what had happened, Vronsky tugged at his mare’s reins. Again she struggled
all over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the saddle heaving, she rose on
her front legs but unable to lift her back, she quivered all over and again fell
on her side. With a face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling, and
his cheeks white, Vronsky kicked her with his heel in the stomach and again
fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but thrusting her nose into the
ground, she simply gazed at her master with her speaking eyes.
“A—a—a!” groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head. “Ah! what have I
done!” he cried. “The race lost! And my fault! shameful, unpardonable!
And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have I done!”
A crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his regiment,
ran up to him. To his misery he felt that he was whole and unhurt. The mare
had broken her back, and it was decided to shoot her. Vronsky could not
answer questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and without
picking up his cap that had fallen off, walked away from the race course,
not knowing where he was going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time
in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond
remedy, and caused by his own fault.
Yashvin overtook him with his cap, and led him home, and half an hour
later Vronsky had regained his self-possession. But the memory of that race
remained for long in his heart, the cruelest and bitterest memory of his life.
Chapter 26
The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had
remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he was more
busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of the spring
he had gone to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his health, deranged
by the winter’s work that every year grew heavier. And just as always he
returned in July and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy. As
usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of town, while
he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their conversation after the
party at Princess Tverskaya’s he had never spoken again to Anna of his
suspicions and his jealousies, and that habitual tone of his bantering
mimicry was the most convenient tone possible for his present attitude to
his wife. He was a little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly
displeased with her for that first midnight conversation, which she had
repelled. In his attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing
more. “You would not be open with me,” he seemed to say, mentally
addressing her; “so much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you
please, but I won’t be open with you. So much the worse for you!” he said
mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire,
should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you
shall burn for this!” This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not
realize all the senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not
realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his actual position,
and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret place
where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and son. He
who had been such a careful father, had from the end of that winter become
peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the same bantering tone
he used with his wife. “Aha, young man!” was the greeting with which he
met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any
previous year had so much official business as that year. But he was not
aware that he sought work for himself that year, that this was one of the
means for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards
his wife and son and his thoughts about them, which became more terrible
the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey
Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife’s behavior, the mild and
peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer, but he
would have been greatly angered with any man who should question him on
that subject. For this reason there positively came into Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone
inquired after his wife’s health. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to
think at all about his wife’s behavior, and he actually succeeded in not
thinking about it at all.
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s permanent summer villa was in Peterhof, and
the Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the summer there, close
to Anna, and constantly seeing her. That year Countess Lidia Ivanovna
declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna Arkadyevna’s, and in
conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability of
Anna’s close intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch
sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be above suspicion, and
from that time began to avoid Countess Lidia Ivanovna. He did not want to
see, and did not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances on his
wife; he did not want to understand, and did not understand, why his wife
had so particularly insisted on staying at Tsarskoe, where Betsy was
staying, and not far from the camp of Vronsky’s regiment. He did not allow
himself to think about it, and he did not think about it; but all the same
though he never admitted it to himself, and had no proofs, not even
suspicious evidence, in the bottom of his heart he knew beyond all doubt
that he was a deceived husband, and he was profoundly miserable about it.
How often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey
Alexandrovitch had looked at other men’s faithless wives and other
deceived husbands and asked himself: “How can people descend to that?
how is it they don’t put an end to such a hideous position?” But now, when
the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so far from thinking of
putting an end to the position that he would not recognize it at all, would
not recognize it just because it was too awful, too unnatural.
Since his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch had twice been at
their country villa. Once he dined there, another time he spent the evening
there with a party of friends, but he had not once stayed the night there, as it
had been his habit to do in previous years.
The day of the races had been a very busy day for Alexey
Alexandrovitch; but when mentally sketching out the day in the morning,
he made up his mind to go to their country house to see his wife
immediately after dinner, and from there to the races, which all the Court
were to witness, and at which he was bound to be present. He was going to
see his wife, because he had determined to see her once a week to keep up
appearances. And besides, on that day, as it was the fifteenth, he had to give
his wife some money for her expenses, according to their usual
arrangement.
With his habitual control over his thoughts, though he thought all this
about his wife, he did not let his thoughts stray further in regard to her.
That morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The
evening before, Countess Lidia Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet by a
celebrated traveler in China, who was staying in Petersburg, and with it she
enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler himself, as he was an
extremely interesting person from various points of view, and likely to be
useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch had not had time to read the pamphlet
through in the evening, and finished it in the morning. Then people began
arriving with petitions, and there came the reports, interviews,
appointments, dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions, grants,
notes, the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that always
took up so much time. Then there was private business of his own, a visit
from the doctor and the steward who managed his property. The steward did
not take up much time. He simply gave Alexey Alexandrovitch the money
he needed together with a brief statement of the position of his affairs,
which was not altogether satisfactory, as it had happened that during that
year, owing to increased expenses, more had been paid out than usual, and
there was a deficit. But the doctor, a celebrated Petersburg doctor, who was
an intimate acquaintance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of
time. Alexey Alexandrovitch had not expected him that day, and was
surprised at his visit, and still more so when the doctor questioned him very
carefully about his health, listened to his breathing, and tapped at his liver.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not know that his friend Lidia Ivanovna,
noticing that he was not as well as usual that year, had begged the doctor to
go and examine him. “Do this for my sake,” the Countess Lidia Ivanovna
had said to him.
“I will do it for the sake of Russia, countess,” replied the doctor.
“A priceless man!” said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna.
The doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch. He
found the liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive powers weakened,
while the course of mineral waters had been quite without effect. He
prescribed more physical exercise as far as possible, and as far as possible
less mental strain, and above all no worry—in other words, just what was as
much out of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s power as abstaining from breathing.
Then he withdrew, leaving in Alexey Alexandrovitch an unpleasant sense
that something was wrong with him, and that there was no chance of curing
it.
As he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet on the staircase an
acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was secretary of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
department. They had been comrades at the university, and though they
rarely met, they thought highly of each other and were excellent friends,
and so there was no one to whom the doctor would have given his opinion
of a patient so freely as to Sludin.
“How glad I am you’ve been seeing him!” said Sludin. “He’s not well,
and I fancy…. Well, what do you think of him?”
“I’ll tell you,” said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin’s head to his
coachman to bring the carriage round. “It’s just this,” said the doctor, taking
a finger of his kid glove in his white hands and pulling it, “if you don’t
strain the strings, and then try to break them, you’ll find it a difficult job;
but strain a string to its very utmost, and the mere weight of one finger on
the strained string will snap it. And with his close assiduity, his
conscientious devotion to his work, he’s strained to the utmost; and there’s
some outside burden weighing on him, and not a light one,” concluded the
doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly. “Will you be at the races?” he
added, as he sank into his seat in the carriage.
“Yes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time,” the doctor responded
vaguely to some reply of Sludin’s he had not caught.
Directly after the doctor, who had taken up so much time, came the
celebrated traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of the pamphlet
he had only just finished reading and his previous acquaintance with the
subject, impressed the traveler by the depth of his knowledge of the subject
and the breadth and enlightenment of his view of it.
At the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial
marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey
Alexandrovitch had to have some conversation. After his departure, he had
to finish the daily routine of business with his secretary, and then he still
had to drive round to call on a certain great personage on a matter of grave
and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch only just managed to be back by
five o’clock, his dinner-hour, and after dining with his secretary, he invited
him to drive with him to his country villa and to the races.
Though he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch
always tried nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his
interviews with his wife.
