Chapter 12

Connected with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in marriage improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch and Stepan Arkadyevitch carefully drew him off them.

When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did not follow them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and by public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar.

‘No, I don’t smoke,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.

‘I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of things,’ he said, and would have gone on to the drawing room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch.

‘You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?’ said Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him. ‘Vasya Pryatchnikov,’ he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, ‘they told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.’

Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sore spot. He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity:

‘What did Pryatchnikov fight about?’

‘His wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!’

‘Ah!’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing room.

‘How glad I am you have come,’ Dolly said with a frightened smile, meeting him in the outer drawing room. ‘I must talk to you. Let’s sit here.’

Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly.

‘It’s fortunate,’ said he, ‘especially as I was meaning to ask you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.’

Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend.

‘Alexey Alexandrovitch,’ she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the face, ‘I asked you about Anna, you made me no answer. How is she?’

‘She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna,’ replied Alexey Alexandrovitch, not looking at her.

‘Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right…but I love Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? what fault do you find with her?’

Alexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his head.

‘I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?’ he said, not looking her in the face, but eyeing with displeasure Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing room.

‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!’ Dolly said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sleeve. ‘We shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please.’

Dolly’s agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got up and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.

‘I don’t, I don’t believe it!’ Dolly said, trying to catch his glance that avoided her.

‘One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna,’ said he, with an emphasis on the word ‘facts.’

‘But what has she done?’ said Darya Alexandrovna. ‘What precisely has she done?’

‘She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That’s what she has done,’ said he.

‘No, no, it can’t be! No, for God’s sake, you are mistaken,’ said Dolly, putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.

‘It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs her husband of the fact—informs him that eight years of her life, and a son, all that’s a mistake, and that she wants to begin life again,’ he said angrily, with a snort.

‘Anna and sin—I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!’

‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, now looking straight into Dolly’s kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite of himself, ‘I would give a great deal for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt of everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy.’

He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in the innocence of her friend began to totter.

‘Oh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are resolved on a divorce?’

‘I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me to do.’

‘Nothing else to do, nothing else to do…’ she replied, with tears in her eyes. ‘Oh no, don’t say nothing else to do!’ she said.

‘What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other—in loss, in death—bear one’s trouble in peace, but that one must act,’ said he, as though guessing her thought. ‘One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can’t live a trois.’

‘I understand, I quite understand that,’ said Dolly, and her head sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. ‘But wait a little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?’

‘I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great deal,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him with all her heart. ‘That was what I did indeed when she herself made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would not regard the slightest request—that she should observe decorum,’ he said, getting heated. ‘One may save anyone who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what’s to be done?’

‘Anything, only not divorce!’ answered Darya Alexandrovna

‘But what is anything?’

‘No, it is awful! She will be no one’s wife, she will be lost!’

‘What can I do?’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife’s last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. ‘I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,’ he said, getting up.

‘No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself…. But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on…. I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!’

Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice:—

‘Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!’ he said, with tones of hatred in his voice.

‘Love those that hate you….’ Darya Alexandrovna whispered timorously.

Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but it could not be applied to his case.

‘Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to bear in his own grief!’ And regaining his self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch quietly took leave and went away.

Chapter 13

When they rose from table, Levin would have liked to follow Kitty into the drawing room; but he was afraid she might dislike this, as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Kitty, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in the drawing room.

He did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he had made her—always to think well of all men, and to like everyone always. The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov saw a sort of special principle, called by him the choral principle. Levin did not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a special attitude of his own, both admitting and not admitting the significance of the Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply trying to reconcile and soften their differences. He was not in the least interested in what he said himself, and even less so in what they said; all he wanted was that they and everyone should be happy and contented. He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt the eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help turning round. She was standing in the doorway with Shtcherbatsky, looking at him.

‘I thought you were going towards the piano,’ said he, going up to her. ‘That’s something I miss in the country—music.’

‘No; we only came to fetch you and thank you,’ she said, rewarding him with a smile that was like a gift, ‘for coming. What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know.’

‘Yes; that’s true,’ said Levin; ‘it generally happens that one argues warmly simply because one can’t make out what one’s opponent wants to prove.’

Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his opponent liked and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at last what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his position. He tried to say this.

She knitted her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to illustrate his meaning, she understood at once.

‘I know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is precious to him, then one can…’

She had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Levin smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of the most complex ideas.

Shtcherbatsky moved away from them, and Kitty, going up to a card table, sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing diverging circles over the new green cloth.

They began again on the subject that had been started at dinner— the liberty and occupations of women. Levin was of the opinion of Darya Alexandrovna that a girl who did not marry should find a woman’s duties in a family. He supported this view by the fact that no family can get on without women to help; that in every family, poor or rich, there are and must be nurses, either relations or hired.

‘No,’ said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes; ‘a girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she herself…’

At the hint he understood her.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, yes, yes—you’re right; you’re right!’

And he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner of the liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an old maid’s existence and its humiliation in Kitty’s heart; and loving her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up his arguments.

A silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness.

‘Ah! I’ve scribbled all over the table!’ she said, and, laying down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.

‘What! shall I be left alone—without her?’ he thought with horror, and he took the chalk. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, sitting down to the table. ‘I’ve long wanted to ask you one thing.’

He looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.

‘Please, ask it.’

‘Here,’ he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant, ‘When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?’ There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, ‘Is it what I think?’

‘I understand,’ she said, flushing a little.

‘What is this word?’ he said, pointing to the n that stood for never.

‘It means never,’ she said; ‘but that’s not true!’

He quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, t, i, c, n, a, d.

Dolly was completely comforted in the depression caused by her conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of the two figures: Kitty with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking upwards at Levin, and his handsome figure bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant, ‘Then I could not answer differently.’

He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.

‘Only then?’

‘Yes,’ her smile answered.

‘And n…and now?’ he asked.

‘Well, read this. I’ll tell you what I should like—should like so much!’ she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h. This meant, ‘If you could forget and forgive what happened.’

He snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, ‘I have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you.’

She glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.

‘I understand,’ she said in a whisper.

He sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and without asking him, ‘Is it this?’ took the chalk and at once answered.

For a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he wrote three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, ‘Yes.’

‘You’re playing secretaire?’ said the old prince. ‘But we must really be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater.’

Levin got up and escorted Kitty to the door.

In their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.