to come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the sequence
of these images and emotions was the same.
“Of course,” he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed
again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and
pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest, and clutching it vigorously
with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger.
He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent
him reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the revolver,
staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about him in astonishment.
He did not recognize his room, looking up from the ground, at the bent legs
of the table, at the wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried,
creaking steps of his servant coming through the drawing-room brought
him to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was
on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and on his arm, he knew
he had shot himself.
“Idiotic! Missed!” he said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver was
close beside him—he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he stretched out
to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his balance, fell over,
streaming with blood.
The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually
complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves, was so
panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor, that he left him losing
blood while he ran for assistance. An hour later Varya, his brother’s wife,
had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for
in all directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the
wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.
Chapter 19
The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing for
seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance might
be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die—this mistake
was two months after his return from Moscow brought home to him in all
its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not simply from
his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until that
day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known his own heart.
At his sick wife’s bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to
that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him by the sufferings
of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness.
And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all,
the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief
of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced
before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his
sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed
insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and
simple when he forgave and loved.
He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse. He
forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him of his
despairing action. He felt more for his son than before. And he blamed
himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But for the little
newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of
tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had been
interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his child, and who was
cast on one side during her mother’s illness, and would certainly have died
if he had not troubled about her, and he did not himself observe how fond
he became of her. He would go into the nursery several times a day, and sit
there for a long while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got
quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would
sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping
baby, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little
hands, with clenched fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such
moments particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace
and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing
that ought to be changed.
But as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however
natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to
remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his
soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful,
which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him that
humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone was looking at him with
inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that something was
expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and unnaturalness of his
relations with his wife.
When the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed away,
Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Anna was afraid of him, ill at
ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face. She seemed to be
wanting, and not daring, to tell him something; and as though foreseeing
their present relations could not continue, she seemed to be expecting
something from him.
Towards the end of February it happened that Anna’s baby daughter, who
had been named Anna too, fell ill. Alexey Alexandrovitch was in the
nursery in the morning, and leaving orders for the doctor to be sent for, he
went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at four. Going
into the hall he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery and a bear fur
cape, holding a white fur cloak.
“Who is here?” asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Princess Elizaveta Federovna Tverskaya,” the groom answered, and it
seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.
During all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed that his
worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest in him
and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed with difficulty concealing
their mirth at something; the same mirth that he had perceived in the
lawyer’s eyes, and just now in the eyes of this groom. Everyone seemed,
somehow, hugely delighted, as though they had just been at a wedding.
When they met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment they inquired after his
wife’s health. The presence of Princess Tverskaya was unpleasant to Alexey
Alexandrovitch from the memories associated with her, and also because he
disliked her, and he went straight to the nursery. In the day nursery
Seryozha, leaning on the table with his legs on a chair, was drawing and
chatting away merrily. The English governess, who had during Anna’s
illness replaced the French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl.
She hurriedly got up, curtseyed, and pulled Seryozha.
Alexey Alexandrovitch stroked his son’s hair, answered the governess’s
inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of the baby.
“The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir.”
“But she is still in pain,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening to the
baby’s screaming in the next room.
“I think it’s the wet-nurse, sir,” the Englishwoman said firmly.
“What makes you think so?” he asked, stopping short.
“It’s just as it was at Countess Paul’s, sir. They gave the baby medicine,
and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse had no milk,
sir.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few seconds
he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown back,
stiffening itself in the nurse’s arms, and would not take the plump breast
offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the double hushing of
the wet-nurse and the other nurse, who was bending over her.
“Still no better?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“She’s very restless,” answered the nurse in a whisper.
“Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk,” he said.
“I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?”
“Who’s one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill….” said the nurse
discontentedly.
The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words
there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his position.
The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse,
with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse’s arms, and
began walking up and down, rocking it.
“You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse,” said Alexey
Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened
at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and covering
her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her
abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at
his position.
“Luckless child!” said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking up
and down with it.
Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering
face watched the nurse walking to and fro.
When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and the
nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey Alexandrovitch
got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the baby. For a
minute he was still, and with the same despondent face gazed at the baby;
but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the skin of his forehead,
came out on his face, and he went as softly out of the room.
In the dining-room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in to
send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being anxious
about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humor he had no wish to go to
her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But his wife might
wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so, overcoming his
disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he walked over the soft rug
towards the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he did not
want to hear.
“If he hadn’t been going away, I could have understood your answer and
his too. But your husband ought to be above that,” Betsy was saying.
“It’s not for my husband; for myself I don’t wish it. Don’t say that!”
answered Anna’s excited voice.
“Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself
on your account….”
“That’s just why I don’t want to.”
With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped
and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be
undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up to the
bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.
Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black curls
on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died out of her
face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped her head and
looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the height of the latest
fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over her head like a shade on a
lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway stripes slanting one way on the
bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat
figure held erect. Bowing her head, she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with
an ironical smile.
“Ah!” she said, as though surprised. “I’m very glad you’re at home. You
never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven’t seen you ever since
Anna has been ill. I have heard all about it—your anxiety. Yes, you’re a
wonderful husband!” she said, with a meaning and affable air, as though she
were bestowing an order of magnanimity on him for his conduct to his wife.
Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife’s hand, asked
how she was.
“Better, I think,” she said, avoiding his eyes.
“But you’ve rather a feverish-looking color,” he said, laying stress on the
word “feverish.”
“We’ve been talking too much,” said Betsy. “I feel it’s selfishness on my
part, and I am going away.”
She got up, but Anna, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand.
“No, wait a minute, please. I must tell you … no, you.” she turned to
Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with crimson.
“I won’t and can’t keep anything secret from you,” she said.
Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.
“Betsy’s been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to say
good-bye before his departure for Tashkend.” She did not look at her
husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, however hard it
might be for her. “I told her I could not receive him.”
“You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,”
Betsy corrected her.
“Oh, no, I can’t receive him; and what object would there….” She
stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he did not look
at her). “In short, I don’t wish it….”
Alexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.
Her first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand with big
swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious effort to control herself
she pressed his hand.
“I am very grateful to you for your confidence, but….” he said, feeling
with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide easily and clearly
by himself, he could not discuss before Princess Tverskaya, who to him
stood for the incarnation of that brute force which would inevitably control
