Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

[shirin71]

Chapter 20
The whole of that day Anna spent at home, that’s to
say at the Oblonskys’, and received no one, though some
of her acquaintances had already heard of her arrival, and
came to call; the same day. Anna spent the whole morning
with Dolly and the children. She merely sent a brief note
to her brother to tell him that he must not fail to dine at
home. ‘Come, God is merciful,’ she wrote.
Oblonsky did dine at home: the conversation was
general, and his wife, speaking to him, addressed him as
‘Stiva,’ as she had not done before. In the relations of the
husband and wife the same estrangement still remained,
but there was no talk now of separation, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of explanation and
reconciliation.
Immediately after dinner Kitty came in. She knew
Anna Arkadyevna, but only very slightly, and she came
now to her sister’s with some trepidation, at the prospect
of meeting this fashionable Petersburg lady, whom
everyone spoke so highly of. But she made a favorable
impression on Anna Arkadyevna—she saw that at once.
Anna was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and he
youth: before Kitty knew where she was she found herself
not merely under Anna’s sway, but in love with her, as
young girls do fall in love with older and married women.
Anna was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a
boy of eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements,
the freshness and the unflagging eagerness which persisted
in her face, and broke out in her smile and her glance, she
would rather have passed for a girl of twenty, had it not
been for a serious and at times mournful look in her eyes,
which struck and attracted Kitty. Kitty felt that Anna was
perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she
had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her,
complex and poetic.
After dinner, when Dolly went away to her own room,
Anna rose quickly and went up to her brother, who was
just lighting a cigar.
‘Stiva,’ she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and
glancing towards the door, ‘go, and God help you.’
He threw down the cigar, understanding her, and
departed through the doorway.
When Stepan Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went
back to the sofa where she had been sitting, surrounded by
the children. Either because the children saw that their
mother was fond of this aunt, or that they felt a special
charm in her themselves, the two elder ones, and the
younger following their lead, as children so often do, had
clung about their new aunt since before dinner, and
would not leave her side. And it had become a sort of
game among them to sit a close as possible to their aunt, to
touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring,
or even touch the flounce of her skirt.
‘Come, come, as we were sitting before,’ said Anna
Arkadyevna, sitting down in her place.
And again Grisha poked his little face under her arm,
and nestled with his head on her gown, beaming with
pride and happiness.
‘And when is your next ball?’ she asked Kitty.
‘Next week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls
where one always enjoys oneself.’
‘Why, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?’
Anna said, with tender irony.
‘It’s strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs’ one
always enjoys oneself, and at the Nikitins’ too, while at the
Mezhkovs’ it’s always dull. Haven’t you noticed it?’
‘No, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one
enjoys oneself,’ said Anna, and Kitty detected in her eyes
that mysterious world which was not open to her. ‘For me
there are some less dull and tiresome.’
‘How can YOU be dull at a ball?’
‘Why should not I be dull at a ball?’ inquired Anna.
Kitty perceived that Anna knew what answer would
follow.
‘Because you always look nicer than anyone.’
Anna had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little,
and said:
‘In the first place it’s never so; and secondly, if it were,
what difference would it make to me?’
‘Are you coming to this ball?’ asked Kitty.
‘I imagine it won’t be possible to avoid going. Here,
take it,’ she said to Tanya, who was bulling the looselyfitting
ring off her white, slender-tipped finger.
‘I shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you
at a ball.’
‘Anyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the
thought that it’s a pleasure to you...Grisha, don’t pull my
hair. It’s untidy enough without that,’ she said, putting up
a straying lock, which Grisha had been playing with.
‘I imagine you at the ball in lilac.’
‘And why in lilac precisely?’ asked Anna, smiling.
‘Now, children, run along, run along. Do you hear? Miss
Hoole is calling you to tea,’ she said, tearing the children
form her, and sending them off to the dining room
‘I know why you press me to come to the ball. You
expect a great deal of this ball, and you want everyone to
be there to take part in it.’
‘How do you know? Yes.’
‘Oh! what a happy time you are at,’ pursued Anna. ‘I
remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the
mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers
everything in that blissful time when childhood is just
ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and ---, there is
a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful
and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as
it is.... Who has not been through it?’
Kitty smiled without speaking. ‘But how did she go
through it? How I should like to know all her love story!’
thought Kitty, recalling the unromantic appearance of
Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.
‘I know something. Stiva told me, and I congratulate
you. I liked him so much,’ Anna continued. ‘I met
Vronsky at the railway station.’
‘Oh, was he there?’ asked Kitty, blushing. ‘What was it
Stiva told you?’
‘Stiva gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad...I
traveled yesterday with Vronsky’s mother,’ she went on;
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‘and his mother talked without a pause of him, he’s her
favorite. I know mothers are partial, but..’
‘What did his mother tell you?’
‘Oh, a great deal! And I know that he’s her favorite;
still one can see how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance,
she told me that he had wanted to give up all his property
to his brother, that he had done something extraordinary
when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of the
water. He’s a hero, in fact,’ said Anna, smiling and
recollecting the two hundred roubles he had given at the
station.
But she did not tell Kitty about the two hundred
roubles. For some reason it was disagreeable to her to
think of it. She felt that there was something that had to
do with her in it, and something that ought not to have
been.
‘She pressed me very much to go and see her,’ Anna
went on; ‘and I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow.
Stiva is staying a long while in Dolly’s room, thank God,’
Anna added, changing the subject, and getting up, Kitty
fancied, displeased with something.
‘No, I’m first! No, I!’ screamed the children, who had
finished tea, running up to their Aunt Anna.
‘All together,’ said Anna, and she ran laughing to meet
them, and embraced and swung round all the throng of
swarming children, shrieking with delight.
Chapter 21
Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up
people. Stepan Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must
have left his wife’s room by the other door.
‘I am afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,’ observed Dolly,
addressing Anna; ‘I want to move you downstairs, and we
shall be nearer.’
‘Oh, please, don’t trouble about me,’ answered Anna,
looking intently into Dolly’s face, trying to make out
whether there had been a reconciliation or not.
‘It will be lighter for you here,’ answered her sister-inlaw.
‘I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a
marmot.’
‘What’s the question?’ inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch,
coming out of his room and addressing his wife.
From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a
reconciliation had taken place.
‘I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang
up blinds. No one knows how to do it; I must see to it
myself,’ answered Dolly addressing him
‘God knows whether they are fully reconciled,’
thought Anna, hearing her tone, cold and composed.
‘Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties,’
answered her husband. ‘Come, I’ll do it all, if you like..’
‘Yes, They must be reconciled,’ thought Anna.
‘I know how you do everything,’ answered Dolly.
‘You tell Matvey to do what can’t be done, and go away
yourself, leaving him to make a muddle of everything,’
and her habitual, mocking smile curved the corners of
Dolly’s lips as she spoke.
‘Full, full reconciliation, full,’ thought Anna; ‘thank
God!’ and rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went
up to Dolly and kissed her.
‘Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and
Matvey?’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly
perceptibly, and addressing his wife.
The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little
mocking in her tone to her husband, while Stepan
Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not so as to
seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten
his offense.
At half-past nine o’clock a particularly joyful and
pleasant family conversation over the tea-table at the
Oblonskys’ was broken up by an apparently simple
incident. But this simple incident for some reason struck
everyone as strange. Talking about common acquaintances
in Petersburg, Anna got up quickly.
‘She is in my album,’ she said; ‘and, by the way, I’ll
show you by Seryozha,’ she added, with a mother’s smile
of pride.
Towards ten o’clock, when she usually said good-night
to her son, and often before going to a ball put him to bed
herself, she felt depressed at being so far from him; and
whatever she was talking about, she kept coming back in
thought to her curly-headed Seryozha. She longed to look
at his photograph and talk of him. Seizing the first pretext,
she got up, and with her light, resolute step went for her
album. The stairs up to her room came out on the landing
of the great warm main staircase.
Just as she was leaving the drawing room, a ring was
heard in the hall.
‘Who can that be?’ said Dolly
‘It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s
late,’ observed Kitty.
‘Sure to be someone with papers for me,’ put in Stepan
Arkadyevitch. When Anna was passing the top of the
staircase, a servant was running up to announce the visitor,
while the visitor himself was standing under a lamp. Anna
glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, and a strange
feeling of pleasure and at the same time of dread of
something stirred in her heart. He was standing still, not
taking off his coat, pulling something out of his pocket. At
the instant when she was just facing the stairs, he raised his
eyes, caught sight of her, and into the expression of his
face there passed a shade of embarrassment and dismay.
With a slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing
behind her Stepan Arkadyevitch’s loud voice calling him
to come up, and the quiet, soft, and composed voice of
Vronsky refusing.
When Anna returned with the album, he was already
gone, and Stepan Arkadyevitch was telling them that he
had called to inquire about the dinner they were giving
next day to a celebrity who had just arrived. ‘And nothing
would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he
is!’ added Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person
who knew why he had come, and why he would not
come up. ‘He has been at home,’ she thought, ‘and didn’t
find me, and thought I should be here, but he did not
come up because he thought it late, and Anna’s here.’
All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and
began to look at Anna’s album.
There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a
man’s calling at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details
of a proposed dinner party and not coming in, but it
seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed strange
and not right to Anna.
Chapter 22
The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her
mother walked up the great staircase, flooded with light,
and lined with flowers and footmen in powder and red
coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as
from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on the
landing between trees they gave last touches to their hair
and dresses before the mirror, they heard from the
ballroom the careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of the
orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old man in
civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another
mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against
them on the stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring
Kitty, whom he did not know. A beardless youth, one of
those society youths whom the old Prince Shtcherbatsky
called ‘young bucks,’ in an exceedingly open waistcoat,
straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and
after running by, came back to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As
the first quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she
had to promise this youth the second. An officer,
buttoning his glove, stood aside in the doorway, and
stroking his mustache, admired rosy Kitty
Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the
preparations for the ball had cost Kitty great trouble and
consideration, at this moment she walked into the
ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as
easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the
minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family
a moment’s attention, as though she had been born in that
tulle and lace, with her hair done up high on her head,
and a rose and two leaves on the top of it.
When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess,
her mother, tried to turn right side out of the ribbon of
her sash, Kitty had drawn back a little. She felt that
everything must be right of itself, and graceful, and
nothing could need setting straight.
It was one of Kitty’s best days. Her dress was not
uncomfortable anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop
anywhere; her rosettes were not crushed nor torn off; her
pink slippers with high, hollowed-out heels did not pinch,
but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair chignon
kept up on her head as if they were her own hair. All the
three buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long
glove that covered her hand without concealing its lines.
The black velvet of her locket nestled with special softness
round her neck. That velvet was delicious; at ho
looking at her neck in the looking glass, Kitty had felt that
that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be
a doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here
too, at the ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her
bare shoulders and arms gave Kitty a sense of chill marble,
a feeling she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her
rosy lips could not keep from smiling from the
consciousness of her own attractiveness. She had scarcely
entered the ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all
tulle, ribbons, lace, and flowers, waiting to be asked to
dance—Kitty was never one of that throng—when she
was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best partner, the
first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned
director of dances, a married man, handsome and wellbuilt,
Yegorushka Korsunsky. He had only just left the
Countess Bonina, with whom he had danced the first half
of the waltz, and, scanning his kingdom—that is to say, a
few couples who had started dancing—he caught sight of
Kitty, entering, and flew up to her with that peculiar, easy
amble which is confined to directors of balls. Without
even asking her if she cared to dance, he put out his arm
to encircle her slender waist. She looked round for
someone to give her fan to, and their hostess, smiling to
her, took it.
‘How nice you’ve come in good time,’ he said to her,
embracing her waist; ‘such a bad habit to be late.’ Bending
her left hand, she laid it on his shoulder, and her little feet
in their pink slippers began swiftly, lightly, and
rhythmically moving over the slippery floor in time to the
music.
‘It’s a rest to waltz with you,’ he said to her, as they fell
into the first slow steps of the waltz. ‘It’s exquisite—such
lightness, precision.’ He said to her the same thing he said
to almost all his partners whom he knew well.
She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about
the room over his shoulder. She was not like a girl at her
first ball, for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into one
vision of fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone
the stale round of balls till every face in the ballroom was
familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage
between these two; she was excited, and at the same time
she had sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In
the left corner of the ballroom she saw the cream of
society gathered together. There—incredibly naked—was
the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky’s wife; there was the lady of
the house; there shone the bald head of Krivin, always to
be found where the best people were. In that direction
gazed the young men, not venturing to approach. There,
too, she descried Stiva, and there she saw the exquisite
figure and head of Anna in a black velvet gown. And HE
was there. Kitty had not seen him since the evening she
refused Levin. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him
at once, and was even aware that he was looking at her.
‘Another turn, eh? You’re not tired?’ said Korsunsky, a
little out of breath.
‘No, thank you!’
‘Where shall I take you?’
‘Madame Karenina’s here, I think...take me to her.’
‘Wherever you command.’
And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps
straight towards the group in the left corner, continually
saying, ‘Pardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames";
and steering his course through the sea of lace, tulle, and
ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned his
partner sharply round, so that her slim ankles, in light
transparent stockings, were exposed to view, and her train
floated out in fan shape and covered Krivin’s knees.
Korsunky bowed, set straight his open shirt front, and gave
her his arm to conduct her to Anna Arkadyevna. Kitty,
flushed, took her train from Krivin’s knees, and, a little
giddy, looked round, seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac,
as Kitty had so urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut,
velvet gown, showing her full throat and shoulders, that
looked as though carved in old ivory, and her rounded
arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was
trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her
black hair—her own, with no false additions—was a little
wreath of pansies, and a bouquet of the same in the black
ribbon of her sash among white lace. Her coiffure was not
striking. All that was noticeable was the little wilful
tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free
about her neck and temples. Round her well-cut, strong
neck was a thread of pearls.
Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her,
and had pictured her invariably in lilac. But now seeing
her in black, she felt that she had not fully seen her charm.
She saw her now as someone quite new and surprising to
her. Now she understood that Anna could not have been
in lilac, and that her charm was just that she always stood
out against her attire, that her dress could never be
noticeable on her. And her black dress, with its sumptuous
lace, was not noticeable on her; it was only the frame, and
all that was seen was she—simple, natural, elegant, and at
the same time --- and eager.
She was standing holding herself, as always, very erect,
and when Kitty drew near the group she was speaking to
the master of the house, her head slightly turned towards
him.
‘No, I don’t throw stones,’ she was saying, in answer to
something, ‘though I can’t understand it,’ she went on,
shrugging her shoulders, and she turned at once with a soft
smile of protection towards Kitty. With a flying, feminine
glance she scanned her attire, and made a movement of
her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by Kitty,
signifying approval of her dress and her looks. ‘You came
into the room dancing,’ she added.
‘This is one of my most faithful supporters,’ said
Korsunsky, bowing to Anna Arkadyevna, whom he had
not yet seen. ‘The princess helps to make balls happy and
successful. Anna Arkadyevna, a waltz?’ he said, bending
down to her.
‘Why, have yo met?’ inquired their host.
‘Is there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are
like white wolves—everyone knows us,’ answered
Korsunsky. ‘A waltz, Anna Arkadyevna?’
‘I don’t dance when it’s possible not to dance,’ she said.
‘But tonight it’s impossible,’ answered Korsunsky.
At that instant Vronsky came up.
‘Well, since it’s impossible tonight, let us start,’ she said,
not noticing Vronsky’s bow, and she hastily put her hand
on Korsunsky’s shoulder.
‘What is she vexed with him about?’ thought Kitty,
discerning that Anna had intentionally not responded to
Vronsky’s bow. Vronsky went up to Kitty reminding her
of the first quadrille, and expressing his regret that he had
not seen her all this time. Kitty gazed in admiration at
Anna waltzing, and listened to him. She expected him to
ask her for a waltz, but he did not, and she glanced
wonderingly at him. He flushed slightly, and hurriedly
asked her to waltz, but he had only just put his arm round
her waist and taken the first step when the music suddenly
stopped. Kitty looked into his face, which was so close to
her own, and long afterwards—for several years after—that
look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her
to the heart with an agony of shame.
‘Pardon! pardon! Waltz! waltz!’ shouted Korsunsky
from the other side of the room, and seizing the first
young lady he came across he began dancing himself.
Chapter 23