Chapter IV
Alexey Alexandrovitch, after meeting
Vronsky on his own steps, drove, as he had intended, to the Italian
opera. He sat through two acts there, and saw every one he had
wanted to see. On returning home, he carefully scrutinized the
hat-stand, and noticing that there was not a military overcoat
there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his
usual habits, he did not go to bed, he walked up and down his study
till three o’clock in the morning. The feeling of furious anger
with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to
the one stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in
her own home, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his
request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his
threat—obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the
difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would
do it, and now he must carry out his threat. Countess Lidia
Ivanovna had hinted that this was the best way out of his position,
and of late the obtaining of divorces had been brought to such
perfection that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a possibility of
overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never come singly,
and the affairs of the reorganization of the native tribes, and of
the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province, had brought
such official worries upon Alexey Alexandrovitch that he had been
of late in a continual condition of extreme irritability.
He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury,
growing in a sort of vast, arithmetical progression, reached its
highest limits in the morning. He dressed in haste, and as though
carrying his cup full of wrath, and fearing to spill any over,
fearing to lose with his wrath the energy necessary for the
interview with his wife, he went into her room directly he heard
she was up.
Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well,
was amazed at his appearance when he went in to her. His brow was
lowering, and his eyes stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes;
his mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his
gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and
firmness such as his wife had never seen in him. He went into her
room, and without greeting her, walked straight up to her
writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.
“What do you want?” she cried.
“Your lover’s letters,” he said.
“They’re not here,” she said, shutting the drawer;
but from that action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly
pushing away her hand, he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he
knew she used to put her most important papers. She tried to pull
the portfolio away, but he pushed her back.
“Sit down! I have to speak to you,” he said,
putting the portfolio under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly
with his elbow that his shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated,
she gazed at him in silence.
“I told you that I would not allow you to receive
your lover in this house.”
“I had to see him to . . .”
She stopped, not finding a reason.
“I do not enter into the details of why a woman
wants to see her lover.”
“I meant, I only...” she said, flushing hotly. This
coarseness of his angered her, and gave her courage. “Surely you
must feel how easy it is for you to insult me?” she said.
“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted,
but to tell a thief he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un
fait.”bd
“This cruelty is something new I did not know in
you.”
“You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife
liberty, giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on
the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?”
“It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to
know!” Anna cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was
going away.
“No!” he shrieked in his shrill voice, which
pitched a note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching
her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from the
bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her
place.
“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base
is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your
husband’s bread!”
She bowed her head. She did not say what she had
said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and
her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt
all the justice of his words, and only said softly:
“You cannot describe my position as worse than I
feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?”
“What am I saying it for? what for?” he went on, as
angrily. “That you may know that since you have not carried out my
wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures
to put an end to this state of things.”
“Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,” she said;
and again, at the thought of death near at hand and now desired,
tears came into her eyes.
“It will end sooner than you and your lover have
planned! If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion . .
.”
“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won’t say it’s not
generous, but it’s not like a gentleman to strike any one who’s
down.”
“Yes, you only think of yourself! But the
sufferings of a man who was your husband have no interest for you.
You don’t care that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff . .
. thuff . . .”
Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that
he stammered, and was utterly unable to articulate the word
“suffering.” In the end he pronounced it “thuffering.” She wanted
to laugh, and was immediately ashamed that anything could amuse her
at such a moment. And for the first time, for an instant, she felt
for him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what
could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was
silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less
shrill voice, emphasizing random words that had no
significance.
“I came to tell you...” he said.
She glanced at him. “No, it was my fancy,” she
thought, recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over
the word “suffering.” “No; can a man with those dull eyes, with
that self-satisfied complacency, feel anything?”
“I cannot change anything,” she whispered.
“I have come to tell you that I am going to-morrow
to Moscow, and shall not return again to this house, and you will
receive notice of what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands
I shall intrust the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to
my sister’s,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling
what he had meant to say about his son.
“You take Seryozha to hurt me,” she said, looking
at him from under her brows. “You do not love him.... Leave me
Seryozha!”
“Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son,
because he is associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But
still I shall take him. Good-bye!”
And he was going away, but now she detained
him.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Seryozha!” she
whispered once more. “I have nothing else to say. Leave Seryozha
till my ... I shall soon be confined; leave him!”
Alexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and,
snatching his hand from her, he went out of the room without a
word.