Anna Karenina 54

ANNA KARENINA

 

PART 54

 

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 everyone had 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 intérieur si joli, si comme il faut. Tout-à-fait à l’anglaise. On se réunit le matin au breakfast, et puis on se sépare. Everyone does as he pleases till dinner time. 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 old-fashioned 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 là 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 écoles,” 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.”

“By the autumn it will all be ready. Inside 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 that 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.

“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 honour 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 ist 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 lässt 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.

“Wünscht 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 marvellous,” 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 marvellous 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 toqué; 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 honour 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 honour 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 honour to stop with me.”

“I rather agree with your beau-frère,” 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 levelled and rolled croquet-ground. 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 theatre 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 without them, struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.

When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief.

It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was coming to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own thoughts.

Chapter 23

 

Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired for the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she had stopped: “Afterwards, by ourselves, we’ll talk about everything. I’ve got so much I want to tell you,” she said.

Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about. She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her own mind all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that everything had been said already.

“Well, what of Kitty?” she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently at Dolly. “Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn’t she angry with me?”

“Angry? Oh, no!” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.

“But she hates me, despises me?”

“Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn’t forgiven.”

“Yes, yes,” said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window. “But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What’s the meaning of being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could it possibly have happened that you didn’t become the wife of Stiva?”

“Really, I don’t know. But this is what I want you to tell me....”

“Yes, yes, but we’ve not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? He’s a very nice man, they say.”

“He’s much more than very nice. I don’t know a better man.”

“Ah, how glad I am! I’m so glad! Much more than very nice,” she repeated.

Dolly smiled.

“But tell me about yourself. We’ve a great deal to talk about. And I’ve had a talk with....” Dolly did not know what to call him. She felt it awkward to call him either the count or Alexey Kirillovitch.

“With Alexey,” said Anna, “I know what you talked about. But I wanted to ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?”

“How am I to say like that straight off? I really don’t know.”

“No, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you mustn’t forget that you’re seeing us in the summer, when you have come to us and we are not alone.... But we came here early in the spring, lived quite alone, and shall be alone again, and I desire nothing better. But imagine me living alone without him, alone, and that will be ... I see by everything that it will often be repeated, that he will be half the time away from home,” she said, getting up and sitting down close by Dolly.

“Of course,” she interrupted Dolly, who would have answered, “of course I won’t try to keep him by force. I don’t keep him indeed. The races are just coming, his horses are running, he will go. I’m very glad. But think of me, fancy my position.... But what’s the use of talking about it?” She smiled. “Well, what did he talk about with you?”

“He spoke of what I want to speak about of myself, and it’s easy for me to be his advocate; of whether there is not a possibility ... whether you could not....” (Darya Alexandrovna hesitated) “correct, improve your position.... You know how I look at it.... But all the same, if possible, you should get married....”

“Divorce, you mean?” said Anna. “Do you know, the only woman who came to see me in Petersburg was Betsy Tverskaya? You know her, of course? Au fond, c’est la femme la plus depraveé qui existe. She had an intrigue with Tushkevitch, deceiving her husband in the basest way. And she told me that she did not care to know me so long as my position was irregular. Don’t imagine I would compare ... I know you, darling. But I could not help remembering.... Well, so what did he say to you?” she repeated.

“He said that he was unhappy on your account and his own. Perhaps you will say that it’s egoism, but what a legitimate and noble egoism. He wants first of all to legitimize his daughter, and to be your husband, to have a legal right to you.”

“What wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in my position?” she put in gloomily.

“The chief thing he desires ... he desires that you should not suffer.”

“That’s impossible. Well?”

“Well, and the most legitimate desire—he wishes that your children should have a name.”

“What children?” Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half closing her eyes.

“Annie and those to come....”

“He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more children.”

“How can you tell that you won’t?”

“I shall not, because I don’t wish it.” And, in spite of all her emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naïve expression of curiosity, wonder, and horror on Dolly’s face.

“The doctor told me after my illness....”

“Impossible!” said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.

For her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for the first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and that one will have to reflect a great, great deal upon it.

This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her, aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder at Anna. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now learning that it was possible, she was horrified. She felt that it was too simple a solution of too complicated a problem.

“N’est-ce pas immoral?” was all she said, after a brief pause.

“Why so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either to be with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and companion of my husband—practically my husband,” Anna said in a tone intentionally superficial and frivolous.

“Yes, yes,” said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments she had used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as before.

“For you, for other people,” said Anna, as though divining her thoughts, “there may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You must consider, I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And how am I to keep his love? Not like this!”

She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement; ideas and memories rushed into Darya Alexandrovna’s head. “I,” she thought, “did not keep my attraction for Stiva; he left me for others, and the first woman for whom he betrayed me did not keep him by being always pretty and lively. He deserted her and took another. And can Anna attract and keep Count Vronsky in that way? If that is what he looks for, he will find dresses and manners still more attractive and charming. And however white and beautiful her bare arms are, however beautiful her full figure and her eager face under her black curls, he will find something better still, just as my disgusting, pitiful, and charming husband does.”

Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh, indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armoury she had other arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.

“Do you say that it’s not right? But you must consider,” she went on; “you forget my position. How can I desire children? I’m not speaking of the suffering, I’m not afraid of that. Think only, what are my children to be? Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a stranger’s name. For the very fact of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed of their mother, their father, their birth.”

“But that is just why a divorce is necessary.” But Anna did not hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which she had so many times convinced herself.

“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!” She looked at Dolly, but without waiting for a reply she went on:

“I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children,” she said. “If they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they are unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it.”

These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in her own reflections; but she heard them without understanding them. “How can one wrong creatures that don’t exist?” she thought. And all at once the idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances, have been better for her favourite Grisha if he had never existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling, mad ideas.

“No, I don’t know; it’s not right,” was all she said, with an expression of disgust on her face.

“Yes, but you mustn’t forget that you and I.... And besides that,” added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Dolly’s objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right, “don’t forget the chief point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For you the question is: do you desire not to have any more children; while for me it is: do I desire to have them? And that’s a great difference. You must see that I can’t desire it in my position.”

Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak.

To be continued

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