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Chapter 26.
The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had
remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he was
more busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of
the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his
health, deranged by the winter’s work that every year grew heavier.
And just as always he returned in July and at once fell to work as usual
with increased energy. As usual, too, his wife had moved for the sum-
mer to a villa out of town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the
date of their conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya’s he
had never spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies,
and that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most conve-
nient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife. He was a little
colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her
for that first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his
attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. “You
would not be open with me,” he seemed to say, mentally addressing
her; “so much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but
I won’t be open with you. So much the worse for you!” he said mentally,
like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly
in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall
burn for this!” This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not
realize all the senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not
realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his actual position,
and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret
place where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and
son. He who had been such a careful father, had from the end of that
winter become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the
same bantering tone he used with his wife. “Aha, young man!” was the
greeting with which he met him.
Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in
any previous year had so much official business as that year. But he
was not aware that he sought work for himself that year, that this was
one of the means for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his
feelings towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them, which
became more terrible the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the
right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife’s be-
havior, the mild and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have
made no answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any
man who should question him on that subject. For this reason there
positively came into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face a look of haughti-
ness and severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife’s health.
Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his wife’s
behavior, and he actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all.
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s permanent summer villa was in Peterhof,
and the Countess Lidia Ivanovna used as a rule to spend the summer
there, close to Anna, and constantly seeing her. That year Countess
Lidia Ivanovna declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Anna
Arkadyevna’s, and in conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch hinted
at the unsuitability of Anna’s close intimacy with Betsy and Vronsky.
Alexey Alexandrovitch sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife