第29章

You know how I was married. With the education maman gave us I was more than innocent - I was foolish. I knew nothing. They say, I know, men tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva' - she corrected herself -`Stepan Arkadyevich told me nothing. You'll hardly believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I lived eight years. You must understand that I was not only far from suspecting infidelity, but I regarded it as impossible, and then - try to imagine it - with such conceptions to find out suddenly all the horror, all the loathsomeness...

You must try and understand me. To be fully convinced of one's happiness, and all at once...' continued Dolly, holding back her sobs, `To get a letter...

His letter to his mistress, a governess in my employ. No, it's too awful!'

She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her face in it. `I can understand if it were passion,' she went on, after a brief silence, `but to deceive me deliberately, slyly... And with whom?... To go on being my husband while he and she... It's awful! You can't understand...'

`Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do understand,'

said Anna, pressing her hand.

`And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?

Dolly resumed. `Not in the slightest! He's happy and contented.'

`Oh, no!' Anna interposed quickly. `He's to be pitied, he's weighed down by remorse...'

`Is he capable of remorse?' Dolly interrupted, gazing intently into her sister-in-law's face.

`Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for him. We both know him. He's good-natured, but he's proud, and now he's so humiliated. What touched me most...' (And here Anna guessed what would touch Dolly most.) `He's tortured by two things: that he's ashamed for the children's sake, and that, loving you - yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,' she hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who would have rejoined - `he has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. ``No, no, she cannot forgive me,'' he keeps on saying.'

Dolly looked pensively past her sister-in-law as she listened to her words.

`Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it's worse for the guilty than the innocent,' she said, `if he feels that all the misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, just because Ilove my past love for him...'

And sobs cut short her words.

But as though of set design, each time she was softened she began to speak again of what exasperated her.

`She's young, you see, she's pretty,' she went on. `Do you know, Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his children.

I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they were silent about me.... Do you understand?'

Again her eyes glowed with hatred.

`And after that he will tell me... What! Am I to believe him?

Never! No, everything is over, everything that once constituted my comfort, the reward of my work and of my sufferings... Would you believe it? I was teaching Grisha just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture.

What have I to strive and toil for? Why to have children? What's so awful is that all at once my heart's turned, and instead of love and tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him and...'

`Darling Dolly, I understand, but don't torture yourself You are so insulted, so excited, that you look at many things mistakenly.'

Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.

`What's to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought over everything, and I see nothing.'

Anna could not find anything, but her heart echoed instantly to each word, to each change of expression on her sister-in-law's face.

`One thing I would say,' began Anna. `I am his sister, I know his character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything' (she waved her hand before her forehead), `that faculty for being completely carried away, but for completely repenting, too. He cannot believe it, he cannot comprehend now, how he could have acted as he did.'

`No; he understands, and understood!' Dolly broke in. `But I...

You are forgetting me... Does that make it easier for me?'

`Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all the horror of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can't tell you how sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, while I fully realize your sufferings, there is one thing I don't know; I don't know... I don't know how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you know - whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If there is - forgive him!'

`No,' Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her hand once more.

`I know more of the world than you do,' she said. I know how men like Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their own home and wife are sacred to them. Somehow or other these women are still looked on with contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for their family. They draw a sort of line that can't be crossed between them and their families. Idon't understand it, but it is so.'

`Yes, but he has kissed her...'

`Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you.

I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and of what a poetry and loftiness you were for him, and I know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word: `Dolly's a marvelous woman.' have always been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this has not been a passion of the heart...

`But if it be repeated?'

`It cannot be, as I understand it...

`Yes, but could you forgive it?'