Chapter 26

The external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had remained unchanged.  The sole difference lay in the fact that he was more busily occupied than ever.  As in former years, at the beginning of the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his health, deranged by the winter’s work that every year grew heavier.  And just as always he returned in July and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy.  As usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of town, while he remained in Petersburg.  From the date of their conversation after the party at Princess Tverskaya’s he had never spoken again to Anna of his suspicions and his jealousies, and that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife.  He was a little colder to his wife.  He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her for that first midnight conversation, which she had repelled.  In his attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more.  “You would not be open with me,” he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; “so much the worse for you.  Now you may beg as you please, but I won’t be open with you.  So much the worse for you!” he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, “Oh, very well then! you shall burn for this!” This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not realize all the senselessness of such an attitude to his wife.  He did not realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and son.  He who had been such a careful father, had from the end of that winter become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the same bantering tone he used with his wife.  “Aha, young man!” was the greeting with which he met him.

Alexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any previous year had so much official business as that year.  But he was not aware that he sought work for himself that year, that this was one of the means for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them, which became more terrible the longer they lay there.  If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife’s behavior, the mild and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any man who should question him on that subject.  For this reason there positively came into Alexey Alexandrovitch’s face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife’s health.  Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his wife’s behavior, and he actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all.