Part 15

The shattering of an ideal by a single word of disparagement is thus shown when a young girl hears from her father that the pious Madame Stahl, whom she had idolized, kept her bed because one leg was shorter than the other and she did not wish it noticed. “Her ideal of holiness, as seen in Madame Stahl, which she had for a whole month carried in her soul, had irrevocably disappeared, as a face seen in a garment thrown down by chance disappears when one really sees how the garment is lying. She retained only the image of a lame woman who stayed in bed to conceal her deformity, and who tormented poor Varenka because her plaid was not arranged to suit her, and it became impossible for her imagination to bring back to her the remembrance of the former Madame Stahl.”

How could domestic discomfort be better pictured than when a mother, with her six children, arrives at her country home and undergoes the following tribulations:

“The roof was leaking, the water dripped in the corridor and the nursery, and the little beds had to be brought down into the parlor. It was impossible to find a cook. Among the nine cows in the barn, according to the dairy-woman’s report, some were going to calve and the rest were either too young or too old, and consequently they could not have butter, or even milk for the children. Not an egg was to be had; it was impossible to find a hen. They had for roasting or broiling one tough old purple rooster. No women were to be found to do the washing; all were at work in the fields. They could not drive because one of the horses was balky and would not be harnessed. They had to give up bathing because the bank of the river had been trodden into a quagmire by the cattle, and, moreover, it was too conspicuous.... Walking near the house was not pleasant because the tumble-down fences let the cattle into the garden and there was in the herd a terrible bull that bellowed and was reported to be ugly. In the house there was not a clothes-press. The closet doors either would not shut or flew open when any one passed. In the kitchen there were no pots or kettles; in the laundry there were no tubs, nor even any scrubbing-boards for the girls.”

Nowhere, perhaps, in all literature, is a hunting expedition so graphically described as in the account of the party that set forth from Levin’s. The feelings of the hunters and of the dogs themselves are given with quiet but convincing realism.

It may be doubted whether some of Tolstoi’s shorter works are not more artistic productions than either of his two long novels. To take the single instance of a rather commonplace official who falls ill and dies and to make out of it the terrible tragedy of “Ivan Ilytch” requires, perhaps, even higher powers than to give such variegated pictures of life as appear in “War and Peace” or in “Anna Karenina.” Yet the latter novel, being many-sided and comprehensive, is perhaps his most representative, as it is certainly his best known work, and it must justly be ranked as among the very foremost of the masterpieces of fiction.

The book opens with an account of the confusion in the house of the Oblonskys when the easy-going and good-tempered Prince Stepan is detected by his wife Dolly in an intrigue with the French governess, and whose “stupid smile” when confronted with the letter that betrays him, “causes the whole trouble.” The Prince can not really repent and persuade himself that he loves his wife, whose charms have faded; he regrets only that he had not hid the thing more adroitly, and his sister Anna is called from Petersburg to Moscow to secure a reconciliation. Although he was entirely wrong, almost every one in the house was on his side, except his little girl, who knew only that there was trouble and that her mother was unhappy and who blushed for her father when he asked her so lightly after her mother’s welfare, until he too blushed when he perceived it. About the same time Levin, the country proprietor, also comes to Moscow to woo Kitty, the younger sister of the unfortunate wife. He had fallen in love successively with each of the daughters of the house, but his affection was now centered on the youngest, whom he deemed a creature so accomplished that he scarcely dared aspire to her hand. They had been old friends for many years, but Kitty had then another admirer, one Vronsky, a brilliant young officer, to whom at the moment her preference was given and Levin’s blunt offer was rejected. But Vronsky, who had gone to the railway station to meet his mother (whom he did not love and to whom for that very reason he was all the more conventionally considerate) found her in company with Anna Karenina, who had come to Moscow to compose Dolly’s troubles with her husband. Anna is the beautiful and accomplished wife of Karenin, an estimable but matter-of-fact Russian official, greatly her senior in age, who was making for himself an enviable career in the public service. At the station and afterwards at a ball Anna meets the young officer, and the two instantly fall in love with each other with a passion so deep and lasting that it can not afterwards be extinguished. This passion is at first, however, expressed only by inferences. Thus, an accident occurs at the station; a train-hand is crushed, and a pitiful scene described when the widow perceives his dead body; Vronsky leaves two hundred roubles for her relief, an act which Anna sees and feels that it “concerns herself too closely.” Anna composes successfully the domestic trouble between Prince Stepan and his wife, and here, too, the complete reconciliation appears in the chiding and ironical banter renewed between the pair rather than from any express acknowledgment.

But Anna, who has thus healed the wound in her brother’s household, has torn open one far more fatal in her own. Vronsky, who has neglected Kitty for the brilliant creature in whom his whole soul is now absorbed, meets Anna again at the station as she leaves. “I came simply for this, to be where you are,” he said. “I could not do otherwise.” Her eyes belied the remonstrance that she forced to her lips, and when she returned to Petersburg, where her husband was waiting for her, her first thought as she gazed on his really distinguished face was, “Good Lord! Why are his ears so long?” When Vronsky afterwards meets her at a drawing-room in that city and she has forbidden him to speak of love, she feels that by the very use of the word “forbidden” she has recognized a certain jurisdiction over him which has encouraged him to speak.

Her husband, who had noticed that others were observing the _tête-à-tête_ between his wife and the handsome officer, resolved to admonish her. “‘Anna, I must put you on your guard.’

“‘On my guard? Why?’ She looked at him so gayly, so innocently, that for any one who did not know her as her husband did the tone of her voice would have sounded perfectly natural, but for him, who knew that he could not deviate from the least of his habits without her asking the reason, who knew that her first impulse was always to tell him of her pleasures and her sorrows, the fact that Anna took special pains not to observe his agitation, or even to speak, was very significant to him. He felt by the very tone that she assumed that she had said openly and without dissimulation, ‘Well, thus it must be, and from henceforth.’ He felt like a man who should come home and find his house barricaded against him....

“‘Your rather too lively conversation this evening with Count Vronsky attracted attention.’ As he spoke he looked at Anna’s laughing eyes, for him so impenetrable, and saw with a feeling of terror all the idleness and uselessness of his words.... He trembled; again he twisted his fingers till the knuckles cracked.

“‘I beg of you, keep your hands still; I detest that,’ said she.

“‘Anna, is this you?’ he said, trying to control himself and stop the movement of his hands.”

When he declares that he loves her a frown passes over her face. The word irritates her.

“‘Love!’ she thought; ‘does he even know what it means!’ And when they retired she waited long without moving, expecting that he would speak to her, but he said nothing. Then the image of another filled her with emotion and with guilty joy. Suddenly she heard a slow and regular sound of snoring. ‘Too late! Too late!’ she thought, with a smile. She remained for a long time thus, motionless, with open eyes, the shining of which it seemed to her she herself could see. From this night a new life began for Karenin and his wife. There was no outward sign of it. Anna continued to go into society, and everywhere she met Vronsky. Karenin understood it, but was powerless to prevent it. Whenever he tried to bring about an explanation she met him with humorous surprise which was beyond his penetration.”

Another incident revealed to him still more clearly the terrible truth. A hurdle race at which Vronsky rode is described with a realism of which Tolstoi only is the master. Anna’s husband observes her while she watches the contest in which her lover is involved. “Her face was pale and stern. Nothing existed for her beyond the one person whom she was watching. Her hands convulsively clutched her fan. She held her breath.... He did not wish to look at her, but his gaze was irresistibly drawn to her face, whereon he read only too plainly and with feelings of horror all that he had tried to ignore.” When others fell in the race he saw that those were not the ones on whom her gaze was riveted. “The more he studied her face the greater became his shame. Absorbed as she was in her interest in Vronsky’s course, Anna was conscious that her husband’s cold eyes were upon her, and she turned around toward him for an instant questioningly and with a slight frown. ‘Ah! I don’t care,’ she seemed to say as she turned her glass to the race. She did not look at him again. The race was disastrous. Out of the seventeen riders more than half were thrown, and at last Vronsky fell. The terror caused by this was so universal that Anna’s cry of horror caused no astonishment, but her face continued to show more lively symptoms of her anxiety. She lost her presence of mind; she tried to escape like a bird caught in a snare. Her husband hastened to her and offered her his arm.

“‘Come, if it is your wish to go,’ he said in French; but she did not heed him, and gazed at the place where Vronsky had fallen. Her husband offered his arm again, and she drew back with aversion.”

At last, however, she feels compelled to accompany him to the carriage, and on the way home he reproves her.

“‘You have behaved improperly, and I would ask you not to let this happen again.’

“She heard only half of his words; she felt overwhelmed with fear; and she thought only of Vronsky, and whether he was killed.... She looked at her husband with an ironical smile, and answered not a word, because she had not noticed what he said. At first he had spoken boldly; but as he saw clearly what he was speaking about, the terror which possessed her seized him. At first her smile led him into a strange mistake. ‘She is amused at my suspicions! She is going to tell me now that they are groundless; that this is absurd.’ Such an answer he longed to hear: he was so afraid that his suspicions would be confirmed, that he was ready to believe any thing she might say. But the expression of her gloomy and frightened face allowed no further chance of falsehood.

“‘Possibly I am mistaken,’ said he: ‘in that case, I beg you to forgive me.’

“‘No, you are not mistaken,’ she replied, with measured words, casting a look of despair on her husband’s icy face. ‘You are not mistaken: I hear you, but I am thinking only of him. I love him. I have been false to you. I cannot endure you, I fear you, I hate you! Do with me as you please!’ And, throwing herself into the bottom of the carriage, she covered her face with her hands, and burst into tears.”...

“No one except Karenin’s most intimate friends suspected that this apparently cold and rational man had one weakness absolutely contradictory to the general consistency of his character. He could not look on with indifference when a child or a woman was weeping. The sight of tears caused him to lose his self-control, and destroyed for him his reasoning faculties.

“Karenin in spite of his anger against his wife could not forget the feeling which her weeping caused, and in his effort to control himself his face assumed an appearance of deathlike rigidity. When he reached home he deliberated upon his course. He thought of a duel, but as he was a timid man, he discarded it. He knew that ‘his friends would never allow him to fight and permit the life of a government official so indispensable to Russia to be exposed to danger.’ The service of the state, always important, assumed unwonted magnitude. As to divorce, public scandal would cause him to fall in public opinion. Separation was equally impossible. His only course was to keep his wife under his protection, doing what he could to break off her illicit relationship with Vronsky and preserving in every way possible his ostensible relations with her. ‘Only by acting in this manner,’ he thought to himself, ‘did he conform with the laws of religion, refusing to send away his guilty wife and consecrating his powers to her regeneration.’ He had not thought of finding a foothold in religion until he had settled the matter upon other grounds, then this sanction gave him full comfort and satisfaction.”

But the illicit relations continued and the scandal grew, until at last divorce seemed to him the only remedy, and he began to make preparations for the suit, but from this project he was recalled by a telegram from his wife that she was dying and would die easier if she had his forgiveness. When he reached his home, the Swiss opened the door even before Karenin rang the bell; dressed in an old coat and slippers.

“‘How is the _baruina_!’

“‘She is as comfortable as could be expected.’

“Karenin turned very pale; he realized how deeply he had hoped for her death.”...

“A uniform overcoat hung in the hall. Karenin noticed it, and asked,--

“‘Who is here?’

“‘The doctor, the nurse, and Count Vronsky.’

“Karenin went into the drawing-room. There was nobody there; but the sound of his steps brought the nurse, in a cap with lilac ribbons, out of the _boudoir_. She came to Karenin, and, taking him by the hand with the familiarity that the approach of death permits, led him into the sleeping-room.

“‘Thank the Lord that you have come! She talks of nothing but you; always of you,’ she said.

“‘Bring some ice quick!’ said the imperative voice of the doctor from the chamber.

“In the _boudoir_, sitting on a little low chair, Karenin saw Vronsky weeping, his face covered with his hands. He started at the sound of the doctor’s voice, uncovered his face, and found himself in the presence of Karenin. The sight of him disturbed him so much that he sank down in his chair, as if he wanted to disappear out of sight; then, making a great effort, he rose, and said,--

“‘She is dying: the doctors say that there is no hope. I am in your power. Only allow me to remain here. I will conform to your wishes in every other respect. I’--

“When he saw Vronsky in tears, Karenin felt the involuntary tenderness that the sufferings of others always caused him: he turned away his head without replying, and went to the door.”

* * * * *

“Karenin’s wrinkled face expressed acute suffering: he wanted to speak, but his lower lip trembled so that he could not utter a word, and his emotion hardly allowed him to glance at his dying wife. He took her hand, and held it between his own. Every time that he turned his head towards her, he saw her eyes fixed on him with a sweetness and a humility that he had never seen there before.

“‘Wait! you do not know--Wait, wait!’ She stopped to collect her thoughts. ‘Yes,’ she began again, ‘yes, yes, yes, this is what I want to say. Do not be astonished. I am always the same, but there is another being within me, whom I fear: it is she who loved him, _him_, and hated you; and I could not forget what I had once been. Now I am myself, entirely, really myself, and not another. I am dying, I know that I am dying.... One thing only is indispensable to me: forgive me, forgive me wholly! I am a sinner; but Serozha’s nurse told me that there was a holy martyr--what was her name?--who was worse than I. I will go to Rome: there is a desert there. I shall not trouble anybody there. I will only take Serozha and my little daughter. No, you cannot forgive me: I know very well that it is impossible. Go away, go away! you are too perfect!’

“She held him with one of her burning hands, and pushed him away with the other.

“Karenin’s emotion became so great that he could no longer control himself. He suddenly felt his emotions change to a moral reconciliation, which seemed like a new and unknown happiness. He had not believed that the Christian law, which he had taken for a guide in life, ordered him to forgive and love his enemies; and yet his soul was filled with love and forgiveness. Kneeling beside the bed, he laid his forehead on her arm, the fever of which burned through the sleeve, and sobbed like a child.”...

“Vronsky came to the side of the bed, and, when he saw Anna, he hid his face in his hands.

“‘Uncover your face, look at him, he is a saint,’ said she. ‘Uncover your face! look at him!’ she repeated in an irritated manner. ‘Karenin, uncover his face: I want to see him.’

“Karenin took Vronsky’s hands and uncovered his face, disfigured by suffering and humiliation.

“‘Give him your hand; forgive him.’

“Karenin held out his hand to him, without trying to keep back the tears.”...

“‘The happiness I feel at being able to forgive, clearly shows me my duty. I offer the other cheek to the smiter: I give my last cloak to him who has robbed me. I only ask one thing of God,--that he will not take away from me this joy of forgiving.’

“Tears filled his eyes. Vronsky was amazed at the calm, luminous face.

“‘These are my feelings. You may drag me in the dust, and make me the laughing-stock of creation; but I will not give up Anna for that, nor will I utter a word of reproach to you,’ continued Karenin. ‘My duty seems clear and plain to me: I must remain with her; I shall remain with her. If she wishes to see you, I shall inform you of it; but now I think it will be better for you to go away.’

“Karenin rose: sobs choked his voice. Vronsky rose too, and, standing with bowed head and humble attitude, looked up at Karenin, without a word to say. He was incapable of understanding Karenin’s feelings, but he felt that such magnanimity was above him, and irreconcilable with his conception of life.”

But Anna recovers, and her old guilty love for Vronsky returns. She flees with him to other countries in Europe, but the tumult in her soul will not subside and social ostracism confronts her everywhere. She returns with Vronsky and lives for a time on his estates in Russia, and there are brief intervals of happiness. Dolly visits her and finds that “Anna was all aglow with that elusive beauty which comes to a woman through the assurance of love returned. Her smiles which, as it were, flew over her face, her brilliant eyes, her graceful and quick motions, her voice, her whole person, from the dimples of her cheeks and the curve of her lip, with its full, rich sounds, and even the quiet, friendly manner in which she replied to a visitor who asked permission to mount her horse, was instinct with a seductive charm. It seemed as if she herself knew it, and was pleased.”

But this is for a moment. In spite of her passion and the constant devotion of her lover quarrels continually arise, jealousies, the fear of abandonment, and at last the desire for revenge upon one who she unjustly imagines is false or indifferent. Her final resolution is suicide, “to make him repent.” She accomplishes her purpose at a railway station under the same conditions as those when she first met her lover.

“Suddenly she remembered the man who was run over on the day when she saw Vronsky for the first time, and she knew then what was in store for her. With light and swift steps she descended the stairway which led from the pump at the end of the platform down to the rails, and stood very near the train, which was slowly passing by. She looked under the cars, at the chains and the brake, and the high iron wheels, and she tried to estimate with her eye the distance between the fore and back wheels, and the moment when the middle would be in front of her.

“‘There,’ she said, looking at the shadow of the car thrown upon the black coal-dust which covered the sleepers, ‘there, in the center, he will be punished, and I shall be delivered from it all,--and from myself.’

“Her little red travelling-bag caused her to lose the moment when she could throw herself under the wheels of the first car: she could not detach it from her arm. She awaited the second. A feeling like that she had experienced once, just before taking a dive in the river, came over her, and she made the sign of the cross. This familiar gesture called back to her soul memories of youth and childhood. Life, with its elusive joys, glowed for an instant before her, but she did not take her eyes from the car; and when the middle, between the two wheels, appeared, she threw away her red bag, drawing her head between her shoulders, and, with outstretched hands, threw herself on her knees under the car. She had time to feel afraid. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? Why?’ thought she, trying to draw back; but a great, inflexible mass struck her head, and threw her upon her back. ‘Lord, forgive me all!’ she murmured, feeling the struggle to be in vain.... And the candle by which she read, as in a book, the fulfilment of her life’s work, of its deceptions, its grief, and its torment, flared up with greater brightness than she had ever known, revealing to her all that before was in darkness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out forever.”

Side by side with this tragedy of unlawful passion, the scenes alternating every few chapters, is the development of the normal love of Levin for Kitty, in scenes which are believed to have been taken from the life of Tolstoi himself. Strange to say that, if this be so, the passages of his own experience are less impressive (if not less realistic) than his imaginative story of the guilty pair. There are long and inconsequent discussions of agrarian problems, and a revelation of Levin’s varying moods, which are, indeed, extremely true to life, but awaken less sympathy or interest than the drama between Anna and Vronsky. Levin proposes to Kitty again, rather awkwardly, one would say, with chalk initials written on a card table, the meaning of which she guesses and answers in kind, an answer which he readily devines. Before their marriage he makes to her a full written confession of all the shortcomings of his past life. She is not at all alarmed or startled at his declaration of religious unbelief, but certain passages revealing past immoralities impress her as “terrible.” He finds her in tears, and she reproaches him for showing it to her, yet grants him forgiveness. The wedding is graphically described, especially the incident which shows the bridegroom “ramping with despair like a wild beast in its cage” while the people were waiting in church, because he could not find his shirt. Then comes the honeymoon, in which he finds that married life was utterly different from his dreams.