She pictured him to herself as talking calmly to his mother and Princess
Sorokina and rejoicing at her sufferings. “Yes, I must go quickly,” she said,
not knowing yet where she was going. She longed to get away as quickly as
possible from the feelings she had gone through in that awful house. The
servants, the walls, the things in that house—all aroused repulsion and
hatred in her and lay like a weight upon her.
“Yes, I must go to the railway station, and if he’s not there, then go there
and catch him.” Anna looked at the railway timetable in the newspapers. An
evening train went at two minutes past eight. “Yes, I shall be in time.” She
gave orders for the other horses to be put in the carriage, and packed in a
traveling-bag the things needed for a few days. She knew she would never
come back here again.
Among the plans that came into her head she vaguely determined that
after what would happen at the station or at the countess’s house, she would
go as far as the first town on the Nizhni road and stop there.
Dinner was on the table; she went up, but the smell of the bread and
cheese was enough to make her feel that all food was disgusting. She
ordered the carriage and went out. The house threw a shadow now right
across the street, but it was a bright evening and still warm in the sunshine.
Annushka, who came down with her things, and Pyotr, who put the things
in the carriage, and the coachman, evidently out of humor, were all hateful
to her, and irritated her by their words and actions.
“I don’t want you, Pyotr.”
“But how about the ticket?”
“Well, as you like, it doesn’t matter,” she said crossly.
Pyotr jumped on the box, and putting his arms akimbo, told the
coachman to drive to the booking-office.
Chapter 30
“Here it is again! Again I understand it all!” Anna said to herself, as soon
as the carriage had started and swaying lightly, rumbled over the tiny
cobbles of the paved road, and again one impression followed rapidly upon
another.
“Yes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly?” she tried to recall
it. “‘Tiutkin, coiffeur?’—no, not that. Yes, of what Yashvin says, the
struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that holds men together.
No, it’s a useless journey you’re making,” she said, mentally addressing a
party in a coach and four, evidently going for an excursion into the country.
“And the dog you’re taking with you will be no help to you. You can’t get
away from yourselves.” Turning her eyes in the direction Pyotr had turned
to look, she saw a factory-hand almost dead-drunk, with hanging head,
being led away by a policeman. “Come, he’s found a quicker way,” she
thought. “Count Vronsky and I did not find that happiness either, though we
expected so much from it.” And now for the first time Anna turned that
glaring light in which she was seeing everything on to her relations with
him, which she had hitherto avoided thinking about. “What was it he sought
in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity.” She remembered his
words, the expression of his face, that recalled an abject setter-dog, in the
early days of their connection. And everything now confirmed this. “Yes,
there was the triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, but
the chief element was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now that’s
over. There’s nothing to be proud of. Not to be proud of, but to be ashamed
of. He has taken from me all he could, and now I am no use to him. He is
weary of me and is trying not to be dishonorable in his behavior to me. He
let that out yesterday—he wants divorce and marriage so as to burn his
ships. He loves me, but how? The zest is gone, as the English say. That
fellow wants everyone to admire him and is very much pleased with
himself,” she thought, looking at a red-faced clerk, riding on a riding-school
horse. “Yes, there’s not the same flavor about me for him now. If I go away
from him, at the bottom of his heart he will be glad.”
This was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in the piercing light,
which revealed to her now the meaning of life and human relations.
“My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his is
waning and waning, and that’s why we’re drifting apart.” She went on
musing. “And there’s no help for it. He is everything for me, and I want him
more and more to give himself up to me entirely. And he wants more and
more to get away from me. We walked to meet each other up to the time of
our love, and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions.
And there’s no altering that. He tells me I’m insanely jealous, and I have
told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it’s not true. I’m not jealous, but
I’m unsatisfied. But….” she opened her lips, and shifted her place in the
carriage in the excitement, aroused by the thought that suddenly struck her.
“If I could be anything but a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but
his caresses; but I can’t and I don’t care to be anything else. And by that
desire I rouse aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me, and it cannot be
different. Don’t I know that he wouldn’t deceive me, that he has no schemes
about Princess Sorokina, that he’s not in love with Kitty, that he won’t
desert me! I know all that, but it makes it no better for me. If without loving
me, from duty he’ll be good and kind to me, without what I want, that’s a
thousand times worse than unkindness! That’s—hell! And that’s just how it
is. For a long while now he hasn’t loved me. And where love ends, hate
begins. I don’t know these streets at all. Hills it seems, and still houses, and
houses…. And in the houses always people and people…. How many of
them, no end, and all hating each other! Come, let me try and think what I
want, to make me happy. Well? Suppose I am divorced, and Alexey
Alexandrovitch lets me have Seryozha, and I marry Vronsky.” Thinking of
Alexey Alexandrovitch, she at once pictured him with extraordinary
vividness as though he were alive before her, with his mild, lifeless, dull
eyes, the blue veins in his white hands, his intonations and the cracking of
his fingers, and remembering the feeling which had existed between them,
and which was also called love, she shuddered with loathing. “Well, I’m
divorced, and become Vronsky’s wife. Well, will Kitty cease looking at me
as she looked at me today? No. And will Seryozha leave off asking and
wondering about my two husbands? And is there any new feeling I can
awaken between Vronsky and me? Is there possible, if not happiness, some
sort of ease from misery? No, no!” she answered now without the slightest
hesitation. “Impossible! We are drawn apart by life, and I make his
unhappiness, and he mine, and there’s no altering him or me. Every attempt
has been made, the screw has come unscrewed. Oh, a beggar woman with a
baby. She thinks I’m sorry for her. Aren’t we all flung into the world only to
hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and each other? Schoolboys
coming—laughing Seryozha?” she thought. “I thought, too, that I loved
him, and used to be touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived
without him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regret the
exchange till that love was satisfied.” And with loathing she thought of
what she meant by that love. And the clearness with which she saw life
now, her own and all men’s, was a pleasure to her. “It’s so with me and
