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_ 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 every one, and every one 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 down-stairs 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, Kaluzhskyand 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, role 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 down-stairs, 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 every one 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 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. _
Read next: Part Three: Chapter 16
Read previous: Part Three: Chapter 14
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