now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The memory of how he had
received her confession of infidelity on their way home from the races
(especially that he had insisted only on the observance of external decorum,
and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a remorse. He was tortured
too by the thought of the letter he had written her; and most of all, his
forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and his care of the other man’s child
made his heart burn with shame and remorse.
And just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he reviewed
all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in which, after long
wavering, he had made her an offer.
“But how have I been to blame?” he said to himself. And this question
always excited another question in him—whether they felt differently, did
their loving and marrying differently, these Vronskys and Oblonskys …
these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves. And there passed
before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-confident
men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive attention in spite of
himself. He tried to dispel these thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that
he was not living for this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that
there was peace and love in his heart.
But the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to
him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal salvation in
which he believed had no existence. But this temptation did not last long,
and soon there was reestablished once more in Alexey Alexandrovitch’s
soul the peace and the elevation by virtue of which he could forget what he
did not want to remember.
Chapter 26
“Well, Kapitonitch?” said Seryozha, coming back rosy and good-
humored from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his overcoat
to the tall old hall-porter, who smiled down at the little person from the
height of his long figure. “Well, has the bandaged clerk been here today?
Did papa see him?”
“He saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced
him,” said the hall-porter with a good-humored wink. “Here, I’ll take it
off.”
“Seryozha!” said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the inner
rooms. “Take it off yourself.” But Seryozha, though he heard his tutor’s
feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the hall-
porter’s belt, and gazing into his face.
“Well, and did papa do what he wanted for him?”
The hall-porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his face
tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favor of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, interested both Seryozha and the hall-porter. Seryozha had
come upon him in the hall, and had heard him plaintively beg the hall-
porter to announce him, saying that he and his children had death staring
them in the face.
Since then Seryozha, having met him a second time in the hall, took great
interest in him.
“Well, was he very glad?” he asked.
“Glad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away.”
“And has anything been left?” asked Seryozha, after a pause.
“Come, sir,” said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head he
whispered, “Something from the countess.”
Seryozha understood at once that what the hall-porter was speaking of
was a present from Countess Lidia Ivanovna for his birthday.
“What do you say? Where?”
“Korney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!”
“How big? Like this?”
“Rather small, but a fine thing.”
“A book.”
“No, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling you,” said
the porter, hearing the tutor’s steps approaching, and carefully taking away
from his belt the little hand in the glove half pulled off, he signed with his
head towards the tutor.
“Vassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!” answered Seryozha with that gay and
loving smile which always won over the conscientious Vassily Lukitch.
Seryozha was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to be able
to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good fortune of which
he had heard during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia Ivanovna’s
niece. This piece of good news seemed to him particularly important from
its coming at the same time with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his
own gladness at toys having come for him. It seemed to Seryozha that this
was a day on which everyone ought to be glad and happy.
“You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky today?”
“To be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him.”
“And is he glad?”
“Glad at the Tsar’s gracious favor! I should think so! It’s a proof he’s
deserved it,” said the porter severely and seriously.
Seryozha fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he
had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the chin that hung down
between the gray whiskers, never seen by anyone but Seryozha, who saw
him only from below.
“Well, and has your daughter been to see you lately?”
The porter’s daughter was a ballet dancer.
“When is she to come on week-days? They’ve their lessons to learn too.
And you’ve your lesson, sir; run along.”
On coming into the room, Seryozha, instead of sitting down to his
lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought him
must be a machine. “What do you think?” he inquired.
But Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of learning
the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two.
“No, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,” he asked suddenly, when he was
seated at their work table with the book in his hands, “what is greater than
the Alexander Nevsky? You know papa’s received the Alexander Nevsky?”
Vassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Alexander
Nevsky.
“And higher still?”
“Well, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.”
“And higher than the Andrey?”
“I don’t know.”
