CONNECTED with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in marriage improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch and Stepan Arkadyevitch carefully drew him off them.
When they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did not follow them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and by public opinion. Stepan Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar.
‘No, I don’t smoke,’ Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.
‘I imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of things,’ he said, and would have gone on to the drawing-room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch.
‘You heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?’ said Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him. ‘Vasya Pryatchnikov,’ he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, ‘they told me to-day he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.’
Just as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Stepan Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sore spot. He would again have got his brother-in- law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity—
Alexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Darya Alexandrovna, and smiled affectedly.
Darya Alexandrovna was firmly convinced of Anna’s innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend.
‘Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right … but I love Anna as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? what fault do you find with her?’
‘I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I consider it necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?’ he said, not looking her in the face, but eyeing with displeasure Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing-room.
‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!’ Dolly said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sleeve. ‘We shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please.’
Dolly’s agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got up and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this warm defence, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.
‘It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife a herself informs her husband of the fact—informs him that eight years of her life, and a son, all that’s a mistake, and that she wants to begin life again,’ he said angrily, with a snort.
‘Darya Alexandrovna,’ he said, now looking straight into Dolly’s kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite of himself, ‘I would give a great deal for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt of everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy.’
He had no need to say that. Darya Alexandrovna had seen that as soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in the innocence of her friend began to totter.
‘What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other—in loss, in death—bear one’s trouble in peace, but that one must act,’ said he, as though guessing her thought. ‘One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can’t live à trois.’
‘I understand, I quite understand that,’ said Dolly, and her head sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. ‘But wait a little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?’
‘I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great deal,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Darya Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him with all her heart. ‘That was what I did indeed when she herself made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would not regard the slightest request—that she should observe decorum,’ he said, getting heated. ‘One may save any one who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to her salvation, what’s to be done?’
‘What can I do?’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife’s last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. ‘I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,’ he said, getting up.
‘No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself … But I came to myself again; and who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on … I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!’
Alexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice—
‘Forgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated any one, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!’ he said, with tones of hatred in his voice.
‘Love those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Every one has enough to bear in his own grief!’ And regaining his self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch quietly took leave and went away
