of late new inner relations had arisen between him and her, which

frightened Vronsky by their indefiniteness. Only the day before she had

told him that she was with child. And he felt that this fact and what

she expected of him called for something not fully defined in that code

of principles by which he had hitherto steered his course in life. And

he had been indeed caught unawares, and at the first moment when she

spoke to him of her position, his heart had prompted him to beg her to

leave her husband. He had said that, but now thinking things over he

saw clearly that it would be better to manage to avoid that; and at the

same time, as he told himself so, he was afraid whether it was not

wrong.

“If I told her to leave her husband, that must mean uniting her life

with mine; am I prepared for that? How can I take her away now, when I

have no money? Supposing I could arrange.... But how can I take her

away while I’m in the service? If I say that—I ought to be prepared to

do it, that is, I ought to have the money and to retire from the army.”

And he grew thoughtful. The question whether to retire from the service

or not brought him to the other and perhaps the chief though hidden

interest of his life, of which none knew but he.

Ambition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he

did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now this

passion was even doing battle with his love. His first steps in the

world and in the service had been successful, but two years before he

had made a great mistake. Anxious to show his independence and to

advance, he had refused a post that had been offered him, hoping that

this refusal would heighten his value; but it turned out that he had

been too bold, and he was passed over. And having, whether he liked or

not, taken up for himself the position of an independent man, he

carried it off with great tact and good sense, behaving as though he

bore no grudge against anyone, did not regard himself as injured in any

way, and cared for nothing but to be left alone since he was enjoying

himself. In reality he had ceased to enjoy himself as long ago as the

year before, when he went away to Moscow. He felt that this independent

attitude of a man who might have done anything, but cared to do

nothing, was already beginning to pall, that many people were beginning

to fancy that he was not really capable of anything but being a

straightforward, good-natured fellow. His connection with Madame

Karenina, by creating so much sensation and attracting general

attention, had given him a fresh distinction which soothed his gnawing

worm of ambition for a while, but a week before that worm had been

roused up again with fresh force. The friend of his childhood, a man of

the same set, of the same coterie, his comrade in the Corps of Pages,

Serpuhovskoy, who had left school with him and had been his rival in

class, in gymnastics, in their scrapes and their dreams of glory, had

come back a few days before from Central Asia, where he had gained two

steps up in rank, and an order rarely bestowed upon generals so young.

As soon as he arrived in Petersburg, people began to talk about him as

a newly risen star of the first magnitude. A schoolfellow of Vronsky’s

and of the same age, he was a general and was expecting a command,

which might have influence on the course of political events; while

Vronsky, independent and brilliant and beloved by a charming woman

though he was, was simply a cavalry captain who was readily allowed to

be as independent as ever he liked. “Of course I don’t envy

Serpuhovskoy and never could envy him; but his advancement shows me

that one has only to watch one’s opportunity, and the career of a man

like me may be very rapidly made. Three years ago he was in just the

same position as I am. If I retire, I burn my ships. If I remain in the

army, I lose nothing. She said herself she did not wish to change her

position. And with her love I cannot feel envious of Serpuhovskoy.” And

slowly twirling his mustaches, he got up from the table and walked

about the room. His eyes shone particularly brightly, and he felt in

that confident, calm, and happy frame of mind which always came after

he had thoroughly faced his position. Everything was straight and

clear, just as after former days of reckoning. He shaved, took a cold

bath, dressed and went out.

Chapter 21

“We’ve come to fetch you. Your _lessive_ lasted a good time today,”

said Petritsky. “Well, is it over?”

“It is over,” answered Vronsky, smiling with his eyes only, and

twirling the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though after the

perfect order into which his affairs had been brought any over-bold or

rapid movement might disturb it.

“You’re always just as if you’d come out of a bath after it,” said

Petritsky. “I’ve come from Gritsky’s” (that was what they called the

colonel); “they’re expecting you.”

Vronsky, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of

something else.

“Yes; is that music at his place?” he said, listening to the familiar

sounds of polkas and waltzes floating across to him. “What’s the fête?”

“Serpuhovskoy’s come.”

“Aha!” said Vronsky, “why, I didn’t know.”

The smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.

Having once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that he

sacrificed his ambition to it—having anyway taken up this position,

Vronsky was incapable of feeling either envious of Serpuhovskoy or hurt

with him for not coming first to him when he came to the regiment.

Serpuhovskoy was a good friend, and he was delighted he had come.

“Ah, I’m very glad!”

The colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole party

were in the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first objects that

met Vronsky’s eyes were a band of singers in white linen coats,

standing near a barrel of vodka, and the robust, good-humored figure of

the colonel surrounded by officers. He had gone out as far as the first

step of the balcony and was loudly shouting across the band that played

Offenbach’s quadrille, waving his arms and giving some orders to a few

soldiers standing on one side. A group of soldiers, a quartermaster,

and several subalterns came up to the balcony with Vronsky. The colonel

returned to the table, went out again onto the steps with a tumbler in

his hand, and proposed the toast, “To the health of our former comrade,

the gallant general, Prince Serpuhovskoy. Hurrah!”

The colonel was followed by Serpuhovskoy, who came out onto the steps

smiling, with a glass in his hand.

“You always get younger, Bondarenko,” he said to the rosy-cheeked,

smart-looking quartermaster standing just before him, still youngish

looking though doing his second term of service.

It was three years since Vronsky had seen Serpuhovskoy. He looked more

robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the same graceful

creature, whose face and figure were even more striking from their

softness and nobility than their beauty. The only change Vronsky

detected in him was that subdued, continual radiance of beaming content

which settles on the faces of men who are successful and are sure of

the recognition of their success by everyone. Vronsky knew that radiant

air, and immediately observed it in Serpuhovskoy.

As Serpuhovskoy came down the steps he saw Vronsky. A smile of pleasure

lighted up his face. He tossed his head upwards and waved the glass in

his hand, greeting Vronsky, and showing him by the gesture that he

could not come to him before the quartermaster, who stood craning

forward his lips ready to be kissed.

“Here he is!” shouted the colonel. “Yashvin told me you were in one of

your gloomy tempers.”

Serpuhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the gallant-looking

quartermaster, and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, went up to

Vronsky.

“How glad I am!” he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him on one

side.

“You look after him,” the colonel shouted to Yashvin, pointing to

Vronsky; and he went down below to the soldiers.

“Why weren’t you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you there,”

said Vronsky, scrutinizing Serpuhovskoy.

“I did go, but late. I beg your pardon,” he added, and he turned to the

adjutant: “Please have this divided from me, each man as much as it

runs to.” And he hurriedly took notes for three hundred roubles from

his pocketbook, blushing a little.

“Vronsky! Have anything to eat or drink?” asked Yashvin. “Hi, something

for the count to eat! Ah, here it is: have a glass!”

The fête at the colonel’s lasted a long while. There was a great deal

of drinking. They tossed Serpuhovskoy in the air and caught him again

several times. Then they did the same to the colonel. Then, to the

accompaniment of the band, the colonel himself danced with Petritsky.

Then the colonel, who began to show signs of feebleness, sat down on a

bench in the courtyard and began demonstrating to Yashvin the

superiority of Russia over Prussia, especially in cavalry attack, and

there was a lull in the revelry for a moment. Serpuhovskoy went into

the house to the bathroom to wash his hands and found Vronsky there;

Vronsky was drenching his head with water. He had taken off his coat

and put his sunburnt, hairy neck under the tap, and was rubbing it and

his head with his hands. When he had finished, Vronsky sat down by

Serpuhovskoy. They both sat down in the bathroom on a lounge, and a

conversation began which was very interesting to both of them.

“I’ve always been hearing about you through my wife,” said

Serpuhovskoy. “I’m glad you’ve been seeing her pretty often.”

“She’s friendly with Varya, and they’re the only women in Petersburg I

care about seeing,” answered Vronsky, smiling. He smiled because he

foresaw the topic the conversation would turn on, and he was glad of

it.

“The only ones?” Serpuhovskoy queried, smiling.

“Yes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife,” said

Vronsky, checking his hint by a stern expression of face. “I was

greatly delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit surprised. I

expected even more.”

Serpuhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously agreeable to

him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal it.

“Well, I on the contrary expected less—I’ll own frankly. But I’m glad,

very glad. I’m ambitious; that’s my weakness, and I confess to it.”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t confess to it if you hadn’t been successful,”

said Vronsky.

“I don’t suppose so,” said Serpuhovskoy, smiling again. “I won’t say

life wouldn’t be worth living without it, but it would be dull. Of

course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain capacity for the

line I’ve chosen, and that power of any sort in my hands, if it is to

be, will be better than in the hands of a good many people I know,”

said Serpuhovskoy, with beaming consciousness of success; “and so the

nearer I get to it, the better pleased I am.”

“Perhaps that is true for you, but not for everyone. I used to think so

too, but here I live and think life worth living not only for that.”

“There it’s out! here it comes!” said Serpuhovskoy, laughing. “Ever

since I heard about you, about your refusal, I began.... Of course, I

approved of what you did. But there are ways of doing everything. And I

think your action was good in itself, but you didn’t do it quite in the

way you ought to have done.”

“What’s done can’t be undone, and you know I never go back on what I’ve

done. And besides, I’m very well off.”

“Very well off—for the time. But you’re not satisfied with that. I

wouldn’t say this to your brother. He’s a nice child, like our host

here. There he goes!” he added, listening to the roar of “hurrah!”—“and

he’s happy, but that does not satisfy you.”

“I didn’t say it did satisfy me.”

“Yes, but that’s not the only thing. Such men as you are wanted.”

“By whom?”

“By whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men; she needs a party,

or else everything goes and will go to the dogs.”

“How do you mean? Bertenev’s party against the Russian communists?”

“No,” said Serpuhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being suspected of

such an absurdity. “_Tout ça est une blague_. That’s always been and

always will be. There are no communists. But intriguing people have to

invent a noxious, dangerous party. It’s an old trick. No, what’s wanted

is a powerful party of independent men like you and me.”

“But why so?” Vronsky mentioned a few men who were in power. “Why

aren’t they independent men?”

“Simply because they have not, or have not had from birth, an

independent fortune; they’ve not had a name, they’ve not been close to

the sun and center as we have. They can be bought either by money or by

favor. And they have to find a support for themselves in inventing a

policy. And they bring forward some notion, some policy that they don’t

believe in, that does harm; and the whole policy is really only a means

to a government house and so much income. _Cela n’est pas plus fin que

ça_, when you get a peep at their cards. I may be inferior to them,

stupider perhaps, though I don’t see why I should be inferior to them.

But you and I have one important advantage over them for certain, in

being more difficult to buy. And such men are more needed than ever.”

Vronsky listened attentively, but he was not so much interested by the

meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpuhovskoy who was already

contemplating a struggle with the existing powers, and already had his

likes and dislikes in that higher world, while his own interest in the

governing world did not go beyond the interests of his regiment.

Vronsky felt, too, how powerful Serpuhovskoy might become through his

unmistakable faculty for thinking things out and for taking things in,

through his intelligence and gift of words, so rarely met with in the

world in which he moved. And, ashamed as he was of the feeling, he felt

envious.

“Still I haven’t the one thing of most importance for that,” he

answered; “I haven’t the desire for power. I had it once, but it’s

gone.”

“Excuse me, that’s not true,” said Serpuhovskoy, smiling.

“Yes, it is true, it is true ... now!” Vronsky added, to be truthful.

“Yes, it’s true now, that’s another thing; but that _now_ won’t last

forever.”

“Perhaps,” answered Vronsky.

“You say _perhaps_,” Serpuhovskoy went on, as though guessing his

thoughts, “but I say _for certain_. And that’s what I wanted to see you

for. Your action was just what it should have been. I see that, but you

ought not to keep it up. I only ask you to give me _carte blanche_. I’m

not going to offer you my protection ... though, indeed, why shouldn’t

I protect you?—you’ve protected me often enough! I should hope our

friendship rises above all that sort of thing. Yes,” he said, smiling

to him as tenderly as a woman, “give me _carte blanche_, retire from

the regiment, and I’ll draw you upwards imperceptibly.”

“But you must understand that I want nothing,” said Vronsky, “except

that all should be as it is.”

Serpuhovskoy got up and stood facing him.

“You say that all should be as it is. I understand what that means. But

listen: we’re the same age, you’ve known a greater number of women

perhaps than I have.” Serpohovskoy’s smile and gestures told Vronsky

that he mustn’t be afraid, that he would be tender and careful in

touching the sore place. “But I’m married, and believe me, in getting

to know thoroughly one’s wife, if one loves her, as someone has said,

one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them.”

“We’re coming directly!” Vronsky shouted to an officer, who looked into

the room and called them to the colonel.

Vronsky was longing now to hear to the end and know what Serpuhovskey

would say to him.

“And here’s my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling block in

a man’s career. It’s hard to love a woman and do anything. There’s only

one way of having love conveniently without its being a

hindrance—that’s marriage. How, how am I to tell you what I mean?” said

Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Yes,

just as you can only carry a _fardeau_ and do something with your

hands, when the _fardeau_ is tied on your back, and that’s marriage.

And that’s what I felt when I was married. My hands were suddenly set

free. But to drag that _fardeau_ about with you without marriage, your

hands will always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov,

at Krupov. They’ve ruined their careers for the sake of women.”

“What women!” said Vronsky, recalling the Frenchwoman and the actress

with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected.

“The firmer the woman’s footing in society, the worse it is. That’s

much the same as—not merely carrying the _fardeau_ in your arms—but

tearing it away from someone else.”

“You have never loved,” Vronsky said softly, looking straight before

him and thinking of Anna.

“Perhaps. But you remember what I’ve said to you. And another thing,

women are all more materialistic than men. We make something immense

out of love, but they are always _terre-à-terre_.”

“Directly, directly!” he cried to a footman who came in. But the

footman had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The footman

brought Vronsky a note.

“A man brought it from Princess Tverskaya.”

Vronsky opened the letter, and flushed crimson.

“My head’s begun to ache; I’m going home,” he said to Serpuhovskoy.

“Oh, good-bye then. You give me _carte blanche!_”

“We’ll talk about it later on; I’ll look you up in Petersburg.”

Chapter 22

It was six o’clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly, and

at the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to everyone,

Vronsky got into Yashvin’s hired fly, and told the driver to drive as

quickly as possible. It was a roomy, old-fashioned fly, with seats for

four. He sat in one corner, stretched his legs out on the front seat,

and sank into meditation.

A vague sense of the order into which his affairs had been brought, a

vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of Serpuhovskoy,

who had considered him a man that was needed, and most of all, the

anticipation of the interview before him—all blended into a general,

joyous sense of life. This feeling was so strong that he could not help

smiling. He dropped his legs, crossed one leg over the other knee, and

taking it in his hand, felt the springy muscle of the calf, where it

had been grazed the day before by his fall, and leaning back he drew

several deep breaths.

“I’m happy, very happy!” he said to himself. He had often before had

this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never felt so

fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He enjoyed the

slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the muscular sensation of

movement in his chest as he breathed. The bright, cold August day,

which had made Anna feel so hopeless, seemed to him keenly stimulating,

and refreshed his face and neck that still tingled from the cold water.

The scent of brilliantine on his whiskers struck him as particularly

pleasant in the fresh air. Everything he saw from the carriage window,

everything in that cold pure air, in the pale light of the sunset, was

as fresh, and gay, and strong as he was himself: the roofs of the

houses shining in the rays of the setting sun, the sharp outlines of

fences and angles of buildings, the figures of passers-by, the

carriages that met him now and then, the motionless green of the trees

and grass, the fields with evenly drawn furrows of potatoes, and the

slanting shadows that fell from the houses, and trees, and bushes, and

even from the rows of potatoes—everything was bright like a pretty

landscape just finished and freshly varnished.

“Get on, get on!” he said to the driver, putting his head out of the

window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he handed it

to the man as he looked round. The driver’s hand fumbled with something

at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the carriage rolled rapidly along

the smooth highroad.

“I want nothing, nothing but this happiness,” he thought, staring at

the bone button of the bell in the space between the windows, and

picturing to himself Anna just as he had seen her last time. “And as I

go on, I love her more and more. Here’s the garden of the Vrede Villa.

Whereabouts will she be? Where? How? Why did she fix on this place to

meet me, and why does she write in Betsy’s letter?” he thought,

wondering now for the first time at it. But there was now no time for

wonder. He called to the driver to stop before reaching the avenue, and

opening the door, jumped out of the carriage as it was moving, and went

into the avenue that led up to the house. There was no one in the

avenue; but looking round to the right he caught sight of her. Her face

was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the special

movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of the shoulders,

and the setting of the head, and at once a sort of electric shock ran

all over him. With fresh force, he felt conscious of himself from the

springy motions of his legs to the movements of his lungs as he

breathed, and something set his lips twitching.

Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.

“You’re not angry that I sent for you? I absolutely had to see you,”

she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which he saw under

the veil, transformed his mood at once.

“I angry! But how have you come, where from?”

“Never mind,” she said, laying her hand on his, “come along, I must

talk to you.”

He saw that something had happened, and that the interview would not be

a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own: without

knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the same distress

unconsciously passing over him.

“What is it? what?” he asked her, squeezing her hand with his elbow,

and trying to read her thoughts in her face.

She walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage; then

suddenly she stopped.

“I did not tell you yesterday,” she began, breathing quickly and

painfully, “that coming home with Alexey Alexandrovitch I told him

everything ... told him I could not be his wife, that ... and told him

everything.”

He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her as

though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her position for

her. But directly she had said this he suddenly drew himself up, and a

proud and hard expression came over his face.

“Yes, yes, that’s better, a thousand times better! I know how painful

it was,” he said. But she was not listening to his words, she was

reading his thoughts from the expression of his face. She could not

guess that that expression arose from the first idea that presented

itself to Vronsky—that a duel was now inevitable. The idea of a duel

had never crossed her mind, and so she put a different interpretation

on this passing expression of hardness.

When she got her husband’s letter, she knew then at the bottom of her

heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she would not

have the strength of will to forego her position, to abandon her son,

and to join her lover. The morning spent at Princess Tverskaya’s had

confirmed her still more in this. But this interview was still of the

utmost gravity for her. She hoped that this interview would transform

her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he were to say to

her resolutely, passionately, without an instant’s wavering: “Throw up

everything and come with me!” she would give up her son and go away

with him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in him;

he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.

“It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself,” she

said irritably; “and see....” she pulled her husband’s letter out of

her glove.

“I understand, I understand,” he interrupted her, taking the letter,

but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. “The one thing I longed

for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this position, so as

to devote my life to your happiness.”

“Why do you tell me that?” she said. “Do you suppose I can doubt it? If

I doubted....”

“Who’s that coming?” said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two ladies

walking towards them. “Perhaps they know us!” and he hurriedly turned

off, drawing her after him into a side path.

“Oh, I don’t care!” she said. Her lips were quivering. And he fancied

that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under the veil. “I

tell you that’s not the point—I can’t doubt that; but see what he

writes to me. Read it.” She stood still again.

Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her

husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away

by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the

betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could

not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at

home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same

cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment

he would await the injured husband’s shot, after having himself fired

into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the

thought of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had

himself been thinking in the morning—that it was better not to bind

himself—and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.

Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no

determination in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about

it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he

would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had

failed her. This was not what she had been reckoning on.

“You see the sort of man he is,” she said, with a shaking voice;

“he....”

“Forgive me, but I rejoice at it,” Vronsky interrupted. “For God’s

sake, let me finish!” he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time

to explain his words. “I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot

possibly remain as he supposes.”

“Why can’t they?” Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously

attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her

fate was sealed.

Vronsky meant that after the duel—inevitable, he thought—things could

not go on as before, but he said something different.

“It can’t go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope”—he was

confused, and reddened—“that you will let me arrange and plan our life.

Tomorrow....” he was beginning.

She did not let him go on.

“But my child!” she shrieked. “You see what he writes! I should have to

leave him, and I can’t and won’t do that.”

“But, for God’s sake, which is better?—leave your child, or keep up

this degrading position?”

“To whom is it degrading?”

“To all, and most of all to you.”

“You say degrading ... don’t say that. Those words have no meaning for

me,” she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what

was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to

love him. “Don’t you understand that from the day I loved you

everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing

only—your love. If that’s mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that

nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because

... proud of being ... proud....” She could not say what she was proud

of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still

and sobbed.

He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his

nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of

weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so. He

felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he

knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done

something wrong.

“Is not a divorce possible?” he said feebly. She shook her head, not

answering. “Couldn’t you take your son, and still leave him?”

“Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him,” she said

shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had

not deceived her.

“On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be settled.”

“Yes,” she said. “But don’t let us talk any more of it.”

Anna’s carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to

the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said good-bye to

Vronsky, and drove home.

Chapter 23

On Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the 2nd of

June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where the sitting was

held, greeted the members and the president, as usual, and sat down in

his place, putting his hand on the papers laid ready before him. Among

these papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline of the

speech he intended to make. But he did not really need these documents.

He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary to go over in

his memory what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when

he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an

expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself better than

he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of his speech was of

such magnitude that every word of it would have weight. Meantime, as he

listened to the usual report, he had the most innocent and inoffensive

air. No one, looking at his white hands, with their swollen veins and

long fingers, so softly stroking the edges of the white paper that lay

before him, and at the air of weariness with which his head drooped on

one side, would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words

would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the

members shouting and attacking one another, and force the president to

call for order. When the report was over, Alexey Alexandrovitch

announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he had several points to

bring before the meeting in regard to the Commission for the

Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All attention was turned upon him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his throat, and not looking at his

opponent, but selecting, as he always did while he was delivering his

speeches, the first person sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little

old man, who never had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began

to expound his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental

and radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest. Stremov,

who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung to the quick,

began defending himself, and altogether a stormy sitting followed; but

Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his motion was carried, three new

commissions were appointed, and the next day in a certain Petersburg

circle nothing else was talked of but this sitting. Alexey

Alexandrovitch’s success had been even greater than he had anticipated.

Next morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up, recollected

with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help

smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent, when the chief

secretary of his department, anxious to flatter him, informed him of

the rumors that had reached him concerning what had happened in the

Commission.

Absorbed in business with the chief secretary, Alexey Alexandrovitch

had completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the day fixed by him for

the return of Anna Arkadyevna, and he was surprised and received a

shock of annoyance when a servant came in to inform him of her arrival.

Anna had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage had

been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so Alexey

Alexandrovitch might have known of her arrival. But when she arrived,

he did not meet her. She was told that he had not yet gone out, but was

busy with his secretary. She sent word to her husband that she had

come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her

things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour passed; he did not

come. She went into the dining-room on the pretext of giving some

directions, and spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out

there; but he did not come, though she heard him go to the door of his

study as he parted from the chief secretary. She knew that he usually

went out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that,

so that their attitude to one another might be defined.

She walked across the drawing-room and went resolutely to him. When she

went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go

out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking

dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she saw that

he was thinking of her.

On seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his face

flushed hotly—a thing Anna had never seen before, and he got up quickly

and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them at her

forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked

her to sit down.

“I am very glad you have come,” he said, sitting down beside her, and

obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he

tried to begin to speak, but stopped. In spite of the fact that,

preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled herself to despise

and reproach him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt

sorry for him. And so the silence lasted for some time. “Is Seryozha

quite well?” he said, and not waiting for an answer, he added: “I

shan’t be dining at home today, and I have got to go out directly.”

“I had thought of going to Moscow,” she said.

“No, you did quite, quite right to come,” he said, and was silent

again.

Seeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began

herself.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, looking at him and not dropping her

eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, “I’m a guilty woman, I’m a

bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have

come to tell you that I can change nothing.”

“I have asked you no question about that,” he said, all at once,

resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face; “that was

as I had supposed.” Under the influence of anger he apparently regained

complete possession of all his faculties. “But as I told you then, and

have written to you,” he said in a thin, shrill voice, “I repeat now,

that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so

kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news

to their husbands.” He laid special emphasis on the word “agreeable.”

“I shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as

my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations

must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of

your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my

honor.”

“But our relations cannot be the same as always,” Anna began in a timid

voice, looking at him with dismay.

When she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill,

childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her

pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to

make clear her position.

“I cannot be your wife while I....” she began.

He laughed a cold and malignant laugh.

“The manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your

ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both ... I respect your

past and despise your present ... that I was far from the

interpretation you put on my words.”

Anna sighed and bowed her head.

“Though indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you

show,” he went on, getting hot, “—announcing your infidelity to your

husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently—you can see

anything reprehensible in performing a wife’s duties in relation to

your husband.”

“Alexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?”

“I want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that

neither the world nor the servants can reproach you ... not to see him.

That’s not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the

privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That’s all

I have to say to you. Now it’s time for me to go. I’m not dining at

home.” He got up and moved towards the door.

Anna got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.

Chapter 24

The night spent by Levin on the haycock did not pass without result for

him. The way in which he had been managing his land revolted him and

had lost all attraction for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest,

never had there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there

been so many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the

peasants as that year, and the origin of these failures and this

hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had

experienced in the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy

with the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire

to adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an

intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail—all this

had so transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had

managed it, that he could not take his former interest in it, and could

not help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople

which was the foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as

Pava, the whole land ploughed over and enriched, the nine level fields

surrounded with hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily

manured, the seed sown in drills, and all the rest of it—it was all

splendid if only the work had been done for themselves, or for

themselves and comrades—people in sympathy with them. But he saw

clearly now (his work on a book of agriculture, in which the chief

element in husbandry was to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him

in this) that the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a

cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which

there was on one side—his side—a continual intense effort to change

everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the

natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that with immense

expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention

on the other side, all that was attained was that the work did not go

to the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle

and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy

expended on this work was not simply wasted. He could not help feeling

now, since the meaning of this system had become clear to him, that the

aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the

struggle about? He was struggling for every farthing of his share (and

he could not help it, for he had only to relax his efforts, and he

would not have had the money to pay his laborers’ wages), while they

were only struggling to be able to do their work easily and agreeably,

that is to say, as they were used to doing it. It was for his interests

that every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while

doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break

the winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the thrashing machines, that

he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to

work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly

and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Levin saw this at every

step. He sent the men to mow some clover for hay, picking out the worst

patches where the clover was overgrown with grass and weeds and of no

use for seed; again and again they mowed the best acres of clover,

justifying themselves by the pretense that the bailiff had told them

to, and trying to pacify him with the assurance that it would be

splendid hay; but he knew that it was owing to those acres being so

much easier to mow. He sent out a hay machine for pitching the hay—it

was broken at the first row because it was dull work for a peasant to

sit on the seat in front with the great wings waving above him. And he

was told, “Don’t trouble, your honor, sure, the womenfolks will pitch

it quick enough.” The ploughs were practically useless, because it

never occurred to the laborer to raise the share when he turned the

plough, and forcing it round, he strained the horses and tore up the

ground, and Levin was begged not to mind about it. The horses were

allowed to stray into the wheat because not a single laborer would

consent to be night-watchman, and in spite of orders to the contrary,

the laborers insisted on taking turns for night duty, and Ivan, after

working all day long, fell asleep, and was very penitent for his fault,

saying, “Do what you will to me, your honor.”

They killed three of the best calves by letting them into the clover

aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing would make the

men believe that they had been blown out by the clover, but they told

him, by way of consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a

hundred and twelve head of cattle in three days. All this happened, not

because anyone felt ill-will to Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he

knew that they liked him, thought him a simple gentleman (their highest

praise); but it happened simply because all they wanted was to work

merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and

incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just

claims. Long before, Levin had felt dissatisfaction with his own

position in regard to the land. He saw where his boat leaked, but he

did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving himself.

(Nothing would be left him if he lost faith in it.) But now he could

deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land, as he was managing

it, had become not merely unattractive but revolting to him, and he

could take no further interest in it.

To this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off, of

Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not see. Darya

Alexandrovna Oblonskaya had invited him, when he was over there, to

come; to come with the object of renewing his offer to her sister, who

would, so she gave him to understand, accept him now. Levin himself had

felt on seeing Kitty Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love

her; but he could not go over to the Oblonskys’, knowing she was there.

The fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him, had

placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. “I can’t ask her to

be my wife merely because she can’t be the wife of the man she wanted

to marry,” he said to himself. The thought of this made him cold and

hostile to her. “I should not be able to speak to her without a feeling

of reproach; I could not look at her without resentment; and she will

only hate me all the more, as she’s bound to. And besides, how can I

now, after what Darya Alexandrovna told me, go to see them? Can I help

showing that I know what she told me? And me to go magnanimously to

forgive her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before

her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... What

induced Darya Alexandrovna to tell me that? By chance I might have seen

her, then everything would have happened of itself; but, as it is, it’s

out of the question, out of the question!”

Darya Alexandrovna sent him a letter, asking him for a side-saddle for

Kitty’s use. “I’m told you have a side-saddle,” she wrote to him; “I

hope you will bring it over yourself.”

This was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any

intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a humiliating

position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and sent the saddle

without any reply. To write that he would go was impossible, because he

could not go; to write that he could not come because something

prevented him, or that he would be away, that was still worse. He sent

the saddle without an answer, and with a sense of having done something

shameful; he handed over all the now revolting business of the estate

to the bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see his

friend Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse in his

neighborhood, and had lately written to ask him to keep a long-standing

promise to stay with him. The grouse-marsh, in the Surovsky district,

had long tempted Levin, but he had continually put off this visit on

account of his work on the estate. Now he was glad to get away from the

neighborhood of the Shtcherbatskys, and still more from his farm work,

especially on a shooting expedition, which always in trouble served as

the best consolation.

Chapter 25

In the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of post

horses, and Levin drove there with his own horses in his big,

old-fashioned carriage.

He stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant’s to feed his horses. A

bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on his

cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to let the

three horses pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in

the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned ploughs in it,

the old man asked Levin to come into the parlor. A cleanly dressed

young woman, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in

the new outer room. She was frightened of the dog, that ran in after

Levin, and uttered a shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at

once when she was told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Levin with

her bare arm to the door into the parlor, she bent down again, hiding

her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.

“Would you like the samovar?” she asked.

“Yes, please.”

The parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a screen dividing it

into two. Under the holy pictures stood a table painted in patterns, a

bench, and two chairs. Near the entrance was a dresser full of

crockery. The shutters were closed, there were few flies, and it was so

clean that Levin was anxious that Laska, who had been running along the

road and bathing in puddles, should not muddy the floor, and ordered

her to a place in the corner by the door. After looking round the

parlor, Levin went out in the back yard. The good-looking young woman

in clogs, swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to

the well for water.

“Look sharp, my girl!” the old man shouted after her, good-humoredly,

and he went up to Levin. “Well, sir, are you going to Nikolay

Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? His honor comes to us too,” he began, chatting,

leaning his elbows on the railing of the steps. In the middle of the

old man’s account of his acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the gates creaked

again, and laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden

ploughs and harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows

were sleek and fat. The laborers were obviously of the household: two

were young men in cotton shirts and caps, the two others were hired

laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man, the other a young fellow.

Moving off from the steps, the old man went up to the horses and began

unharnessing them.

“What have they been ploughing?” asked Levin.

“Ploughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot, don’t let

out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we’ll put the other in

harness.”

“Oh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought them along?”

asked the big, healthy-looking fellow, obviously the old man’s son.

“There ... in the outer room,” answered the old man, bundling together

the harness he had taken off, and flinging it on the ground. “You can

put them on, while they have dinner.”

The good-looking young woman came into the outer room with the full

pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the scene from

somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with children

and without children.

The samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family, having

disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Levin, getting his

provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take tea with

him.

“Well, I have had some today already,” said the old man, obviously

accepting the invitation with pleasure. “But just a glass for company.”

Over their tea Levin heard all about the old man’s farming. Ten years

before, the old man had rented three hundred acres from the lady who

owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented another three

hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part of the land—the

worst part—he let out for rent, while a hundred acres of arable land he

cultivated himself with his family and two hired laborers. The old man

complained that things were doing badly. But Levin saw that he simply

did so from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a

flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not have

bought land at thirty-five roubles the acre, he would not have married

his three sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice after

fires, and each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old man’s

complaints, it was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his

prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons’ wives, his horses

and his cows, and especially of the fact that he was keeping all this

farming going. From his conversation with the old man, Levin thought he

was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great many

potatoes, and his potatoes, as Levin had seen driving past, were

already past flowering and beginning to die down, while Levin’s were

only just coming into flower. He earthed up his potatoes with a modern

plough borrowed from a neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The

trifling fact that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he

thinned out for his horses, specially struck Levin. How many times had

Levin seen this splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but

always it had turned out to be impossible. The peasant got this done,

and he could not say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.

“What have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the

roadside, and the cart brings it away.”

“Well, we landowners can’t manage well with our laborers,” said Levin,

handing him a glass of tea.

“Thank you,” said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused

sugar, pointing to a lump he had left. “They’re simple destruction,”

said he. “Look at Sviazhsky’s, for instance. We know what the land’s

like—first-rate, yet there’s not much of a crop to boast of. It’s not

looked after enough—that’s all it is!”

“But you work your land with hired laborers?”

“We’re all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves. If a

man’s no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves.”

“Father, Finogen wants some tar,” said the young woman in the clogs,

coming in.

“Yes, yes, that’s how it is, sir!” said the old man, getting up, and

crossing himself deliberately, he thanked Levin and went out.

When Levin went into the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole

family at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them. The

young, sturdy-looking son was telling something funny with his mouth

full of pudding, and they were all laughing, the woman in the clogs,

who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily of all.

Very probably the good-looking face of the young woman in the clogs had

a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant

household made upon Levin, but the impression was so strong that Levin

could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old peasant’s to

Sviazhsky’s he kept recalling this peasant farm as though there were

something in this impression that demanded his special attention.

Chapter 26

Sviazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years older than

Levin, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a young girl Levin

liked very much, lived in his house; and Levin knew that Sviazhsky and

his wife would have greatly liked to marry the girl to him. He knew

this with certainty, as so-called eligible young men always know it,

though he could never have brought himself to speak of it to anyone;

and he knew too that, although he wanted to get married, and although

by every token this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife,

he could no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with

Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, than he could have flown up to the sky. And this

knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to

Sviazhsky.

On getting Sviazhsky’s letter with the invitation for shooting, Levin

had immediately thought of this; but in spite of it he had made up his

mind that Sviazhsky’s having such views for him was simply his own

groundless supposition, and so he would go, all the same. Besides, at

the bottom of his heart he had a desire to try himself, put himself to

the test in regard to this girl. The Sviazhskys’ home-life was

exceedingly pleasant, and Sviazhsky himself, the best type of man

taking part in local affairs that Levin knew, was very interesting to

him.

Sviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to Levin,

whose convictions, very logical though never original, go one way by

themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm in its

direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct

contradiction to their convictions. Sviazhsky was an extremely advanced

man. He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of the nobility to

be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only concealing their views from

cowardice. He regarded Russia as a ruined country, rather after the

style of Turkey, and the government of Russia as so bad that he never

permitted himself to criticize its doings seriously, and yet he was a

functionary of that government and a model marshal of nobility, and

when he drove about he always wore the cockade of office and the cap

with the red band. He considered human life only tolerable abroad, and

went abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same time he

carried on a complex and improved system of agriculture in Russia, and

with extreme interest followed everything and knew everything that was

being done in Russia. He considered the Russian peasant as occupying a

stage of development intermediate between the ape and the man, and at

the same time in the local assemblies no one was readier to shake hands

with the peasants and listen to their opinion. He believed neither in

God nor the devil, but was much concerned about the question of the

improvement of the clergy and the maintenance of their revenues, and

took special trouble to keep up the church in his village.

On the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates of

complete liberty for women, and especially their right to labor. But he

lived with his wife on such terms that their affectionate childless

home life was the admiration of everyone, and arranged his wife’s life

so that she did nothing and could do nothing but share her husband’s

efforts that her time should pass as happily and as agreeably as

possible.

If it had not been a characteristic of Levin’s to put the most

favorable interpretation on people, Sviazhsky’s character would have

presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said to himself,

“a fool or a knave,” and everything would have seemed clear. But he

could not say “a fool,” because Sviazhsky was unmistakably clever, and

moreover, a highly cultivated man, who was exceptionally modest over

his culture. There was not a subject he knew nothing of. But he did not

display his knowledge except when he was compelled to do so. Still less

could Levin say that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an

honest, good-hearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly,

and perseveringly at his work; he was held in high honor by everyone

about him, and certainly he had never consciously done, and was indeed

incapable of doing, anything base.

Levin tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and looked

at him and his life as at a living enigma.

Levin and he were very friendly, and so Levin used to venture to sound

Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view of life;

but it was always in vain. Every time Levin tried to penetrate beyond

the outer chambers of Sviazhsky’s mind, which were hospitably open to

all, he noticed that Sviazhsky was slightly disconcerted; faint signs

of alarm were visible in his eyes, as though he were afraid Levin would

understand him, and he would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.

Just now, since his disenchantment with farming, Levin was particularly

glad to stay with Sviazhsky. Apart from the fact that the sight of this

happy and affectionate couple, so pleased with themselves and everyone

else, and their well-ordered home had always a cheering effect on

Levin, he felt a longing, now that he was so dissatisfied with his own

life, to get at that secret in Sviazhsky that gave him such clearness,

definiteness, and good courage in life. Moreover, Levin knew that at

Sviazhsky’s he should meet the landowners of the neighborhood, and it

was particularly interesting for him just now to hear and take part in

those rural conversations concerning crops, laborers’ wages, and so on,

which, he was aware, are conventionally regarded as something very low,

but which seemed to him just now to constitute the one subject of

importance. “It was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom,

and it may not be of importance in England. In both cases the

conditions of agriculture are firmly established; but among us now,

when everything has been turned upside down and is only just taking

shape, the question what form these conditions will take is the one

question of importance in Russia,” thought Levin.

The shooting turned out to be worse than Levin had expected. The marsh

was dry and there were no grouse at all. He walked about the whole day

and only brought back three birds, but to make up for that—he brought

back, as he always did from shooting, an excellent appetite, excellent

spirits, and that keen, intellectual mood which with him always

accompanied violent physical exertion. And while out shooting, when he

seemed to be thinking of nothing at all, suddenly the old man and his

family kept coming back to his mind, and the impression of them seemed

to claim not merely his attention, but the solution of some question

connected with them.

In the evening at tea, two landowners who had come about some business

connected with a wardship were of the party, and the interesting

conversation Levin had been looking forward to sprang up.

Levin was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was obliged

to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting

opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather

short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get a

solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but

he had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of

embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the

sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put

on, as he fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape

of a trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite

of the bosom’s being very white, or just because it was very white,

deprived Levin of the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably

mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account,

and felt that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look at

it; but he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of the

low-necked bodice having been made. It seemed to Levin that he had

deceived someone, that he ought to explain something, but that to

explain it was impossible, and for that reason he was continually

blushing, was ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the

pretty sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe

this, and kept purposely drawing her into the conversation.

“You say,” she said, pursuing the subject that had been started, “that

my husband cannot be interested in what’s Russian. It’s quite the

contrary; he is always in cheerful spirits abroad, but not as he is

here. Here, he feels in his proper place. He has so much to do, and he

has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh, you’ve not

been to see our school, have you?”

“I’ve seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn’t it?”

“Yes; that’s Nastia’s work,” she said, indicating her sister.

“You teach in it yourself?” asked Levin, trying to look above the open

neck, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction he should

see it.

“Yes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we have a

first-rate schoolmistress now. And we’ve started gymnastic exercises.”

“No, thank you, I won’t have any more tea,” said Levin, and conscious

of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the conversation, he

got up, blushing. “I hear a very interesting conversation,” he added,

and walked to the other end of the table, where Sviazhsky was sitting

with the two gentlemen of the neighborhood. Sviazhsky was sitting

sideways, with one elbow on the table, and a cup in one hand, while

with the other hand he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and

let it drop again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black

eyes were looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray

whiskers, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks. The

gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to Levin that

Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman’s complaints, which would at

once demolish his whole contention, but that in his position he could

not give utterance to this answer, and listened, not without pleasure,

to the landowner’s comic speeches.