was better anyway,” she added, touched by his despairing face. “But it’s
awful, awful!”
His head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.
“You can’t forgive me,” he whispered.
“Yes, I forgive you; but it’s terrible!”
But his happiness was so immense that this confession did not shatter it,
it only added another shade to it. She forgave him; but from that time more
than ever he considered himself unworthy of her, morally bowed down
lower than ever before her, and prized more highly than ever his undeserved
happiness.
Chapter 17
Unconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had
taken place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch returned to his
solitary room. Darya Alexandrovna’s words about forgiveness had aroused
in him nothing but annoyance. The applicability or non-applicability of the
Christian precept to his own case was too difficult a question to be
discussed lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexey
Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what stuck most
in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured Turovtsin—“Acted
like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!” Everyone had apparently
shared this feeling, though from politeness they had not expressed it.
“But the matter is settled, it’s useless thinking about it,” Alexey
Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but the journey before
him, and the revision work he had to do, he went into his room and asked
the porter who escorted him where his man was. The porter said that the
man had only just gone out. Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be sent
him, sat down to the table, and taking the guidebook, began considering the
route of his journey.
“Two telegrams,” said his manservant, coming into the room. “I beg your
pardon, your excellency; I’d only just that minute gone out.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The first
telegram was the announcement of Stremov’s appointment to the very post
Karenin had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung the telegram down, and
flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and down the room. “Quos
vult perdere dementat,” he said, meaning by quos the persons responsible
for this appointment. He was not so much annoyed that he had not received
the post, that he had been conspicuously passed over; but it was
incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the wordy
phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How could they fail to
see how they were ruining themselves, lowering their prestige by this
appointment?
“Something else in the same line,” he said to himself bitterly, opening the
second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her name, written in blue
pencil, “Anna,” was the first thing that caught his eye. “I am dying; I beg, I
implore you to come. I shall die easier with your forgiveness,” he read. He
smiled contemptuously, and flung down the telegram. That this was a trick
and a fraud, of that, he thought for the first minute, there could be no doubt.
“There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her confinement.
Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their aim? To legitimize the
child, to compromise me, and prevent a divorce,” he thought. “But
something was said in it: I am dying….” He read the telegram again, and
suddenly the plain meaning of what was said in it struck him.
“And if it is true?” he said to himself. “If it is true that in the moment of
agony and nearness to death she is genuinely penitent, and I, taking it for a
trick, refuse to go? That would not only be cruel, and everyone would
blame me, but it would be stupid on my part.”
“Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg,” he said to his servant.
Alexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and see
his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing and go away again.
If she was really in danger, and wished to see him before her death, he
would forgive her if he found her alive, and pay her the last duties if he
came too late.
All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.
With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in the
train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch drove through
the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him, not thinking of what
was awaiting him. He could not think about it, because in picturing what
would happen, he could not drive away the reflection that her death would
at once remove all the difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-
cabmen, porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he
watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was awaiting him, and
what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping for. He drove up to the
steps. A sledge and a carriage with the coachman asleep stood at the
entrance. As he went into the entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got
out his resolution from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it
thoroughly. Its meaning ran: “If it’s a trick, then calm contempt and
departure. If truth, do what is proper.”
The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang. The
porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie, and in
slippers.
“How is your mistress?”
“A successful confinement yesterday.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt distinctly
now how intensely he had longed for her death.
“And how is she?”
Korney in his morning apron ran downstairs.
“Very ill,” he answered. “There was a consultation yesterday, and the
doctor’s here now.”
“Take my things,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some relief at
the news that there was still hope of her death, he went into the hall.
On the hatstand there was a military overcoat. Alexey Alexandrovitch
noticed it and asked:
“Who is here?”
“The doctor, the midwife, and Count Vronsky.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms.
In the drawing-room there was no one; at the sound of his steps there
came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac ribbons.
She went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity given by
the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him towards the
bedroom.
“Thank God you’ve come! She keeps on about you and nothing but you,”
she said.
“Make haste with the ice!” the doctor’s peremptory voice said from the
bedroom.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.
At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face hidden
in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor’s voice, took his hands
from his face, and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch. Seeing the husband, he was
so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head down to his
shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself,
got up and said:
“She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your
power, only let me be here … though I am at your disposal. I….”
Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky’s tears, felt a rush of that nervous
emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people’s suffering,
and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door, without hearing
the rest of his words. From the bedroom came the sound of Anna’s voice
saying something. Her voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct
intonations. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to
the bed. She was lying turned with her face towards him. Her cheeks were
flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands thrust out from the
sleeves of her dressing gown were playing with the quilt, twisting it about.
It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the
happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with
exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation.
“For Alexey—I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a strange
and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn’t it?)—Alexey would not refuse
me. I should forget, he would forgive…. But why doesn’t he come? He’s so
good he doesn’t know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what agony!
Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh,
very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it’s better in fact. He’ll be
coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the nurse.”
“Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!” said the midwife, trying to
attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Oh, what nonsense!” Anna went on, not seeing her husband. “No, give
her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won’t
forgive me, because you don’t know him. No one knows him. I’m the only
one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I ought to know—Seryozha has
just the same eyes—and I can’t bear to see them because of it. Has
Seryozha had his dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not
forget. Seryozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be
asked to sleep with him.”
All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though
expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to her
face. She had seen her husband.
“No, no!” she began. “I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death.
Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I’ve no time, I’ve not long left
to live; the fever will begin directly and I shall understand nothing more.
Now I understand, I understand it all, I see it all!”
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s wrinkled face wore an expression of agony; he
took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he could not utter it;
his lower lip quivered, but he still went on struggling with his emotion, and
only now and then glanced at her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw
her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as
he had never seen in them.
“Wait a minute, you don’t know … stay a little, stay!…” She stopped, as
though collecting her ideas. “Yes,” she began; “yes, yes, yes. This is what I
wanted to say. Don’t be surprised at me. I’m still the same…. But there is
another woman in me, I’m afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to
hate you, and could not forget about her that used to be. I’m not that
woman. Now I’m my real self, all myself. I’m dying now, I know I shall
die, ask him. Even now I feel—see here, the weights on my feet, on my
hands, on my fingers. My fingers—see how huge they are! But this will
soon all be over…. Only one thing I want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I’m
terrible, but my nurse used to tell me; the holy martyr—what was her
name? She was worse. And I’ll go to Rome; there’s a wilderness, and there
I shall be no trouble to anyone, only I’ll take Seryozha and the little one….
No, you can’t forgive me! I know, it can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away,
you’re too good!” She held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed
him away with the other.
The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing, and had
by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He suddenly
felt that what he had regarded as nervous agitation was on the contrary a
blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new happiness he had
never known. He did not think that the Christian law that he had been all his
life trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his enemies; but a
glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart. He
knelt down, and laying his head in the curve of her arm, which burned him
as with fire through the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm
around his head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her
eyes.
“That is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive me!…
They’ve come again; why don’t they go away?… Oh, take these cloaks off
me!”
The doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the pillow, and
covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back submissively, and looked
before her with beaming eyes.
“Remember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I want
nothing more…. Why doesn’t he come?” she said, turning to the door
towards Vronsky. “Do come, do come! Give him your hand.”
Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and seeing Anna, again hid his face
in his hands.
“Uncover your face—look at him! He’s a saint,” she said. “Oh! uncover
your face, do uncover it!” she said angrily. “Alexey Alexandrovitch, do
uncover his face! I want to see him.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch took Vronsky’s hands and drew them away from
his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it.
“Give him your hand. Forgive him.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the
tears that streamed from his eyes.
“Thank God, thank God!” she said, “now everything is ready. Only to
stretch my legs a little. There, that’s capital. How badly these flowers are
done—not a bit like a violet,” she said, pointing to the hangings. “My God,
my God! when will it end? Give me some morphine. Doctor, give me some
morphine! Oh, my God, my God!”
And she tossed about on the bed.
The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was ninety-nine
chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole day long there was
fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At midnight the patient lay without
consciousness, and almost without pulse.
The end was expected every minute.
Vronsky had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and
Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: “Better stay, she
might ask for you,” and himself led him to his wife’s boudoir. Towards
morning, there was a return again of excitement, rapid thought and talk, and
again it ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same thing,
and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexey Alexandrovitch went
into the boudoir where Vronsky was sitting, and closing the door sat down
opposite him.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” said Vronsky, feeling that a statement of the
position was coming, “I can’t speak, I can’t understand. Spare me! However
hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me.”
He would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the hand
and said:
“I beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings, the
feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that you may not be in
error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had even
begun to take proceedings. I won’t conceal from you that in beginning this I
was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued by a
desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the telegram, I
came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I longed for her death.
But….” He paused, pondering whether to disclose or not to disclose his
feeling to him. “But I saw her and forgave her. And the happiness of
forgiveness has revealed to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer
the other cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God
only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!”
Tears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them impressed
Vronsky.
“This is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the
laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will never utter a
word of reproach to you,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on. “My duty is
clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If she wishes to
see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to
go away.”
