moving it. “The patient can’t walk—still too weak, perhaps, or something
wrong with his legs, but he must have air, and he moves, rolls himself
along….”
Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She liked everything
very much, but most of all she liked Vronsky himself with his natural,
simple-hearted eagerness. “Yes, he’s a very nice, good man,” she thought
several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and penetrating
into his expression, while she mentally put herself in Anna’s place. She
liked him so much just now with his eager interest that she saw how Anna
could be in love with him.
Chapter 21
“No, I think the princess is tired, and horses don’t interest her,” Vronsky
said to Anna, who wanted to go on to the stables, where Sviazhsky wished
to see the new stallion. “You go on, while I escort the princess home, and
we’ll have a little talk,” he said, “if you would like that?” he added, turning
to her.
“I know nothing about horses, and I shall be delighted,” answered Darya
Alexandrovna, rather astonished.
She saw by Vronsky’s face that he wanted something from her. She was
not mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back into
the garden, he looked in the direction Anna had taken, and having made
sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:
“You guess that I have something I want to say to you,” he said, looking
at her with laughing eyes. “I am not wrong in believing you to be a friend of
Anna’s.” He took off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief, wiped his
head, which was growing bald.
Darya Alexandrovna made no answer, and merely stared at him with
dismay. When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his
laughing eyes and stern expression scared her.
The most diverse suppositions as to what he was about to speak of to her
flashed into her brain. “He is going to beg me to come to stay with them
with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or to create a set that will
receive Anna in Moscow…. Or isn’t it Vassenka Veslovsky and his relations
with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels he was to blame?” All her
conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what he really wanted to
talk about to her.
“You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,” he said;
“do help me.”
Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face,
which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches by
the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for
him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his
cane in the gravel.
“You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna’s former friends
—I don’t count Princess Varvara—but I know that you have done this not
because you regard our position as normal, but because, understanding all
the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her.
Have I understood you rightly?” he asked, looking round at her.
“Oh, yes,” answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade,
“but….”
“No,” he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position
into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she
had to stop short too. “No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all
the difficulty of Anna’s position; and that you may well understand, if you
do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that
position, and that is why I feel it.”
“I understand,” said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the
sincerity and firmness with which he said this. “But just because you feel
yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,” she said. “Her position
in the world is difficult, I can well understand.”
“In the world it is hell!” he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. “You
can’t imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in
Petersburg in that fortnight … and I beg you to believe it.”
“Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna … nor you miss society….”
“Society!” he said contemptuously, “how could I miss society?”
“So far—and it may be so always—you are happy and at peace. I see in
Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so much
already,” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said
this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna really
were happy.
But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “I know that she has revived after all her sufferings;
she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?… I am afraid of what is
before us … I beg your pardon, you would like to walk on?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Well, then, let us sit here.”
Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue.
He stood up facing her.
“I see that she is happy,” he repeated, and the doubt whether she were
happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna’s mind. “But can it last?
Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is
cast,” he said, passing from Russian to French, “and we are bound together
for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold most sacred. We
have a child, we may have other children. But the law and all the conditions
of our position are such that thousands of complications arise which she
does not see and does not want to see. And that one can well understand.
But I can’t help seeing them. My daughter is by law not my daughter, but
Karenin’s. I cannot bear this falsity!” he said, with a vigorous gesture of
refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry towards Darya Alexandrovna.
She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on:
“One day a son may be born, my son, and he will be legally a Karenin;
he will not be the heir of my name nor of my property, and however happy
we may be in our home life and however many children we may have, there
will be no real tie between us. They will be Karenins. You can understand
the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to speak of this to
Anna. It irritates her. She does not understand, and to her I cannot speak
plainly of all this. Now look at another side. I am happy, happy in her love,
but I must have occupation. I have found occupation, and am proud of what
I am doing and consider it nobler than the pursuits of my former
companions at court and in the army. And most certainly I would not
change the work I am doing for theirs. I am working here, settled in my
own place, and I am happy and contented, and we need nothing more to
make us happy. I love my work here. Ce n’est pas un pis-aller, on the
contrary….”
Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew
confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she felt that
having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he could not
speak to Anna, he was now making a clean breast of everything, and that
the question of his pursuits in the country fell into the same category of
matters near his heart, as the question of his relations with Anna.
“Well, I will go on,” he said, collecting himself. “The great thing is that
as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will not die with
me, that I shall have heirs to come after me,—and this I have not. Conceive
the position of a man who knows that his children, the children of the
woman he loves, will not be his, but will belong to someone who hates
them and cares nothing about them! It is awful!”
He paused, evidently much moved.
“Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?” queried Darya
Alexandrovna.
“Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,” he said, calming
himself with an effort. “Anna can, it depends on her…. Even to petition the
Tsar for legitimization, a divorce is essential. And that depends on Anna.
Her husband agreed to a divorce—at that time your husband had arranged it
completely. And now, I know, he would not refuse it. It is only a matter of
writing to him. He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire,
he would not refuse. Of course,” he said gloomily, “it is one of those
Pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless men are capable. He
knows what agony any recollection of him must give her, and knowing her,
he must have a letter from her. I can understand that it is agony to her. But
the matter is of such importance, that one must passer par-dessus toutes ces
finesses de sentiment. Il y va du bonheur et de l’existence d’Anne et de ses
enfants. I won’t speak of myself, though it’s hard for me, very hard,” he
said, with an expression as though he were threatening someone for its
being hard for him. “And so it is, princess, that I am shamelessly clutching
at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to him
and ask for a divorce.”
“Yes, of course,” Darya Alexandrovna said dreamily, as she vividly
recalled her last interview with Alexey Alexandrovitch. “Yes, of course,”
