Anna Karenina (Dole)/Part Two/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch found nothing unusual or improper in the fact that his wife and Vronsky had been sitting by themselves and having a rather lively talk together; he noticed that to others in the drawingroom it seemed unusual and improper, and therefore it seemed to him also improper. He decided that he ought to speak about it to his wife.
When he reached home, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, according to his usual custom, went to his library, threw himself into his arm-chair, and opened his book at the place marked by a paper-cutter, in an article on Papistry, and read till the clock struck one, as he usually did. From time to time he passed his hand across his high forehead, and shook his head, as if to drive away an importunate thought. At his usual hour he arose and he prepared to go to bed. Anna Arkadyevna had not yet returned. With his book under his arm, he went upstairs; but that evening, instead of pursuing his usual train of reflections and thinking over his governmental duties, his mind was occupied with his wife and the disagreeable impression which her behavior had caused him. Contrary to his habit, instead of going to bed he walked up and down the rooms with his arms behind his back. He could not go to bed because he felt that first it was incumbent on him to ponder anew over the exigency that had arisen.
When Alekseï Aleksandrovitch made up his mind that he must have a talk with his wife, it seemed to him very simple and natural; but now, as he reflected, it occurred to him that the matter was complicated and perplexing.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy in his opinion was insulting to a wife, and a husband should trust in her. But he did not ask himself why one should trust her, that is to say, why a man should expect a young wife always to love him.
But he had not felt any lack of confidence simply because he trusted her, and said to himself that it was the proper thing to do. But now, although it was his conviction that jealousy is a disgusting state of mind, and that it was his duty to trust his wife and that his faith was still intact, yet he felt that he was placed in an illogical and ridiculous position, and he knew not what he ought to do.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch was now standing face to face with life, with the possibility that his wife was in love with some one else besides him, and this seemed to him very senseless and incomprehensible, because it was life itself. All his life he had lived and labored in a round of official duties concerned with the reflections of life. And whenever he came in contact with life itself he was revolted by it. Now he experienced a sensation such as a man feels, who, passing calmly over a bridge above a precipice, suddenly discovers that the arch is broken, and that the abyss yawns beneath his feet.
This abyss was actual life; the bridge—the artificial life which he had been living. The idea that his wife could love another man occurred to him for the first time, and filled him with terror.
Without undressing, he kept walking back and forth with regular steps: over the echoing parquetry floor of the dining-room lighted with a single burner; over the carpet of the dark drawing-room, where the light fell on his recently painted full-length portrait, over the divan; and then through his wife's boudoir, where two candles were burning, lighting up the portraits of parents and friends, and the pretty trinkets upon her writing-table, so long familiar to him. When he reached the door of her bedroom he turned and went back.
At the end of each turn in his pacing back and forth, and especially on the hard-wood floor of his brightly lighted dining-room, he would stop and say to himself:—
"Yes, this must certainly be cut short; it must be decided; I must tell her my way of looking at it!"
And then he would turn back again.
"But what can I say? what decision can I make?" he would ask himself by the time he reached the drawing-room, and find no answer.
"But, after all," he would say, as he turned in the library, "what has been done? Nothing. She had a long talk with him. What of that? But whom does not a society woman talk with? To be jealous is degrading both her and me," he would say to himself as he reached her boudoir. But this reasoning, which had hitherto had such weight, had now lost its cogency.
From the door of her sleeping-room he returned again to the hall, but, as he crossed the dark drawing-room, he thought he heard a voice saying to him, "It is not so! the fact that the others noticed this signifies that there must be something in it."—And by the time he reached the dining-room again he was saying, "Yes, the thing must be decided, and broken short off." And once more in the drawing-room, just before he turned about, he would ask himself:—
"How can I decide? How can I tell her?"
And then he would ask himself, "What had happened?" and reply, "Nothing," and remember that jealousy is a feeling degrading to a woman; but again in the drawing-room he would feel persuaded that something had happened.
His thoughts, like his steps, followed the same circle, and he struck no new idea. He recognized this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her boudoir.
There, as he looked at her table, with its malachite writing-tablet, and a letter unfinished, his thoughts took another direction; he began to think of her, and how she would feel. His imagination vividly showed him her personal life, her thoughts, and her desires; and the idea that she might, that she must, have her individual life apart from his, seemed to him so terrible, that he hastened to put it out of his mind.
This was the abyss which it was so dreadful for him to gaze into. To penetrate by thought and feeling into the soul of another was a psychical effort strange to Alekseï Aleksandrovitch. He considered it a pernicious and dangerous mental habit.
"And what is most terrible," he said to himself, "is that this senseless uncertainty comes on me just as I am about to bring my work to completion,"—he referred to a scheme which he was at that time managing,—"and when I need perfect freedom from agitation and all my mental powers. What is to be done? I am not one of those men who can endure agitation and annoyance and have the strength of mind to face them."
"I must reflect; I must take some stand and get rid of this annoyance," he added aloud. "I do not admit that I have any right to probe into her feelings, or to scrutinize what is going on in her heart; that belongs to her conscience, and comes into the domain of religion," he said to himself, feeling some consolation that he had found a domain of law applicable to the circumstances that had arisen.
"So," he continued, "the questions relating to her feelings and the like are questions of conscience, in which I have no concern. My duty lies clearly before me. As head of my family, I am bound to guide her, and therefore, to a certain degree, I am responsible. I must point out the danger which I see; I must watch over her, and even use my powers. I must speak to her."
And Alekseï Aleksandrovitch formulated in his mind everything that he should say to his wife. While he was thinking it over he regretted the necessity of wasting his time and his intellectual powers in family matters. But, in spite of him, his plan assumed, in his thought, the clear, precise, and logical form of a report:—
"I must make her understand as follows: First, The meaning and importance of public opinion and decorum; Secondly, The religious significance of marriage; Thirdly, if necessary, The unhappiness which it might cause her son; Fourthly, The unhappiness which might befall herself."
And Alekseï Aleksandrovitch twisted his fingers together, palms down, and made the joints crack.
This gesture, of joining his hands and stretching his finger-joints,—a bad habit,—calmed him, and conduced to the precision of which he now stood in such need.
A carriage was heard driving up to the house. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch stopped in the middle of the hall. He heard his wife's step on the stairway. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch had his sermon all ready; but still he stood there, squeezing his crossed fingers and trying to make the joints crack. One joint cracked.
Even as he heard her light steps on the stairs he was conscious of her presence, and, though he was satisfied with his sermon, he dreaded the explanation that was imminent. ....