Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Seven/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII
Many families remain for years in places of which the husband and wife both are tired and disgusted, simply because there is neither full discord nor full concord.
Unendurable to Vronsky and Anna was their life in Moscow, in the heat and dust, when the sun shone, not now with its springtime beauty, but with summer fervor, and all the trees along the boulevards had been long in leaf, and the leaves were already thick with dust. Though they had long before decided to remove to Vozdvizhenskoye, still they continued to live in Moscow, which was detestable to them both, and the reason for this was that of late there had been no harmony between them.
The exasperation which tended to keep them apart had no tangible cause, and all attempts at an explanation, instead of closing the chasm, only widened it. It was an internal irritation which, as far as she was concerned, had for its source the diminution of his love for her, and on his part his annoyance because, thanks to her, he found himself placed in an embarrassing position, which she, instead of trying to relieve, made still more difficult. Neither he nor she formulated any definite complaints, but each considered the other in the wrong, and at every opportunity tried to make this evident.
She considered that he, with ail his habits, ideas, desires, with all his spiritual and physical tendencies, had one distinguishing quality,—the power of loving women; and this love, she felt, ought by good rights to be wholly concentrated on her. This love had diminished; consequently, in her opinion, a part of this love must necessarily be transferred to others or to some other woman, and—she was jealous. She was jealous, not of any definite woman, but of his diminished love for her.
Having as yet no definite object for her jealousy to rest on, she was on the watch for one. On the slightest pretext she would transfer her jealousy from one person to another. Sometimes she suspected him of low amours, which he might enter into as an unmarried man about town; sometimes she distrusted ladies whom he might meet in society; then again, with the imaginary young lady whom he would be likely to marry in case he broke with her. This form of jealousy especially tormented her, for the reason that he himself had carelessly, in a moment of confidence one day, spoken of his mother's lack of tact in having ventured to propose to him to marry the young Princess Sorokin.
And being thus jealous, Anna felt indignant with him and kept finding reasons for her indignation. For all the painfulness of her position she blamed him. She considered him responsible for her painful state of expectancy which she was enduring in Moscow, as it were suspended between heaven and earth, for the uncertainty in which she lived, for Alekseï Aleksandrovitch's delay and indecision, and for her loneliness. If he loved her, he would understand the difficulty of her position, and save her from it. He was to blame because she was living in Moscow and not in the country. He could not live in the country, as she wanted to do. He wanted society, and so condemned her to this horrible position, the trials of which he could not comprehend, And, again, he was responsible for depriving her forever of her son. Even those rare moments of tenderness which they occasionally enjoyed did not appease her; she now detected in his tenderness a shade of calmness, of assurance, which he had never before shown, and which exasperated her.
It was getting dark. Vronsky was at a gentlemen's dinner; and Anna, while waiting for him, had taken refuge in his library, where the noise of the street was less oppressive than in the rest of the house. She walked up and down, going over in memory their last altercation.
As she recalled in memory the insulting words that had been spoken, and tried to think what had led to it, she at last remembered how the quarrel had begun. For some time she found it impossible to believe that any dissension could have arisen from such an inoffensive conversation, from a subject which was so unimportant to any one. But such was the fact. It all began from his having made sport of women's gymnasia, declaring them unnecessary, and she had taken up the cudgels in their defense. He had disrespectfully attacked the education of women in general, and had said that Hannah, Anna's English protégée, had not the slightest need of knowing anything about physics.
That had irritated Anna. She saw in it a derogatory reference to her own occupations, and she conjured up and uttered a phrase which was meant to repay him for the pain he inflicted on her.
"I did not expect that you would comprehend me and my feelings as a man who really loved would, but I expected at least some delicacy," said she.
And in reality he had reddened with vexation and made some unpleasant remark. She did not remember what retort she then made, but, whatever it was, he had said with the manifest intention of hurting her feelings:—
"I confess your devotion to that girl does not interest me, because I can see in it nothing but an affectation."
This cruelty of his, with which he demolished the fabric which she had with such labor erected so as to endure the trials of her life, this injustice of his in accusing her of pretense and affectation, drove her frantic.
"It is very unfortunate that only what is low and material is comprehensible to you," she had retorted, and she left the room.
When, in the evening, he came to see her, the discussion was not resumed, but they both felt that it was not forgotten.
All this day he had not been at home; and she was so lonely and wretched, as she thought of their quarrels, that she resolved to forget everything, to ask his forgiveness, and to take the blame on herself, so as to bring about a reconciliation at any cost.
"I am to blame; I am irritable; I am absurdly jealous. I will make it up with him, and we will leave for the country, and there I shall be calmer," she thought.
"Affectation!"—nenaturalno. She suddenly remembered the word which had so affronted her, above all in his intention of causing her pain by it."I know what he meant. He meant by affected that I did not love my daughter, but loved another's child. What does he know of the love a child can inspire? Has he the least idea what I sacrificed for him in giving up Serozha? But this desire to wound me! No, he loves another woman; it must be so."
And seeing that, even while she wanted to calm herself she was once more going over the circle she had so many times traversed, and was once more returning to the same state of irritation, she was horror-struck.
"Is it wholly out of the question? Can I not attach him to myself?" she queried, and then she began at the beginning again. "He is true, he is honorable, he loves me. I love him; in a day or two dissension will be ended. What is necessary? Calmness, gentleness, and I shall bring him back to me. Yes; now, when he comes, I will tell him that I was to blame .... although I was not to blame; .... and we will go off."
And, in order not to think any more, and not to give way to her irritation, she gave orders to bring down her trunks, to begin preparations for departure.
At ten o'clock Vronsky came in.