Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [301]
‘Congratulations,’ she said to him, indicating the sash with her eyes.
Suppressing a smile of satisfaction, he shrugged his shoulders and closed his eyes, as if to say it was no cause for rejoicing. Countess Lydia Ivanovna knew very well that it was one of his chief joys, though he would never admit it.
‘How is our angel?’ asked Countess Lydia Ivanovna, meaning Seryozha.
‘I can’t say I’m entirely pleased with him,’ Alexei Alexandrovich said, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. ‘And Sitnikov is not pleased with him either.’ (Sitnikov was the teacher entrusted with Seryozha’s secular education.) ‘As I told you, there is some coldness in him towards those very chief questions which ought to touch the soul of every person and every child.’ Alexei Alexandrovich began to explain his thoughts about the only question that interested him apart from the service - his son’s education.
When Alexei Alexandrovich, with the help of Lydia Ivanovna, returned anew to life and action, he felt it his duty to occupy himself with the education of the son left on his hands. Never having concerned himself with questions of education before, Alexei Alexandrovich devoted some time to the theoretical study of the subject. And, after reading several books on anthropology, pedagogy and didactics, he made himself a plan of education and, inviting the best pedagogue in Petersburg for guidance, got down to business. And this business occupied him constantly.
‘Yes, but his heart? I see his father’s heart in him, and with such a heart a child cannot be bad,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna said rapturously.
‘Yes, perhaps ... As for me, I am fulfilling my duty. That is all I can do.’
‘You shall come to my house,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna said after a pause, ‘we must talk about a matter that is sad for you. I’d have given anything to deliver you from certain memories, but other people do not think that way. I have received a letter from her. She is here, in Petersburg.’
Alexei Alexandrovich gave a start at the mention of his wife, but his face at once settled into that dead immobility which expressed his utter helplessness in the matter.
‘I was expecting that,’ he said.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna looked at him rapturously, and tears of admiration at the grandeur of his soul came to her eyes.
XXV
When Alexei Alexandrovich entered Countess Lydia Ivanovna’s small, cosy boudoir, filled with antique porcelain and hung with portraits, the hostess herself was not there. She was changing.
On a round table covered with a tablecloth stood a Chinese tea service and a silver spirit-lamp tea-kettle. Alexei Alexandrovich absentmindedly glanced around at the numberless familiar portraits that adorned the boudoir, and, sitting down at the desk, opened the Gospel that lay on it. The rustle of the countess’s silk dress diverted him.
‘Well, there, now we can sit down quietly,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna said with a nervous smile, hurriedly squeezing between the table and the sofa, ‘and have a talk over tea.’
After a few words of preparation, Countess Lydia Ivanovna, breathing heavily and flushing, handed Alexei Alexandrovich the letter she had received.
Having read the letter, he was silent for a long time.
‘I don’t suppose I have the right to refuse her,’ he said, timidly raising his eyes.
‘My friend! You see no evil in anyone!’
‘On the contrary, I see that everything is evil. But is it fair? ...’
There was indecision in his face, a seeking for counsel, support and guidance in a matter incomprehensible to him.
‘No,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna interrupted him. ‘There is a limit to everything. I can understand immorality,’ she said, not quite sincerely, because she never could understand what led women to immorality, ‘but I do not understand cruelty - and to whom? To you! How can she stay in the same town with you? No, live and learn. And I am learning to understand your loftiness and her baseness.’
‘And who will throw the stone?’38 said Alexei Alexandrovich,