Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

[shirin71]

.
‘You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond
of you,’ he said; ‘do help me.’
Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his
energetic face, which under the lime-trees was continually
being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then
passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to
say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching
with his cane in the gravel.
‘You have come to see us, you, the only woman of
Anna’s former friends—I don’t count Princess Varvara—
but I know that you have done this not because you
regard our position as normal, but because, understanding
all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want
to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?’ he
asked, looking round at her.
‘Oh, yes,’ answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down
her sunshade, ‘but..’
‘No,’ he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the
awkward position into which he was putting his
companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop
short too. ‘No one feels more deeply and intensely than I
do all the difficulty of Anna’s position; and that you may
well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I
have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is
why I feel it.’
‘I understand,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily
admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said
this. ‘But just because you feel yourself responsible, you
exaggerate it, I am afraid,’ she said. ‘Her position in the
world is difficult, I can well understand.’
‘In the world it is hell!’ he brought out quickly,
frowning darkly. ‘You can’t imagine moral sufferings
greater than what she went through in Petersburg in that
fortnight...and I beg you to believe it.’
‘Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna...nor you miss
society..’
‘Society!’ he said contemptuously, ‘how could I miss
society?’
‘So far—and it may be so always—you are happy and at
peace. I see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy, she
has had time to tell me so much already,’ said Darya
Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said this,
at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether
Anna really were happy.
But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I know that she has revived after all
her sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present.
But I?... I am afraid of what is before us...I beg your
pardon, you would like to walk on?’
‘No, I don’t mind.’
‘Well, then, let us sit here.’
Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a
corner of the avenue. He stood up facing her.
‘I see that she is happy,’ he repeated, and the doubt
whether she were happy sank more deeply into Darya
Alexandrovna’s mind. ‘But can it last? Whether we have
acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is
cast,’ he said, passing from Russian to French, ‘and we are
bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of
love that we hold most sacred. We have a child, we may
have other children. But the law and all the conditions of
our position are such that thousands of complications arise
which she does not see and does not want to see. And that
one can well understand. But I can’t help seeing them. My
daughter is by law not my daughter, but Karenin’s. I
cannot bear this falsity!’ he said, with a vigorous gesture of
refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry towards Darya
Alexandrovna.
She made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He
went on:
‘One day a son may be born, my son, and he will be
legally a Karenin; he will not be the heir of my name nor
of my property, and however happy we may be in our
home life and however many children we may have, there
will be no real tie between us. They will be Karenins. You
can understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I
have tried to speak of this to Anna. It irritates her. She
does not understand, and to her I cannot speak plainly of
all this. Now look at another side. I am happy, happy in
her love, but I must have occupation. I have found
occupation, and am proud of what I am doing and
consider it nobler than the pursuits of my former
companions at court and in the army. And most certainly I
would not change the work I am doing for theirs. I am
working here, settled in my own place, and I am happy
and contented, and we need nothing more to make us
happy. I love my work here. Ce n’est pas un pis-aller, on
the contrary..’
Darya Alexandrovna noticed that at this point in his
explanation he grew confused, and she did not quite
understand this digression, but she felt that having once
begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he
could not speak to Anna, he was now making a clean
breast of everything, and that the question of his pursuits
in the country fell into the same category of matters near
his heart, as the question of his relations with Anna.
‘Well, I will go on,’ he said, collecting himself. ‘The
great thing is that as I work I want to have a conviction
that what I am doing will not die with me, that I shall
have heirs to come after me,—and this I have not.
Conceive the position of a man who knows that his
children, the children of the woman he loves, will not be
his, but will belong to someone who hates them and cares
nothing about them! It is awful!’
He paused, evidently much moved.
‘Yes, indeed, I see that. But what can Anna do?’
queried Darya Alexandrovna.
‘Yes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,’
he said, calming himself with an effort. ‘Anna can, it
depends on her.... Even to petition the Tsar for
legitimization, a divorce is essential. And that depends on
Anna. Her husband agreed to a divorce—at that time your
husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he
would not refuse it. It is only a matter of writing to him.
He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire,
he would not refuse. Of course,’ he said gloomily, ‘it is
one of those Pharisaical cruelties of which only such
heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any
recollection of him must give her, and knowing her, he
must have a letter from her. I can understand that it is
agony to her. But the matter is of such importance, that
one must passer par-dessus toutes ces finesses de sentiment.
Il y va du bonheur et de l’existence d’Anne et de ses
enfants. I won’t speak of myself, though it’s hard for me,
very hard,’ he said, with an expression as though he were
threatening someone for its being hard for him. ‘And so it
is, princess, that I am shamelessly clutching at you as an
anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to
him and ask for a divorce.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Darya Alexandrovna said dreamily, as
she vividly recalled her last interview with Alexey
Alexandrovitch. ‘Yes, of course,’ she repeated with
decision, thinking of Anna.
‘Use your influence with her, make her write. I don’t
like—I’m almost unable to speak about this to her.’
‘Very well, I will talk to her. But how is it she does not
think of it herself?’ said Darya Alexandrovna, and for some
reason she suddenly at that point recalled Anna’s strange
new habit of half-closing her eyes. And she remembered
that Anna drooped her eyelids just when the deeper
questions of life were touched upon. ‘Just as though she
half-shut her eyes to her own life, so as not to see
everything,’ thought Dolly. ‘Yes, indeed, for my own sake
and for hers I will talk to her,’ Dolly said in reply to his
look of gratitude.
They got up and walked to the house.
Chapter 22
When Anna found Dolly at home before her, she
looked intently in her eyes, as though questioning her
about the talk she had had with Vronsky, but she made no
inquiry in words.
‘I believe it’s dinner time,’ she said. ‘We’ve not seen
each other at all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now
I want to go and dress. I expect you do too; we all got
splashed at the buildings.’
Dolly went to her room and she felt amused. To
change her dress was impossible, for she had already put
on her best dress. But in order to signify in some way her
preparation for dinner, she asked the maid to brush her
dress, changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her
head.
‘This is all I can do,’ she said with a smile to Anna,
who came in to her in a third dress, again of extreme
simplicity.
‘Yes, we are too formal here,’ she said, as it were
apologizing for her magnificence. ‘Alexey is delighted at
your visit, as he rarely is at anything. He has completely
lost his heart to you,’ she added. ‘You’re not tired?’
There was no time for talking about anything before
dinner. Going into the drawing room they found Princess
Varvara already there, and the gentlemen of the party in
black frock-coats. The architect wore a swallow-tail coat.
Vronsky presented the doctor and the steward to his guest.
The architect he had already introduced to her at the
hospital.
A stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven
round chin and a starched white cravat, announced that
dinner was ready, and the ladies got up. Vronsky asked
Sviazhsky to take in Anna Arkadyevna, and himself offered
his arm to Dolly. Veslovsky was before Tushkevitch in
offering his arm to Princess Varvara, so that Tushkevitch
with the steward and the doctor walked in alone.
The dinner, the dining room, the service, the waiting
at table, the wine, and the food, were not simply in
keeping with the general tone of modern luxury
throughout all the house, but seemed even more
sumptuous and modern. Darya Alexandrovna watched this
luxury which was novel to her, and as a good housekeeper
used to managing a household—although she never
dreamed of adapting anything she saw to her own
household, as it was all in a style of luxury far above her
own manner of living—she could not help scrutinizing
every detail, and wondering how and by whom it was all
done. Vassenka Veslovsky, her husband, and even
Sviazhsky, and many other people she knew, would never
have considered this question, and would have readily
believed what every well-bred host tries to make his guests
feel, that is, that all that is well-ordered in his house has
cost him, the host, no trouble whatever, but comes of
itself. Darya Alexandrovna was well aware that even
porridge for the children’s breakfast does not come of
itself, and that therefore, where so complicated and
magnificent a style of luxury was maintained, someone
must give earnest attention to its organization. And from
the glance with which Alexey Kirillovitch scanned the
table, from the way he nodded to the butler, and offered
Darya Alexandrovna her choice between cold soup and
hot soup, she saw that it was all organized and maintained
by the care of the master of the house himself. It was
evident that it all rested no more upon Anna than upon
Veslovsky. She, Sviazhsky, the princess, and Veslovsky,
were equally guests, with light hearts enjoying what had
been arranged for them.
Anna was the hostess only in conducting the
conversation. The conversation was a difficult one for the
lady of the house at a small table with persons present, like
the steward and the architect, belonging to a completely
different world, struggling not to be overawed by an
elegance to which they were unaccustomed, and unable to
sustain a large share in the general conversation. But this
difficult conversation Anna directed with her usual tact
and naturalness, and indeed she did so with actual
enjoyment, as Darya Alexandrovna observed. The
conversation began about the row Tushkevitch and
Veslovsky had taken alone together in the boat, and
Tushkevitch began describing the last boat races in
Petersburg at the Yacht Club. But Anna, seizing the first
pause, at once turned to the architect to draw him out of
his silence.
‘Nikolay Ivanitch was struck,’ she said, meaning
Sviazhsky, ‘at the progress the new building had made
since he was here last; but I am there every day, and every
day I wonder at the rate at which it grows.’
‘It’s first-rate working with his excellency,’ said the
architect with a smile (he was respectful and composed,
though with a sense of his own dignity). ‘It’s a very
different matter to have to do with the district authorities.
Where one would have to write out sheaves of papers,
here I call upon the count, and in three words we settle
the business.’
‘The American way of doing business,’ said Sviazhsky,
with a smile.
‘Yes, there they build in a rational fashion..’
The conversation passed to the misuse of political
power in the United States, but Anna quickly brought it
round to another topic, so as to draw the steward into talk.
‘Have you ever seen a reaping machine?’ she said,
addressing Darya Alexandrovna. ‘We had just ridden over
to look at one when we met. It’s the first time I ever saw
one.’
‘How do they work?’ asked Dolly.
‘Exactly like little scissors. A plank and a lot of little
scissors. Like this.’
Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful white hands
covered with rings, and began showing how the machine
worked. It was clear that she saw nothing would be
understood from her explanation; but aware that her talk
was pleasant and her hands beautiful she went on
explaining.
‘More like little penknives,’ Veslovsky said playfully,
never taking his eyes off her.
Anna gave a just perceptible smile, but made no
answer. ‘Isn’t it true, Karl Fedoritch, that it’s just like little
scissors?’ she said to the steward.
‘Oh, ja,’ answered the German. ‘Es it ein ganz
einfaches Ding,’ and he began to explain the construction
of the machine.
‘It’s a pity it doesn’t bind too. I saw one at the Vienna
exhibition, which binds with a wire,’ said Sviazhsky.
‘They would be more profitable in use.’
‘Es kommt drauf an.... Der Preis vom Draht muss
ausgerechnet werden.’ And the German, roused from his
taciturnity, turned to Vronsky. ‘Das laesst sich ausrechnen,
Erlaucht.’ The German was just feeling in the pocket
where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote
in, but recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing
Vronsky’s chilly glance, he checked himself. ‘Zu
compliziert, macht zu viel Klopot,’ he concluded.
‘Wuenscht man Dochots, so hat man auch Klopots,’
said Vassenka Veslovsky, mimicking the German. ‘J’adore
l’allemand,’ he addressed Anna again with the same smile.
‘Cessez,’ she said with playful severity.
‘We expected to find you in the fields, Vassily
Semyonitch,’ she said to the doctor, a sickly-looking man;
‘have you been there?’
‘I went there, but I had taken flight,’ the doctor
answered with gloomy jocoseness.
‘Then you’ve taken a good constitutional?’

‘Splendid!’
‘Well, and how was the old woman? I hope it’s not
typhus?’
‘Typhus it is not, but it’s taking a bad turn.’
‘What a pity!’ said Anna, and having thus paid the dues
of civility to her domestic circle, she turned to her own
friends.
‘It would be a hard task, though, to construct a
machine from your description, Anna Arkadyevna,’
Sviazhsky said jestingly.
‘Oh, no, why so?’ said Anna with a smile that betrayed
that she knew there was something charming in her
disquisitions upon the machine that had been noticed by
Sviazhsky. This new trait of girlish coquettishness made an
unpleasant impression on Dolly.
‘But Anna Arkadyevna’s knowledge of architecture is
marvelous,’ said Tushkevitch.
‘To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna talking yesterday
about plinths and damp-courses,’ said Veslovsky. ‘Have I
got it right?’
‘There’s nothing marvelous about it, when one sees
and hears so much of it,’ said Anna. ‘But, I dare say, you
don’t even know what houses are made of?’
Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of
raillery that existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in
with it against her will.
Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from
Levin. He obviously attached no significance to
Veslovsky’s chattering; on the contrary, he encouraged his
jests.
‘Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held
together?’
‘By cement, of course.’
‘Bravo! And what is cement?’
‘Oh, some sort of paste ...no, putty,’ said Veslovsky,
raising a general laugh.
The company at dinner, with the exception of the
doctor, the architect, and the steward, who remained
plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that
never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on
another, and at times stinging one or the other to the
quick. Once Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the
quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and
wondered afterwards whether she had said anything
extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Levin,
describing his strange view that machinery is simply
pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture.
‘I have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin,’
Vronsky said, smiling, ‘but most likely he has never seen
the machines he condemns; or if he has seen and tried any,
it must have been after a queer fashion, some Russian
imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort of views
can anyone have on such a subject?’
‘Turkish views, in general,’ Veslovsky said, turning to
Anna with a smile.
‘I can’t defend his opinions,’ Darya Alexandrovna said,
firing up; ‘but I can say that he’s a highly cultivated man,
and if he were here he would know very well how to
answer you, though I am not capable of doing so.’
‘I like him extremely, and we are great friends,’
Sviazhsky said, smiling good-naturedly. ‘Mais pardon, il
est un petit peu toque; he maintains, for instance, that
district councils and arbitration boards are all of no use,
and he is unwilling to take part in anything.’
‘It’s our Russian apathy,’ said Vronsky, pouring water
from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem;
‘we’ve no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon
us, and so we refuse to recognize these duties.’
‘I know no man more strict in the performance of his
duties,’ said Darya Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronsky’s
tone of superiority.

‘For my part,’ pursued Vronsky, who was evidently for
some reason or other keenly affected by this conversation,
‘such as I am, I am, on the contrary, extremely grateful for
the honor they have done me, thanks to Nikolay Ivanitch’
(he indicated Sviazhsky), ‘in electing me a justice of the
peace. I consider that for me the duty of being present at
the session, of judging some peasants’ quarrel about a
horse, is as important as anything I can do. And I shall
regard it as an honor if they elect me for the district
council. It’s only in that way I can pay for the advantages I
enjoy as a landowner. Unluckily they don’t understand the
weight that the big landowners ought to have in the state.’
It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how
serenely confident he was of being right at his own table.
She thought how Levin, who believed the opposite, was
just as positive in his opinions at his own table. But she
loved Levin, and so she was on his side.
‘So we can reckon upon you, count, for the coming
elections?’ said Sviazhsky. ‘But you must come a little
beforehand, so as to be on the spot by the eighth. If you
would do me the honor to stop with me.’
‘I rather agree with your beau-frere,’ said Anna,
‘though not quite on the same ground as he,’ she added
with a smile. ‘I’m afraid that we have too many of these
public duties in these latter days. Just as in old days there
were so many government functionaries that one had to
call in a functionary for every single thing, so now
everyone’s doing some sort of public duty. Alexey has
been here now six months, and he’s a member, I do
believe, of five or six different public bodies. Du train que
cela va, the whole time will be wasted on it. And I’m
afraid that with such a multiplicity of these bodies, they’ll
end in being a mere form. How many are you a member
of, Nikolay Ivanitch?’ she turned to Sviazhsky—‘over
twenty, I fancy.’
Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in
her tone. Darya Alexandrovna, watching Anna and
Vronsky attentively, detected it instantly. She noticed, too,
that as she spoke Vronsky’s face had immediately taken a
serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this, and that
Princess Varvara at once made haste to change the
conversation by talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and
remembering what Vronsky had without apparent
connection said in the garden of his work in the country,
Dolly surmised that this question of public activity was
connected with some deep private disagreement between
Anna and Vronsky.
The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were
all very good; but it was all like what Darya Alexandrovna
had seen at formal dinners and balls which of late years had
become quite unfamiliar to her; it all had the same
impersonal and constrained character, and so on an
ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it made a
disagreeable impression on her.
After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they
proceeded to play lawn tennis. The players, divided into
two parties, stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net
with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and rolled croquetground.
Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but
it was a long time before she could understand the game,
and by the time she did understand it, she was so tired that
she sat down with Princess Varvara and simply looked on
at the players. Her partner, Tushkevitch, gave up playing
too, but the others kept the game up for a long time.
Sviazhsky and Vronsky both played very well and
seriously. They kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to
them, and without haste or getting in each other’s way,
they ran adroitly up to them, waited for the rebound, and
neatly and accurately returned them over the net.
Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager,
but he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His
laughter and outcries never paused. Like the other men of
the party, with the ladies’ permission, he took off his coat,
and his solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves, with
his red perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made
a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.
When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as
soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky
flying about the croquet ground.
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not
enjoying herself. She did not like the light tone of raillery
that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Veslovsky
and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether of grown-up
people, all alone without children, playing at a child’s
game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get
through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the
game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day
it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater
with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was
spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the
intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the
evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she
would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries,
which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent