“Not quite … soon.”
And a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the
mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying
out the corpse.
The sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in Levin that
sense of horror in face of the insoluble enigma, together with the nearness
and inevitability of death, that had come upon him that autumn evening
when his brother had come to him. This feeling was now even stronger than
before; even less than before did he feel capable of apprehending the
meaning of death, and its inevitability rose up before him more terrible than
ever. But now, thanks to his wife’s presence, that feeling did not reduce him
to despair. In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that
love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of
despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still
unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had
arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.
The doctor confirmed his suppositions in regard to Kitty. Her
indisposition was a symptom that she was with child.
Chapter 21
From the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch understood from his
interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that was
expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her with
his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so distraught that
he could come to no decision of himself; he did not know himself what he
wanted now, and putting himself in the hands of those who were so pleased
to interest themselves in his affairs, he met everything with unqualified
assent. It was only when Anna had left his house, and the English governess
sent to ask him whether she should dine with him or separately, that for the
first time he clearly comprehended his position, and was appalled by it.
Most difficult of all in this position was the fact that he could not in any
way connect and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the past
when he had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition
from that past to a knowledge of his wife’s unfaithfulness he had lived
through miserably already; that state was painful, but he could understand
it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him, he
would have been wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the
hopeless position—incomprehensible to himself—in which he felt himself
now. He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his
love for his sick wife, and for the other man’s child with what was now the
case, that is with the fact that, as it were, in return for all this he now found
himself alone, put to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no one, and
despised by everyone.
For the first two days after his wife’s departure Alexey Alexandrovitch
received applicants for assistance and his chief secretary, drove to the
committee, and went down to dinner in the dining-room as usual. Without
giving himself a reason for what he was doing, he strained every nerve of
his being for those two days, simply to preserve an appearance of
composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries about the
disposition of Anna Arkadyevna’s rooms and belongings, he had exercised
immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had occurred
was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events, and he attained
his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of despair. But on the
second day after her departure, when Korney gave him a bill from a
fashionable draper’s shop, which Anna had forgotten to pay, and announced
that the clerk from the shop was waiting, Alexey Alexandrovitch told him to
show the clerk up.
“Excuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if you
direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously oblige us with
her address?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at
once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his head sink into his
hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times attempted to
speak and stopped short. Korney, perceiving his master’s emotion, asked
the clerk to call another time. Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch recognized
that he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and composure
any longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was awaiting him to be
taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.
He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and
exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the clerk and of
Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during those
two days. He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of
men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he
could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively
unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with
grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as
dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of
security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively
he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the
unequal struggle.
His despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly
alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human being to whom
he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high
official, not as a member of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed
he had not such a one in the whole world.
Alexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers.
They did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey
Alexandrovitch was ten years old. The property was a small one. Their
uncle, Karenin, a government official of high standing, at one time a
favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up.
On completing his high school and university courses with medals,
Alexey Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle’s aid, immediately started in a
prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had
devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high school and the
university, and afterwards in the service, Alexey Alexandrovitch had never
formed a close friendship with anyone. His brother had been the person
nearest to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
was always abroad, where he had died shortly after Alexey
Alexandrovitch’s marriage.
While he was governor of a province, Anna’s aunt, a wealthy provincial
lady, had thrown him—middle-aged as he was, though young for a
governor—with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a
position that he had either to declare himself or to leave the town. Alexey
Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation. There were at the time as many
reasons for the step as against it, and there was no overbalancing
consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of abstaining when in doubt.
But Anna’s aunt had through a common acquaintance insinuated that he had
already compromised the girl, and that he was in honor bound to make her
an offer. He made the offer, and concentrated on his betrothed and his wife
all the feeling of which he was capable.
The attachment he felt to Anna precluded in his heart every need of
intimate relations with others. And now among all his acquaintances he had
not one friend. He had plenty of so-called connections, but no friendships.
Alexey Alexandrovitch had plenty of people whom he could invite to
dinner, to whose sympathy he could appeal in any public affair he was
concerned about, whose interest he could reckon upon for anyone he
wished to help, with whom he could candidly discuss other people’s
business and affairs of state. But his relations with these people were
confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain routine from
which it was impossible to depart. There was one man, a comrade of his at
the university, with whom he had made friends later, and with whom he
could have spoken of a personal sorrow; but this friend had a post in the
Department of Education in a remote part of Russia. Of the people in
Petersburg the most intimate and most possible were his chief secretary and
his doctor.
Mihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a straightforward,
intelligent, good-hearted, and conscientious man, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch was aware of his personal goodwill. But their five years of
official work together seemed to have put a barrier between them that cut
off warmer relations.
After signing the papers brought him, Alexey Alexandrovitch had sat for
a long while in silence, glancing at Mihail Vassilievitch, and several times
he attempted to speak, but could not. He had already prepared the phrase:
“You have heard of my trouble?” But he ended by saying, as usual: “So
you’ll get this ready for me?” and with that dismissed him.
The other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him;
but there had long existed a taciturn understanding between them that both
were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.
Of his women friends, foremost amongst them Countess Lidia Ivanovna,
Alexey Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply as women, were
