ANNA KARENINA
PART 10
Chapter 29
“Come,
it’s all over, and thank God!” was the first thought that came to Anna
Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last time to her brother, who
had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the third bell rang.
She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and looked about her in the
twilight of the sleeping-carriage. “Thank God! tomorrow I shall see Seryozha
and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old way, all nice and
as usual.”
Still in
the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day, Anna took
pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great care. With her little
deft hands she opened and shut her little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it
on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably.
An invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies began talking
to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made observations
about the heating of the train. Anna answered a few words, but not foreseeing
any entertainment from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp,
hooked it onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper-knife and an
English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The fuss and bustle were
disturbing; then when the train had started, she could not help listening to
the noises; then the snow beating on the left window and sticking to the pane,
and the sight of the muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side,
and the conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside, distracted
her attention. Farther on, it was continually the same again and again: the
same shaking and rattling, the same snow on the window, the same rapid
transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same
passing glimpses of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and
Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was already
dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad hands, in gloves, of
which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful
to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She
had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the
novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the
room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she
longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden
after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised
everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no
chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper-knife in her little
hands, she forced herself to read.
The hero
of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness, a baronetcy and
an estate, and Anna was feeling a desire to go with him to the estate, when she
suddenly felt that he ought to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of
the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? “What have I to be ashamed
of?” she asked herself in injured surprise. She laid down the book and sank
against the back of the chair, tightly gripping the paper-cutter in both hands.
There was nothing. She went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good,
pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of slavish
adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And
for all that, at the same point in her memories, the feeling of shame was
intensified, as though some inner voice, just at the point when she thought of
Vronsky, were saying to her, “Warm, very warm, hot.” “Well, what is it?” she
said to herself resolutely, shifting her seat in the lounge. “What does it
mean? Am I afraid to look it straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be
that between me and this officer boy there exist, or can exist, any other
relations than such as are common with every acquaintance?” She laughed
contemptuously and took up her book again; but now she was definitely unable to
follow what she read. She passed the paper-knife over the window pane, then
laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost laughed aloud at the
feeling of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She felt as
though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort
of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and
toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all
shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with
unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when
she was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or were
standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger.
“What’s that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast? And what am I
myself? Myself or some other woman?” She was afraid of giving way to this
delirium. But something drew her towards it, and she could yield to it or
resist it at will. She got up to rouse herself, and slipped off her plaid and
the cape of her warm dress. For a moment she regained her self-possession, and
realized that the thin peasant who had come in wearing a long overcoat, with
buttons missing from it, was the stove heater, that he was looking at the
thermometer, that it was the wind and snow bursting in after him at the door;
but then everything grew blurred again.... That peasant with the long waist
seemed to be gnawing something on the wall, the old lady began stretching her
legs the whole length of the carriage, and filling it with a black cloud; then
there was a fearful shrieking and banging, as though someone were being torn to
pieces; then there was a blinding dazzle of red fire before her eyes and a wall
seemed to rise up and hide everything. Anna felt as though she were sinking
down. But it was not terrible, but delightful. The voice of a man muffled up
and covered with snow shouted something in her ear. She got up and pulled
herself together; she realized that they had reached a station and that this
was the guard. She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken off and her
shawl, put them on and moved towards the door.
“Do you
wish to get out?” asked Annushka.
“Yes, I
want a little air. It’s very hot in here.” And she opened the door. The driving
snow and the wind rushed to meet her and struggled with her over the door. But
she enjoyed the struggle.
She opened
the door and went out. The wind seemed as though lying in wait for her; with
gleeful whistle it tried to snatch her up and bear her off, but she clung to
the cold door post, and holding her skirt got down onto the platform and under
the shelter of the carriages. The wind had been powerful on the steps, but on
the platform, under the lee of the carriages, there was a lull. With enjoyment
she drew deep breaths of the frozen, snowy air, and standing near the carriage
looked about the platform and the lighted station.
Chapter 30
The raging
tempest rushed whistling between the wheels of the carriages, about the
scaffolding, and round the corner of the station. The carriages, posts, people,
everything that was to be seen was covered with snow on one side, and was
getting more and more thickly covered. For a moment there would come a lull in
the storm, but then it would swoop down again with such onslaughts that it
seemed impossible to stand against it. Meanwhile men ran to and fro, talking
merrily together, their steps crackling on the platform as they continually
opened and closed the big doors. The bent shadow of a man glided by at her
feet, and she heard sounds of a hammer upon iron. “Hand over that telegram!”
came an angry voice out of the stormy darkness on the other side. “This way!
No. 28!” several different voices shouted again, and muffled figures ran by
covered with snow. Two gentlemen with lighted cigarettes passed by her. She
drew one more deep breath of the fresh air, and had just put her hand out of
her muff to take hold of the door post and get back into the carriage, when
another man in a military overcoat, quite close beside her, stepped between her
and the flickering light of the lamp post. She looked round, and the same
instant recognized Vronsky’s face. Putting his hand to the peak of his cap, he
bowed to her and asked, Was there anything she wanted? Could he be of any
service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him without answering, and, in
spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both
the expression of his face and his eyes. It was again that expression of
reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day before. More than once
she had told herself during the past few days, and again only a few moments
before, that Vronsky was for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever
exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that she would never allow herself
to bestow a thought upon him. But now at the first instant of meeting him, she
was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to ask why he had
come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where
she was.
“I didn’t
know you were going. What are you coming for?” she said, letting fall the hand
with which she had grasped the door post. And irrepressible delight and
eagerness shone in her face.
“What am I
coming for?” he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. “You know that I have
come to be where you are,” he said; “I can’t help it.”
At that
moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles, sent the snow flying
from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron it had torn off, while
the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front, plaintively and gloomily. All
the awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid now. He had said what
her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her reason. She made no
answer, and in her face he saw conflict.
“Forgive
me, if you dislike what I said,” he said humbly.
He had
spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stubbornly, that for a
long while she could make no answer.
“It’s
wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you’re a good man, to forget what you’ve
said, as I forget it,” she said at last.
“Not one
word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget....”
“Enough,
enough!” she cried trying assiduously to give a stern expression to her face,
into which he was gazing greedily. And clutching at the cold door post, she
clambered up the steps and got rapidly into the corridor of the carriage. But
in the little corridor she paused, going over in her imagination what had
happened. Though she could not recall her own words or his, she realized
instinctively that the momentary conversation had brought them fearfully
closer; and she was panic-stricken and blissful at it. After standing still a
few seconds, she went into the carriage and sat down in her place. The
overstrained condition which had tormented her before did not only come back,
but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid every minute
that something would snap within her from the excessive tension. She did not
sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and in the visions that filled
her imagination, there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary
there was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating. Towards morning Anna
sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when she waked it was daylight and
the train was near Petersburg. At once thoughts of home, of husband and of son,
and the details of that day and the following came upon her.
At
Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first person that
attracted her attention was her husband. “Oh, mercy! why do his ears look like
that?” she thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure, and especially
the ears that struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round
hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips falling into their
habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An
unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary
glance, as though she had expected to see him different. She was especially
struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on
meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling, like a
consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with her
husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now she was
clearly and painfully aware of it.
“Yes, as
you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after marriage,
burned with impatience to see you,” he said in his deliberate, high-pitched
voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her, a tone of jeering
at anyone who should say in earnest what he said.
“Is
Seryozha quite well?” she asked.
“And is
this all the reward,” said he, “for my ardour? He’s quite well....”
Chapter 31
Vronsky
had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in his armchair, looking
straight before him or scanning the people who got in and out. If he had indeed
on previous occasions struck and impressed people who did not know him by his
air of unhesitating composure, he seemed now more haughty and self-possessed
than ever. He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man, a
clerk in a law court, sitting opposite him, hated him for that look. The young
man asked him for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even
pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but a person. But
Vronsky gazed at him exactly as he did at the lamp, and the young man made a
wry face, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the oppression
of this refusal to recognize him as a person.
Vronsky
saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not because he believed that he
had made an impression on Anna—he did not yet believe that,—but because the
impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.
What would
come of it all he did not know, he did not even think. He felt that all his
forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centred on one thing, and bent with
fearful energy on one blissful goal. And he was happy at it. He knew only that
he had told her the truth, that he had come where she was, that all the
happiness of his life, the only meaning in life for him, now lay in seeing and
hearing her. And when he got out of the carriage at Bologova to get some
seltzer water, and caught sight of Anna, involuntarily his first word had told
her just what he thought. And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it
now and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. When he was back in the
carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in which he had seen
her, every word she had uttered, and before his fancy, making his heart faint
with emotion, floated pictures of a possible future.
When he
got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless night as keen
and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his compartment, waiting for her
to get out. “Once more,” he said to himself, smiling unconsciously, “once more
I shall see her walk, her face; she will say something, turn her head, glance,
smile, maybe.” But before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the
station-master was deferentially escorting through the crowd. “Ah, yes! The
husband.” Only now for the first time did Vronsky realize clearly the fact that
there was a person attached to her, a husband. He knew that she had a husband,
but had hardly believed in his existence, and only now fully believed in him,
with his head and shoulders, and his legs clad in black trousers; especially
when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a sense of property.
Seeing
Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely self-confident
figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent spine, he believed in him,
and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a man might feel tortured by
thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a sheep, or a pig, who
has drunk of it and muddied the water. Alexey Alexandrovitch’s manner of
walking, with a swing of the hips and flat feet, particularly annoyed Vronsky.
He could recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But
she was still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way,
physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with rapture. He
told his German valet, who ran up to him from the second class, to take his
things and go on, and he himself went up to her. He saw the first meeting
between the husband and wife, and noted with a lover’s insight the signs of slight
reserve with which she spoke to her husband. “No, she does not love him and
cannot love him,” he decided to himself.
At the
moment when he was approaching Anna Arkadyevna he noticed too with joy that she
was conscious of his being near, and looked round, and seeing him, turned again
to her husband.
“Have you
passed a good night?” he asked, bowing to her and her husband together, and
leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the bow on his own account,
and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.
“Thank
you, very good,” she answered.
Her face
looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness in it, peeping out in
her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she glanced at him, there
was a flash of something in her eyes, and although the flash died away at once,
he was happy for that moment. She glanced at her husband to find out whether he
knew Vronsky. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at Vronsky with displeasure, vaguely
recalling who this was. Vronsky’s composure and self-confidence here struck,
like a scythe against a stone, upon the cold self-confidence of Alexey
Alexandrovitch.
“Count
Vronsky,” said Anna.
“Ah! We
are acquainted, I believe,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, giving
his hand.
“You set
off with the mother and you return with the son,” he said, articulating each
syllable, as though each were a separate favour he was bestowing.
“You’re
back from leave, I suppose?” he said, and without waiting for a reply, he
turned to his wife in his jesting tone: “Well, were a great many tears shed at
Moscow at parting?”
By
addressing his wife like this he gave Vronsky to understand that he wished to
be left alone, and, turning slightly towards him, he touched his hat; but
Vronsky turned to Anna Arkadyevna.
“I hope I
may have the honour of calling on you,” he said.
Alexey
Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Vronsky.
“Delighted,”
he said coldly. “On Mondays we’re at home. Most fortunate,” he said to his
wife, dismissing Vronsky altogether, “that I should just have half an hour to
meet you, so that I can prove my devotion,” he went on in the same jesting
tone.
“You lay
too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,” she responded in the
same jesting tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of Vronsky’s steps
behind them. “But what has it to do with me?” she said to herself, and she
began asking her husband how Seryozha had got on without her.
“Oh,
capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And ... I must disappoint you
... but he has not missed you as your husband has. But once more merci,
my dear, for giving me a day. Our dear Samovar will be delighted.” (He
used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well known in society, a samovar,
because she was always bubbling over with excitement.) “She has been
continually asking after you. And, do you know, if I may venture to advise you,
you should go and see her today. You know how she takes everything to heart.
Just now, with all her own cares, she’s anxious about the Oblonskys being
brought together.”
The
Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a friend of her husband’s, and the centre of that
one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which Anna was, through her
husband, in the closest relations.
“But you
know I wrote to her?”
“Still
she’ll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you’re not too tired, my dear.
Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, while I go to my committee. I
shall not be alone at dinner again,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on, no longer
in a sarcastic tone. “You wouldn’t believe how I’ve missed....” And with a long
pressure of her hand and a meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.
Chapter 32
The first
person to meet Anna at home was her son. He dashed down the stairs to her, in
spite of the governess’s call, and with desperate joy shrieked: “Mother!
mother!” Running up to her, he hung on her neck.
“I told
you it was mother!” he shouted to the governess. “I knew!”
And her
son, like her husband, aroused in Anna a feeling akin to disappointment. She
had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to let herself drop
down to the reality to enjoy him as he really was. But even as he was, he was
charming, with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his plump, graceful little
legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Anna experienced almost physical pleasure
in the sensation of his nearness, and his caresses, and moral soothing, when
she met his simple, confiding, and loving glance, and heard his naïve
questions. Anna took out the presents Dolly’s children had sent him, and told
her son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and how Tanya could read,
and even taught the other children.
“Why, am I
not so nice as she?” asked Seryozha.
“To me
you’re nicer than anyone in the world.”
“I know
that,” said Seryozha, smiling.
Anna had
not had time to drink her coffee when the Countess Lidia Ivanovna was
announced. The Countess Lidia Ivanovna was a tall, stout woman, with an
unhealthily sallow face and splendid, pensive black eyes. Anna liked her, but
today she seemed to be seeing her for the first time with all her defects.
“Well, my
dear, so you took the olive branch?” inquired Countess Lidia Ivanovna, as soon
as she came into the room.
“Yes, it’s
all over, but it was all much less serious than we had supposed,” answered
Anna. “My belle-sœur is in general too hasty.”
But
Countess Lidia Ivanovna, though she was interested in everything that did not
concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her; she
interrupted Anna:
“Yes,
there’s plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so worried today.”
“Oh, why?”
asked Anna, trying to suppress a smile.
“I’m
beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth, and sometimes I’m
quite unhinged by it. The Society of the Little Sisters” (this was a
religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution) “was going splendidly, but
with these gentlemen it’s impossible to do anything,” added Countess Lidia
Ivanovna in a tone of ironical submission to destiny. “They pounce on the idea,
and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people,
your husband among them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the
others simply drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me....”
Pravdin
was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna described the
purport of his letter.
Then the
countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against the work of the
unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as she had that day to be
at the meeting of some society and also at the Slavonic committee.
“It was
all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn’t notice it before?” Anna
asked herself. “Or has she been very much irritated today? It’s really
ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she’s always angry;
and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and
doing good.”
After
Countess Lidia Ivanovna another friend came, the wife of a chief secretary, who
told her all the news of the town. At three o’clock she too went away,
promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the ministry. Anna,
left alone, spent the time till dinner in assisting at her son’s dinner (he
dined apart from his parents) and in putting her things in order, and in
reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated on her table.
The
feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and her
excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions of her
life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.
She
recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. “What was it?
Nothing. Vronsky said something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to, and
I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my husband would be
unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it would be to attach
importance to what has no importance.” She remembered how she had told her
husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg by a young man,
one of her husband’s subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered
that every woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents, but that he
had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself
by jealousy. “So then there’s no reason to speak of it? And indeed, thank God,
there’s nothing to speak of,” she told herself.
To be continued
