Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Five/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been married when she was a very young and enthusiastic girl to a very wealthy, aristocratic, good-natured, and dissolute young fellow. Two months after the wedding her husband deserted her. He had replied to her effusive expressions of love with scorn and even hatred, which no one who knew the count's kindliness, and were not acquainted with the faults of Lidia's romantic nature, could comprehend. Since then, without any formal divorce, they had lived apart; and when the husband met his wife, he always treated her with a venomous scorn, the reason for which it puzzled people to understand.
The Countess Lidia Ivanovna long ago ceased to worship her husband, but at no time had she ceased to be in love with some one. Not seldom she was in love with several at once—men and women indiscriminately. She had been in love with almost every one of any prominence. Thus she had lost her heart to each of the new princes and princesses who married into the imperial family. Then she had been in love with a metropolitan, a vicar, and a priest. Then she had been in love with a journalist, three Slavophiles, and Komisarof; then with a foreign minister, a doctor, an English missionary, and finally Karenin. These multifarious love-affairs and their different phases of warmth or coldness in no wise hindered her from keeping up the most complicated relations both with the court and society.
But from the day wheh Karenin was touched by misfortune and she took him under her special protection, from the time when she began to busy herself with his domestic affairs and work for his well-being, she felt that all her former passions were of no account, but that she now loved Karenin alone with perfect sincerity. The feeling which she now cherished toward him seemed to her stronger than all the previous feelings. As she analyzed her sentiment and compared it with the former ones, she clearly saw that she would never have been in love with Komisarof if he had not saved the emperor's life, or with Ristitch-Kudzhitsky had there been no Slav question. But Karenin she loved for himself, for his great, unappreciated spirit, for his character, for the delightful sound of his voice, his deliberate intonations, his weary eyes, and his soft white hands with their swollen veins. Not only did the thought of seeing him fill her with joy, but it seemed to her that she saw on her friend's face the signs of the impression which she made on him. She did her best to please him, no less by her person than by her conversation. Never before had she spent so much time and attention on her toilet. More than once she found herself wondering what would happen if she were not married and he were only free! When he came into the room, she colored with emotion, and she could not restrain a smile of ecstasy if he said something pleasant to her.
For several days the countess had been in a state of great excitement. She knew that Anna and Vronsky were back in Petersburg. It was necessary to save Alekseï Aleksandrovitch from seeing her; it was necessary to save him even from the tormenting knowledge that this wretched woman was living in the same town with him and he might meet her at any instant.
Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through acquaintances so as to discover the plans of these repulsive people as she called Anna and Vronsky; and she tried to direct all of Karenin's movements so that he might not meet them. The young aide to the emperor, a friend of Vronsky's, from whom she learned about them, and who was hoping through the Countess Lidia Ivanovna's influence to get a concession, told her that they were completing their arrangements and expected to depart on the following day.
Lidia Ivanovna was beginning to breathe freely once more, when on the next morning she received a note, the handwriting of which she recognized with terror. It was Anna Karenina's handwriting. The envelop was of paper thick as bark; the oblong sheet of yellow paper was adorned with an immense monogram. The note exhaled a delicious perfume.
"Who brought it?"
"A messenger from the hotel."
The countess waited long before she had the courage to sit down and read it. Her emotion almost brought on an attack of asthma, to which she was subject. At last, when she felt calmer, she opened the following note written in French:—
Madame la Comtesse:—The Christian sentiments filling your heart prompt me, with unpardonable boldness, I fear, to address you. I am unhappy at being separated from my son, and I ask you to do me the favor of letting me see him once more before I depart. If I do not make direct application to Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, it is because I do not wish to give this generous-hearted man the pain of thinking of me. Knowing your friendship for him, I felt that you would understand me; will you have Serozha sent to me here? or do you prefer that I should come at an appointed hour? or would you let me know how and at what place I could see him? You cannot imagine my desire to see my child again, and consequently you cannot comprehend the extent of my gratefulness for the assistance that you can render me in these circumstances.
Anna.
Everything about this note exasperated the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, its tenor, the allusions to Karenin's magnanimity, and the especially free and easy tone which pervaded it.
"Say that there is no reply," said the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, and, hurriedly opening her buvard, she wrote to Alekseï Aleksandrovitch that she hoped to meet him about one o'clock at the birthday reception at the Palace.
"I must consult with you in regard to a sad and serious affair; we will decide at the Palace when I can see you. The best plan would be at my house, where I will have your tea ready. It is absolutely necessary. He imposes the cross, but He gives also the strength," she added, that she might somewhat prepare him. "The Countess Lidia Ivanovna wrote Alekseï Aleksandrovitch two or three times a day; she liked this way of communication with him, as it had the elegance and mystery which were lacking in ordinary personal intercourse.