BEFORE Betsy had time to walk out of the drawing- room, she was met in the doorway by Stepan Arkadyevitch, who had just come from Yeliseev’s, where a consignment of fresh oysters had been received.
‘Don’t put on your glove yet, princess; let me kiss your hand. There’s nothing I’m so thankful to the revival of the old fashions for as the kissing the hand.’ He kissed Betsy’s hand. ‘When shall we see each other?’
‘Oh yes, I deserve a great deal, for I’ve become a most serious person. I don’t only manage my own affairs, but other people’s too,’ he said, with a significant expression.
‘Oh, I’m so glad!’ answered Betsy, at once understanding that he was speaking of Anna. And going back into the drawing-room, they stood in a corner. ‘He’s killing her,’ said Betsy in a whisper full of meaning. ‘It’s impossible, impossible…’
‘I’m so glad you think so, said Stepan Arkadyevitch, shaking his head with a serious and sympathetically distressed expression, ‘that’s what I’ve come to Petersburg for.’
‘The whole town’s talking of it,’ she said. ‘It’s an impossible position. She pines and pines away. He doesn’t understand that she’s one of those women who can’t trifle with their feelings. One of two things: either let him take her away, act with energy, or give her a divorce. This is stifling her.’
‘Yes, yes … just so…’ Oblonsky said, sighing. ‘That’s what I’ve come for. At least not solely for that … I’ve been made a kammer-herr; of course, one has to say thank you. But the chief thing was having to settle this.’
After accompanying Betsy to the outside hall, once more kissing her hand above the glove, at the point where the pulse beats, and murmuring to her such unseemly nonsense that she did not know whether to laugh or be angry, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to his sister. He found her in tears.
Although he happened to be bubbling over with good spirits, Stepan Arkadyevitch immediately and quite naturally fell into the sympathetic, poetically emotional tone which harmonised with her mood. He asked her how she was, and how she had spent the morning.
‘I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,’ Anna began suddenly, ‘but I hate him for his virtues. I can’t live with him. Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical effect on me, it makes me beside myself. I can’t, I can’t live with him. What am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think one couldn’t be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am going through now, I could never have conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he’s a good man, a splendid man, that I’m not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I hate him for his generosity. And there’s nothing left for me but…’
And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s place, having to do with such despair, would have ventured to smile (the smile would have seemed brutal); but in his smile there was so much of sweetness and almost feminine tenderness that his smile did not wound, but softened and soothed. His gentle, soothing words and smiles were as soothing and softening as almond oil. And Anna soon felt this.
‘No, Stiva,’ she said, ‘I’m lost, lost! worse than lost! I can’t say yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it’s not over. I’m an overstrained string that must snap. But it’s not ended yet … and it will have a fearful end.’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Listen to me. You can’t see your own position as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion.’ Again he smiled discreetly his almond-oil smile. ‘I’ll begin from the beginning. You married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let’s admit.’
‘But I repeat, it’s an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us say, the misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a misfortune; but that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your husband knew it and forgave it.’ He stopped at each sentence, waiting for her to object, but she made no answer. ‘That’s so. Now the question is: can you go on living with your husband? Do you wish it? Does he wish it?’
‘Never mind, we’ll slip something under and pull you out. I understand you; I understand that you can’t take it on yourself to express your wishes, your feelings.’
‘But he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on him any less than on you? You’re wretched, he’s wretched, and what good can come of it? while divorce would solve the whole difficulty.’ With some effort Stepan Arkadyevitch brought out his central idea, and looked significantly at her.
She said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from the look in her face, that suddenly brightened into its old beauty, he saw that if she did not desire this, it was simply because it seemed to her unattainable happiness.
‘I’m awfully sorry for you! And how happy I should be if I could arrange things!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling more boldly. ‘Don’t speak, don’t say a word! God grant only that I may speak as I feel. I’m going to him.’
