the 2nd of June, and had been pressed forward actively by Alexey
Alexandrovitch as one admitting of no delay on account of the deplorable
condition of the native tribes. In the commission this question had been a
ground of contention between several departments. The department hostile
to Alexey Alexandrovitch proved that the condition of the native tribes was
exceedingly flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might be the ruin
of their prosperity, and that if there were anything wrong, it arose mainly
from the failure on the part of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s department to carry
out the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended
to demand: First, that a new commission should be formed which should be
empowered to investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot;
secondly, if it should appear that the condition of the native tribes actually
was such as it appeared to be from the official documents in the hands of
the committee, that another new scientific commission should be appointed
to investigate the deplorable condition of the native tribes from the—(1)
political, (2) administrative, (3) economic, (4) ethnographical, (5) material,
and (6) religious points of view; thirdly, that evidence should be required
from the rival department of the measures that had been taken during the
last ten years by that department for averting the disastrous conditions in
which the native tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that that
department explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence before the
committee, from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December 5, 1863, and June
7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the intent of the law T… Act 18,
and the note to Act 36. A flash of eagerness suffused the face of Alexey
Alexandrovitch as he rapidly wrote out a synopsis of these ideas for his own
benefit. Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a note to
the chief secretary of his department to look up certain necessary facts for
him. Getting up and walking about the room, he glanced again at the
portrait, frowned, and smiled contemptuously. After reading a little more of
the book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and renewing his interest in it, Alexey
Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven o’clock, and recollecting as he lay in
bed the incident with his wife, he saw it now in by no means such a gloomy
light.
Chapter 15
Though Anna had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted
Vronsky when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of
her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she
longed with her whole soul to change it. On the way home from the races
she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in spite
of the agony she had suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her
husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything
was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and deception. It
seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now made clear forever.
It might be bad, this new position, but it would be clear; there would be no
indefiniteness or falsehood about it. The pain she had caused herself and her
husband in uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything
being made clear, she thought. That evening she saw Vronsky, but she did
not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband, though, to
make the position definite, it was necessary to tell him.
When she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her mind was
what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed to her so awful
that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter
those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come of it.
But the words were spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away
without saying anything. “I saw Vronsky and did not tell him. At the very
instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told him, but I
changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told him the first
minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell him?” And in
answer to this question a burning blush of shame spread over her face. She
knew what had kept her from it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her
position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly
struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt
terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before. Directly
she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to
her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame
being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go
when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer.
When she thought of Vronsky, it seemed to her that he did not love her,
that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not offer
herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed to her that the
words that she had spoken to her husband, and had continually repeated in
her imagination, she had said to everyone, and everyone had heard them.
She could not bring herself to look those of her own household in the face.
She could not bring herself to call her maid, and still less go downstairs and
see her son and his governess.
The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while, came into
her room of her own accord. Anna glanced inquiringly into her face, and
blushed with a scared look. The maid begged her pardon for coming in,
saying that she had fancied the bell rang. She brought her clothes and a
note. The note was from Betsy. Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalova
and Baroness Shtoltz were coming to play croquet with her that morning
with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and old Stremov. “Come, if only as a study in
morals. I shall expect you,” she finished.
Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh.
“Nothing, I need nothing,” she said to Annushka, who was rearranging
the bottles and brushes on the dressing table. “You can go. I’ll dress at once
and come down. I need nothing.”
Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing, and sat in the same
position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and every now and then she
shivered all over, seemed as though she would make some gesture, utter
some word, and sank back into lifelessness again. She repeated continually,
“My God! my God!” But neither “God” nor “my” had any meaning to her.
The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her
as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she had
never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought up. She knew
that the support of religion was possible only upon condition of renouncing
what made up for her the whole meaning of life. She was not simply
miserable, she began to feel alarm at the new spiritual condition, never
experienced before, in which she found herself. She felt as though
everything were beginning to be double in her soul, just as objects
sometimes appear double to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what
it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired
what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what she
longed for, she could not have said.
“Ah, what am I doing!” she said to herself, feeling a sudden thrill of pain
in both sides of her head. When she came to herself, she saw that she was
holding her hair in both hands, each side of her temples, and pulling it. She
jumped up, and began walking about.
“The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,” said
Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same position.
“Seryozha? What about Seryozha?” Anna asked, with sudden eagerness,
recollecting her son’s existence for the first time that morning.
“He’s been naughty, I think,” answered Annushka with a smile.
“In what way?”
“Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I think he
slipped in and ate one of them on the sly.”
The recollection of her son suddenly roused Anna from the helpless
condition in which she found herself. She recalled the partly sincere, though
greatly exaggerated, rôle of the mother living for her child, which she had
taken up of late years, and she felt with joy that in the plight in which she
found herself she had a support, quite apart from her relation to her husband
or to Vronsky. This support was her son. In whatever position she might be
placed, she could not lose her son. Her husband might put her to shame and
turn her out, Vronsky might grow cold to her and go on living his own life
apart (she thought of him again with bitterness and reproach); she could not
leave her son. She had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this
relation to her son, so that he might not be taken from her. Quickly indeed,
as quickly as possible, she must take action before he was taken from her.
She must take her son and go away. Here was the one thing she had to do
now. She needed consolation. She must be calm, and get out of this
insufferable position. The thought of immediate action binding her to her
son, of going away somewhere with him, gave her this consolation.
She dressed quickly, went downstairs, and with resolute steps walked
into the drawing-room, where she found, as usual, waiting for her, the
coffee, Seryozha, and his governess. Seryozha, all in white, with his back
and head bent, was standing at a table under a looking-glass, and with an
expression of intense concentration which she knew well, and in which he
resembled his father, he was doing something to the flowers he carried.
The governess had a particularly severe expression. Seryozha screamed
shrilly, as he often did, “Ah, mamma!” and stopped, hesitating whether to
go to greet his mother and put down the flowers, or to finish making the
wreath and go with the flowers.
The governess, after saying good-morning, began a long and detailed
account of Seryozha’s naughtiness, but Anna did not hear her; she was
considering whether she would take her with her or not. “No, I won’t take
her,” she decided. “I’ll go alone with my child.”
“Yes, it’s very wrong,” said Anna, and taking her son by the shoulder she
looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance that bewildered and
delighted the boy, and she kissed him. “Leave him to me,” she said to the
astonished governess, and not letting go of her son, she sat down at the
table, where coffee was set ready for her.
“Mamma! I … I … didn’t….” he said, trying to make out from her
expression what was in store for him in regard to the peaches.
“Seryozha,” she said, as soon as the governess had left the room, “that
was wrong, but you’ll never do it again, will you?… You love me?”
She felt that the tears were coming into her eyes. “Can I help loving
him?” she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared and at the same
time delighted eyes. “And can he ever join his father in punishing me? Is it
possible he will not feel for me?” Tears were already flowing down her
face, and to hide them she got up abruptly and almost ran out on to the
terrace.
After the thunder showers of the last few days, cold, bright weather had
set in. The air was cold in the bright sun that filtered through the freshly
washed leaves.
She shivered, both from the cold and from the inward horror which had
clutched her with fresh force in the open air.
“Run along, run along to Mariette,” she said to Seryozha, who had
followed her out, and she began walking up and down on the straw matting
of the terrace. “Can it be that they won’t forgive me, won’t understand how
it all couldn’t be helped?” she said to herself.
Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving in the
wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves in the cold
sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her, that everyone and
everything would be merciless to her now as was that sky, that green. And
again she felt that everything was split in two in her soul. “I mustn’t,
