Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Four/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the "hall" and returned to his wife; she was lying down, but, hearing her husband's steps, she sat up quickly in her former position, and looked at him in a frightened way. He saw that she had been crying.
"I am very grateful to you for your confidence in me," said he, gently, repeating in Russian the remark that he had just made in French before Betsy.
When he spoke to her in Russian, and used the familiar second person singular tui, this tui irritated Anna in spite of herself. "I am very grateful for your decision; for I agree with you that, since Count Vronsky is going away, there is no necessity of his coming here; besides...."
"Yes! but as I have said that, why repeat it?" interrupted Anna, with an annoyance which she could not control. "No necessity," she thought, "for a man to say farewell to the woman he loves, for whom he has wished to commit suicide, and who cannot live without him!"
She pressed her lips together, and fixed her flashing eyes on her husband's hands with their swollen veins, as he stood slowly rubbing them together.
"We will not say any more about that," she added, more calmly.
"I have given you perfect freedom to decide this question, and I am happy to see ...." Alekseï Aleksandrovitch began again.
"That my desires are in conformity with yours," finished Anna, quickly, exasperated to hear him speak so slowly, when she knew beforehand what he was going to say.
"Yes," he affirmed; "and the Princess Tverskaya shows very poor taste to meddle in family affairs, she of all others." ....
"I don't believe what they say about her," said Anna. "I only know that she loves me sincerely."
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch sighed, and was silent. Anna played nervously with the tassels of her khalat, and looked at him now and then, with that feeling of physical repulsion which she reproached herself for, without being able to overcome. All that she wished for at this moment was to be rid of his distasteful presence."Ah! I have just sent for the doctor," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch.
"What for? I am well."
"For the baby, the little one cries so much; they think that the nurse hasn't enough nourishment for her."
"Why didn't you let me nurse her, when I urged it so? All the same" (Alekseï Aleksandrovitch understood what she meant by all the same) " she is a baby, and they will kill her." She rang, and sent for the little one. "I wanted to nurse her, and you wouldn't let me, and now you blame me."
"I do not blame you for anything." ....
"Yes, you do blame me! Bozhe moi! why didn't I die!" She began to sob. "Forgive me: I am nervous and unjust," she said, trying to control herself. "But go away."
"No, this state of things cannot go on," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch to himself, as he left his wife's room.
Never before had he been so convinced of the impossibility of prolonging such a situation before the world: never had his wife's dislike of him, and the strength of that mysterious brutal force which had taken possession of his life, to rule it contrary to the needs of his soul and to make him change his relations to his wife, appeared to him with such clearness.
He saw clearly that the world and his wife exacted something from him which he did not fully understand. He felt that it aroused within him feelings of hatred, which disturbed his peace, and destroyed the worth of his victory over himself. Anna, in his opinion, ought to have nothing more to do with Vronsky; but if everybody considered this impossible, he was ready to tolerate their meeting, on condition that the children should not be disgraced, or his own life disturbed.
Wretched as this was—it was, nevertheless, better than a rupture whereby she would be placed in a shameful and hopeless position, and he himself would be deprived of all that he loved. But he felt his powerlessness in this struggle, and knew beforehand that all were against him and that he would be prevented from doing what seemed to him wise and good, and that he would be obliged to do what was bad, but necessary to be done.