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Chapter 16.
All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters, gardeners,
and footmen going to and fro carrying out things. Cupboards and
chests were open; twice they had sent to the shop for cord; pieces of
newspaper were tossing about on the floor. Two trunks, some bags and
strapped-up rugs, had been carried down into the hall. The carriage
and two hired cabs were waiting at the steps. Anna, forgetting her
inward agitation in the work of packing, was standing at a table in her
boudoir, packing her traveling bag, when Annushka called her atten-
tion to the rattle of some carriage driving up. Anna looked out of the
window and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch’s courier on the steps, ringing
at the front door bell.
“Run and find out what it is,” she said, and with a calm sense of
being prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding her
hands on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet directed in
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s hand.
“The courier had orders to wait for an answer,” he said.
“Very well,” she said, and as soon as he had left the room she tore
open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded notes done
up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the letter and began
reading it at the end. “Preparations shall be made for your arrival
here...I attach particular significance to compliance...” she read. She
ran on, then back, read it all through, and once more read the letter all
through again from the beginning. When she had finished, she felt
that she was cold all over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had
not expected, had burst upon her.
In the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her hus-
band, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be
unspoken. And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and gave
her what she had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her more
awful than anything she had been able to conceive.
“He’s right!” she said; “of course, he’s always right; he’s a Christian,
he’s generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one understands it
except me, and no one ever will; and I can’t explain it. They say he’s so
religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don’t see
what I’ve seen. They don’t know how he has crushed my life for eight
years, crushed everything that was living in me—he has not once even
thought that I’m a live woman who must have love. They don’t know
how at every step he’s humiliated me, and been just as pleased with
himself. Haven’t I striven, striven with all my strength, to find some-
thing to give meaning to my life? Haven’t I struggled to love him, to
love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time came
when I knew that I couldn’t cheat myself any longer, that I was alive,
that I was not to blame, that God has made me so that I must love and
live. And now what does he do? If he’d killed me, if he’d killed him, I
could have borne anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no,
he.... How was it I didn’t guess what he would do? He’s doing just
what’s characteristic of his mean character. He’ll keep himself in the
right, while me, in my ruin, he’ll drive still lower to worse ruin yet...”
She recalled the words from the letter. “You can conjecture what
awaits you and your son....” “That’s a threat to take away my child, and