Chapter 23
Vronsky had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried
to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been
confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his
appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which she could
not or would not face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the
real Anna, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and
unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he
feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was resolved to
have it out.
“Whether he knows or not,” said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and resolute
tone, “that’s nothing to do with us. We cannot … you cannot stay like this,
especially now.”
“What’s to be done, according to you?” she asked with the same
frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too
lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking
some step.
“Tell him everything, and leave him.”
“Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know what the
result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,” and a wicked light
gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before. “‘Eh, you love
another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with him?’”
(Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on the word “criminal,” as
Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) “‘I warned you of the results in the religious,
the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I
cannot let you disgrace my name,—’” “and my son,” she had meant to say,
but about her son she could not jest,—“‘disgrace my name, and’—and more
in the same style,” she added. “In general terms, he’ll say in his official
manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go,
but will take all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will
calmly and punctually act in accordance with his words. That’s what will
happen. He’s not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he’s
angry,” she added, recalling Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all
the peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning
against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing for the
great wrong she herself was doing him.
“But, Anna,” said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying to
soothe her, “we absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided by
the line he takes.”
“What, run away?”
“And why not run away? I don’t see how we can keep on like this. And
not for my sake—I see that you suffer.”
“Yes, run away, and become your mistress,” she said angrily.
“Anna,” he said, with reproachful tenderness.
“Yes,” she went on, “become your mistress, and complete the ruin of….”
Again she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter that word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful
nature, could endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he
did not suspect that the chief cause of it was the word—son, which she
could not bring herself to pronounce. When she thought of her son, and his
future attitude to his mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such
terror at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a woman,
could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances that everything
would remain as it always had been, and that it was possible to forget the
fearful question of how it would be with her son.
“I beg you, I entreat you,” she said suddenly, taking his hand, and
speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender, “never speak to me of
that!”
“But, Anna….”
“Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my
position; but it’s not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to me, and
do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you promise me?… No, no,
promise!…”
“I promise everything, but I can’t be at peace, especially after what you
have told me. I can’t be at peace, when you can’t be at peace….”
“I?” she repeated. “Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass, if
you will never talk about this. When you talk about it—it’s only then it
worries me.”
