it. Yes, we must put an end to it,” he decided.
And for the first time the idea clearly presented itself that it was essential
to put an end to this false position, and the sooner the better. “Throw up
everything, she and I, and hide ourselves somewhere alone with our love,”
he said to himself.
Chapter 22
The rain did not last long, and by the time Vronsky arrived, his shaft-
horse trotting at full speed and dragging the trace-horses galloping through
the mud, with their reins hanging loose, the sun had peeped out again, the
roofs of the summer villas and the old limetrees in the gardens on both sides
of the principal streets sparkled with wet brilliance, and from the twigs
came a pleasant drip and from the roofs rushing streams of water. He
thought no more of the shower spoiling the race course, but was rejoicing
now that—thanks to the rain—he would be sure to find her at home and
alone, as he knew that Alexey Alexandrovitch, who had lately returned from
a foreign watering place, had not moved from Petersburg.
Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky alighted, as he always did, to avoid
attracting attention, before crossing the bridge, and walked to the house. He
did not go up the steps to the street door, but went into the court.
“Has your master come?” he asked a gardener.
“No, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please go to the front
door; there are servants there,” the gardener answered. “They’ll open the
door.”
“No, I’ll go in from the garden.”
And feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to take her by
surprise, since he had not promised to be there today, and she would
certainly not expect him to come before the races, he walked, holding his
sword and stepping cautiously over the sandy path, bordered with flowers,
to the terrace that looked out upon the garden. Vronsky forgot now all that
he had thought on the way of the hardships and difficulties of their position.
He thought of nothing but that he would see her directly, not in imagination,
but living, all of her, as she was in reality. He was just going in, stepping on
his whole foot so as not to creak, up the worn steps of the terrace, when he
suddenly remembered what he always forgot, and what caused the most
torturing side of his relations with her, her son with his questioning—
hostile, as he fancied—eyes.
This boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their freedom.
When he was present, both Vronsky and Anna did not merely avoid
speaking of anything that they could not have repeated before everyone;
they did not even allow themselves to refer by hints to anything the boy did
not understand. They had made no agreement about this, it had settled itself.
They would have felt it wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his
presence they talked like acquaintances. But in spite of this caution,
Vronsky often saw the child’s intent, bewildered glance fixed upon him, and
a strange shyness, uncertainty, at one time friendliness, at another, coldness
and reserve, in the boy’s manner to him; as though the child felt that
between this man and his mother there existed some important bond, the
significance of which he could not understand.
As a fact, the boy did feel that he could not understand this relation, and
he tried painfully, and was not able to make clear to himself what feeling he
ought to have for this man. With a child’s keen instinct for every
manifestation of feeling, he saw distinctly that his father, his governess, his
nurse,—all did not merely dislike Vronsky, but looked on him with horror
and aversion, though they never said anything about him, while his mother
looked on him as her greatest friend.
“What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I don’t
know, it’s my fault; either I’m stupid or a naughty boy,” thought the child.
And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring, sometimes hostile,
expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which Vronsky found so
irksome. This child’s presence always and infallibly called up in Vronsky
that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had experienced of
late. This child’s presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling
akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in
which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his
motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him further and
further away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right
direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin.
This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that
showed them the point to which they had departed from what they knew,
but did not want to know.
This time Seryozha was not at home, and she was completely alone. She
was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son, who had gone
out for his walk and been caught in the rain. She had sent a manservant and
a maid out to look for him. Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered,
she was sitting in a corner of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not
hear him. Bending her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a
cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with
the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure,
her head, her neck, her hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new
and unexpected. He stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he
would have made a step to come nearer to her, she was aware of his
presence, pushed away the watering pot, and turned her flushed face
towards him.
“What’s the matter? You are ill?” he said to her in French, going up to
her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be
spectators, he looked round towards the balcony door, and reddened a little,
as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be on his guard.
“No, I’m quite well,” she said, getting up and pressing his outstretched
hand tightly. “I did not expect … thee.”
“Mercy! what cold hands!” he said.
“You startled me,” she said. “I’m alone, and expecting Seryozha; he’s out
for a walk; they’ll come in from this side.”
But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.
“Forgive me for coming, but I couldn’t pass the day without seeing you,”
he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the stiff
Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the
dangerously intimate singular.
“Forgive you? I’m so glad!”
“But you’re ill or worried,” he went on, not letting go her hands and
bending over her. “What were you thinking of?”
“Always the same thing,” she said, with a smile.
She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she
was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of her
happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon
her, of this: why was it, she wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of
her secret connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was
such torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain
other considerations. She asked him about the races. He answered her
questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to calm her, he began
telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races.
“Tell him or not tell him?” she thought, looking into his quiet,
affectionate eyes. “He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he won’t
understand as he ought, he won’t understand all the gravity of this fact to
us.”
“But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of when I came in,” he
said, interrupting his narrative; “please tell me!”
She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked inquiringly
at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under their long lashes. Her
hand shook as it played with a leaf she had picked. He saw it, and his face
expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so
much to win her.
“I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace,
knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God’s sake,” he
repeated imploringly.
“Yes, I shan’t be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the gravity
of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?” she thought, still staring at
him in the same way, and feeling the hand that held the leaf was trembling
more and more.
“For God’s sake!” he repeated, taking her hand.
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes, yes, yes….”
“I’m with child,” she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf in her hand
shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him, watching how
he would take it. He turned white, would have said something, but stopped;
he dropped her hand, and his head sank on his breast. “Yes, he realizes all
the gravity of it,” she thought, and gratefully she pressed his hand.
But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity of the fact as
she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with tenfold
intensity that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But at the same time,
he felt that the turning-point he had been longing for had come now; that it
was impossible to go on concealing things from her husband, and it was
inevitable in one way or another that they should soon put an end to their
unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion physically affected him in
the same way. He looked at her with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed
her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down the terrace.
“Yes,” he said, going up to her resolutely. “Neither you nor I have looked
on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed. It is
absolutely necessary to put an end”—he looked round as he spoke—“to the
deception in which we are living.”
“Put an end? How put an end, Alexey?” she said softly.
She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile.
“Leave your husband and make our life one.”
“It is one as it is,” she answered, scarcely audibly.
“Yes, but altogether; altogether.”
“But how, Alexey, tell me how?” she said in melancholy mockery at the
hopelessness of her own position. “Is there any way out of such a position?
Am I not the wife of my husband?”
“There is a way out of every position. We must take our line,” he said.
“Anything’s better than the position in which you’re living. Of course, I see
how you torture yourself over everything—the world and your son and your
husband.”
“Oh, not over my husband,” she said, with a quiet smile. “I don’t know
him, I don’t think of him. He doesn’t exist.”
“You’re not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him too.”
“Oh, he doesn’t even know,” she said, and suddenly a hot flush came
over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and tears of shame
came into her eyes. “But we won’t talk of him.”
