Chapter 4
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 everyone 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 habit,
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.”
“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 anyone 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 special 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 tomorrow 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.
