Leo Tolstoy
Page 58
‘Wasn’t I all dishevelled?’ she thought. But seeing the rapturous smile that the recollection of these details evoked in him, she felt that, on the contrary, the impression she had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed joyfully.
‘I really don’t remember.’
‘How nicely Turovtsyn laughs!’ said Levin, admiring his moist eyes and shaking body.
‘Have you known him long?’ asked Kitty.
‘Who doesn’t know him!’
‘And I see you think he’s a bad man.’
‘Not bad, but worthless.’
‘That’s not true! And you must immediately stop thinking so!’ said Kitty. ‘I had a very low opinion of him, too, but he – he is the dearest man, and remarkably kind. He has a heart of gold.’
‘How could you know about his heart?’
‘He and I are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon after you … visited us,’ she said with a guilty and at the same time trustful smile, ‘Dolly’s children all got scarlet fever, and he came to see her once. And can you imagine,’ she said in a whisper, ‘he felt so sorry for her that he stayed and began to help her look after the children. Yes, and he lived in their house for three weeks and looked after the children like a nurse.
‘I’m telling Konstantin Dmitrich about Turovtsyn during the scarlet fever,’ she said, leaning over to her sister.
‘Yes, remarkable, charming!’ said Dolly, glancing at Turovtsyn, who sensed that he was being talked about, and smiling meekly at him. Levin glanced at him once more and was surprised that he had not understood all the charm of this man before.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and I’ll never think badly of people again!’ he said gaily, sincerely expressing what he then felt.
XII
In the conversation begun about the rights of women there were questions about the inequality of rights in marriage that it was ticklish to discuss in front of ladies. During dinner Pestsov had taken a fling at these questions several times, but Sergei Ivanovich and Stepan Arkadyich had carefully deflected him.
However, when they got up from the table and the ladies left, Pestsov did not follow them, but turned to Alexei Alexandrovich and began to explain the main cause of the inequality. The inequality of spouses, in his opinion, consisted in the fact that the unfaithfulness of a wife and the unfaithfulness of a husband were punished unequally by the law and public opinion.
Stepan Arkadyich hastened to Alexei Alexandrovich and offered him a cigar.
‘No, I don’t smoke,’ Alexei Alexandrovich replied calmly and, as if deliberately wishing to show that he was not afraid of the conversation, turned to Pestsov with a cold smile.
‘I suppose the grounds for such a view are in the very essence of things,’ he said and was about to go to the drawing room; but here Turovtsyn suddenly spoke unexpectedly, addressing Alexei Alexandrovich.
‘And have you heard about Pryachnikov?’ Turovtsyn said, animated by the champagne he had drunk and having long waited for a chance to break the silence that oppressed him. ‘Vasya Pryachnikov,’ he said with a kindly smile of his moist and ruddy lips, mainly addressing the chief guest, Alexei Alexandrovich. ‘I’ve just been told he fought a duel with Kvytsky in Tver and killed him.’
As one always seems to bump, as if on purpose, precisely on a sore spot, so now Stepan Arkadyich felt that, unluckily, the evening’s conversation kept hitting Alexei Alexandrovich on his sore spot. He again wanted to shield his brother–in–law, but Alexei Alexandrovich himself asked with curiosity:
‘What did Pryachnikov fight the duel over?’
‘His wife. Acted like a real man! Challenged him and killed him!’
‘Ah!’ Alexei Alexandrovich said indifferently and, raising his eyebrows, proceeded to the drawing room.
‘I’m so glad you came,’ Dolly said to him with a frightened smile, meeting him in the anteroom. ‘I must talk with you. Let’s sit down here.’
With the same indifferent expression, produced by his raised eyebrows, Alexei Alexandrovich sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna and smiled falsely.
‘The more so,’ he said, ‘as I, too, wanted to beg your pardon and bow out at once. I must leave tomorrow.’
Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips trembling with wrath at this cold, unfeeling man who so calmly intended to ruin her innocent friend.
‘Alexei Alexandrovich,’ she said, looking into his eyes with desperate determination. ‘I asked you about Anna and you didn’t answer me. How is she?’
‘It seems she’s well, Darya Alexandrovna,’ Alexei Alexandrovich replied without looking at her.
‘Forgive me, Alexei Alexandrovich, I have no right . . . but I love and respect Anna like a sister; I beg you, I entreat you to tell me what’s wrong between you? What do you accuse her of?’
Alexei Alexandrovich winced and, almost closing his eyes, bowed his head.
‘I suppose your husband has told you the reasons why I consider it necessary to change my former relations with Anna Arkadyevna,’ he said, not looking in her eyes and glancing with displeasure at Shcherbatsky who was passing through the drawing room.
‘I don’t believe it, I don’t, I can’t believe it!’ said Dolly, clasping her bony hands before her with an energetic gesture. She got up quickly and placed her hand on Alexei Alexandrovich’s sleeve. ‘We’ll be disturbed here. Please, let’s go in there.’ Dolly’s agitation affected Alexei Alexandrovich. He got up and obediently followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down at a table covered with oilcloth cut all over by penknives.
‘I don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it!’ said Dolly, trying to catch his eyes, which avoided hers.
‘It’s impossible not to believe facts, Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, stressing the word facts.
‘But what has she done?’ said Darya Alexandrovna. ‘What precisely has she done?’
‘She has scorned her obligations and betrayed her husband. That is what she has done,’ he said.
‘No, no, it can’t be! No, for God’s sake, you’re mistaken!’ said Dolly, touching her temples with her hands and closing her eyes.
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled coldly with his lips only, wishing to show her and himself the firmness of his conviction; but this ardent defence, though it did not shake him, rubbed salt into his wound. He spoke with increased animation.
‘It is rather difficult to be mistaken, when the wife herself announces it to her husband. Announces that eight years of life and a son – that it was all a mistake and that she wants to live over again,’ he said, sniffing angrily.
‘Anna and vice – I can’t put the two together, I can’t believe it.’
‘Darya Alexandrovna!’ he said, now looking straight into Dolly’s kind, agitated face and feeling that his tongue was involuntarily loosening. ‘I would have paid dearly for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, it was hard for me, but easier than now. When I doubted, there was hope; but now there is no hope and even so I doubt everything. I doubt everything so much that I hate my own son and sometimes do not believe that he is my son. I am very unhappy.’
He had no need to say it. Darya Alexandrovna understood it as soon as he looked into her face. She felt sorry for him, and her belief in her friend’s innocence was shaken.
‘Ah, it’s terrible, terrible! But is it really true that you’ve decided on divorce?’
‘I’ve decided on the final measure. There’s nothing else for me to do.’
‘Nothing to do, nothing to do …’ she said with tears in her eyes. ‘No, that’s not so!’ she said.
‘The terrible thing in this sort of grief is that, unlike anything else – a loss, a death – one cannot simply bear one’s cross. Here one must act,’ he said, as if guessing her thought. ‘One must get out of the humiliating position one has been put in: it is impossible to live as three.’
‘I understand, I understand that very well,’ said Dolly, and s
he bowed her head. She paused, thinking of herself, of her own family grief, and suddenly raised her head energetically and clasped her hands in a pleading gesture. ‘But wait! You’re a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her if you leave her?’
‘I have been thinking, Darya Alexandrovna, and thinking a great deal,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said. His face flushed in spots, his dull eyes looked straight at her. Darya Alexandrovna pitied him now with all her heart. ‘That is what I did after she herself announced my disgrace to me. I left everything as it had been. I gave her the chance to reform. I tried to save her. And what? She did not fulfil the easiest of requirements –the observance of propriety,’ he said heatedly. ‘It is possible to save a person who does not want to perish. But if the whole nature is so corrupt, so perverted, that perdition itself looks like salvation, what can be done?’
‘Anything, only not divorce!’ Darya Alexandrovna replied.
‘But what is this "anything"?’
‘No, it’s terrible! She’ll be no one’s wife, she’ll be ruined!’
‘What can I do?’ said Alexei Alexandrovich, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The memory of his wife’s last trespass vexed him so much that he again became cold, as at the beginning of their conversation. T thank you very much for your concern, but I must go,’ he said, getting up.
‘No, wait! You mustn’t ruin her. Wait, I’ll tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me. Angry, jealous, I wanted to abandon everything, I myself wanted … But I came to my senses – and who saved me? Anna saved me. And so I live. My children are growing up, my husband comes back to the family, he feels he wasn’t right, becomes purer, better, and I live … I forgave, and you must forgive!’
Alexei Alexandrovich listened, but her words no longer affected him. In his soul there arose again all the anger of the day when he had decided on divorce. He shook himself and spoke in a shrill, loud voice:
T cannot forgive, I do not want to, and I consider it unjust. I did everything for that woman, and she trampled everything in the mud that is so suitable to her. I am not a wicked man, I have never hated anyone, but her I hate with all the strength of my soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her so much for all the evil she has done me!’ he said with tears of anger in his voice.
‘Love those who hate you …’ Darya Alexandrovna whispered shamefacedly.
Alexei Alexandrovich smiled contemptuously. He had long known that, but it could not be applied in his case.
‘Love those who hate you, but to love those you hate is impossible. Forgive me for having upset you. Everyone has enough grief of his own!’ And, having regained control of himself, Alexei Alexandrovich calmly said goodbye and left.
XIII
When they got up from the table, Levin wanted to follow Kitty into the drawing room, but he was afraid that she might be displeased by such all–too–obvious courtship of her on his part. He remained in the men’s circle, taking part in the general conversation, but, without looking at Kitty, sensed her movements, her glances, and the place where she was in the drawing room.
He began at once, and without the slightest effort, to fulfil the promise he had given her – always to think well of all people and always to love everyone. The conversation turned to village communes, in which Pestsov saw some special principle which he called the choral principle.[13] Levin agreed neither with Pestsov nor with his brother, who had some way of his own of both agreeing and disagreeing with the significance of the Russian commune. But he talked with them, trying only to reconcile them and soften their objections. He was not the least bit interested in what he said himself, still less in what they said, and desired only one thing – that they and everyone should be nice and agreeable. He now knew the one important thing. And that one thing was at first there in the drawing room, and then began to move on and stopped by the door. Without turning round, he felt a gaze and a smile directed at him and could not help turning. She was standing in the doorway with Shcherbatsky and looking at him.
‘I thought you were going to the piano,’ he said, approaching her. ‘That’s what I lack in the country: music’
‘No, we were only coming to call you away, and I thank you,’ she said, awarding him a smile as if it were a gift, ‘for having come. What’s all this love of arguing? No one ever convinces anyone else.’
‘Yes, true,’ said Levin, ‘it most often happens that you argue hotly only because you can’t understand what precisely your opponent wants to prove.’
Levin had often noticed in arguments between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, an enormous number of logical subtleties and words, the arguers would finally come to the awareness that what they had spent so long struggling to prove to each other had been known to them long, long before, from the beginning of the argument, but that they loved different things and therefore did not want to name what they loved, so as not to be challenged. He had often felt that sometimes during an argument you would understand what your opponent loves, and suddenly come to love the same thing yourself, and agree all at once, and then all reasonings would fall away as superfluous; and sometimes it was the other way round: you would finally say what you yourself love, for the sake of which you are inventing your reasonings, and if you happened to say it well and sincerely, the opponent would suddenly agree and stop arguing. That was the very thing he wanted to say.
She wrinkled her forehead, trying to understand. But as soon as he began to explain, she understood.
‘I understand: you must find out what he’s arguing for, what he loves, and then you can …’
She had fully divined and expressed his poorly expressed thought. Levin smiled joyfully: so striking did he find the transition from an intricate, verbose argument with his brother and Pestsov to this laconic and clear, almost wordless, communication of the most complex thoughts.
Shcherbatsky left them, and Kitty, going over to an open card table, sat down, took a piece of chalk in her hand and began to trace radiating circles on the new green cloth.
They resumed the conversation that had gone on at dinner about the freedom and occupations of women. Levin agreed with Darya Alexandrovna’s opinion that a girl who did not get married could find feminine work for herself in her family. He supported it by saying that no family can do without a helper, that in every family, poor or rich, there are and must be nannies, hired or from the family.
‘No,’ said Kitty, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes, ‘a girl can be in such a position that she cannot enter a family without humiliation, while she herself…’
He understood from a hint.
‘Oh! yes!’ he said, ‘yes, yes, yes, you’re right, you’re right!’
And he understood all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner about women’s freedom, only because he saw the fear of spinsterhood and humiliation in Kitty’s heart, and, loving her, he felt that fear and humiliation and at once renounced his arguments.
Silence ensued. She went on tracing on the table with the chalk. Her eyes shone with a quiet light. Obedient to her mood, he felt in his whole being the ever increasing tension of happiness.
‘Ah! I’ve scribbled all over the table!’ she said and, putting down the chalk, made a movement as if she wanted to get up.
‘How can I stay alone … without her?’ he thought with horror and he took the chalk. ‘Wait,’ he said, sitting down at the table. ‘There’s one thing I’ve long wanted to ask you.’
He looked straight into her tender though frightened eyes.
‘Please do.’
‘Here,’ he said, and wrote the initial letters: w, y, a, m: t, c, b, d, i, m, n, o, t? These letters meant: ‘When you answered me: "that cannot be", did it mean never or then?’ There was no likelihood that she would be able to understand this complex phrase, but he watched her with such a look as if his life depended on her understanding these words.