Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Six/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
Darya Aleksandrovna carried out her plan of going to see Anna. She was sorry to offend her sister, or to displease her sister's husband. She realized that the Levins were right in not wishing to have anything to do with Vronsky; but she considered it her duty to go to see Anna and prove to her that her feelings could not change, in spite of the change in her position.
In order not to be dependent on the Levins, Darya Aleksandrovna sent to the village to hire horses; but Levin, when he heard about it, went to her with his complaint:—
"Why do you think this journey would be disagreeable to me? And even if it were, it would be still more unpleasant for me not to have you take my horses," said he. "You never told me that you were really going; but to hire them from the village is disagreeable to me in the first place, and chiefly because, though they undertake to get you there, they would not succeed. I have horses. And if you don't wish to offend me, you will take mine."
Darya Aleksandrovna had to yield, and on the appointed day Levin had all ready for his sister-in-law a team of four horses, and a relay, made up of working and saddle-horses; a very far from handsome turnout, but capable of taking Darya Aleksandrovna to her destination in one day.
Now that horses were needed to take the old princess out for her daily drive, and for the midwife, it was a rather heavy burden for Levin; but, according to the law of hospitality, he could not possibly think of allowing Darya Aleksandrovna to hire horses outside, and, moreover, he knew that the twenty rubles which was asked for the hire of a team would be a serious matter for her, for Darya Aleksandrovna's pecuniary affairs had got into a very wretched condition, and caused the Levins as much anxiety as if they had been their own.
Darya Aleksandrovna, by Levin's advice, set out at early dawn. The weather was fine, the calash was comfortable, the horses went merrily, and on the box, next the coachman, in place of a footman, sat the book-keeper, whom Levin had sent for the sake of greater security.
Darya Aleksandrovna dropped off to sleep, and did not wake up till they reached the place where they had to change horses. It was at the same rich muzhik's house where Levin had stopped on his way to Sviazhsky's. After she had taken tea, and talked awhile with the women about their children and with the old man about Count Vronsky, for whom he had great respect, Darya Aleksandrovna proceeded on her way about ten o'clock.
At home on account of her maternal cares she never had much time to think. Consequently now, during this four hours' journey, all the thoughts that had been so long restrained suddenly began to throng through her brain, and she passed her whole life in review as she had never before done and from every side. These thoughts were strange even to herself.
First she thought of her children, and began to worry over them, though her mother and her sister—and it was the latter on whom she chiefly relied—had promised to look after them. "If only Masha doesn't do some stupid thing, and if Grisha doesn't get kicked by the horse, and if Lili doesn't have an attack of indigestion," she said to herself.
Then questions of the present moment began to mingle with questions of the immediate future. She began to consider how she must make changes in her rooms when she returned to Moscow, she must refurnish her drawing-room; her eldest daughter would need a shuba for winter. Then came questions of a still more distant future. How should she best continue the children's education?
"The girls can be easily managed," she said to herself, "but the boys? It is well that I am able to look after Grisha, but it comes from the fact that I am free just now, with no baby in prospect. Of course there's no dependence to be placed on Stiva. I shall be able to bring them up with the assistance of excellent people; but if I have any more babies ...."
And it occurred to her how unjust was the saying that the curse laid on woman lay in the pangs of child-birth.
"Childbirth is nothing, but pregnancy is such misery," she said to herself, recalling the last experience of the sort, and the death of the child. And the thought brought to mind her talk with the young wife at the post-house. When asked if she had children, this peasant woman had answered cheerfully:—
"I had one daughter, but God relieved me of her; she was buried in Lent.
"And you are very sad about her?"
"Why should I be? father has plenty of grandchildren, as it is, and she would have been only one care more! You can't work or do anything; it hinders everything."
This reply had seemed revolting to Darya Aleksandrovna, in spite of the young peasant-woman's appearance of good nature, but now she could not help recalling what she had said. There was certainly a grain of truth in those cynical words.
"Yes, and as a general thing," said Darya Aleksandrovna, as she looked back over the fifteen years of her married life, "pregnancy, nausea, dullness of spirits, indifference to everything, and worst of all, ugliness. Kitty, our little, young, pretty Kitty, how ugly even she has grown, and I know well what a fright I become when I am in that condition. The birth-pains, the awful sufferings, and that last moment.... then the nursing of the children, the sleepless nights, the agonies...."
Darya Aleksandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the agony which with almost every one of her children she had suffered from broken breast.
Then the illnesses of the children, that panic of fear, then their education, their evil disposition; she recalled little Masha's disobedience in going to the raspberry bush; the lessons, Latin—everything that is so incomprehensible and hard. And, above all, the death of these children.
And once more she went over the undying pangs that weighed down her maternal heart in the cruel remembrance of the death of her youngest child, the nursling who died of the croup, and his funeral, and the indifference of other people as they looked at the little pink coffin, and her own heartrending grief, which none could share, as she looked for the last time on the pallid brow with the clinging curls, and the surprised half-open mouth visible for one instant ere they shut down the cover with its silver-gilt cross.
"And what is all this for? What will be the result of it all? That I never have a moment of rest, spending my days now in bearing children, now in nursing them, forever irritable, complaining, self-tormented, and tormenting others, repulsive to my husband. I shall live on, and my children will grow up wretched, ill-educated, and poor. Even now, if I had not been able to spend the summer with the Levins, I don't know how we should have got along. Of course Kostia and Kitty are so considerate that we can't feel under obligations to them; but this cannot go on so. They will be having children of their own, and then they will not be able to help us any more; even now their expenses are very heavy. What then? Papa, who has kept almost nothing for himself, won't be able to help us, will he? One thing is perfectly certain, I cannot educate my children unaided; and, if I have to have assistance, it will be humiliating. Well, let us suppose that we have good luck, if no more of the children die and I can manage to educate them. Under the most favorable circumstances they will at least turn out not to be bad. That is all that I can hope for. And to bring about so much, how much suffering, how much trouble, I must go through. ... My whole life is spoiled!"
Again she recalled what the young peasant woman had said, and again it was odious to her to remember it; but she could not help agreeing that there was a grain of coarse truth in her words.
"Is it much farther, Mikhaïla?" asked Darya Aleksandrovna of the bookkeeper, in order to check these painful thoughts.
"They say it is seven versts from this village."
The calash was rolling through the village street and across a little bridge. On the bridge was passing a whole troop of peasant women talking, with loud and merry voices, and carrying their sheaves on their backs. The women paused on the bridge and gazed inquisitively at the calash. All the faces turned toward Darya Aleksandrovna seemed to her healthy and cheerful, mocking her with the very joy of life.
"All are full of life, all of them enjoy themselves," said Darya Aleksandrovna, continuing to commune with her own thoughts, as she passed by the peasant women and was carried swiftly up the little hill, pleasantly rocking on the easy springs of the old calash, "while I, like one let loose from a prison, am free for a moment from the life that is crushing me with its cares. All other women know what it is to live, these peasant women and my sister Natali and Varenka and Anna whom I am going to visit—every one but me.
"And they blame Anna. Why? Am I really any better than she? At least I have a husband whom I love; not, to be sure, as I wish I loved him, but I love him in a way, and Anna did not love hers. In what respect is she to blame? She desired to live. And God put that desire into our hearts. Very possibly I might have done the same thing. And to this day I am not certain whether I did well in taking her advice at that horrible time when she came to visit me in Moscow. Then I ought to have left my husband and begun my life all over again. If I had I might have loved and been loved. And now are things any better? I cannot respect him, but I need him," she said to herself, referring to her husband, "and so I endure him. Is that any better? At that time I still had the power of pleasing, I had some beauty then," said Darya Aleksandrovna, still pursuing her thoughts; and the desire to look at herself in a mirror came over her. She had a small traveling mirror in her bag, and she wanted to take it out; but, as she looked at the backs of the coachman and the swaying bookkeeper, she felt that she should be ashamed of herself if either of them turned round and saw her, and so she did not take out the mirror. But, even though she did not look at the mirror, she felt that even now it was not too late: for she remembered Sergyeï Ivanovitch, who was especially amiable to her, and Stiva's friend, the good Turovtsuin, who had helped her take care of the children during the time of the scarlatina, and had been in love with her. And then there was still another, a very young man, who, as her husband used jestingly to remark, found her prettier than all her sisters. And all sorts of passionate and impossible romances rose before her imagination.
"Anna has done perfectly right, and I shall never think of reproaching her. She is happy, she makes some one else happy, and she is not worn out as I am, but keeps all her freshness and her mind open to all sorts of interests," said Darya Aleksandrovna, and a roguish smile played over her lips because, as she passed Anna's romantic story in review, she imagined herself simultaneously having almost the same experiences with a sort of collective representation of all the men who had ever been in love with her. She, just like Anna, confessed everything to her husband. And the amazement and perplexity which she imagined Stepan Arkadyevitch displayed at this confession caused her to smile.
With such day-dreams she reached the side road that led from the highway to Vozdvizhenskoye.