Part Six: Chapter 16

by Leo Tolstoy

　　Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to seeAnna. She was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Levindisliked. She quite understood how right the Levins were in notwishing to have anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt shemust go and see Anna, and show her that her feelings could not bechanged, in spite of the change in her position. That she mightbe independent of the Levins in this expedition, DaryaAlexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for the drive;but Levin learning of it went to her to protest.

　　"What makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even ifI did dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking myhorses," he said. "You never told me that you were going forcertain. Hiring horses in the village is disagreeable to me,and, what's of more importance, they'll undertake the job andnever get you there. I have horses. And if you don't want towound me, you'll take mine."

　　Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day fixed Levin hadready for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays,getting them together from the farm- and saddle-horses--not atall a smart-looking set, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovnathe whole distance in a single day. At that moment, when horseswere wanted for the princess, who was going, and for the midwife,it was a difficult matter for Levin to make up the number, butthe duties of hospitality would not let him allow DaryaAlexandrovna to hire horses when staying in his house. Moreover,he was well aware that the twenty roubles that would be asked forthe journey were a serious matter for her; Darya Alexandrovna'specuniary affairs, which were in a very unsatisfactory state,were taken to heart by the Levins as if they were their own.

　　Darya Alexandrovna, by Levin's advice, started before daybreak.The road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trottedalong merrily, and on the box, besides the coachman, sat thecounting-house clerk, whom Levin was sending instead of a groomfor greater security. Darya Alexandrovna dozed and waked up onlyon reaching the inn where the horses were to be changed.

　　After drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasant's with whomLevin had stayed on the way to Sviazhsky's, and chatting with thewomen about their children, and with the old man about CountVronsky, whom the latter praised very highly, Darya Alexandrovna,at ten o'clock, went on again. At home, looking after herchildren, she had no time to think. So now, after this journeyof four hours, all the thoughts she had suppressed before rushedswarming into her brain, and she thought over all her life as shenever had before, and from the most different points of view.Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At first shethought about the children, about whom she was uneasy, althoughthe princess and Kitty (she reckoned more upon her) had promisedto look after them. "If only Masha does not begin her naughtytricks, if Grisha isn't kicked by a horse, and Lily's stomachisn't upset again!" she thought. But these questions of thepresent were succeeded by questions of the immediate future. Shebegan thinking how she had to get a new flat in Moscow for thecoming winter, to renew the drawing room furniture, and to makeher elder girl a cloak. Then questions of the more remote futureoccurred to her: how she was to place her children in the world.'The girls are all right," she thought; "but the boys?"

　　"It's very well that I'm teaching Grisha, but of course that'sonly because I am free myself now, I'm not with child. Stiva,of course, there's no counting on. And with the help ofgood-natured friends I can bring them up; but if there's anotherbaby coming?..." And the thought struck her how untruly it wassaid that the curse laid on woman was that in sorrow she shouldbring forth children.

　　"The birth itself, that's nothing; but the months of carrying thechild--that's what's so intolerable," she thought, picturing toherself her last pregnancy, and the death of the last baby. Andshe recalled the conversation she had just had with the youngwoman at the inn. On being asked whether she had any children,the handsome young woman had answered cheerfully:

　　"I had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last Lent."

　　"Well, did you grieve very much for her?" asked DaryaAlexandrovna.

　　"Why grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough as it is. Itwas only a trouble. No working, nor nothing. Only a tie."

　　This answer had struck Darya Alexandrovna as revolting in spiteof the good-natured and pleasing face of the young woman; but nowshe could not help recalling these words. In those cynical wordsthere was indeed a grain of truth.

　　"Yes, altogether," thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking back overher whole existence during those fifteen years of her marriedlife, "pregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity, indifference toeverything, and most of all--hideousness. Kitty, young andpretty as she is, even Kitty has lost her looks; and I when I'mwith child become hideous, I know it. The birth, the agony, thehideous agonies, that last moment...then the nursing, thesleepless nights, the fearful pains...."

　　Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the painfrom sore breasts which she had suffered with almost every child."Then the children's illnesses, that everlasting apprehension;then bringing them up; evil propensities" (she thought of littleMasha's crime among the raspberries), "education, Latin--it's allso incomprehensible and difficult. And on the top of it all, thedeath of these children." And there rose again before herimagination the cruel memory, that always tore her mother'sheart, of the death of her last little baby, who had died ofcroup; his funeral, the callous indifference of all at the littlepink coffin, and her own torn heart, and her lonely anguish atthe sight of the pale little brow with its projecting temples,and the open, wondering little mouth seen in the coffin at themoment when it was being covered with the little pink lid with across braided on it.

　　"And all this, what's it for? What is to come of it all? ThatI'm wasting my life, never having a moment's peace, either withchild, or nursing a child, forever irritable, peevish, wretchedmyself and worrying others, repulsive to my husband, while thechildren are growing up unhappy, badly educated, and penniless.Even now, if it weren't for spending the summer at the Levins',I don't know how we should be managing to live. Of course Kostyaand Kitty have so much tact that we don't feel it; but it can'tgo on. They'll have children, they won't be able to keep us;it's a drag on them as it is. How is papa, who has hardlyanything left for himself, to help us? So that I can't evenbring the children up by myself, and may find it hard with thehelp of other people, at the cost of humiliation. Why, even ifwe suppose the greatest good luck, that the children don't die,and I bring them up somehow. At the very best they'll simply bedecent people. That's all I can hope for. And to gain simplythat--what agonies, what toil!... One's whole life ruined!"Again she recalled what the young peasant woman had said, andagain she was revolted at the thought; but she could not helpadmitting that there was a grain of brutal truth in the words.

　　"Is it far now, Mihail?" Darya Alexandrovna asked thecounting house clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that werefrightening her.

　　"From this village, they say, it's five miles." The carriagedrove along the village street and onto a bridge. On the bridgewas a crowd of peasant women with coils of ties for the sheaveson their shoulders, gaily and noisily chattering. They stoodstill on the bridge, staring inquisitively at the carriage. Allthe faces turned to Darya Alexandrovna looked to her healthy andhappy, making her envious of their enjoyment of life. "They'reall living, they're all enjoying life," Darya Alexandrovna stillmused when she had passed the peasant women and was drivinguphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the soft springs ofthe old carriage, "while I, let out, as it were from prison, fromthe world of worries that fret me to death, am only looking aboutme now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women and mysister Natalia and Varenka and Anna, whom I am going to see--all,but not I.

　　"And they attack Anna. What for? am I any better? I have,anyway, a husband I love--not as I should like to love him, stillI do love him, while Anna never loved hers. How is she to blame?She wants to live. God has put that in our hearts. Very likelyI should have done the same. Even to this day I don't feel sureI did right in listening to her at that terrible time when shecame to me in Moscow. I ought then to have cast off my husbandand have begun my life fresh. I might have loved and have beenloved in reality. And is it any better as it is? I don'trespect him. He's necessary to me," she thought about herhusband, "and I put up with him. Is that any better? At thattime I could still have been admired, I had beauty left mestill," Darya Alexandrovna pursued her thoughts, and she wouldhave liked to look at herself in the looking glass. She had atraveling looking glass in her handbag, and she wanted to takeit out; but looking at the backs of the coachman and the swayingcounting house clerk, she felt that she would be ashamed ifeither of them were to look round, and she did not take out theglass.

　　But without looking in the glass, she thought that even now itwas not too late; and she thought of Sergey Ivanovitch, who wasalways particularly attentive to her, of Stiva's good-heartedfriend, Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children throughthe scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someoneelse, a quite young man, who--her husband had told her it as ajoke--thought her more beautiful than either of her sisters. Andthe most passionate and impossible romances rose before DaryaAlexandrovna's imagination. "Anna did quite right, and certainlyI shall never reproach her for it. She is happy, she makesanother person happy, and she's not broken down as I am, but mostlikely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to everyimpression," thought Darya Alexandrovna,--and a sly smile curvedher lips, for, as she pondered on Anna's love affair, DaryaAlexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identicallove affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, theideal man who was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessedthe whole affair to her husband. And the amazement andperplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at this avowal made her smile.

　　In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad thatled to Vozdvizhenskoe.