Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

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Chapter 16
Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went
to see Anna. She was sorry to annoy her sister and to do
anything Levin disliked. She quite understood how right
the Levins were in not wishing to have anything to do
with Vronsky. But she felt she must go and see Anna, and
show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite
of the change in her position. That she might be
independent of the Levins in this expedition, Darya
Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for the
drive; but Levin learning of it went to her to protest.
‘What makes you suppose that I dislike your going?
But, even if I did dislike it, I should still more dislike your
not taking my horses,’ he said. ‘You never told me that
you were going for certain. Hiring horses in the village is
disagreeable to me, and, what’s of more importance,
they’ll undertake the job and never get you there. I have
horses. And if you don’t want to wound me, you’ll take
mine.’
Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day
fixed Levin had ready for his sister-in-law a set of four
horses and relays, getting them together from the farmAnna
and saddle-horses—not at all a smart-looking set, but
capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna the whole distance
in a single day. At that moment, when horses were wanted
for the princess, who was going, and for the midwife, it
was a difficult matter for Levin to make up the number,
but the duties of hospitality would not let him allow Darya
Alexandrovna to hire horses when staying in his house.
Moreover, he was well aware that the twenty roubles that
would be asked for the journey were a serious matter for
her; Darya Alexandrovna’s pecuniary affairs, which were
in a very unsatisfactory state, were taken to heart by the
Levins as if they were their own.
Darya Alexandrovna, by Levin’s advice, started before
daybreak. The road was good, the carriage comfortable,
the horses trotted along merrily, and on the box, besides
the coachman, sat the counting-house clerk, whom Levin
was sending instead of a groom for greater security. Darya
Alexandrovna dozed and waked up only on reaching the
inn where the horses were to be changed.
After drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasant’s with
whom Levin had stayed on the way to Sviazhsky’s, and
chatting with the women about their children, and with
the old man about Count Vronsky, whom the latter
praised very highly, Darya Alexandrovna, at ten o’clock,
went on again. At home, looking after her children, she
had no time to think. So now, after this journey of four
hours, all the thoughts she had suppressed before rushed
swarming into her brain, and she thought over all her life
as she never had before, and from the most different points
of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At
first she thought about the children, about whom she was
uneasy, although the princess and Kitty (she reckoned
more upon her) had promised to look after them. ‘If only
Masha does not begin her naughty tricks, if Grisha isn’t
kicked by a horse, and Lily’s stomach isn’t upset again!’
she thought. But these questions of the present were
succeeded by questions of the immediate future. She
began thinking how she had to get a new flat in Moscow
for the coming winter, to renew the drawing room
furniture, and to make her elder girl a cloak. Then
questions of the more remote future occurred to her: how
she was to place her children in the world. ‘The girls are
all right,’ she thought; ‘but the boys?’
‘It’s very well that I’m teaching Grisha, but of course
that’s only because I am free myself now, I’m not with
child. Stiva, of course, there’s no counting on. And with
the help of good-natured friends I can bring them up; but
if there’s another baby coming?...’ And the thought struck
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her how untruly it was said that the curse laid on woman
was that in sorrow she should bring forth children.
‘The birth itself, that’s nothing; but the months of
carrying the child—that’s what’s so intolerable,’ she
thought, picturing to herself her last pregnancy, and the
death of the last baby. And she recalled the conversation
she had just had with the young woman at the inn. On
being asked whether she had any children, the handsome
young woman had answered cheerfully:
‘I had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last
Lent.’
‘Well, did you grieve very much for her?’ asked Darya
Alexandrovna.
‘Why grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough
as it is. It was only a trouble. No working, nor nothing.
Only a tie.’
This answer had struck Darya Alexandrovna as
revolting in spite of the good-natured and pleasing face of
the young woman; but now she could not help recalling
these words. In those cynical words there was indeed a
grain of truth.
‘Yes, altogether,’ thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking
back over her whole existence during those fifteen years of
her married life, ‘pregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity,
indifference to everything, and most of all—hideousness.
Kitty, young and pretty as she is, even Kitty has lost her
looks; and I when I’m with child become hideous, I know
it. The birth, the agony, the hideous agonies, that last
moment...then the nursing, the sleepless nights, the fearful
pains...’
Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection
of the pain from sore breasts which she had suffered with
almost every child. ‘Then the children’s illnesses, that
everlasting apprehension; then bringing them up; evil
propensities’ (she thought of little Masha’s crime among
the raspberries), ‘education, Latin—it’s all so
incomprehensible and difficult. And on the top of it all,
the death of these children.’ And there rose again before
her imagination the cruel memory, that always tore her
mother’s heart, of the death of her last little baby, who had
died of croup; his funeral, the callous indifference of all at
the little pink coffin, and her own torn heart, and her
lonely anguish at the sight of the pale little brow with its
projecting temples, and the open, wondering little mouth
seen in the coffin at the moment when it was being
covered with the little pink lid with a cross braided on it.
‘And all this, what’s it for? What is to come of it all?
That I’m wasting my life, never having a moment’s peace,
either with child, or nursing a child, forever irritable,
peevish, wretched myself and worrying others, repulsive to
my husband, while the children are growing up unhappy,
badly educated, and penniless. Even now, if it weren’t for
spending the summer at the Levins’, I don’t know how we
should be managing to live. Of course Kostya and Kitty
have so much tact that we don’t feel it; but it can’t go on.
They’ll have children, they won’t be able to keep us; it’s a
drag on them as it is. How is papa, who has hardly
anything left for himself, to help us? So that I can’t even
bring the children up by myself, and may find it hard with
the help of other people, at the cost of humiliation. Why,
even if we suppose the greatest good luck, that the
children don’t die, and I bring them up somehow. At the
very best they’ll simply be decent people. That’s all I can
hope for. And to gain simply that—what agonies, what
toil!... One’s whole life ruined!’ Again she recalled what
the young peasant woman had said, and again she was
revolted at the thought; but she could not help admitting
that there was a grain of brutal truth in the words.
‘Is it far now, Mihail?’ Darya Alexandrovna asked the
counting house clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that
were frightening her.
‘From this village, they say, it’s five miles.’ The carriage
drove along the village street and onto a bridge. On the
bridge was a crowd of peasant women with coils of ties for
the sheaves on their shoulders, gaily and noisily chattering.
They stood still on the bridge, staring inquisitively at the
carriage. All the faces turned to Darya Alexandrovna
looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of
their enjoyment of life. ‘They’re all living, they’re all
enjoying life,’ Darya Alexandrovna still mused when she
had passed the peasant women and was driving uphill
again at a trot, seated comfortably on the soft springs of
the old carriage, ‘while I, let out, as it were from prison,
from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only
looking about me now for an instant. They all live; those
peasant women and my sister Natalia and Varenka and
Anna, whom I am going to see—all, but not I.
‘And they attack Anna. What for? am I any better? I
have, anyway, a husband I love—not as I should like to
love him, still I do love him, while Anna never loved hers.
How is she to blame? She wants to live. God has put that
in our hearts. Very likely I should have done the same.
Even to this day I don’t feel sure I did right in listening to
her at that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow.
I ought then to have cast off my husband and have begun
my life fresh. I might have loved and have been loved in
reality. And is it any better as it is? I don’t respect him.
He’s necessary to me,’ she thought about her husband,
‘and I put up with him. Is that any better? At that time I
could still have been admired, I had beauty left me still,’
Darya Alexandrovna pursued her thoughts, and she would
have liked to look at herself in the looking glass. She had a
traveling looking glass in her handbag, and she wanted to
take it out; but looking at the backs of the coachman and
the swaying counting house clerk, she felt that she would
be ashamed if either of them were to look round, and she
did not take out the glass.
But without looking in the glass, she thought that even
now it was not too late; and she thought of Sergey
Ivanovitch, who was always particularly attentive to her,
of Stiva’s good-hearted friend, Turovtsin, who had helped
her nurse her children through the scarlatina, and was in
love with her. And there was someone else, a quite young
man, who—her husband had told her it as a joke—
thought her more beautiful than either of her sisters. And
the most passionate and impossible romances rose before
Darya Alexandrovna’s imagination. ‘Anna did quite right,
and certainly I shall never reproach her for it. She is
happy, she makes another person happy, and she’s not

broken down as I am, but most likely just as she always
was, bright, clever, open to every impression,’ thought
Darya Alexandrovna,—and a sly smile curved her lips, for,
as she pondered on Anna’s love affair, Darya Alexandrovna
constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love affair
for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal
man who was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessed
the whole affair to her husband. And the amazement and
perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at this avowal made her
smile.
In such daydreams she reached the turning of the
highroad that led to Vozdvizhenskoe.
Chapter 17
The coachman pulled up his four horses and looked
round to the right, to a field of rye, where some peasants
were sitting on a cart. The counting house clerk was just
going to jump down, but on second thoughts he shouted
peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned to
them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they
drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies
settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off.
The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that
came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants
got up and came towards the carriage.
‘Well, you are slow!’ the counting house clerk shouted
angrily to the peasant who was stepping slowly with his
bare feet over the ruts of the rough dry road. ‘Come
along, do!’
A curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round
his hair, and his bent back dark with perspiration, came
towards the carriage, quickening his steps, and took hold
of the mud-guard with his sunburnt hand.
‘Vozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the count’s?’ he
repeated; ‘go on to the end of this track. Then turn to the
left. Straight along the avenue and you’ll come right upon
it. But whom do you want? The count himself?’
‘Well, are they at home, my good man?’ Darya
Alexandrovna said vaguely, not knowing how to ask about
Anna, even of this peasant.
‘At home for sure,’ said the peasant, shifting from one
bare foot to the other, and leaving a distinct print of five
toes and a heel in the dust. ‘Sure to be at home,’ he
repeated, evidently eager to talk. ‘Only yesterday visitors
arrived. There’s a sight of visitors come. What do you
want?’ He turned round and called to a lad, who was
shouting something to him from the cart. ‘Oh! They all
rode by here not long since, to look at a reaping machine.
They’ll be home by now. And who will you be belonging
to?..’
‘We’ve come a long way,’ said the coachman, climbing
onto the box. ‘So it’s not far?’
‘I tell you, it’s just here. As soon as you get out...’ he
said, keeping hold all the while of the carriage.
A healthy-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow
came up too.
‘What, is it laborers they want for the harvest?’ he
asked.
‘I don’t know, my boy.’
‘So you keep to the left, and you’ll come right on it,’
said the peasant, unmistakably loth to let the travelers go,
and eager to converse.
The coachman started the horses, but they were only
just turning off when the peasant shouted: ‘Stop! Hi,
friend! Stop!’ called the two voices. The coachman
stopped.
‘They’re coming! They’re yonder!’ shouted the
peasant. ‘See what a turn-out!’ he said, pointing to four
persons on horseback, and two in a char-a-banc, coming
along the road.
They were Vronsky with a jockey, Veslovsky and Anna
on horseback, and Princess Varvara and Sviazhsky in the
char-a-banc. They had gone out to look at the working of
a new reaping machine.
When the carriage stopped, the party on horseback
were coming at a walking pace. Anna was in front beside
Veslovsky. Anna, quietly walking her horse, a sturdy
English cob with cropped mane and short tail, her
beautiful head with her black hair straying loose under her
high hat, her full shoulders, her slender waist in her black
riding habit, and all the ease and grace of her deportment,
impressed Dolly.
For the first minute it seemed to her unsuitable for
Anna to be on horseback. The conception of riding on
horseback for a lady was, in Darya Alexandrovna’s mind,
associated with ideas of youthful flirtation and frivolity,
which, in her opinion, was unbecoming in Anna’s
position. But when she had scrutinized her, seeing her
closer, she was at once reconciled to her riding. In spite of
her elegance, everything was so simple, quiet, and
dignified in the attitude, the dress and the movements of
Anna, that nothing could have been more natural.
Beside Anna, on a hot-looking gray cavalry horse, was
Vassenka Veslovsky in his Scotch cap with floating
ribbons, his stout legs stretched out in front, obviously
pleased with his own appearance. Darya Alexandrovna
could not suppress a good-humored smile as she
recognized him. Behind rode Vronsky on a dark bay mare,
obviously heated from galloping. He was holding her in,
pulling at the reins.
After him rode a little man in the dress of a jockey.
Sviazhsky and Princess Varvara in a new char-a-banc with
a big, raven-black trotting horse, overtook the party on
horseback.
Anna’s face suddenly beamed with a joyful smile at the
instant when, in the little figure huddled in a corner of the
old carriage, she recognized Dolly. She uttered a cry,
started in the saddle, and set her horse into a gallop. On
reaching the carriage she jumped off without assistance,
and holding up her riding habit, she ran up to greet Dolly.
‘I thought it was you and dared not think it. How
delightful! You can’t fancy how glad I am!’ she said, at one
moment pressing her face against Dolly and kissing her,
and at the next holding her off and examining her with a
smile.
‘Here’s a delightful surprise, Alexey!’ she said, looking
round at Vronsky, who had dismounted, and was walking
towards them.
Vronsky, taking off his tall gray hat, went up to Dolly.
‘You wouldn’t believe how glad we are to see you,’ he
said, giving peculiar significance to the words, and
showing his strong white teeth in a smile.
Vassenka Veslovsky, without getting off his horse, took
off his cap and greeted the visitor by gleefully waving the
ribbons over his head.
‘That’s Princess Varvara,’ Anna said in reply to a glance
of inquiry from Dolly as the char-a-banc drove up.
‘Ah!’ said Darya Alexandrovna, and unconsciously her
face betrayed her dissatisfaction.
Princess Varvara was her husband’s aunt, and she had
long known her, and did not respect her. She knew that
Princess Varvara had passed her whole life toadying on her
rich relations, but that she should now be sponging on
Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Dolly
on account of her kinship with her husband. Anna noticed
Dolly’s expression, and was disconcerted by it. She
blushed, dropped her riding habit, and stumbled over it.
Darya Alexandrovna went up to the char-a-banc and
coldly greeted Princess Varvara. Sviazhsky too she knew.
He inquired how his queer friend with the young wife
was, and running his eyes over the ill-matched horses and
the carriage with its patched mud-guards, proposed to the
ladies that they should get into the char-a-banc.
‘And I’ll get into this vehicle,’ he said. ‘The horse is
quiet, and the princess drives capitally.’
‘No, stay as you were,’ said Anna, coming up, ‘and
we’ll go in the carriage,’ and taking Dolly’s arm, she drew
her away.
Darya Alexandrovna’s eyes were fairly dazzled by the
elegant carriage of a pattern she had never seen before, the
splendid horses, and the elegant and gorgeous people
surrounding her. But what struck her most of all was the
change that had taken place in Anna, whom she knew so
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well and loved. Any other woman, a less close observer,
not knowing Anna before, or not having thought as Darya
Alexandrovna had been thinking on the road, would not
have noticed anything special in Anna. But now Dolly was
struck by that temporary beauty, which is only found in
women during the moments of love, and which she saw
now in Anna’s face. Everything in her face, the clearly
marked dimples in her cheeks and chin, the line of her
lips, the smile which, as it were, fluttered about her face,
the brilliance of her eyes, the grace and rapidity of her
move meets, the fulness of the notes of her voice, even the
manner in which, with a sort of angry friendliness, she
answered Veslovsky when he asked permission to get on
her cob, so as to teach it to gallop with the right leg
foremost—it was all peculiarly fascinating, and it seemed as
if she were herself aware of it, and rejoicing in it.
When both the women were seated in the carriage, a
sudden embarrassment came over both of them. Anna was
disconcerted by the intent look of inquiry Dolly fixed
upon her. Dolly was embarrassed because after Sviazhsky’s
phrase about ‘this vehicle,’ she could not help feeling
ashamed of the dirty old carriage in which Anna was
sitting with her. The coachman Philip and the counting
house clerk were experiencing the same sensation. The
counting house clerk, to conceal his confusion, busied
himself settling the ladies, but Philip the coachman
became sullen, and was bracing himself not to be
overawed in future by this external superiority. He smiled
ironically, looking at the raven horse, and was already
deciding in his own mind that this smart trotter in the
char-a-banc was only good for promenage, and wouldn’t
do thirty miles straight off in the heat.
The peasants had all got up from the cart and were
inquisitively and mirthfully staring at the meeting of the
friends, making their comments on it.
‘They’re pleased, too; haven’t seen each other for a
long while,’ said the curly-headed old man with the bast
round his hair.
‘I say, Uncle Gerasim, if we could take that raven horse
now, to cart the corn, that ‘ud be quick work!’
‘Look-ee! Is that a woman in breeches?’ said one of
them, pointing to Vassenka Veslovsky sitting in a side
saddle.
‘Nay, a man! See how smartly he’s going it!’
‘Eh, lads! seems we’re not going to sleep, then?’
‘What chance of sleep today!’ said the old man, with a
sidelong look at the sun. ‘Midday’s past, look-ee! Get your
hooks, and come along!’
Chapter 18
Anna looked at Dolly’s thin, care-worn face, with its
wrinkles filled with dust from the road, and she was on the
point of saying what she was thinking, that is, that Dolly
had got thinner. But, conscious that she herself had grown
handsomer, and that Dolly’s eyes were telling her so, she
sighed and began to speak about herself.
‘You are looking at me,’ she said, ‘and wondering how
I can be happy in my position? Well! it’s shameful to
confess, but I... I’m inexcusably happy. Something magical
has happened to me, like a dream, when you’re
frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake
up and all the horrors are no more. I have waked up. I
have lived through the misery, the dread, and now for a
long while past, especially since we’ve been here, I’ve
been so happy!...’ she said, with a timid smile of inquiry
looking at Dolly.
‘How glad I am!’ said Dolly smiling, involuntarily
speaking more coldly than she wanted to. ‘I’m very glad
for you. Why haven’t you written to me?’
‘Why?... Because I hadn’t the courage.... You forget
my position..’
‘To me? Hadn’t the courage? If you knew how I...I
look at..’
Darya Alexandrovna wanted to express her thoughts of
the morning, but for some reason it seemed to her now
out of place to do so.
‘But of that we’ll talk later. What’s this, what are all
these buildings?’ she asked, wanting to change the
conversation and pointing to the red and green roofs that
came into view behind the green hedges of acacia and
lilac. ‘Quite a little town.’
But Anna did not answer.
‘No, no! How do you look at my position, what do
you think of it?’ she asked.
‘I consider...’ Darya Alexandrovna was beginning, but
at that instant Vassenka Veslovsky, having brought the cob
to gallop with the right leg foremost, galloped past them,
bumping heavily up and down in his short jacket on the
chamois leather of the side saddle. ‘He’s doing it, Anna
Arkadyevna!’ he shouted.
Anna did not even glance at him; but again it seemed
to Darya Alexandrovna out of place to enter upon such a
long conversation in the carriage, and so she cut short her
thought.
‘I don’t think anything,’ she said, ‘but I always loved
you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person,
just as they are and not as one would like them to be...’
Anna, taking her eyes off her friend’s face and dropping
her eyelids (this was a new habit Dolly had not seen in her
before), pondered, trying to penetrate the full significance
of the words. And obviously interpreting them as she
would have wished, she glanced at Dolly.
‘If you had any sins,’ she said, ‘they would all be
forgiven you for your coming to see me and these words.’
And Dolly saw that tears stood in her eyes. She pressed
Anna’s hand in silence.
‘Well, what are these buildings? How many there are of
them!’ After a moment’s silence she repeated her question.
‘These are the servants’ houses, barns, and stables,’
answered Anna. ‘And there the park begins. It had all gone
to ruin, but Alexey had everything renewed. He is very
fond of this place, and, what I never expected, he has
become intensely interested in looking after it. But his is
such a rich nature! Whatever he takes up, he does
splendidly. So far from being bored by it, he works with
passionate interest. He—with his temperament as I know
it—he has become careful and businesslike, a first-rate
manager, he positively reckons every penny in his
management of the land. But only in that. When it’s a
question of tens of thousands, he doesn’t think of money.’
She spoke with that gleefully sly smile with which women
often talk of the secret characteristics only known to
them—of those they love. ‘Do you see that big building?
that’s the new hospital. I believe it will cost over a
hundred thousand; that’s his hobby just now. And do you
know how it all came about? The peasants asked him for
some meadowland, I think it was, at a cheaper rate, and he
refused, and I accused him of being miserly. Of course it
was not really because of that, but everything together, he
began this hospital to prove, do you see, that he was not
miserly about money. C’est une petitesse, if you like, but I
love him all the more for it. And now you’ll see the house
in a moment. It was his grandfather’s house, and he has
had nothing changed outside.’
‘How beautiful!’ said Dolly, looking with involuntary
admiration at the handsome house with columns, standing
out among the different-colored greens of the old trees in
the garden.
‘Isn’t it fine? And from the house, from the top, the
view is wonderful.’
They drove into a courtyard strewn with gravel and
bright with flowers, in which two laborers were at work
putting an edging of stones round the light mould of a
flower bed, and drew up in a covered entry.
‘Ah, they’re here already!’ said Anna, looking at the
saddle horses, which were just being led away from the
steps. ‘It is a nice horse, isn’t it? It’s my cob; my favorite.
Lead him here and bring me some sugar. Where is the
count?’ she inquired of two smart footmen who darted
out. ‘Ah, there he is!’ she said, seeing Vronsky coming to
meet her with Veslovsky.
‘Where are you going to put the princess?’ said
Vronsky in French, addressing Anna, and without waiting
for a reply, he once more greeted Darya Alexandrovna,
and this time he kissed her hand. ‘I think the big balcony
room.’
‘Oh, no, that’s too far off! Better in the corner room,
we shall see each other more. Come, let’s go up,’ said
Anna, as she gave her favorite horse the sugar the footman
had brought her.
‘Et vous oubliez votre devoir,’ she said to Veslovsky,
who came out too on the steps.
‘Pardon, j’en ai tout plein les poches,’ he answered,
smiling, putting his fingers in his waistcoat pocket.
‘Mais vous venez trop tard,’ she said, rubbing her
handkerchief on her hand, which the horse had made wet
in taking the sugar.
Anna turned to Dolly. ‘You can stay some time? For
one day only? That’s impossible!’
‘I promised to be back, and the children...’ said Dolly,
feeling embarrassed both because she had to get her bag
out of the carriage, and because she knew her face must be
covered with dust.
‘No, Dolly, darling!... Well, we’ll see. Come along,
come along!’ and Anna led Dolly to her room.
That room was not the smart guest chamber Vronsky
had suggested, but the one of which Anna had said that
Dolly would excuse it. And this room, for which excuse
was needed, was more full of luxury than any in which
Dolly had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the
best hotels abroad.
‘Well, darling, how happy I am!’ Anna said, sitting
down in her riding habit for a moment beside Dolly. ‘Tell
me about all of you. Stiva I had only a glimpse of, and he
cannot tell one about the children. How is my favorite,
Tanya? Quite a big girl, I expect?’
‘Yes, she’s very tall,’ Darya Alexandrovna answered
shortly, surprised herself that she should respond so coolly
about her children. ‘We are having a delightful stay at the
Levins’,’ she added.
‘Oh, if I had known,’ said Anna, ‘that you do not
despise me!... You might have all come to us. Stiva’s an
old friend and a great friend of Alexey’s, you know,’ she
added, and suddenly she blushed.
‘Yes, but we are all...’ Dolly answered in confusion.
‘But in my delight I’m talking nonsense. The one
thing, darling, is that I am so glad to have you!’ said Anna,
kissing her again. ‘You haven’t told me yet how and what
you think about me, and I keep wanting to know. But I’m
glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I shouldn’t
like would be for people to imagine I want to prove
anything. I don’t want to prove anything; I merely want
to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to
do that, haven’t I? But it is a big subject, and we’ll talk
over everything properly later. Now I’ll go and dress and
send a maid to you.’
Anna Karenina
1333 of 1759
Chapter 19
Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna, with a good
housewife’s eye, scanned her room. All she had seen in
entering the house and walking through it, and all she saw
now in her room, gave her an impression of wealth and
sumptuousness and of that modern European luxury of
which she had only read in English novels, but had never
seen in Russia and in the country. Everything was new
from the new French hangings on the walls to the carpet
which covered the whole floor. The bed had a spring
mattress, and a special sort of bolster and silk pillowcases
on the little pillows. The marble washstand, the dressing
table, the little sofa, the tables, the bronze clock on the
chimney piece, the window curtains, and the portieres
were all new and expensive.
The smart maid, who came in to offer her services,
with her hair done up high, and a gown more fashionable
than Dolly’s, was as new and expensive as the whole
room. Darya Alexandrovna liked her neatness, her
deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease
with her. She felt ashamed of her seeing the patched
dressing jacket that had unluckily been packed by mistake
for her. She was ashamed of the very patches and darned
places of which she had been so proud at home. At home
it had been so clear that for six dressing jackets there
would be needed twenty-four yards of nainsook at sixteen
pence the yard, which was a matter of thirty shillings
besides the cutting-out and making, and these thirty
shillings had been saved. But before the maid she felt, if
not exactly ashamed, at least uncomfortable.
Darya Alexandrovna had a great sense of relief when
Annushka, whom she had known for years, walked in.
The smart maid was sent for to go to her mistress, and
Annushka remained with Darya Alexandrovna.
Annushka was obviously much pleased at that lady’s
arrival, and began to chatter away without a pause. Dolly
observed that she was longing to express her opinion in
regard to her mistress’s position, especially as to the love
and devotion of the count to Anna Arkadyevna, but Dolly
carefully interrupted her whenever she began to speak
about this.
‘I grew up with Anna Arkadyevna; my lady’s dearer to
me than anything. Well, it’s not for us to judge. And, to
be sure, there seems so much love..’
‘Kindly pour out the water for me to wash now,
please,’ Darya Alexandrovna cut her short.
‘Certainly. We’ve two women kept specially for
washing small things, but most of the linen’s done by
machinery. The count goes into everything himself. Ah,
what a husband!..’
Dolly was glad when Anna came in, and by her
entrance put a stop to Annushka’s gossip.
Anna had put on a very simple batiste gown. Dolly
scrutinized that simple gown attentively. She knew what it
meant, and the price at which such simplicity was
obtained.
‘An old friend,’ said Anna of Annushka.
Anna was not embarrassed now. She was perfectly
composed and at ease. Dolly saw that she had now
completely recovered from the impression her arrival had
made on her, and had assumed that superficial, careless
tone which, as it were, closed the door on that
compartment in which her deeper feelings and ideas were
kept.
‘Well, Anna, and how is your little girl?’ asked Dolly.
‘Annie?’ (This was what she called her little daughter
Anna.) ‘Very well. She has got on wonderfully. Would
you like to see her? Come, I’ll show her to you. We had a
terrible bother,’ she began telling her, ‘over nurses. We
had an Italian wet-nurse. A good creature, but so stupid!
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We wanted to get rid of her, but the baby is so used to her
that we’ve gone on keeping her still.’
‘But how have you managed?...’ Dolly was beginning a
question as to what name the little girl would have; but
noticing a sudden frown on Anna’s face, she changed the
drift of her question.
‘How did you manage? have you weaned her yet?’
But Anna had understood.
‘You didn’t mean to ask that? You meant to ask about
her surname. Yes? That worries Alexey. She has no
name—that is, she’s a Karenina,’ said Anna, dropping her
eyelids till nothing could be seen but the eyelashes
meeting. ‘But we’ll talk about all that later,’ her face
suddenly brightening. ‘Come, I’ll show you her. Elle est
tres gentille. She crawls now.’
In the nursery the luxury which had impressed Dolly in
the whole house struck her still more. There were little
go-carts ordered from England, and appliances for learning
to walk, and a sofa after the fashion of a billiard table,
purposely constructed for crawling, and swings and baths,
all of special pattern, and modern. They were all English,
solid, and of good make, and obviously very expensive.
The room was large, and very light and lofty.
When they went in, the baby, with nothing on but her
little smock was sitting in a little elbow chair at the table,
having her dinner of broth which she was spilling all over
her little chest. The baby was being fed, and the Russian
nursery maid was evidently sharing her meal. Neither the
wet-nurse nor the head nurse were there; they were in the
next room, from which came the sound of their
conversation in the queer French which was their only
means of communication.
Hearing Anna’s voice, a smart, tall, English nurse with
a disagreeable face and a dissolute expression walked in at
the door, hurriedly shaking her fair curls, and immediately
began to defend herself though Anna had not found fault
with her. At every word Anna said, the English nurse said
hurriedly several times, ‘Yes, my lady.’
The rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her
sturdy red little body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted
Darya Alexandrovna in spite of the cross expression with
which she stared at the stranger. She positively envied the
baby’s healthy appearance. She was delighted, too, at the
baby’s crawling. Not one of her own children had crawled
like that. When the baby was put on the carpet and its
little dress tucked up behind, it was wonderfully charming.
Looking round like some little wild animal at the grown
up big people with her bright black eyes, she smiled,
unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and holding
her legs sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and
rapidly drew her whole back up after, and then made
another step forward with her little arms.
But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and
especially the English nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not
like at all. It was only on the supposition that no good
nurse would have entered so irregular a household as
Anna’s that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself
how Anna with her insight into people could take such an
unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse to
her child.
Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya
Alexandrovna saw at once that Anna, the two nurses, and
the child had no common existence, and that the mother’s
visit was something exceptional. Anna wanted to get the
baby her plaything, and could not find it.
Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked
how many teeth the baby had, Anna answered wrong, and
knew nothing about the two last teeth.
‘I sometimes feel sorry I’m so superfluous here,’ said
Anna, going out of the nursery and holding up her skirt so
as to escape the plaything standing in the doorway. ‘It was
very different with my first child.’
‘I expected it to be the other way,’ said Darya
Alexandrovna shyly.
‘Oh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Seryozha?’
said Anna; screwing up her eyes, as though looking at
something far away. ‘But we’ll talk about that later. You
wouldn’t believe it, I’m like a hungry beggar woman
when a full dinner is set before her, and she does not
know what to begin on first. The dinner is you, and the
talks I have before me with you, which I could never have
with anyone else; and I don’t know which subject to
begin upon first. Mais je ne vous ferai grace de rien. I
must have everything out with you.’
‘Oh, I ought to give you a sketch of the company you
will meet with us,’ she went on. ‘I’ll begin with the ladies.
Princess Varvara—you know her, and I know your
opinion and Stiva’s about her. Stiva says the whole aim of
her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie
Katerina Pavlovna: that’s all true; but she’s a good-natured
woman, and I am so grateful to her. In Petersburg there
was a moment when a chaperon was absolutely essential
for me. Then she turned up. But really she is goodnatured.
She did a great deal to alleviate my position. I see
you don’t understand all the difficulty of my
position...there in Petersburg,’ she added. ‘Here I’m
perfectly at ease and happy. Well, of that later on, though.
Then Sviazhsky—he’s the marshal of the district, and he’s
a very good sort of a man, but he wants to get something
out of Alexey. You understand, with his property, now
that we are settled in the country, Alexey can exercise
great influence. Then there’s Tushkevitch—you have seen
him, you know—Betsy’s admirer. Now he’s been thrown
over and he’s come to see us. As Alexey says, he’s one of
those people who are very pleasant if one accepts them for
what they try to appear to be, et puis il est comme il faut,
as Princess Varvara says. Then Veslovsky...you know him.
A very nice boy,’ she said, and a sly smile curved her lips.
‘What’s this wild story about him and the Levins?
Veslovsky told Alexey about it, and we don’t believe it. Il
est tres gentil et naif,’ she said again with the same smile.
‘Men need occupation, and Alexey needs a circle, so I
value all these people. We have to have the house lively
and ---, so that Alexey may not long for any novelty.
Then you’ll see the steward—a German, a very good
fellow, and he understands his work. Alexey has a very
high opinion of him. Then the doctor, a young man, not
quite a Nihilist perhaps, but you know, eats with his
knife...but a very good doctor. Then the architect.... Une
petite cour!’
Chapter 20
‘Here’s Dolly for you, princess, you were so anxious to
see her,’ said Anna, coming out with Darya Alexandrovna
onto the stone terrace where Princess Varvara was sitting
in the shade at an embroidery frame, working at a cover
for Count Alexey Kirillovitch’s easy chair. ‘She says she
doesn’t want anything before dinner, but please order
some lunch for her, and I’ll go and look for Alexey and
bring them all in.’
Princess Varvara gave Dolly a cordial and rather
patronizing reception, and began at once explaining to her
that she was living with Anna because she had always
cared more for her than her sister Katerina Pavlovna, the
aunt that had brought Anna up, and that now, when every
onehad abandoned Anna, she thought it her duty to help
her in this most difficult period of transition.
‘Her husband will give her a divorce, and then I shall
go back to my solitude; but now I can be of use, and I am
doing my duty, however difficult it may be for me—not
like some other people. And how sweet it is of you, how
right of you to have come! They live like the best of
married couples; it’s for God to judge them, not for us.
And didn’t Biryuzovsky and Madame Avenieva...and Sam
Nikandrov, and Vassiliev and Madame Mamonova, and
Liza Neptunova... Did no one say anything about them?
And it has ended by their being received by everyone.
And then, c’est un interieur si joli, si comme il faut. Touta-
fait a l’anglaise. On se reunit le matin au breakfast, et
puis on se separe. Everyone does as he pleases till
dinnertime. Dinner at seven o’clock. Stiva did very rightly
to send you. He needs their support. You know that
through his mother and brother he can do anything. And
then they do so much good. He didn’t tell you about his
hospital? Ce sera admirable—everything from Paris.’
Their conversation was interrupted by Anna, who had
found the men of the party in the billiard room, and
returned with them to the terrace. There was still a long
time before the dinner-hour, it was exquisite weather, and
so several different methods of spending the next two
hours were proposed. There were very many methods of
passing the time at Vozdvizhenskoe, and these were all
unlike those in use at Pokrovskoe.
‘Une partie de lawn-tennis,’ Veslovsky proposed, with
his handsome smile. ‘We’ll be partners again, Anna
Arkadyevna.’
‘No, it’s too hot; better stroll about the garden and
have a row in the boat, show Darya Alexandrovna the
river banks.’ Vronsky proposed.
‘I agree to anything,’ said Sviazhsky.
‘I imagine that what Dolly would like best would be a
stroll— wouldn’t you? And then the boat, perhaps,’ said
Anna.
So it was decided. Veslovsky and Tushkevitch went off
to the bathing place, promising to get the boat ready and
to wait there for them.
They walked along the path in two couples, Anna with
Sviazhsky, and Dolly with Vronsky. Dolly was a little
embarrassed and anxious in the new surroundings in
which she found herself. Abstractly, theoretically, she did
not merely justify, she positively approved of Anna’s
conduct. As is indeed not unfrequent with women of
unimpeachable virtue, weary of the monotony of
respectable existence, at a distance she not only excused
illicit love, she positively envied it. Besides, she loved
Anna with all her heart. But seeing Anna in actual life
among these strangers, with this fashionable tone that was
so new to Darya Alexandrovna, she felt ill at ease. What
she disliked particularly was seeing Princess Varvara ready
to overlook everything for the sake of the comforts she
enjoyed.
As a general principle, abstractly, Dolly approved of
Anna’s action; but to see the man for whose sake her
action had been taken was disagreeable to her. Moreover,
she had never liked Vronsky. She thought him very
proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be
proud except his wealth. But against her own will, here in
his own house, he overawed her more than ever, and she
could not be at ease with him. She felt with him the same
feeling she had had with the maid about her dressing
jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt not exactly
ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with
him not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at herself.
Dolly was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of
conversation. Even though she supposed that, through his
pride, praise of his house and garden would be sure to be
disagreeable to him, she did all the same tell him how
much she liked his house.
‘Yes, it’s a very fine building, and in the good oldfashioned
style,’ he said.
‘I like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that
always so?’
‘Oh, no!’ he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. ‘If
you could only have seen that court last spring!’
And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and
more carried away by the subject as he went on, to draw
her attention to the various details of the decoration of his
house and garden. It was evident that, having devoted a
great deal of trouble to improve and beautify his home,
Vronsky felt a need to show off the improvements to a
new person, and was genuinely delighted at Darya
Alexandrovna’s praise.
‘If you would care to look at the hospital, and are not
tired, indeed, it’s not far. Shall we go?’ he said, glancing
into her face to convince himself that she was not bored.
‘Are you coming, Anna?’ he turned to her.
‘We will come, won’t we?’ she said, addressing
Sviazhsky. ‘Mais il ne faut pas laisser le pauvre Veslovsky
et Tushkevitch se morfondre la dans le bateau. We must
send and tell them.’
‘Yes, this is a monument he is setting up here,’ said
Anna, turning to Dolly with that sly smile of
comprehension with which she had previously talked
about the hospital.
‘Oh, it’s a work of real importance!’ said Sviazhsky. But
to show he was not trying to ingratiate himself with
Vronsky, he promptly added some slightly critical remarks.
‘I wonder, though, count,’ he said, ‘that while you do
so much for the health of the peasants, you take so little
interest in the schools.’
‘C’est devenu tellement commun les ecoles,’ said
Vronsky. ‘You understand it’s not on that account, but it
just happens so, my interest has been diverted elsewhere.
This way then to the hospital,’ he said to Darya
Alexandrovna, pointing to a turning out of the avenue.
The ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side
path. After going down several turnings, and going
through a little gate, Darya Alexandrovna saw standing on
rising ground before her a large pretentious-looking red
building, almost finished. The iron roof, which was not
yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the
sunshine. Beside the finished building another had been
begun, surrounded by scaffolding. Workmen in aprons,
standing on scaffolds, were laying bricks, pouring mortar
out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.
‘How quickly work gets done with you!’ said
Sviazhsky. ‘When I was here last time the roof was not
on.’
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‘By the autumn it will all be ready. Iside almost
everything is done,’ said Anna.
‘And what’s this new building?’
‘That’s the house for the doctor and the dispensary,’
answered Vronsky, seeing the architect in a short jacket
coming towards him; and excusing himself to the ladies,
he went to meet him.
Going round a hole where the workmen were slaking
lime, he stood still with the architect and began talking
rather warmly.
‘The front is still too low,’ he said to Anna, who had
asked what was the matter.
‘I said the foundation ought to be raised,’ said Anna.
‘Yes, of course it would have been much better, Anna
Arkadyevna,’ said the architect, ‘but now it’s too late.’
‘Yes, I take a great interest in it,’ Anna answered
Sviazhsky, who was expressing his surprise at her
knowledge of architecture. ‘This new building ought to
have been in harmony with the hospital. It was an
afterthought, and was begun without a plan.’
Vronsky, having finished his talk with the architect,
joined the ladies, and led them inside the hospital.
Although they were still at work on the cornices
outside and were painting on the ground floor, upstairs
almost all the rooms were finished. Going up the broad
cast-iron staircase to the landing, they walked into the first
large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like marble,
the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the
parquet floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who
were planing a block of it, left their work, taking off the
bands that fastened their hair, to greet the gentry.
‘This is the reception room,’ said Vronsky. ‘Here there
will be a desk, tables, and benches, and nothing more.’
‘This way; let us go in here. Don’t go near the
window,’ said Anna, trying the paint to see if it were dry.
‘Alexey, the paint’s dry already,’ she added.
From the reception room they went into the corridor.
Here Vronsky showed them the mechanism for ventilation
on a novel system. Then he showed them marble baths,
and beds with extraordinary springs. Then he showed
them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen
room, then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the
trolleys, which would make no noise as they carried
everything needed along the corridors, and many other
things. Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest mechanical
improvements, appreciated everything fully. Dolly simply
wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to
understand it all, made minute inquiries about everything,
which gave Vronsky great satisfaction.
‘Yes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of
a properly fitted hospital in Russia,’ said Sviazhsky.
‘And won’t you have a lying-in ward?’ asked Dolly.
‘That’s so much needed in the country. I have often..’
In spite of his usual courtesy, Vronsky interrupted her.
‘This is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick,
and is intended for all diseases, except infectious
complaints,’ he said. ‘Ah! look at this,’ and he rolled up to
Darya Alexandrovna an invalid chair that had just been
ordered for the convalescents. ‘Look.’ He sat down in the
chair and began moving it. ‘The patient can’t walk—still
too weak, perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but
he must have air, and he moves, rolls himself along...’
Darya Alexandrovna was interested by everything. She
liked everything very much, but most of all she liked
Vronsky himself with his natural, simple-hearted
eagerness. ‘Yes, he’s a very nice, good man,’ she thought
several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him
and penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put
herself in Anna’s place. She liked him so much just now
with his eager interest that she saw how Anna could be in
love with him.
Chapter 21
‘No, I think the princess is tired, and horses don’t
interest her,’ Vronsky said to Anna, who wanted to go on
to the stables, where Sviazhsky wished to see the new
stallion. ‘You go on, while I escort the princess home, and
we’ll have a little talk,’ he said, ‘if you would like that?’ he
added, turning to her.
‘I know nothing about horses, and I shall be delighted,’
answered Darya Alexandrovna, rather astonished.
She saw by Vronsky’s face that he wanted something
from her. She was not mistaken. As soon as they had
passed through the little gate back into the garden, he
looked in the direction Anna had taken, and having made
sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:
‘You guess that I have something I want to say to you,’
he said, looking at her with laughing eyes. ‘I am not
wrong in believing you to be a friend of Anna’s.’ He took
off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief, wiped his
head, which was growing bald.
Darya Alexandrovna made no answer, and merely
stared at him with dismay. When she was left alone with
him, she suddenly felt afraid; his laughing eyes and stern
expression scared her.
The most diverse suppositions as to what he was about
to speak of to her flashed into her brain. ‘He is going to
beg me to come to stay with them with the children, and
I shall have to refuse; or to create a set will receive Anna
in Moscow.... Or isn’t it Vassenka Veslovsky and his
relations with Anna? Or perhaps about Kitty, that he feels
he was to blame?’ All her conjectures were unpleasant, but
she did not guess what he really wanted to talk about to
her.