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FIFTY-SEVEN

 

Chapter 21

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FROM the moment that Karenin understood from his conversations with Betsy and Oblonsky that all that was asked of him was that he should leave his wife in peace and not trouble her with his presence and that his wife herself wished this, he felt so lost that he could decide nothing for himself, did not know what he now wanted, and having placed himself in the hands of those who with so much pleasure busied themselves with his affairs, he consented to everything. Only after Anna had left his house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she was to dine with him or alone, did he for the first time clearly understand his position, and he was horror-struck at it.

 

What was most painful in his situation was his inability to reconcile his past life with the present state of things. It was not the past when he lived happily with his wife that perplexed him, the transition from the past to the consciousness of his wife’s infidelity he had already painfully passed through; that had been trying, but it was comprehensible. Had his wife then, after confessing her infidelity, left him, he would have been grieved and unhappy, but he would not have felt himself to be in such an unintelligible impasse as now. He could not at all reconcile his recent forgiveness, his emotion and love for his sick wife and for another man’s baby, with the present position: with the fact that, as if in reward for all that, he was now left alone, disgraced, ridiculed, not wanted by anyone and despised by all.

 

The first two days after his wife’s departure Karenin received petitioners, and his private secretary, attended Committee Meetings, and went to the dining-room to dinner as usual. Without rendering account to himself why he did it, during those two days he tried with all his might to appear calm and even indifferent. When answering questions as to what should be done with Anna’s rooms and belongings, he made the greatest efforts to seem like a man by whom what had taken place had not been unforeseen, and who did not consider it extraordinary. In this he succeeded: no one could have observed in him any signs of despair. But on the third day, when Korney brought him a bill from a firm of milliners which Anna had forgotten to pay, and informed him that the shopman had come in person, he had him brought in.

 

‘Excuse me, your Excellency, for taking the liberty of troubling you! But if you wish us to address ourselves to her Excellency, please be so good as to let us have her address!’

 

Karenin appeared to be considering, when suddenly he turned round and sat down at the table. Dropping his head on his hands he sat thus for a long time, tried several times to speak, but stopped short.

 

Comprehending his master’s emotion, Korney asked the assistant to come again another time. Karenin, left alone, realized that he could not any longer maintain an appearance of firmness and calm. He ordered the carriage that was waiting to be unharnessed, said that he would receive no one, and did not appear at dinner.

 

He felt that he could not bear the general pressure of contempt and harshness which he had clearly seen in the faces of that shop-assistant and of Korney, and of every one without exception whom he had met during those two days. He felt that he could not divert from himself people’s hatred, because that hatred was caused not by his badness (had it been so he might have tried to be better) but by his disgraceful and repulsive misery. He knew that for that reason — because his heart was rent in pieces — they would be pitiless toward him. He felt that people would destroy him, as dogs kill a tortured dog that is whining with pain. He knew that the only way of escape from men was to hide his wounds from them. He had unconsciously tried to do so for two days, and now felt himself unable to continue the unequal struggle.

 

His despair was heightened by the consciousness that he was quite alone in his sorrow. Not only was there not a soul in Petersburg to whom he could express what he felt, who would pity him, not as a high official, not as a member of a society, but simply as a suffering human being — but nowhere at all had he any such friends.

 

Karenin had been left an orphan. There were two of them: he had a brother. They could not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexis Alexandrovich was ten years old. They had small means. Their uncle, Karenin, a high official and at one time a favourite with the late Emperor, brought them up.

 

Having taken a medal on finishing, both at school and at the university, Karenin, by his uncle’s help, started at once on a conspicuous path in the Civil Service, and from that time devoted himself entirely to official ambition. Neither at school nor at the university, nor afterwards, in the Service, did he enter into friendly relations with anyone. His brother was nearest to his heart, but he served under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and always lived abroad, where he died soon after Alexis Alexandrovich’s marriage.

 

At the time when he was Governor of a Province, Anna’s aunt, a rich provincial lady, introduced him, who though not a young man was a young Governor, to her niece, and contrived to put him in such a position that he was obliged either to propose or leave the town. Karenin hesitated long. At that time there were as many reasons for the step as against it, but there was no such decisive reason as to make him neglect his rule of refraining when in doubt. But Anna’s aunt intimated to him, through an acquaintance, that he had already compromised the girl, and that he was in honour bound to propose to her. He proposed, and devoted to his betrothed and to his wife all the feeling of which he was capable.

 

His attachment to Anna excluded from his soul any need he had felt for affectionate relations with other persons; and now, among all his acquaintances, he had no intimate friend. He was connected with many people, but had friendly relations with none. He knew many persons whom he could invite to dinner, could ask to take part in anything he was interested in or to use their influence for some petitioner, and with whom he could frankly discuss the actions of other men and of the Government; but his relations with these persons were confined to a sphere strictly limited by custom and habit from which it was impossible to escape. There was a fellow-student at the university with whom he had subsequently become friendly, and to whom he might have spoken of his grief; but that fellow-student was now curator in a distant educational district. Of the Petersburg people the most intimate and most likely were the doctor, and Michael Vasilich Slyudin, his private secretary.

 

Slyudin was an unaffected, intelligent, kindly and moral man, who, Karenin felt, had a personal liking for himself; but their five years’ official activity together had built a barrier in the way of any intimate talk between them.

 

Once Karenin, having finished signing documents, remained silent a long time, glancing now and then at Michael Vasilich, and tried several times but was unable to begin speaking. He had prepared a phrase: ‘You have heard of my misfortune?’ but it ended by his saying merely the usual, ‘Then you will get this ready for me?’ and letting him go.

 

The other person, the doctor, was also well-inclined toward Karenin, but they had long ago come to a tacit understanding that they were both overwhelmed with work and had no time to spare.

 

Of his women friends, including the principal one among them, the Countess Lydia Ivanovna, Karenin did not think at all. All women, as such, appeared to him dreadful and repulsive.

 

Chapter 22

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KARENIN had forgotten the Countess Lydia Ivanovna, but she had not forgotten him. At that most painful time of lonely despair she came to his house and entered his study unannounced. She found him in the posture in which he had long sat, resting his head on his hands.

 

‘J’ai forcé la consigne! [I’ve forced my way in!]’ she said as she entered with hurried steps, breathing heavily from her rapid movement and from excitement. ‘I have heard everything. Alexis Alexandrovich, my dear friend!’ she continued, firmly clasping his hand in both hers and gazing with her beautiful dreamy eyes into his.

 

Karenin rose frowning, and disengaging his hand moved a chair toward her.

 

‘If you please, Countess! — I do not receive because I am ill,’ he said, and his lips trembled.

 

‘My dear friend!’ repeated the Countess with her eyes fixed on him; and suddenly the inner corners of her eyebrows rose, forming a triangle on her forehead, and her plain yellow face grew still plainer; but Karenin felt that she was sorry for him and ready to cry. He was moved, and seizing her plump hand began kissing it.

 

‘My dear friend!’ she repeated in a voice broken by emotion, ‘you must not give way to sorrow. Your sorrow is great, but you will find consolation.’

 

‘I am broken, I am stricken! I am no longer a man!’ said Karenin, releasing her hand but continuing to gaze into her tearful eyes. ‘My position is terrible because I cannot find support anywhere, cannot find it even in myself.’

 

‘You will find support; do not seek it in me, though I want you to believe in my friendship,’ she replied with a sigh. ‘Love is the only support, that love which He has bequeathed us! His yoke is easy,’ she went on with that ecstatic look he knew so well. ‘He will support you and help you!’

 

Though it was evident that she was touched by her own lofty sentiments, and though her words proceeded from that new, ecstatic, mystic influence which had lately spread through Petersburg and which Karenin had considered superfluous, it was pleasant to him to hear them now.

 

‘I am weak — I am done for! I did not foresee it, and don’t understand it now!’

 

‘My dear friend!’ Lydia Ivanovna said once more.

 

‘It is not the loss of what no longer exists, it is not that,’ continued Karenin. ‘I don’t regret that, but I cannot help feeling ashamed before others of the position I am in. That is wrong, but I can’t help it, I can’t.’

 

‘It is not you who have performed that great act of forgiveness which fills me and everybody else with rapture, but He that dwells within your heart,’ said the Countess Lydia Ivanovna, turning up her eyes ecstatically, ‘and therefore you must not be ashamed of your action.’

 

Karenin frowned, and bending his hands backward began cracking his fingers.

 

‘One must know all the details,’ he said in a high-pitched voice. ‘Human strength has its limits, Countess, and I have reached the limits of mine. All day long I have had to take domestic decisions resulting from’ (he emphasized the word ‘resulting’) ‘my new solitary position. The servants, the governess, the bills . . . These petty flames have burnt me, and I was unable to bear it. At dinner . . . yesterday, I very nearly left the table. I could not bear the way my son looked at me. He did not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could not endure his look. He was afraid of looking at me. But this is not all. . . .’

 

Karenin was going to mention the bill that had been brought him, but his voice shook and he paused. He could not think of that bill, made out on blue paper, for a bonnet and ribbons, without pitying himself.

 

‘I understand, dear friend,’ said the Countess Lydia Ivanovna. ‘I understand it all. Not in me will you find help and consolation, though I have come to help you if I can. If I could take all those trivial humiliating cares off your shoulders? . . . I see that a woman’s word, a woman’s direction, is wanted. Will you entrust it to me?’

 

Karenin silently and gratefully pressed her hand.

 

‘We will look after Serezha together. I am not good in practical matters, still I will undertake it — I will be your housekeeper. Do not thank me. I am not doing it of myself. . . .’

 

‘I cannot help thanking you!’

 

‘But, my dear friend, do not give way to that feeling you were speaking about — of being ashamed of that which is the utmost height of Christianity! “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted,” and you must not thank me! You must thank Him, and ask Him for help. In Him alone you will find peace, comfort, salvation, and love!’ And raising her eyes to Heaven she began to pray, as Karenin understood from her silence.

 

Karenin listened to her now, and those very expressions, which formerly had seemed to him if not disagreeable at least superfluous, now seemed natural and comforting. He did not like that new ecstatic influence. He was a believer, interested in religion chiefly from a political point of view, and this new teaching which allowed itself some novel interpretation, just because it paved the way for disputes and analyses, was repugnant to him on principle. He had formerly regarded the new teaching with coldness and even hostility, and had never discussed it with the Countess Lydia Ivanovna (who was carried away by it), but had carefully and silently evaded her challenges. Now for the first time he listened to her words with pleasure and without mental rejoinder.

 

‘I am very, very grateful to you, both for your actions and your words,’ said he when she had finished praying.

 

The Countess Lydia Ivanovna once more pressed both the hands of her friend.

 

‘Now I am going to act,’ she said, smiling and wiping the traces of tears from her face. ‘I am going to see Serezha. Only in extreme cases will I apply to you,’ and she rose and went out.

 

The Countess went to Serezha’s part of the house and there, watering the frightened boy’s cheeks with her tears, told him that his father was a saint and that his mother was dead.

 

The Countess kept her word. She really took upon herself the care of arranging and managing Karenin’s household, but she had not exaggerated when she said she was not good at practical matters. None of her directions could be carried out without alteration, and the alterations were made by Karenin’s valet, Korney, who now imperceptibly directed the whole household. Quietly and tactfully, while helping his master dress, he would inform him of anything that was necessary. But nevertheless Lydia Ivanovna’s help was in the highest degree effective, for it gave Karenin the moral support of the consciousness of her affection and respect, and especially of the fact that she had nearly converted him to Christianity (as it consoled her to believe); that is to say, she had changed him from an apathetic, indolent believer into a fervent and firm adherent of that new interpretation of the Christian teaching which had lately spread in Petersburg. For Karenin it was easy to accept that interpretation. Like Lydia Ivanovna and others who shared these views, Karenin was quite devoid of that deep imaginative faculty of the soul by which ideas aroused by the imagination become so vivid that they must be brought into conformity with other ideas and with reality. He saw nothing impossible or incongruous in the notion that death which exists for the unbeliever did not exist for him, and that as he possessed complete faith — of the measure of which he himself was the judge — there was no longer any sin in his soul, and he already experienced complete salvation here on earth.

 

It is true that the frivolity and falseness of this view of his faith were vaguely felt by Karenin. He knew that when, without thinking that his forgiveness was the act of a Higher Power, he had surrendered to his faith, he had experienced more joy than when, as now, he was perpetually thinking that Christ lived in his soul, and that while signing documents he was fulfilling His will. But it was absolutely necessary for Karenin to think thus; it was so necessary for him in his humiliation to possess at least this imaginary exaltation, from the height of which he, the despised of all, was able to despise others, that he clung to this mock salvation as if it were the real thing.

 

Chapter 23

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THE Countess Lydia Ivanovna when quite a young and ecstatic girl was married to a rich, aristocratic, very good-natured, and most jovial profligate. About two months after their marriage her husband left her, and only answered her ecstatic assurances of tenderness with ridicule and even with animosity — which those who knew the Count’s good-nature, and who saw no fault in the ecstatic Lydia, were quite unable to explain. Since then, though not divorced, they lived apart; and when the husband did meet his wife he always treated her with an unchanging venomous irony which seemed inexplicable.

 

The Countess Lydia had long ago ceased to be in love with her husband, but since then had never ceased to be in love with somebody else. She was in love with several persons at once, both men and women; she had been in love with almost every one who was specially notable. She was in love with all the new Princes and Princesses who became connected with the Imperial family, she was in love with a Metropolitan, a Suffragan, and a priest. She had been in love with a journalist, three Slavs, Komisarov [a man who saved the life of Alexander II by knocking the pistol from the hand of a would-be assassin], one of the Ministers, a doctor, an English missionary, and now with Karenin. All these passions, ever waxing or waning, did not interfere with her carrying on very widespread and complicated relations with the Court and Society. But from the time she took Karenin under her special protection after his misfortune — from the time she exerted herself in his house, labouring for his welfare — she felt that all her other passions were unreal, and that she now truly loved only Karenin. The feeling she now had for him seemed to her stronger than any of her former sentiments. Analysing that feeling, and comparing it with her previous loves, she saw clearly that she would not have been in love with Komisarov had he not saved the Tsar’s life, nor with Ristich-Kudzhitsky but for the Slavonic question; but that she loved Karenin for himself, for his lofty, misunderstood soul, for the high-pitched tone of his voice with the long-drawn inflections which she thought charming, for his weary eyes, for his character, and for his soft hands with their swollen veins. She was not only glad to meet him, but searched his face for signs of the impression she created on him. She wished to please him not merely by words, but by her whole self. For his sake she now paid more attention to her dress than ever before. She caught herself meditating on what might have been had she not married and had he been free. She blushed with excitement when he entered the room, and could not repress a smile of delight when he said something agreeable to her.

 

For some days the Countess Lydia Ivanovna had been greatly excited. She had heard that Anna and Vronsky were in Petersburg. It was necessary to save Karenin from meeting her, necessary even to save him from the painful knowledge that that dreadful woman was in the same town with him, and that he might come across her at any moment.

 

Lydia Ivanovna found out through acquaintances what ‘those disgusting people,’ as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended to do, and tried so to direct her friend’s steps during those days that he should not meet them. A young adjutant, a comrade of Vronsky’s, through whom she had her information, who hoped through her influence to obtain a concession, told her that they had finished their affairs and were leaving Petersburg next day. Lydia Ivanovna was beginning to breathe freely again, when next morning she received a note and with horror recognized the handwriting. It was Anna Karenina’s. The envelope was as thick as parchment; there was a large monogram on the narrow yellow sheet, and the letter had a delicious perfume.

 

‘Who brought it?’

 

‘A commissionaire from the hotel.’

 

It was some time before the Countess Lydia Ivanovna could sit down to read the letter. Her agitation brought on a fit of asthma, to which she was subject. When she grew calmer, she read the following, written in French:

 

‘MADAME LA COMTESSE! — The Christian feelings which fill your heart encourage me to what I feel to be the unpardonable boldness of writing to you. I am unhappy at being parted from my son. I entreat you to permit me to see him once before my departure. Forgive me for reminding you of myself. I address myself to you, instead of to Alexis Alexandrovich, only because I do not wish to give pain to that high-minded man by reminding him of myself. Knowing your friendship for him, I feel that you will understand me. Will you send Serezha to me or shall I come to the house at an appointed time, or will you let me know when and where I can meet him away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of the person on whom the decision depends. You cannot imagine the yearning I have to see him, and therefore cannot imagine the gratitude which your help will awaken in me. — ANNA.’

 

Everything in that letter irritated the Countess Lydia Ivanovna: its matter, the hint contained in the word ‘magnanimity’, and especially what seemed to her its free and easy tone.

 

‘Say there will be no answer,’ said the Countess Lydia Ivanovna, and at once opened her blotter and wrote to Karenin that she hoped to meet him about one o’clock at the Palace, at the Birthday Reception.

 

‘I must talk over an important and sad matter with you, and we can arrange where. Best of all at my house, where I will have your special tea ready. It is necessary. He sends a cross, but He also sends strength to bear it,’ she added, to prepare him somewhat.

 

The Countess Lydia Ivanovna generally wrote two or three notes a day to Karenin. She liked that way of communicating with him, which had an elegance and secrecy absent in their personal interviews.