His wife’s words, confirming as they did his worst suspicions, had given Karenin a cruel pain in his heart. This pain was rendered more acute by physical pity for her, evoked by her tears. But when alone in the carriage, to his surprise and joy he felt completely relieved of that pity and of the suspicions and jealousy that had lately so tormented him.
He felt like a man who has just had a tooth drawn which has been hurting him a long time. After terrible pain and a sensation as if something enormous, bigger than his whole head, were being pulled out of his jaw, he feels, scarcely believing in his happiness, that the thing which has so long been poisoning his life and engrossing his attention no longer exists, and that it is possible again to live, think, and be interested in other things. What Karenin experienced was a feeling of this kind: it had been a strange and terrible pain, but it was past, and he felt he could again live, and think of other things besides his wife.
‘Without honour, without heart, without religion; a depraved woman! I knew it and could see it all along, though I tried out of pity for her to deceive myself,’ thought he. And it really seemed to him that he had always seen it. He recalled all the details of their past life, and details which he had not previously considered wrong now proved to him clearly that she had always been depraved.
‘I made a mistake when I bound up my life with hers, but in my mistake there was nothing blameworthy, therefore I ought not to be unhappy. It is not I who am guilty,’ he said to himself, ‘but it is she. She does not concern me. She does not exist for me.’
What would happen to her and to her son, toward whom his feelings had changed as they had toward her, no longer occupied his mind. The one thing that preoccupied him was the question of how he could best divest himself of the mud with which she in her fall had bespattered him: of how to do it in the way which would be most decent, most convenient for him, and consequently fairest, and how he should continue his active, honest, and useful career. ‘I ought not to be unhappy because a despicable woman has committed a crime, but I must find the best way out of this painful situation in which she has placed me. And find it I will,’ said he to himself frowning more and more. ‘I’m not the first and shall not be the last’; and without taking into account the historical instances of wives’ unfaithfulness, beginning with Menelaus [mythical husband of Helen] and La Belle Hélène [a comic opera by Offenbach], whose memory had just recently been fresh in everybody’s mind, quite a number of cases of infidelity, the infidelity of modern wives, occurred to Karenin.
‘Daryalov, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram … Yes, even Dram — that honest, business-like fellow … Semenov, Chagin, Sigonin …’ he passed them in review. ‘It’s true a kind of unreasonable ridicule falls on these men, but I never could see it in any other light than as a misfortune, and felt nothing but sympathy,’ Karenin reflected, though it was not true: he had never felt any sympathy of the kind, and the more cases he had come across of husbands being betrayed by their wives the better the opinion he had had of himself. ‘It is a misfortune that may befall anyone and it has befallen me. The only question is, how best to face the situation.’ And he began mentally reviewing the courses pursued by other men in similar positions.
‘Daryalov fought a duel… .’
In his youth Karenin had been particularly attracted by the idea of duelling, just because he was physically a timid man and was quite aware of it. He could not think without horror of a pistol being levelled at him, and had never used any kind of weapon. This horror had in his youth often induced him to take mental measure of his strength, in case he should ever be confronted by a situation in which it would be necessary to face danger. Since, however, he had achieved success and gained a firm position in the world he had long forgotten that feeling; but the old habit now revived and claimed its own, and the fear of being a coward was again so strong that he considered this point a long time and flattered his vanity with the idea of a duel, though he knew beforehand that he would on no account fight one.
‘Of course our Society is still so uncivilized — not as in England — that very many’ (among the many were those whose opinion Karenin particularly valued) ‘would regard a duel as the right thing; but what object would be gained? Supposing I challenged him …’ continued Karenin; and vividly picturing to himself the night he would spend after the challenge, and the sensation of having a pistol pointed at him, he shuddered and realized that he would never do it.
‘Supposing,’ he went on, ‘they showed me how to do it, placed me, and I pulled the trigger …’ He closed his eyes … ‘and it turned out that I had killed him …’ and he shook his head to drive away the stupid thought. ‘What sense is there in killing a man in order to define one’s relations with a guilty wife and a son? Nevertheless, I shall have to decide what to do with her.
‘But what is even more likely and sure to happen — is that I should be killed or wounded. Then I, an innocent man, should be the victim. That would be still more senseless. And this is not all. A challenge from me would not be an honest action. Do I not know beforehand that my friends would never allow me to go so far as to fight a duel, would not allow a statesman whom Russia needs to expose himself to danger? What, then, would happen? This would happen: I, knowing beforehand that matters would never be allowed to reach a dangerous point, should have challenged a man in order to cover myself with false glamour. That would be dishonest, it would be false, it would be deceiving myself as well as others. No! a duel is unthinkable and no one expects it of me. My aim is to safeguard my reputation, which I need for the uninterrupted pursuit of my career.’ His official pursuits, which had always appeared essential to Karenin, now assumed even greater importance.
Having considered and rejected the idea of a duel, Karenin turned his thoughts to divorce, the next expedient of which some of the wronged husbands he remembered had availed themselves. Going over all the cases of divorce he knew — there were very many, and in the highest Society, with which he was well acquainted — Karenin could not recall one in which the purpose of the divorce was the one he had in view. In all these cases the husband had ceded or sold the unfaithful wife, and the very person who according to law had no right to remarry entered into fictitious, pseudo-legal relations with a pretended husband. Karenin saw that in his own case it would be impossible to obtain a legal divorce — that is, a divorce in which the guilty wife would be simply cast off. He knew that in their complex conditions of life it would not be possible to obtain those coarse proofs of a wife’s infidelity which the law demanded; he knew that in that life there was a certain convention of refinement which would not allow him to bring forward such proofs, had they existed, because such an action would make him sink even lower than she in public opinion. To attempt a divorce could only lead to a lawsuit and a scandal which would give his enemies great opportunity for calumny, and would lower his high position in Society. The chief object of his life, the settling of conditions with the least possible amount of disturbance, could not be furthered by divorce. Besides, it was evident that as a consequence of divorce the wife would break off relations with her husband and unite with her lover. In Karenin’s soul, however, despite the complete and contemptuous indifference he thought he felt for his wife, there was one feeling left with regard to her: an objection to her being in a position to unite unhindered with Vronsky, so making her crime advantageous to her. The very thought of it irritated him to such an extent that he groaned with inner pain, rose, and changed his place in the carriage; and for a long while after that he sat wrapping his fluffy rug round his bony, easily-chilled legs.
‘Besides a formal divorce, it would be possible to act as Karibanov, Paskudin, and that good-natured Dram did, and just separate,’ he resumed when he had grown calm again; but this measure would have all the inconvenience of a divorce-scandal, and would throw his wife into Vronsky’s arms just in the same way. ‘No, it is impossible, impossible!’ he said aloud, again wrapping the rug round his legs, ‘I cannot be unhappy, but she and he must not be happy.’
The jealousy that had tormented him during the period