ANNA KARENINA
PART 13
Chapter 4
The
highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone knows everyone
else, everyone even visits everyone else. But this great set has its
subdivisions. Anna Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in three
different circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband’s
government official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, brought
together in the most various and capricious manner, and belonging to different
social strata. Anna found it difficult now to recall the feeling of almost
awe-stricken reverence which she had at first entertained for these persons.
Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew
their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. She
knew their relations with one another and with the head authorities, knew who
was for whom, and how each one maintained his position, and where they agreed
and disagreed. But the circle of political, masculine interests had never
interested her, in spite of countess Lidia Ivanovna’s influence, and she
avoided it.
Another
little set with which Anna was in close relations was the one by means of which
Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career. The centre of this circle was the
Countess Lidia Ivanovna. It was a set made up of elderly, ugly, benevolent, and
godly women, and clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever people
belonging to the set had called it “the conscience of Petersburg society.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch had the highest esteem for this circle, and Anna with her
special gift for getting on with everyone, had in the early days of her life in
Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow,
she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and
all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world
that she went to see the Countess Lidia Ivanovna as little as possible.
The third
circle with which Anna had ties was pre-eminently the fashionable world—the
world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous dresses, the world that hung on to the
court with one hand, so as to avoid sinking to the level of the demi-monde. For
the demi-monde the members of that fashionable world believed that they
despised, though their tastes were not merely similar, but in fact identical.
Her connection with this circle was kept up through Princess Betsy Tverskaya,
her cousin’s wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles,
and who had taken a great fancy to Anna ever since she first came out, showed
her much attention, and drew her into her set, making fun of Countess Lidia
Ivanovna’s coterie.
“When I’m
old and ugly I’ll be the same,” Betsy used to say; “but for a pretty young
woman like you it’s early days for that house of charity.”
Anna had
at first avoided as far as she could Princess Tverskaya’s world, because it
necessitated an expenditure beyond her means, and besides in her heart she
preferred the first circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had done quite
the contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends, and went out into the
fashionable world. There she met Vronsky, and experienced an agitating joy at
those meetings. She met Vronsky specially often at Betsy’s for Betsy was a
Vronsky by birth and his cousin. Vronsky was everywhere where he had any chance
of meeting Anna, and speaking to her, when he could, of his love. She gave him
no encouragement, but every time she met him there surged up in her heart that
same feeling of quickened life that had come upon her that day in the railway
carriage when she saw him for the first time. She was conscious herself that
her delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her lips into a smile, and she could
not quench the expression of this delight.
At first Anna sincerely believed that she was
displeased with him for daring to pursue her. Soon after her return from
Moscow, on arriving at a soirée where she had expected to meet him, and
not finding him there, she realized distinctly from the rush of disappointment
that she had been deceiving herself, and that this pursuit was not merely not
distasteful to her, but that it made the whole interest of her life.
The
celebrated singer was singing for the second time, and all the fashionable
world was in the theatre. Vronsky, seeing his cousin from his stall in the
front row, did not wait till the entr’acte, but went to her box.
“Why
didn’t you come to dinner?” she said to him. “I marvel at the second sight of
lovers,” she added with a smile, so that no one but he could hear; “she
wasn’t there. But come after the opera.”
Vronsky
looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her by a smile, and sat down
beside her.
“But how I
remember your jeers!” continued Princess Betsy, who took a peculiar pleasure in
following up this passion to a successful issue. “What’s become of all that?
You’re caught, my dear boy.”
“That’s my
one desire, to be caught,” answered Vronsky, with his serene, good-humoured
smile. “If I complain of anything it’s only that I’m not caught enough, to tell
the truth. I begin to lose hope.”
“Why,
whatever hope can you have?” said Betsy, offended on behalf of her friend. “Entendons
nous....” But in her eyes there were gleams of light that betrayed that she
understood perfectly and precisely as he did what hope he might have.
“None
whatever,” said Vronsky, laughing and showing his even rows of teeth. “Excuse
me,” he added, taking an opera-glass out of her hand, and proceeding to
scrutinize, over her bare shoulder, the row of boxes facing them. “I’m afraid
I’m becoming ridiculous.”
He was
very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in the eyes of Betsy or
any other fashionable people. He was very well aware that in their eyes the
position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry,
might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and,
regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has
something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was
with a proud and gay smile under his moustaches that he lowered the opera-glass
and looked at his cousin.
“But why
was it you didn’t come to dinner?” she said, admiring him.
“I must tell
you about that. I was busily employed, and doing what, do you suppose? I’ll
give you a hundred guesses, a thousand ... you’d never guess. I’ve been
reconciling a husband with a man who’d insulted his wife. Yes, really!”
“Well, did
you succeed?”
“Almost.”
“You
really must tell me about it,” she said, getting up. “Come to me in the next entr’acte.”
“I can’t;
I’m going to the French theatre.”
“From
Nilsson?” Betsy queried in horror, though she could not herself have
distinguished Nilsson’s voice from any chorus girl’s.
“Can’t
help it. I’ve an appointment there, all to do with my mission of peace.”
“‘Blessed
are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’” said Betsy, vaguely
recollecting she had heard some similar saying from someone. “Very well, then,
sit down, and tell me what it’s all about.”
And she
sat down again.
Chapter 5
“This is
rather indiscreet, but it’s so good it’s an awful temptation to tell the
story,” said Vronsky, looking at her with his laughing eyes. “I’m not going to
mention any names.”
“But I
shall guess, so much the better.”
“Well,
listen: two festive young men were driving—”
“Officers
of your regiment, of course?”
“I didn’t
say they were officers,—two young men who had been lunching.”
“In other
words, drinking.”
“Possibly.
They were driving on their way to dinner with a friend in the most festive state
of mind. And they beheld a pretty woman in a hired sledge; she overtakes them,
looks round at them, and, so they fancy anyway, nods to them and laughs. They,
of course, follow her. They gallop at full speed. To their amazement, the fair
one alights at the entrance of the very house to which they were going. The
fair one darts upstairs to the top story. They get a glimpse of red lips under
a short veil, and exquisite little feet.”
“You
describe it with such feeling that I fancy you must be one of the two.”
“And after
what you said, just now! Well, the young men go in to their comrade’s; he was
giving a farewell dinner. There they certainly did drink a little too much, as
one always does at farewell dinners. And at dinner they inquire who lives at the
top in that house. No one knows; only their host’s valet, in answer to their
inquiry whether any ‘young ladies’ are living on the top floor, answered that
there were a great many of them about there. After dinner the two young men go
into their host’s study, and write a letter to the unknown fair one. They
compose an ardent epistle, a declaration in fact, and they carry the letter
upstairs themselves, so as to elucidate whatever might appear not perfectly
intelligible in the letter.”
“Why are
you telling me these horrible stories? Well?”
“They
ring. A maid-servant opens the door, they hand her the letter, and assure the
maid that they’re both so in love that they’ll die on the spot at the door. The
maid, stupefied, carries in their messages. All at once a gentleman appears
with whiskers like sausages, as red as a lobster, announces that there is no
one living in the flat except his wife, and sends them both about their
business.”
“How do
you know he had whiskers like sausages, as you say?”
“Ah, you
shall hear. I’ve just been to make peace between them.”
“Well, and
what then?”
“That’s
the most interesting part of the story. It appears that it’s a happy couple, a
government clerk and his lady. The government clerk lodges a complaint, and I
became a mediator, and such a mediator!... I assure you Talleyrand couldn’t
hold a candle to me.”
“Why,
where was the difficulty?”
“Ah, you
shall hear.... We apologize in due form: we are in despair, we entreat
forgiveness for the unfortunate misunderstanding. The government clerk with the
sausages begins to melt, but he, too, desires to express his sentiments, and as
soon as ever he begins to express them, he begins to get hot and say nasty
things, and again I’m obliged to trot out all my diplomatic talents. I allowed
that their conduct was bad, but I urged him to take into consideration their
heedlessness, their youth; then, too, the young men had only just been lunching
together. ‘You understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you to overlook their
misbehaviour.’ The government clerk was softened once more. ‘I consent, count,
and am ready to overlook it; but you perceive that my wife—my wife’s a
respectable woman—has been exposed to the persecution, and insults, and
effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels....’ And you must understand, the
young upstarts are present all the while, and I have to keep the peace between
them. Again I call out all my diplomacy, and again as soon as the thing was
about at an end, our friend the government clerk gets hot and red, and his
sausages stand on end with wrath, and once more I launch out into diplomatic
wiles.”
“Ah, he
must tell you this story!” said Betsy, laughing, to a lady who came into her
box. “He has been making me laugh so.”
“Well, bonne
chance!” she added, giving Vronsky one finger of the hand in which she held
her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders she twitched down the bodice of her
gown that had worked up, so as to be duly naked as she moved forward towards
the footlights into the light of the gas, and the sight of all eyes.
Vronsky
drove to the French theatre, where he really had to see the colonel of his
regiment, who never missed a single performance there. He wanted to see him, to
report on the result of his mediation, which had occupied and amused him for
the last three days. Petritsky, whom he liked, was implicated in the affair,
and the other culprit was a capital fellow and first-rate comrade, who had
lately joined the regiment, the young Prince Kedrov. And what was most
important, the interests of the regiment were involved in it too.
Both the
young men were in Vronsky’s company. The colonel of the regiment was waited
upon by the government clerk, Venden, with a complaint against his officers,
who had insulted his wife. His young wife, so Venden told the story—he had been
married half a year—was at church with her mother, and suddenly overcome by
indisposition, arising from her interesting condition, she could not remain
standing, she drove home in the first sledge, a smart-looking one, she came
across. On the spot the officers set off in pursuit of her; she was alarmed,
and feeling still more unwell, ran up the staircase home. Venden himself, on
returning from his office, heard a ring at their bell and voices, went out, and
seeing the intoxicated officers with a letter, he had turned them out. He asked
for exemplary punishment.
“Yes, it’s
all very well,” said the colonel to Vronsky, whom he had invited to come and
see him. “Petritsky’s becoming impossible. Not a week goes by without some
scandal. This government clerk won’t let it drop, he’ll go on with the thing.”
Vronsky
saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that there could be no question
of a duel in it, that everything must be done to soften the government clerk,
and hush the matter up. The colonel had called in Vronsky just because he knew
him to be an honourable and intelligent man, and, more than all, a man who
cared for the honour of the regiment. They talked it over, and decided that
Petritsky and Kedrov must go with Vronsky to Venden’s to apologize. The colonel
and Vronsky were both fully aware that Vronsky’s name and rank would be sure to
contribute greatly to the softening of the injured husband’s feelings.
And these
two influences were not in fact without effect; though the result remained, as
Vronsky had described, uncertain.
On
reaching the French theatre, Vronsky retired to the foyer with the colonel, and
reported to him his success, or non-success. The colonel, thinking it all over,
made up his mind not to pursue the matter further, but then for his own
satisfaction proceeded to cross-examine Vronsky about his interview; and it was
a long while before he could restrain his laughter, as Vronsky described how
the government clerk, after subsiding for a while, would suddenly flare up
again, as he recalled the details, and how Vronsky, at the last half word of
conciliation, skilfully manœuvred a retreat, shoving Petritsky out before him.
“It’s a
disgraceful story, but killing. Kedrov really can’t fight the gentleman! Was he
so awfully hot?” he commented, laughing. “But what do you say to Claire today?
She’s marvellous,” he went on, speaking of a new French actress. “However often
you see her, every day she’s different. It’s only the French who can do that.”
Chapter 6
Princess
Betsy drove home from the theatre, without waiting for the end of the last act.
She had only just time to go into her dressing-room, sprinkle her long, pale
face with powder, rub it, set her dress to rights, and order tea in the big drawing-room,
when one after another carriages drove up to her huge house in Bolshaia
Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide entrance, and the stout porter,
who used to read the newspapers in the mornings behind the glass door, to the
edification of the passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the
visitors pass by him into the house.
Almost at
the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged coiffure and freshened
face, walked in at one door and her guests at the other door of the drawing-room,
a large room with dark walls, downy rugs, and a brightly lighted table,
gleaming with the light of candles, white cloth, silver samovar, and
transparent china tea-things.
The
hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves. Chairs were set with the
aid of footmen, moving almost imperceptibly about the room; the party settled
itself, divided into two groups: one round the samovar near the hostess, the
other at the opposite end of the drawing-room, round the handsome wife of an
ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined black eyebrows. In both
groups conversation wavered, as it always does, for the first few minutes,
broken up by meetings, greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling about
for something to rest upon.
“She’s exceptionally
good as an actress; one can see she’s studied Kaulbach,” said a diplomatic
attaché in the group round the ambassador’s wife. “Did you notice how she fell
down?...”
“Oh,
please, don’t let us talk about Nilsson! No one can possibly say anything new
about her,” said a fat, red-faced, flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and
chignon, wearing an old silk dress. This was Princess Myakaya, noted for her
simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed enfant terrible.
Princess Myakaya, sitting in the middle between the two groups, and listening
to both, took part in the conversation first of one and then of the other.
“Three people have used that very phrase about Kaulbach to me today already,
just as though they had made a compact about it. And I can’t see why they liked
that remark so.”
The
conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new subject had to be
thought of again.
“Do tell
me something amusing but not spiteful,” said the ambassador’s wife, a great
proficient in the art of that elegant conversation called by the English small
talk. She addressed the attaché, who was at a loss now what to begin upon.
“They say
that that’s a difficult task, that nothing’s amusing that isn’t spiteful,” he
began with a smile. “But I’ll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the
subject. If a subject’s given me, it’s easy to spin something round it. I often
think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it
difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale....”
“That has
been said long ago,” the ambassador’s wife interrupted him, laughing.
The
conversation began amiably, but just because it was too amiable, it came to a
stop again. They had to have recourse to the sure, never-failing topic—gossip.
“Don’t you
think there’s something Louis Quinze about Tushkevitch?” he said, glancing
towards a handsome, fair-haired young man, standing at the table.
“Oh, yes!
He’s in the same style as the drawing-room and that’s why it is he’s so often
here.”
This conversation
was maintained, since it rested on allusions to what could not be talked of in
that room—that is to say, of the relations of Tushkevitch with their hostess.
Round the
samovar and the hostess the conversation had been meanwhile vacillating in just
the same way between three inevitable topics: the latest piece of public news,
the theatre, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest on the last topic, that
is, ill-natured gossip.
“Have you
heard the Maltishtcheva woman—the mother, not the daughter—has ordered a
costume in diable rose colour?”
“Nonsense!
No, that’s too lovely!”
“I wonder
that with her sense—for she’s not a fool, you know—that she doesn’t see how
funny she is.”
Everyone
had something to say in censure or ridicule of the luckless Madame
Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a burning
faggot-stack.
The
husband of Princess Betsy, a good-natured fat man, an ardent collector of
engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came into the drawing-room
before going to his club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up
to Princess Myakaya.
“How did
you like Nilsson?” he asked.
“Oh, how
can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled me!” she responded.
“Please don’t talk to me about the opera; you know nothing about music. I’d
better meet you on your own ground, and talk about your maiolica and
engravings. Come now, what treasure have you been buying lately at the old
curiosity shops?”
“Would you
like me to show you? But you don’t understand such things.”
“Oh, do
show me! I’ve been learning about them at those—what’s their names?... the
bankers ... they’ve some splendid engravings. They showed them to us.”
“Why, have
you been at the Schützburgs?” asked the hostess from the samovar.
“Yes, ma
chère. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told us the sauce at
that dinner cost a hundred pounds,” Princess Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and
conscious everyone was listening; “and very nasty sauce it was, some green
mess. We had to ask them, and I made them sauce for eighteen pence, and
everybody was very much pleased with it. I can’t run to hundred-pound sauces.”
“She’s
unique!” said the lady of the house.
“Marvellous!”
said someone.
The
sensation produced by Princess Myakaya’s speeches was always unique, and the
secret of the sensation she produced lay in the fact that though she spoke not
always appropriately, as now, she said simple things with some sense in them.
In the society in which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of
the wittiest epigram. Princess Myakaya could never see why it had that effect,
but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.
As
everyone had been listening while Princess Myakaya spoke, and so the
conversation around the ambassador’s wife had dropped, Princess Betsy tried to
bring the whole party together, and turned to the ambassador’s wife.
“Will you
really not have tea? You should come over here by us.”
“No, we’re
very happy here,” the ambassador’s wife responded with a smile, and she went on
with the conversation that had been begun.
It was a
very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the Karenins, husband and
wife.
“Anna is
quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There’s something strange about her,”
said her friend.
“The great
change is that she brought back with her the shadow of Alexey Vronsky,” said
the ambassador’s wife.
“Well,
what of it? There’s a fable of Grimm’s about a man without a shadow, a man
who’s lost his shadow. And that’s his punishment for something. I never could
understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a
shadow.”
“Yes, but
women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,” said Anna’s friend.
“Bad luck
to your tongue!” said Princess Myakaya suddenly. “Madame Karenina’s a splendid
woman. I don’t like her husband, but I like her very much.”
“Why don’t
you like her husband? He’s such a remarkable man,” said the ambassador’s wife.
“My husband says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.”
“And my
husband tells me just the same, but I don’t believe it,” said Princess Myakaya.
“If our husbands didn’t talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexey
Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper ... but
doesn’t it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider
him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not
seeing it; but directly I said, he’s a fool, though only in a whisper,
everything’s explained, isn’t it?”
“How
spiteful you are today!”
“Not a
bit. I’d no other way out of it. One of the two had to be a fool. And, well,
you know one can’t say that of oneself.”
“‘No one
is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit.’” The
attaché repeated the French saying.
“That’s
just it, just it,” Princess Myakaya turned to him. “But the point is that I
won’t abandon Anna to your mercies. She’s so nice, so charming. How can she
help it if they’re all in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?”
“Oh, I had
no idea of blaming her for it,” Anna’s friend said in self-defence.
“If no one
follows us about like a shadow, that’s no proof that we’ve any right to blame
her.”
And having
duly disposed of Anna’s friend, the Princess Myakaya got up, and together with
the ambassador’s wife, joined the group at the table, where the conversation
was dealing with the king of Prussia.
“What
wicked gossip were you talking over there?” asked Betsy.
“About the
Karenins. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey Alexandrovitch,” said the
ambassador’s wife with a smile, as she sat down at the table.
“Pity we
didn’t hear it!” said Princess Betsy, glancing towards the door. “Ah, here you
are at last!” she said, turning with a smile to Vronsky, as he came in.
Vronsky
was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was meeting here; he saw
them all every day; and so he came in with the quiet manner with which one
enters a room full of people from whom one has only just parted.
“Where do
I come from?” he said, in answer to a question from the ambassador’s wife.
“Well, there’s no help for it, I must confess. From the opera bouffe. I
do believe I’ve seen it a hundred times, and always with fresh enjoyment. It’s
exquisite! I know it’s disgraceful, but I go to sleep at the opera, and I sit
out the opera bouffe to the last minute, and enjoy it. This evening....”
He
mentioned a French actress, and was going to tell something about her; but the
ambassador’s wife, with playful horror, cut him short.
“Please
don’t tell us about that horror.”
“All
right, I won’t especially as everyone knows those horrors.”
“And we
should all go to see them if it were accepted as the correct thing, like the
opera,” chimed in Princess Myakaya.
To be continued
