from home, and when he came in late in the evening the maid told him that
Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and begged him not to go in to her.
Chapter 26
Never before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time.
And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete
coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came
into the room for the guarantee?—to look at her, see her heart was breaking
with despair, and go out without a word with that face of callous
composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because he loved
another woman—that was clear.
And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the
words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her,
and she grew more and more exasperated.
“I won’t prevent you,” he might say. “You can go where you like. You
were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you
might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I’ll give it to
you. How many roubles do you want?”
All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her
imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had
actually said them.
“But didn’t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and
sincere man? Haven’t I despaired for nothing many times already?” she said
to herself afterwards.
All that day, except for the visit to Wilson’s, which occupied two hours,
Anna spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether there were
still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see him
once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she
went to her own room, leaving a message for him that her head ached, she
said to herself, “If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he
loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what
I’m to do!…”
In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance,
his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he believed what
was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So
then everything was over.
And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of
bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the
victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was
waging with him.
Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or
not getting a divorce from her husband—all that did not matter. The one
thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out her
usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the whole
bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she began musing
with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory
when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a
single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the ceiling and
at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it, while she vividly
pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when
she would be only a memory to him. “How could I say such cruel things to
her?” he would say. “How could I go out of the room without saying
anything to her? But now she is no more. She has gone away from us
forever. She is….” Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on
the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side
swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with
fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered, commingled, and all was
darkness. “Death!” she thought. And such horror came upon her that for a
long while she could not realize where she was, and for a long while her
trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle,
instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. “No, anything—only
to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me! This has been before and will
pass,” she said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling
down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his
room.
He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and
holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now when
he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep
back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he would look at
her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that before telling him
of her love, she would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his
treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back, and after a second
dose of opium she fell towards morning into a heavy, incomplete sleep,
during which she never quite lost consciousness.
In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had
recurred several times in her dreams, even before her connection with
Vronsky. A little old man with unkempt beard was doing something bent
down over some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she, as she
always did in this nightmare (it was what made the horror of it), felt that
this peasant was taking no notice of her, but was doing something horrible
with the iron—over her. And she waked up in a cold sweat.
When she got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in
mist.
“There was a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I had a
headache, and he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we’re going away; I
must see him and get ready for the journey,” she said to herself. And
learning that he was in his study, she went down to him. As she passed
through the drawing-room she heard a carriage stop at the entrance, and
looking out of the window she saw the carriage, from which a young girl in
a lilac hat was leaning out giving some direction to the footman ringing the
bell. After a parley in the hall, someone came upstairs, and Vronsky’s steps
could be heard passing the drawing-room. He went rapidly downstairs.
Anna went again to the window. She saw him come out onto the steps
without his hat and go up to the carriage. The young girl in the lilac hat
handed him a parcel. Vronsky, smiling, said something to her. The carriage
drove away, he ran rapidly upstairs again.
The mists that had shrouded everything in her soul parted suddenly. The
feelings of yesterday pierced the sick heart with a fresh pang. She could not
understand now how she could have lowered herself by spending a whole
day with him in his house. She went into his room to announce her
determination.
“That was Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They came and brought
me the money and the deeds from maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday.
How is your head, better?” he said quietly, not wishing to see and to
understand the gloomy and solemn expression of her face.
She looked silently, intently at him, standing in the middle of the room.
He glanced at her, frowned for a moment, and went on reading a letter. She
turned, and went deliberately out of the room. He still might have turned
her back, but she had reached the door, he was still silent, and the only
sound audible was the rustling of the note paper as he turned it.
“Oh, by the way,” he said at the very moment she was in the doorway,
“we’re going tomorrow for certain, aren’t we?”
“You, but not I,” she said, turning round to him.
“Anna, we can’t go on like this….”
“You, but not I,” she repeated.
“This is getting unbearable!”
“You … you will be sorry for this,” she said, and went out.
Frightened by the desperate expression with which these words were
uttered, he jumped up and would have run after her, but on second thoughts
he sat down and scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar—as he thought it—
threat of something vague exasperated him. “I’ve tried everything,” he
thought; “the only thing left is not to pay attention,” and he began to get
ready to drive into town, and again to his mother’s to get her signature to
the deeds.
She heard the sound of his steps about the study and the dining-room. At
the drawing-room he stood still. But he did not turn in to see her, he merely
gave an order that the horse should be given to Voytov if he came while he
was away. Then she heard the carriage brought round, the door opened, and
he came out again. But he went back into the porch again, and someone was
running upstairs. It was the valet running up for his gloves that had been
forgotten. She went to the window and saw him take the gloves without
looking, and touching the coachman on the back he said something to him.
Then without looking up at the window he settled himself in his usual
attitude in the carriage, with his legs crossed, and drawing on his gloves he
vanished round the corner.
