Chapter 25

Feeling that the reconciliation was complete, Anna set eagerly to work in the morning preparing for their departure. Though it was not settled whether they should go on Monday or Tuesday, as they had each given way to the other, Anna packed busily, feeling absolutely indifferent whether they went a day earlier or later. She was standing in her room over an open box, taking things out of it, when he came in to see her earlier than usual, dressed to go out.

‘I’m going off at once to see maman; she can send me the money by Yegorov. And I shall be ready to go tomorrow,’ he said.

Though she was in such a good mood, the thought of his visit to his mother’s gave her a pang.

‘No, I shan’t be ready by then myself,’ she said; and at once reflected, ‘so then it was possible to arrange to do as I wished.’ ‘No, do as you meant to do. Go into the dining room, I’m coming directly. It’s only to turn out those things that aren’t wanted,’ she said, putting something more on the heap of frippery that lay in Annushka’s arms.

Vronsky was eating his beefsteak when she came into the diningroom.

‘You wouldn’t believe how distasteful these rooms have become to me,’ she said, sitting down beside him to her coffee. ‘There’s nothing more awful than these chambres garnies. There’s no individuality in them, no soul. These clocks, and curtains, and, worst of all, the wallpapers—they’re a nightmare. I think of Vozdvizhenskoe as the promised land. You’re not sending the horses off yet?’

‘No, they will come after us. Where are you going to?’

‘I wanted to go to Wilson’s to take some dresses to her. So it’s really to be tomorrow?’ she said in a cheerful voice; but suddenly her face changed.

Vronsky’s valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing out of the way in Vronsky’s getting a telegram, but he said, as though anxious to conceal something from her, that the receipt was in his study, and he turned hurriedly to her.

‘By tomorrow, without fail, I will finish it all.’

‘From whom is the telegram?’ she asked, not hearing him.

‘From Stiva,’ he answered reluctantly.

‘Why didn’t you show it to me? What secret can there be between Stiva and me?’

Vronsky called the valet back, and told him to bring the telegram.

‘I didn’t want to show it to you, because Stiva has such a passion for telegraphing: why telegraph when nothing is settled?’

‘About the divorce?’

‘Yes; but he says he has not been able to come at anything yet. He has promised a decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it.’

With trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and read what Vronsky had told her. At the end was added: ‘Little hope; but I will do everything possible and impossible.’

‘I said yesterday that it’s absolutely nothing to me when I get, or whether I never get, a divorce,’ she said, flushing crimson. ‘There was not the slightest necessity to hide it from me.’ ‘So he may hide and does hide his correspondence with women from me,’ she thought.

‘Yashvin meant to come this morning with Voytov,’ said Vronsky; ‘I believe he’s won from Pyevtsov all and more than he can pay, about sixty thousand.’

‘No,’ she said, irritated by his so obviously showing by this change of subject that he was irritated, ‘why did you suppose that this news would affect me so, that you must even try to hide it? I said I don’t want to consider it, and I should have liked you to care as little about it as I do.’

‘I care about it because I like definiteness,’ he said.

‘Definiteness is not in the form but the love,’ she said, more and more irritated, not by his words, but by the tone of cool composure in which he spoke. ‘What do you want it for?’

‘My God! love again,’ he thought, frowning.

‘Oh, you know what for; for your sake and your children’s in the future.’

‘There won’t be children in the future.’

‘That’s a great pity,’ he said.

‘You want it for the children’s sake, but you don’t think of me?’ she said, quite forgetting or not having heard that he had said, ‘for your sake and the children’s.’

The question of the possibility of having children had long been a subject of dispute and irritation to her. His desire to have children she interpreted as a proof he did not prize her beauty.

‘Oh, I said: for your sake. Above all for your sake,’ he repeated, frowning as though in pain, ‘because I am certain that the greater part of your irritability comes from the indefiniteness of the position.’

‘Yes, now he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me is apparent,’ she thought, not hearing his words, but watching with terror the cold, cruel judge who looked mocking her out of his eyes.

‘The cause is not that,’ she said, ‘and, indeed, I don’t see how the cause of my irritability, as you call it, can be that I am completely in your power. What indefiniteness is there in the position? on the contrary…’

‘I am very sorry that you don’t care to understand,’ he interrupted, obstinately anxious to give utterance to his thought. ‘The indefiniteness consists in your imagining that I am free.’

‘On that score you can set your mind quite at rest,’ she said, and turning away from him, she began drinking her coffee.

She lifted her cup, with her little finger held apart, and put it to her lips. After drinking a few sips she glanced at him, and by his expression, she saw clearly that he was repelled by her hand, and her gesture, and the sound made by her lips.

‘I don’t care in the least what your mother thinks, and what match she wants to make for you,’ she said, putting the cup down with a shaking hand.

‘But we are not talking about that.’

‘Yes, that’s just what we are talking about. And let me tell you that a heartless woman, whether she’s old or not old, your mother or anyone else, is of no consequence to me, and I would not consent to know her.’

‘Anna, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother.’

‘A woman whose heart does not tell her where her son’s happiness and honor lie has no heart.’

‘I repeat my request that you will not speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I respect,’ he said, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.

She did not answer. Looking intently at him, at his face, his hands, she recalled all the details of their reconciliation the previous day, and his passionate caresses. ‘There, just such caresses he has lavished, and will lavish, and longs to lavish on other women!’ she thought.

‘You don’t love your mother. That’s all talk, and talk, and talk!’ she said, looking at him with hatred in her eyes.

‘Even if so, you must…’

‘Must decide, and I have decided,’ she said, and she would have gone away, but at that moment Yashvin walked into the room. Anna greeted him and remained.

Why, when there was a tempest in her soul, and she felt she was standing at a turning point in her life, which might have fearful consequences—why, at that minute, she had to keep up appearances before an outsider, who sooner or later must know it all—she did not know. But at once quelling the storm within her, she sat down and began talking to their guest.

‘Well, how are you getting on? Has your debt been paid you?’ she asked Yashvin.

‘Oh, pretty fair; I fancy I shan’t get it all, but I shall get a good half. And when are you off?’ said Yashvin, looking at Vronsky, and unmistakably guessing at a quarrel.

‘The day after tomorrow, I think,’ said Vronsky.

‘You’ve been meaning to go so long, though.’

‘But now it’s quite decided,’ said Anna, looking Vronsky straight in the face with a look which told him not to dream of the possibility of reconciliation.

‘Don’t you feel sorry for that unlucky Pyevtsov?’ she went on, talking to Yashvin.

‘I’ve never asked myself the question, Anna Arkadyevna, whether I’m sorry for him or not. You see, all my fortune’s here’—he touched his breast pocket—‘and just now I’m a wealthy man. But today I’m going to the club, and I may come out a beggar. You see, whoever sits down to play with me—he wants to leave me without a shirt to my back, and so do I him. And so we fight it out, and that’s the pleasure of it.’

‘Well, but suppose you were married,’ said Anna, ‘how would it be for your wife?’

Yashvin laughed.

‘That’s why I’m not married, and never mean to be.’

‘And Helsingfors?’ said Vronsky, entering into the conversation and glancing at Anna’s smiling face. Meeting his eyes, Anna’s face instantly took a coldly severe expression as though she were saying to him: ‘It’s not forgotten. It’s all the same.’

‘Were you really in love?’ she said to Yashvin.

‘Oh heavens! ever so many times! But you see, some men can play but only so that they can always lay down their cards when the hour of a rendezvous comes, while I can take up love, but only so as not to be late for my cards in the evening. That’s how I manage things.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that, but the real thing.’ She would have said Helsingfors, but would not repeat the word used by Vronsky.

Voytov, who was buying the horse, came in. Anna got up and went out of the room.

Before leaving the house, Vronsky went into her room. She would have pretended to be looking for something on the table, but ashamed of making a pretense, she looked straight in his face with cold eyes.

‘What do you want?’ she asked in French.

‘To get the guarantee for Gambetta, I’ve sold him,’ he said, in a tone which said more clearly than words, ‘I’ve no time for discussing things, and it would lead to nothing.’

‘I’m not to blame in any way,’ he thought. ‘If she will punish herself, tant pis pour elle.’ But as he was going he fancied that she said something, and his heart suddenly ached with pity for her.

‘Eh, Anna?’ he queried.

‘I said nothing,’ she answered just as coldly and calmly.

‘Oh, nothing, tant pis then,’ he thought, feeling cold again, and he turned and went out. As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the looking glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that day he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and begged him not to go in to her.

Chapter 26

Never before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time. And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came into the room for the guarantee?—to look at her, see her heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that face of callous composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because he loved another woman—that was clear.

And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew more and more exasperated.

‘I won’t prevent you,’ he might say. ‘You can go where you like. You were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I’ll give it to you. How many roubles do you want?’

All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them.

‘But didn’t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and sincere man? Haven’t I despaired for nothing many times already?’ she said to herself afterwards.

All that day, except for the visit to Wilson’s, which occupied two hours, Anna spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message for him that her head ached, she said to herself, ‘If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I’m to do!…’

In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then everything was over.

And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him.

Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. ‘How could I say such cruel things to her?’ he would say. ‘How could I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She is….’ Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered, commingled, and all was darkness. ‘Death!’ she thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. ‘No, anything—only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me! This has been before and will pass,’ she said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his room.

He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back, and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite lost consciousness.

In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had recurred several times in her dreams, even before her connection with Vronsky. A little old man with unkempt beard was doing something bent down over some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she, as she always did in this nightmare (it was what made the horror of it), felt that this peasant was taking no notice of her, but was doing something horrible with the iron— over her. And she waked up in a cold sweat.

When she got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in mist.

‘There was a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I had a headache, and he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we’re going away; I must see him and get ready for the journey,’ she said to herself. And learning that he was in his study, she went down to him. As she passed through the drawing room she heard a carriage stop at the entrance, and looking out of the window she saw the carriage, from which a young girl in a lilac hat was leaning out giving some direction to the footman ringing the bell. After a parley in the hall, someone came upstairs, and Vronsky’s steps could be heard passing the drawing room. He went rapidly downstairs. Anna went again to the window. She saw him come out onto the steps without his hat and go up to the carriage. The young girl in the lilac hat handed him a parcel. Vronsky, smiling, said something to her. The carriage drove away, he ran rapidly upstairs again.

The mists that had shrouded everything in her soul parted suddenly. The feelings of yesterday pierced the sick heart with a fresh pang. She could not understand now how she could have lowered herself by spending a whole day with him in his house. She went into his room to announce her determination.

‘That was Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They came and brought me the money and the deeds from maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday. How is your head, better?’ he said quietly, not wishing to see and to understand the gloomy and solemn expression of her face.

She looked silently, intently at him, standing in the middle of the room. He glanced at her, frowned for a moment, and went on reading a letter. She turned, and went deliberately out of the room. He still might have turned her back, but she had reached the door, he was still silent, and the only sound audible was the rustling of the note paper as he turned it.

‘Oh, by the way,’ he said at the very moment she was in the doorway, ‘we’re going tomorrow for certain, aren’t we?’

‘You, but not I,’ she said, turning round to him.

‘Anna, we can’t go on like this…’

‘You, but not I,’ she repeated.

‘This is getting unbearable!’

‘You…you will be sorry for this,’ she said, and went out.

Frightened by the desperate expression with which these words were uttered, he jumped up and would have run after her, but on second thoughts he sat down and scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar—as he thought it—threat of something vague exasperated him. ‘I’ve tried everything,’ he thought; ‘the only thing left is not to pay attention,’ and he began to get ready to drive into town, and again to his mother’s to get her signature to the deeds.

She heard the sound of his steps about the study and the dining room. At the drawing room he stood still. But he did not turn in to see her, he merely gave an order that the horse should be given to Voytov if he came while he was away. Then she heard the carriage brought round, the door opened, and he came out again. But he went back into the porch again, and someone was running upstairs. It was the valet running up for his gloves that had been forgotten. She went to the window and saw him take the gloves without looking, and touching the coachman on the back he said something to him. Then without looking up at the window he settled himself in his usual attitude in the carriage, with his legs crossed, and drawing on his gloves he vanished round the corner.