Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Three/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
It was already six o'clock; and in order not to miss his appointment, or to go with his own horses, which everybody knew, Vronsky engaged Yashvin's hired carriage, and told the izvoshchik to drive with all speed. It was a spacious old carriage, with room for four. He sat in one corner, stretched his legs out on the empty seat, and began to think.
The confused consciousness of the order in which he had regulated his affairs; the confused recollection of the friendship and flattery of Serpukhovskoï, who assured him that he was an indispensable man; and most of all, the expectation of the coming interview,—conspired to give him a keen sense of the joy of living. This impression was so powerful that he could not keep from smiling. He stretched his legs, threw one knee over the other, felt for the contusion that his fall had given him the evening before, and drew several long breaths with full lungs.
"Good, very good," said he to himself. Oftentimes before he had felt a pleasure in the possession of his body, but never had he so loved it, or loved himself, as now. It was even pleasurable to feel the slight soreness in his leg, pleasurable was the mouse-like sensation of motion on his breast when he breathed.
This same bright, fresh, August day, which so impressed Anna with its hopelessness, stimulated, vitalized him, and cooled his face and neck, which still burned from the reaction after his bath. The odor of brilliantine from his mustaches seemed pleasant to him in this fresh atmosphere. Everything that he saw from the carriage-window seemed to him in this cool, pure air, in this pale light of the dying day, fresh, joyous, and healthful, like himself. And the housetops shining in the rays of the setting sun, the outlines of the fences and the edifices along the way, and the shapes of occasional pedestrians and carriages hurrying hither and thither, and the motionless green of the trees, and the lawns, and the fields with their straight-cut rows of potato-hills, and the oblique shadows cast by the houses and the trees, and even by the potato-hills,—all was as beautiful as an exquisite landscape just from the master's hand, and freshly varnished.
"Make haste, make haste!" he shouted, pushing up through the window a three-ruble note to the driver, who turned round and looked down at him.
The izvoshchik's hand arranged something about the lantern, then the crack of the knout was heard, and the carriage whirled rapidly over the even pavement.
"I need nothing, nothing, but this pleasure," he thought, as his eyes rested on the knob of the bell, fastened between the windows, and he imagined Anna as she seemed when last he saw her. "The farther I go, the more I love her.—Ah! here is the garden of the Vrede datcha. Where shall I find her? How? Why did she make this appointment? and why did she write on Betsy's note?"
This struck him for the first time, but he had no time to think about it. He stopped the driver before they reached the driveway, and, getting out of the carriage, he went up the walk which led to the house. There was no one on the avenue; but looking toward the right he saw her. Her face was covered with a veil; but with a joyful glance, he recognized her immediately, by her graceful motion as she walked, by the slope of her shoulders, and the pose of her head, and he felt as if an electric shock had passed through him. With new strength he felt the joy of life and of action, even from the movements of his limbs to the involuntary motion of respiration, and something made his lips twitch.
When he came near her, she eagerly seized his hand.
"You are not angry because I asked you to come? I absolutely needed to see you," she said; and the serious and stern closing of the lips, which he saw under the veil, quickly put an end to his jubilant spirits.
"I angry? but how did you come? when?"
"No matter about that," said she, taking Vronsky's arm. "Come; I must have a talk with you."
He perceived that something had happened, and that their interview would not be joyful. While with her, he could not control his will. Though he did not know what her agitation portended, yet he felt that it had taken possession of him also.
"What is it? What is the matter?" he asked, pressing her arm, and trying to read her thoughts by her face.
She went a few steps in silence, so as to get her breath; then she suddenly halted.
"I did not tell you last evening," she began, breathing fast and painfully, "that, on the way home with Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, I confessed to him everything ....I said that I could not be his wife .... that .... and I told him all."
He listened, involuntarily leaning toward her, as if he wished to lighten for her the difficulty of this confidence; but as soon as she finished speaking, he suddenly drew himself up, and his face assumed a haughty and stern expression.
"Yes! yes! that was better, a thousand times better, I understand how hard it must have been," he said.
But she did not heed his words, she read his thoughts by the expression of his face. She could not know that the expression of his face arose from the first thought that came into his mind—the thought that a duel could not now be avoided. Never had a thought of a duel entered her head, and therefore she interpreted the momentary expression of sternness in a quite different way.
Since the arrival of her husband's letter, she felt in the bottom of her heart that all would remain as before; that she should not have the strength to sacrifice her position in the world, to abandon her son and join her lover. The morning spent with the Princess Tverskaya confirmed her in this. But this interview with Vronsky seemed to her to be of vital importance. She hoped that it might change their relations and save her. If, on hearing this news, he had said decidedly, passionately, without a moment's hesitation, "Leave all, and come with me," she would even have abandoned her son, and gone with him. But what she told him did not produce on him at all the impression which she had expected; he seemed, if anything, vexed and angry.
"It was not hard for me at all. It came of its own accord," she said, with a touch of irritation; "and here"—she drew her husband's letter from her glove.
"I understand, I understand," interrupted Vronsky, taking the letter, but not reading it, and trying to calm Anna. "The one thing I wanted, the one thing I prayed for ....to put an end to this situation, so that I could devote my whole life to your happiness."
"Why do you say that to me?" she asked. "Can I doubt it? If I doubted...."
"Who are those coming?" asked Vronsky, abruptly, seeing two ladies coming in their direction. "Perhaps they know us." And he hastily drew Anna with him down a side alley.
"Akh! it is all the same to me," she said.
Her lips trembled, and it seemed to Vronsky that her eyes looked at him from under her veil with strange hatred.
"As I said, in all this affair, I cannot doubt you. But here is what he wrote me. Read it."
And again she halted. Again, as when he first learned of Anna's rupture with her husband, Vronsky, beginning to read this letter, involuntarily abandoned himself to the impression awakened in him by the thought of his relations to the deceived husband. Now that he had the letter in his hand, he imagined the challenge, which he would receive that day or the next, and the duel itself, at the moment when, with the same cool and haughty expression which now set his face, he would stand in front of his adversary, and, having discharged his weapon in the air, would wait the outraged husband's shot. And at this very instant Serpukhovskoï's words and what he himself had felt that day flashed through his mind, "Better not tie yourself down;" and she knew that he could not express his thought before her.
After he read the note, he raised his eyes to her, and there was indecision in his look. She instantly perceived that he had thought this matter over before. She knew that whatever he said to her, he would not say all that he thought. And she realized that her last hope had vanished. This was not what she had desired.
"You see what sort of a man he is," said she, with faltering voice. "He ...."
"Excuse me, but I am glad of this," said Vronsky, interrupting. "For God's sake, let me speak," he quickly added, beseeching her with his look to give him time to explain his words. "I am glad, because this cannot, and never could go on as he imagines."
"Why can't it?" demanded Anna, holding back her tears, and evidently attaching no importance to what he said. She felt that her fate was already settled.
Vronsky meant that after the duel, which he felt was inevitable, this situation must be changed; but he said something quite different.
"It cannot go on so. I hope that now you will leave him, I hope"—he stumbled and grew red—"that you will allow me to take charge of our lives, and regulate them. To-morrow.... " he began to say.
She did not allow him to finish.
"And my son!" she cried. "Do you see what he writes? I must leave him; but I cannot and I will not do that."
"But, for God's sake, which is better,—to leave your son, or to continue this humiliating situation?"
"For whom is it a humiliating situation?"
"For all of us, and especially for you,"
"You say humiliating! .... Don't say that. For me that word has no meaning," said she, with trembling voice. She could not bear now to have him tell her a falsehood. Her love for him was trembling in the balance, and she wished to love him. "You must know that for me, on that day when I first loved you, everything was transformed. For me there was one thing, and only one thing,—your love. If it is mine, then I feel myself so high, so firm, that nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because .... proud that .... proud ...." She did not say why she was proud. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stopped, and began to sob.
He also felt that something rose in his throat. For the first time in his life he felt ready to cry. He could not have said what affected him so. He was sorry for her, and he felt that he could not help her; and, more than all, he knew that he was the cause of her unhappiness, that he had done something abominable.
"Then a divorce is impossible?" he asked gently.
She shook her head without replying. "Then, could you not take your son, and leave him?"
"Yes; but all this depends on him. Now I must go to him," she said dryly. Her presentiment that all would be as before was verified.
"I shall be in Petersburg Tuesday, and everything will be decided."
"Yes," she repeated. "But we shall not speak any more about that."
Anna's carriage, which she sent away with the order to come back for her at the railing of the Vrede Garden, was approaching. Anna took leave of Vronsky, and went home.