.
‘Of course In shall say Betsy has sent me to ask whether
she’s coming to the races. Of course, I’ll go,’ he decided,
lifting his head from the book. And as he vividly pictured
the happiness of seeing her, his face lighted up.
‘Send to my house, and tell them to have out the
carriage and three horses as quick as they can,’ he said to
the servant, who handed him the steak on a hot silver
dish, and moving the dish up he began eating.
From the billiard room next door came the sound of
balls knocking, of talk and laughter. Two officers appeared
at the entrance-door: one, a young fellow, with a feeble,
delicate face, who had lately joined the regiment from the
Corps of Pages; the other, a plump, elderly officer, with a
bracelet on his wrist, and little eyes, lost in fat.
Vronsky glanced at them, frowned, and looking down
at his book as though he had not noticed them, he
proceeded to eat and read at the same time.
‘What? Fortifying yourself for your work?’ said the
plump officer, sitting down beside him.
‘As you see,’ responded Vronsky, knitting his brows,
wiping his mouth, and not looking at the officer.
‘So you’re not afraid of getting fat?’ said the latter,
turning a chair round for the young officer.
‘What?’ said Vronsky angrily, making a wry face of
disgust, and showing his even teeth.
‘You’re not afraid of getting fat?’
‘Waiter, sherry!’ said Vronsky, without replying, and
moving the book to the other side of him, he went on
reading.
The plump officer took up the list of wines and turned
to the young officer.
‘You choose what we’re to drink,’ he said, handing
him the card, and looking at him.
‘Rhine wine, please,’ said the young officer, stealing a
timid glance at Vronsky, and trying to pull his scarcely
visible mustache. Seeing that Vronsky did not turn round,
the young officer got up.
‘Let’s go into the billiard room,’ he said.
The plump officer rose submissively, and they moved
towards the door.
At that moment there walked into the room the tall
and well-built Captain Yashvin. Nodding with an air of
lofty contempt to the two officers, he went up to
Vronsky.
‘Ah! here he is!’ he cried, bringing his big hand down
heavily on his epaulet. Vronsky looked round angrily, but
his face lighted up immediately with his characteristic
expression of genial and manly serenity.
‘That’s it, Alexey,’ said the captain, in his loud
baritone. ‘You must just eat a mouthful, now, and drink
only one tiny glass.’
‘Oh, I’m not hungry.’
‘There go the inseparables,’ Yashvin dropped, glancing
sarcastically at the two officers who were at that instant
leaving the room. And he bent his long legs, swatched in
tight riding breeches, and sat down in the chair, too low
for him, so that his knees were cramped up in a sharp
angle.
‘Why didn’t you turn up at the Red Theater yesterday?
Numerova wasn’t at all bad. Where were you?’
‘In was late at the Tverskoys’,’ said Vronsky.
‘Ah!’ responded Yashvin.
Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely
without moral principles, but of immoral principles,
Yashvin was Vronsky’s greatest friend in the regiment.
Vronsky liked him both for his exceptional physical
strength, which he showed for the most part by being able
to drink like a fish, and do without sleep without being in
the slightest degree affected by it; and for his great strength
of character, which he showed in his relations with his
comrades and superior officers, commanding both fear and
respect, and also at cards, when he would play for tens of
thousands and however much he might have drunk,
always with such skill and decision that he was reckoned
the best player in the English Club. Vronsky respected and
liked Yashvin particularly because he felt Yashvin liked
him, not for his name and his money, but for himself. And
of all men he was the only one with whom Vronsky
would have liked to speak of his love. He felt that
Yashvin, in spite of his apparent contempt for every sort of
feeling, was the only man who could, so he fancied,
comprehend the intense passion which now filled his
whole life. Moreover, he felt certain that Yashvin, as it
was, took no delight in gossip and scandal, and interpreted
his feeling rightly, that is to say, knew and believed that
this passion was not a jest, not a pastime, but something
more serious and important.
Vronsky had never spoken to him of his passion, but he
was aware that he knew all about it, and that he put the
right interpretation on it, and he was glad to see that in his
eyes.
‘Ah! yes,’ he said, to the announcement that Vronsky
had been at the Tverskoys’; and his black eyes shining, he
plucked at his left mustache, and began twisting it into his
mouth, a bad habit he had.
‘Well, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?’
asked Vronsky.
‘Eight thousand. But three don’t count; he won’t pay
up.’
‘Oh, then you can afford to lose over me,’ said
Vronsky, laughing. (Yashvin had bet heavily on Vronsky
in the races.)
‘No chance of my losing. Mahotin’s the only one that’s
risky.’
And the conversation passed to forecasts of the coming
race, the only thing Vronsky could think of just now.
‘Come along, I’ve finished,’ said Vronsky, and getting
up he went to the door. Yashvin got up too, stretching his
long legs and his long back.
‘It’s too early for me to dine, but I must have a drink.
I’ll come along directly. Hi, wine!’ he shouted, in his rich
voice, that always rang out so loudly at drill, and set the
windows shaking now.
‘No, all right,’ he shouted again immediately after.
‘You’re going home, so I’ll go with you.’
And he walked out with Vronsky.
Chapter 20
Vronsky was staying in a roomy, clean, Finnish hut,
divided into two by a partition. Petritsky lived with him in
camp too. Petritsky was asleep when Vronsky and Yashvin
came into the hut.
‘Get up, don’t go on sleeping,’ said Yashvin, going
behind the partition and giving Petritsky, who was lying
with ruffled hair and with his nose in the pillow, a prod
on the shoulder.
Petritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and
looked round.
‘Your brother’s been here,’ he said to Vronsky. ‘He
waked me up, damn him, and said he’d look in again.’
And pulling up the rug he flung himself back on the
pillow. ‘Oh, do shut up, Yashvin!’ he said, getting furious
with Yashvin, who was pulling the rug off him. ‘Shut up!’
He turned over and opened his eyes. ‘You’d better tell me
what to drink; such a nasty taste in my mouth, that..’
‘Brandy’s better than anything,’ boomed Yashvin.
‘Tereshtchenko! brandy for your master and cucumbers,’
he shouted, obviously taking pleasure in the sound of his
own voice.
‘Brandy, do you think? Eh?’ queried Petritsky, blinking
and rubbing his eyes. ‘And you’ll drink something? All
right then, we’ll have a drink together! Vronsky, have a
drink?’ said Petritsky, getting up and wrapping the tigerskin
rug round him. He went to the door of the partition
wall, raised his hands, and hummed in French, ‘There was
a king in Thule.’ ‘Vronsky, will you have a drink?’
‘Go along,’ said Vronsky, putting on the coat his valet
handed to him.
‘Where are you off to?’ asked Yashvin. ‘Oh, here are
your three horses,’ he added, seeing the carriage drive up.
‘To the stables, and I’ve got to see Bryansky, too, about
the horses,’ said Vronsky.
Vronsky had as a fact promised to call at Bryansky’s,
some eight miles from Peterhof, and to bring him some
money owing for some horses; and he hoped to have time
to get that in too. But his comrades were at once aware
that he was not only going there.
Petritsky, still humming, winked and made a pout with
his lips, as though he would say: ‘Oh, yes, we know your
Bryansky.’
‘Mind you’re not late!’ was Yashvin’s only comment;
and to change the conversation: ‘How’s my roan? is he
doing all right?’ he inquired, looking out of the window at
the middle one of the three horses, which he had sold
Vronsky.
‘Stop!’ cried Petritsky to Vronsky as he was just going
out. ‘Your brother left a letter and a note for you. Wait a
bit; where are they?’
Vronsky stopped.
‘Well, where are they?’
‘Where are they? That’s just the question!’ said
Petritsky solemnly, moving his forefinger upwards from
his nose.
‘Come, tell me; this is silly!’ said Vronsky smiling.
‘I have not lighted the fire. Here somewhere about.’
‘Come, enough fooling! Where is the letter?’
‘No, I’ve forgotten really. Or was it a dream? Wait a
bit, wait a bit! But what’s the use of getting in a rage. If
you’d drunk four bottles yesterday as I did you’d forget
where you were lying. Wait a bit, I’ll remember!’
Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on
his bed.
‘Wait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was
how he was standing. Yes—yes—yes.... Here it is!’—and
Petritsky pulled a letter out from under the mattress,
where he had hidden it.
Vronsky took the letter and his brother’s note. It was
the letter he was expecting—from his mother, reproaching
him for not having been to see her—and the note was
from his brother to say that he must have a little talk with
him. Vronsky knew that it was all about the same thing.
‘What business is it of theirs!’ thought Vronsky, and
crumpling up the letters he thrust them between the
buttons of his coat so as to read them carefully on the
road. In the porch of the hut he was met by two officers;
one of his regiment and one of another.
Vronsky’s quarters were always a meeting place for all
the officers.
‘Where are you off to?’
‘I must go to Peterhof.’
‘Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?’
‘Yes, but I’ve not seen her yet.’
‘They say Mahotin’s Gladiator’s lame.’
‘Nonsense! But however are you going to race in this
mud?’ said the other.
‘Here are my saviors!’ cried Petritsky, seeing them
come in. Before him stood the orderly with a tray of
brandy and salted cucumbers. ‘Here’s Yashvin ordering me
a drink a pick-me-up.’
‘Well, you did give it to us yesterday,’ said one of those
who had come in; ‘you didn’t let us get a wink of sleep all
night.’
‘Oh, didn’t we make a pretty finish!’ said Petritsky.
‘Volkov climbed onto the roof and began telling us how
sad he was. I said: ‘Let’s have music, the funeral march!’
He fairly dropped asleep on the roof over the funeral
march.’
‘Drink it up; you positively must drink the brandy, and
then seltzer water and a lot of lemon,’ said Yashvin,
standing over Petritsky like a mother making a child take
medicine, ‘and then a little champagne—just a small
bottle.’
‘Come, there’s some sense in that. Stop a bit, Vronsky.
We’ll all have a drink.’
‘No; good-bye all of you. I’m not going to drink
today.’
‘Why, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must
have it alone. Give us the seltzer water and lemon.’
‘Vronsky!’ shouted someone when he was already
outside.
‘Well?’
‘You’d better get your hair cut, it’ll weigh you down,
especially at the top.’
Vronsky was in fact beginning, prematurely, to get a
little bald. He laughed gaily, showing his even teeth, and
puling his cap over the thin place, went out and got into
his carriage.
‘To the stables!’ he said, and was just pulling out the
letters to read them through, but he thought better of it,
and put off reading them so as not to distract his attention
before looking at the mare. ‘Later!’
Chapter 21
The temporary stable, a wooden shed, had been put up
close to the race course, and there his mare was to have
been taken the previous day. He had not yet seen her
there.
During the last few days he had not ridden her out for
exercise himself, but had put her in the charge of the
trainer, and so now he positively did not know in what
condition his mare had arrived yesterday and was today.
He had scarcely got out of his carriage when his groom,
the so-called ‘stable boy,’ recognizing the carriage some
way off, called the trainer. A dry-looking Englishman, in
high boots and a short jacket, clean-shaven, except for a
tuft below his chin, came to meet him, walking with the
uncouth gait of jockey, turning his elbows out and
swaying from side to side.
‘Well, how’s Frou-Frou?’ Vronsky asked in English.
‘All right, sir,’ the Englishman’s voice responded
somewhere in the inside of his throat. ‘Better not go in,’
he added, touching his hat. ‘I’ve put a muzzle on her, and
the mare’s fidgety. Better not go in, it’ll excite the mare.’
‘No, I’m going in. I want to look at her.’
‘Come along, then,’ said the Englishman, frowning,
and speaking with his mouth shut, and with swinging
elbows, he went on in front with his disjointed gait.
They went into the little yard in front of the shed. A
stable boy, spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them
with a broom in his hand, and followed them. In the shed
there were five horses in their separate stalls, and Vronsky
knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a very tall chestnut
horse, had been brought there, and must be standing
among them. Even more than his mare, Vronsky longed
to see Gladiator, whom he had never seen. But he knew
that by the etiquette of the race course it was not merely
impossible for him to see the horse, but improper even to
ask questions about him. Just as he was passing along the
passage, the boy opened the door into the second horsebox
on the left, and Vronsky caught a glimpse of a big
chestnut horse with white legs. He knew that this was
Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man turning away
from the sight of another man’s open letter, he turned
round and went into Frou-Frou’s stall.
‘The horse is here belonging to Mak...Mak...I never
can say the name,’ said the Englishman, over his shoulder,
pointing his big finger and dirty nail towards Gladiator’s
stall.
‘Mahotin? Yes, he’s my most serious rival,’ said
Vronsky.
‘If you were riding him,’ said the Englishman, ‘I’d bet
on you.’
‘Frou-Frou’s more nervous; he’s stronger,’ said
Vronsky, smiling at the compliment to his riding.
‘In a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on
pluck,’ said the Englishman.
Of pluck—that is, energy and courage—Vronsky did
not merely feel that he had enough; what was of far more
importance, he was firmly convinced that no one in the
world could have more of this ‘pluck’ than he had.
‘Don’t you think I want more thinning down?’
‘Oh, no,’ answered the Englishman. ‘Please, don’t
speak loud. The mare’s fidgety,’ he added, nodding
towards the horse-box, before which they were standing,
and from which came the sound of restless stamping in the
straw.
He opened the door, and Vronsky went into the horsebox,
dimly lighted by one little window. In the horse-box
stood a dark bay mare, with a muzzle on, picking at the
fresh straw with her hoofs. Looking round him in the
twilight of the horse-box, Vronsky unconsciously took in
once more in a comprehensive glance all the points of his
favorite mare. Frou-Frou was a beast of medium size, not
altogether free from reproach, from a breeder’s point of
view. She was small-boned all over; though her chest was
extremely prominent in front, it was narrow. Her hindquarters
were a little drooping, and in her fore-legs, and
still more in her hind-legs, there was a noticeable
curvature. The muscles of both hind- and fore-legs were
not very thick; but across her shoulders the mare was
exceptionally broad, a peculiarity specially striking now
that she was lean from training. The bones of her legs
below the knees looked no thicker than a finger from in
front, but were extraordinarily thick seen from the side.
She looked altogether, except across the shoulders, as it
were, pinched in at the sides and pressed out in depth. But
she had in the highest degree the quality that makes all
defects forgotten: that quality was blood, the blood that
tells, as the English expression has it. The muscles stood up
sharply under the network of sinews, covered with this
delicate, mobile skin, soft as satin, and they were hard a
bone. Her clean-cut head with prominent, bright, spirited
eyes, broadened out at the open nostrils, that showed the
red blood in the cartilage within. About all her figure, and
especially her head, there was a certain expression of
energy, and, at the same time, of softness. She was one of
those creatures which seem only not to speak because the
mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.
To Vronsky, at any rate, it seemed that she understood
all he felt at that moment, looking at her.
Directly Vronsky went towards her, she drew in a deep
breath, and, turning back her prominent eye till the white
looked bloodshot, she started at the approaching figures
from the opposite side, shaking her muzzle, and shifting
lightly from one leg to the other.
‘There, you see how fidgety she is,’ said the
Englishman.
‘There, darling! There!’ said Vronsky, going up to the
mare and speaking soothingly to her.
But the nearer he came, the more excited she grew.
Only when he stood by her head, she was suddenly
quieter, while the muscles quivered under her soft,
delicate coat. Vronsky patted her strong neck, straightened
over her sharp withers a stray lock of her mane that had
fallen on the other side, and moved his face near her
dilated nostrils, transparent as a bat’s wing. She drew a
loud breath and snorted out through her tense nostrils,
started, pricked up her sharp ear, and put out her strong,
black lip towards Vronsky, as though she would nip hold
of his sleeve. But remembering the muzzle, she shook it
and again began restlessly stamping one after the other her
shapely legs.
‘Quiet, darling, quiet!’ he said, patting her again over
her hind-quarters; and with a glad sense that his mare was
in the best possible condition, he went out of the horsebox.
The mare’s excitement had infected Vronsky. He felt
that his heart was throbbing, and that he, too, like the
mare, longed to move, to bite; it was both dreadful and
delicious.
‘Well, I rely on you, then,’ he said to the Englishman;
‘half-past six on the ground.’
‘All right,’ said the Englishman. ‘Oh, where are you
going, my lord?’ he asked suddenly, using the title ‘my
lord,’ which he had scarcely ever used before.
Vronsky in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he
knew how to stare, not into the Englishman’s eyes, but at
his forehead, astounded at the impertinence of his
question. But realizing that in asking this the Englishman
had been looking at him not as an employer, but as a
jockey, he answered:
‘I’ve got to go to Bryansky’s; I shall be home within an
hour.’
‘How often I’m asked that question today!’ he said to
himself, and he blushed, a thing which rarely happened to
him. The Englishman looked gravely at him; and, as
though he, too, knew where Vronsky was going, he
added:
‘The great thing’s to keep quiet before a race,’ said he;
‘don’t get out of temper or upset about anything.’
‘All right,’ answered Vronsky, smiling; and jumping
into his carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.
Before he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds
that had been threatening rain all day broke, and there was
a heavy downpour of rain.
‘What a pity!’ thought Vronsky, putting up the roof of
the carriage. ‘It was muddy before, now it will be a perfect
swamp.’ As he sat in solitude in the closed carriage, he
took out his mother’s letter and his brother’s note, and
read them through.
Yes, it was the same thing over and over again.
Everyone, his mother, his brother, everyone thought fit to
interfere in the affairs of his heart. This interference
aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred—a feeling he had
rarely known before. ‘What business is it of theirs? Why
does everybody feel called upon to concern himself about
me? And why do they worry me so? Just because they see
that this is something they can’t understand. If it were a
common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left
me alone. They feel that this is something different, that
this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me
than life. And this is incomprehensible, and that’s why it
annoys them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have
made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it,’ he said,
in the word we linking himself with Anna. ‘No, they must
needs teach us how to live. They haven’t an idea of what
happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us
there is neither happiness nor unhappiness—no life at all,’
he thought.
He was angry with all of them for their interference
just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people,
were right. He felt that the love that bound him to Anna
was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as
worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life
of either but pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all
the torture of his own and her position, all the difficulty
there was for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of
all the world, in concealing their love, in lying and
deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning, and
continually thinking of others, when the passion that
united them was so intense that they were both oblivious
of everything else but their love.
He vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances
of inevitable necessity for lying and deceit, which were so
against his natural bent. He recalled particularly vividly the
shame he had more than once detected in her at this
necessity for lying and deceit. And he experienced the
strange feeling that had sometimes come upon him since
his secret love for Anna. This was a feeling of loathing for
something—whether for Alexey Alexandrovitch, or for
himself, or for the whole world, he could not have said.
But he always drove away this strange feeling. Now, too,
he shook it off and continued the thread of his thoughts.
‘Yes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace;
and now she cannot be at peace and feel secure in her
dignity, though she does not show it. Yes, we must put an
end to it,’ he decided.
And for the first time the idea clearly presented itself
that it was essential to put an end to this false position, and
the sooner the better. ‘Throw up everything, she and I,
and hide ourselves somewhere alone with our love,’ he
said to himself.
Chapter 22
The rain did not last long, and by the time Vronsky
arrived, his shaft-horse trotting at full speed and dragging
the trace-horses galloping through the mud, with their
reins hanging loose, the sun had peeped out again, the
roofs of the summer villas and the old limetrees in the
gardens on both sides of the principal streets sparkled with
wet brilliance, and from the twigs came a pleasant drip and
from the roofs rushing streams of water. He thought no
more of the shower spoiling the race course, but was
rejoicing now that—thanks to the rain—he would be sure
to find her at home and alone, as he knew that Alexey
Alexandrovitch, who had lately returned from a foreign
watering place, had not moved from Petersburg.
Hoping to find her alone, Vronsky alighted, as he
always did, to avoid attracting attention, before crossing
the bridge, and walked to the house. He did not go up the
steps to the street door, but went into the court.
‘Has your master come?’ he asked a gardener.
‘No, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please
go to the frond door; there are servants there,’ the
gardener answered. ‘They’ll open the door.’
‘No, I’ll go in from the garden.’
And feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to
take her by surprise, since he had not promised to be there
today, and she would certainly not expect him to come
before the races, he walked, holding his sword and
stepping cautiously over the sandy path, bordered with
flowers, to the terrace that looked out upon the garden.
Vronsky forgot now all that he had thought on the way of
the hardships and difficulties of their position. He thought
of nothing but that he would see her directly, not in
imagination, but living, all of her, as she was in reality. He
was just going in, stepping on his whole foot so as not to
creak, up the worn steps of the terrace, when he suddenly
remembered what he always forgot, and what caused the
most torturing side of his relations with her, her son with
his questioning—hostile, as he fancied—eyes.
This boy was more often than anyone else a check
upon their freedom. When he was present, both Vronsky
and Anna did not merely avoid speaking of anything that
they could not have repeated before everyone; they did
not even allow themselves to refer by hints to anything the
boy did not understand. They had made no agreement
about this, it had settled itself. They would have felt it
wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his presence
they talked like acquaintances. But in spite of this caution,
Vronsky often saw the child’s intent, bewildered glance
fixed upon him, and a strange shyness, uncertainty, at one
time friendliness, at another, coldness and reserve, in the
boy’s manner to him; as though the child felt that between
this man and his mother there existed some important
bond, the significance of which he could not understand.
As a fact, the boy did feel that he could not understand
this relation, and he tried painfully, and was not able to
make clear to himself what feeling he ought to have for
this man. With a child’s keen instinct for every
manifestation of feeling, he saw distinctly that his father,
his governess, his nurse,—all did not merely dislike
Vronsky, but looked on him with horror and aversion,
though they never said anything about him, while his
mother looked on him as her greatest friend.
‘What does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love
him? If I don’t know, it’s my fault; either I’m stupid or a
naughty boy,’ thought the child. And this was what caused
his dubious, inquiring, sometimes hostile, expression, and
the shyness and uncertainty which Vronsky found so
irksome. This child’s presence always and infallibly called
up in Vronsky that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing
which he had experienced of late. This child’s presence
called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to
the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the
direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the
right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power,
that every instant is carrying him further and further away,
and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right
direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin.
This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was
the compass that showed them the point to which they
had departed from what they knew, but did not want to
know.
This time Seryozha was not at home, and she was
completely alone. She was sitting on the terrace waiting
for the return of her son, who had gone out for his walk
and been caught in the rain. She had sent a manservant
and a maid out to look for him. Dressed in a white gown,
deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the
terrace behind some flowers, and did not hear him.
Bending her curly black head, she pressed her forehead
against a cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and
both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well,
clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head,
her neck, her hands, struck Vronsky every time as
something new and unexpected. He stood still, gazing at
her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have made a step to
come nearer to her, she was aware of his presence, pushed
away the watering pot, and turned her flushed face
towards him.
‘What’s the matter? You are ill?’ he said to her in
French, going up to her. He would have run to her, but
remembering that there might be spectators, he looked
round towards the balcony door, and reddened a little, as
he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be
on his guard.
‘No, I’m quite well,’ she said, getting up and pressing
his outstretched hand tightly. ‘I did not expect...thee.’
‘Mercy! what cold hands!’ he said.
‘You startled me,’ she said. ‘I’m alone, and expecting
Seryozha; he’s out for a walk; they’ll come in from this
side.’
But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were
quivering.
‘Forgive me for coming, but I couldn’t pass the day
without seeing you,’ he went on, speaking French, as he
always did to avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so
impossibly frigid between them, and the dangerously
intimate singular.
‘Forgive you? I’m so glad!’
‘But you’re ill or worried,’ he went on, not letting go
her hands and bending over her. ‘What were you thinking
of?’
‘Always the same thing,’ she said, with a smile.
She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had
been asked what she was thinking of, she could have
answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness and her
unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon
her of this: why was it, she wondered, that to others, to
Betsy (she knew of her secret connection with
Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such
torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from
certain other considerations. She asked him about the
races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was
agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the
simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races.
‘Tell him or not tell him?’ she thought, looking into his
quiet, affectionate eyes. ‘He is so happy, so absorbed in his
races that he won’t understand as he ought, he won’t
understand all the gravity of this fact to us.’
‘But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of
when I came in,’ he said, interrupting his narrative; ‘please
tell me!’
She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she
looked inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes
shining under their long lashes. Her hand shook as it
played with a leaf she had picked. He saw it, and his face
expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion,
which had done so much to win her.
‘I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can
be at peace, knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing?
Tell me, for God’s sake,’ he repeated imploringly.
‘Yes, I shan’t be able to forgive him if he does not
realize all the gravity of it. Better not tell; why put him to
the proof?’ she thought, still staring at him in the same
way, and feeling the hand that held the leaf was trembling
more and more.
‘For God’s sake!’ he repeated, taking her hand.
‘Shall I tell you?’
‘Yes, yes, yes . . .’
‘I’m with child,’ she said, softly and deliberately. The
leaf in her hand shook more violently, but she did not take
her eyes off him, watching how he would take it. He
turned white, would have said something, but stopped; he
dropped her hand, and his head sank on his breast. ‘Yes,
he realizes all the gravity of it,’ she thought, and gratefully
she pressed his hand.
But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity
of the fact as she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he
felt come upon him with tenfold intensity that strange
feeling of loathing of someone. But at the same time, he
felt that the turning-point he had been longing for had
come now; that it was impossible to go on concealing
things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way
or another that they should soon put an end to their
unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion
physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her
with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got
up, and, in silence, paced up and down the terrace.
‘Yes,’ he said, going up to her resolutely. ‘Neither you
nor I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement,
and now our fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put
an end’—he looked round as he spoke—‘to the deception
in which we are living.’
‘Put an end? How put an end, Alexey?’ she said softly.
She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a
tender smile.
‘Leave your husband and make our life one.’
‘It is one as it is,’ she answered, scarcely audibly.
‘Yes, but altogether; altogether.’
‘But how, Alexey, tell me how?’ she said in melancholy
mockery at the hopelessness of her own position. ‘Is there
any way out of such a position? Am I not the wife of my
husband?’
‘There is a way out of every position. We must take
our line,’ he said. ‘Anything’s better than the position in
which you’re living. Of course, I see how you torture
yourself over everything—the world and your son and
your husband.’
‘Oh, not over my husband,’ she said, with a quiet
smile. ‘I don’t know him, I don’t think of him. He doesn’t
exist.’
‘You’re not speaking sincerely. I know you. You
worry about him too.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t even know,’ she said, and suddenly a
hot flush came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her
neck crimsoned, and tears of shame came into her eyes.
‘But we won’t talk of him.’
Chapter 23
Vronsky had several times already, though not so
resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their
position, and every time he had been confronted by the
same superficiality and triviality with which she met his
appeal now. It was as though there were something in this
which she could not or would not face, as though directly
she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated
somehow into herself, and another strange and
unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love,
and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him.
But today he was resolved to have it out.
‘Whether he knows or not,’ said Vronsky, in his usual
quiet and resolute tone, ‘that’s nothing to do with us. We
cannot...you cannot stay like this, especially now.’
‘What’s to be done, according to you?’ she asked with
the same frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would
take her condition too lightly was now vexed with him
for deducing from it the necessity of taking some step.
‘Tell him everything, and leave him.’
‘Very well, let us suppose I do that,’ she said. ‘Do you
know what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all
beforehand,’ and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that
had been so soft a minute before. ‘‘Eh, you love another
man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with him?’’
(Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on the
word ‘criminal,’ as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) ‘ ‘I
warned you of the results in the religious, the civil, and
the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now
In cannot let you disgrace my name,—’’ ‘and my son,’ she
had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest,—
‘‘disgrace my name, and’—and more in the same style,’
she added. ‘In general terms, he’ll say in his official
manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he
cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his power
to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act
in accordance with his words. That’s what will happen.
He’s not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine
when he’s angry,’ she added, recalling Alexey
Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of
his figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning against
him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing
for the great wrong she herself was doing him.
‘But, Anna,’ said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive
voice, trying to soothe her, ‘we absolutely must, anyway,
tell him, and then be guided by the line he takes.’
‘What, run away?’
‘And why not run away? I don’t see how we can keep
on like this. And not for my sake—I see that you suffer.’
‘Yes, run away, and become your mistress,’ she said
angrily.
‘Anna,’ he said, with reproachful tenderness.
‘Yes,’ she went on, ‘become your mistress, and
complete the ruin of..’
Again she would have said ‘my son,’ but she could not
utter that word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her
strong and truthful nature, could endure this state of
deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he did not
suspect that the chief cause of it was the word—son,
which she could not bring herself to pronounce. When
she thought of her son, and his future attitude to his
mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such terror
at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a
woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying
assurances that everything would remain as it always had
been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question
of how it would be with her son.
‘I beg you, I entreat you,’ she said suddenly, taking his
hand, and speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and
tender, ‘never speak to me of that!’
‘But, Anna..’
‘Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the
horror of my position; but it’s not so easy to arrange as
you think. And leave it to me, and do what I say. Never
speak to me of it. Do you promise me?...No, no,
promise!..’
‘I promise everything, but I can’t be at peace, especially
after what you have told me. I can’t be at peace, when
you can’t be at peace...’
‘I?’ she repeated. ‘Yes, I am worried sometimes; but
that will pass, if you will never talk about this. When you
talk about it—it’s only then it worries me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she interrupted him, ‘how hard it is for your
truthful nature to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think
that you have ruined your whole life for me.’
‘I was just thinking the very same thing,’ he said; ‘how
could you sacrifice everything for my sake? I can’t forgive
myself that you’re unhappy!’
‘I unhappy?’ she said, coming closer to him, and
looking at him with an ecstatic smile of love. ‘I am like a
hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold,
and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I
unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness...’
She could hear the sound of her son’s voice coming
towards them, and glancing swiftly round the terrace, she
got up impulsively. Her eyes glowed with the fire he
knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised her lovely
hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long
look into his face, and, putting up her face with smiling,
parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth and both eyes, and
pushed him away. She would have gone, but he held her
back.
‘When?’ he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at
her.
‘Tonight, at one o’clock,’ she whispered, and, with a
heavy sigh, she walked with her light, swift step to meet
her son.
Seryozha had been caught by the rain in the big
garden, and he and his nurse had taken shelter in an arbor.
‘Well, au revoir,’ she said to Vronsky. ‘I must soon be
getting ready for the races. Betsy promised to fetch me.’
Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.
Chapter 24
When Vronsky looked at his watch on the Karenins’
balcony, he was so greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts
that he saw the figures on the watch’s face, but could not
take in what time it was. He came out on to the highroad
and walked, picking his way carefully through the mud, to
his carriage. He was so completely absorbed in his feeling
for Anna, that he did not even think what o’clock it was,
and whether he had time to go to Bryansky’s. He had left
him, as often happens, only the external faculty of
memory, that points out each step one has to take, one
after the other. He went up to his coachman, who was
dozing on the box in the shadow, already lengthening, of
a thick limetree; he admired the shifting clouds of midges
circling over the hot horses, and, waking the coachman,
he jumped into the carriage, and told him to drive to
Bryansky’s. It was only after driving nearly five miles that
he had sufficiently recovered himself to look at his watch,
and realize that it was half-past five, and he was late.
There were several races fixed for that day: the
Mounted Guards’ race, then the officers’ mile-and-a-half
race, then the three-mile race, and then the race~for
which he was entered. He could still be in time for his
race, but if he went to Bryansky’s he could only just be in
time, and he would arrive when the whole of the court
would be in their places. That would be a pity. But he had
promised Bryansky to come, and so he decided to drive
on, telling the coachman not to spare the horses.
He reached Bryansky’s, spent five minutes there, and
galloped back. This rapid drive calmed him. All that was
painful in his relations with Anna, all the feeling of
indefiniteness left by their conversation, had slipped out of
his mind. He was thinking now with pleasure and
excitement of the race, of his being anyhow, in time, and
now and then the thought of the blissful interview
awaiting him that night flashed across his imagination like
a flaming light.
The excitement of the approaching race gained upon
him as he drove further and further into the atmosphere of
the races, overtaking carriages driving up from the summer
villas or out of Petersburg.
At his quarters no one was left at home; all were at the
races, and his valet was looking out for him at the gate.
While he was changing his clothes, his valet told him that
the second race had begun already, that a lot of gentlemen
had been to ask for him, and a boy had twice run up from
the stables. Dressing without hurry (he never hurried
himself, and never lost his self-possession), Vronsky drove
to the sheds. From the sheds he could see a perfect sea of
carriages, and people on foot, soldiers surrounding the race
course, and pavilions swarming with people. The second
race was apparently going on, for just as he went into the
sheds he heard a bell ringing. Going towards the stable, he
met the white-legged chestnut, Mahotin’s Gladiator, being
led to the race-course in a blue forage horsecloth, with
what looked like huge ears edged with blue.
‘Where’s Cord?’ he asked the stable-boy.
‘In the stable, putting on the saddle.’
In the open horse-box stood Frou-Frou, saddled ready.
They were just going to lead her out.
‘I’m not too late?’
‘All right! All right!’ said the Englishman; ‘don’t upset
yourself!’
پاسخ با نقل قول
علاقه مندی ها (بوک مارک ها)