Chapter 11
THE MISTAKE MADE by Alexei Alexandrovich—that, when preparing to see his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die—this mistake was, two months after his return from Moscow, brought home to him in all its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known his own heart. At his sick wife’s bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all, the joy of forgiveness made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced before. In the profound silence of the Face’s unexpected disappearance, he suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.
He forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse. He forgave Vronsky, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him of his desperate action. He felt more for his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his child, and who was cast on one side during her mother’s illness, and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her, and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would go into the nursery several times a day until the child got quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby in its I/Perambulator/9, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands with clenched fingers that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments particularly, Alexei Alexandrovich had a sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing that ought to be changed.
But then . . . then he heard the whisper.
DESTROY IT
DESTROY IT
DESTROY THE CHILD
DESTROY
And he knew in that instant that the struggle was not over. He knew that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he longed for. There had been a period of detente, and now it was at an end. His Face, his dear friend and most fearsome enemy, had returned.
DESTROY, it whispered.
CONTROL
DESTROY