Chapter 33

Alexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the ministers at four o’clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come in to her. He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary. At dinner time (there were always a few people dining with the Karenins) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch, the chief secretary of the department and his wife, and a young man who had been recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service. Anna went into the drawing room to receive these guests. Precisely at five o’clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch’s life was portioned out and occupied. And to make time to get through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality. ‘Unhasting and unresting,’ was his motto. He came into the dining hall, greeted everyone, and hurriedly sat down, smiling to his wife.

‘Yes, my solitude is over. You wouldn’t believe how uncomfortable’ (he laid stress on the word uncomfortable) ‘it is to dine alone.’

At dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and, with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Stepan Arkadyevitch; but the conversation was for the most part general, dealing with Petersburg official and public news. After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests, and again, with a smile, pressed his wife’s hand, withdrew, and drove off to the council. Anna did not go out that evening either to the Princess Betsy Tverskaya, who, hearing of her return, had invited her, nor to the theater, where she had a box for that evening. She did not go out principally because the dress she had reckoned upon was not ready. Altogether, Anna, on turning, after the departure of her guests, to the consideration of her attire, was very much annoyed. She was generally a mistress of the art of dressing well without great expense, and before leaving Moscow she had given her dressmaker three dresses to transform. The dresses had to be altered so that they could not be recognized, and they ought to have been ready three days before. It appeared that two dresses had not been done at all, while the other one had not been altered as Anna had intended. The dressmaker came to explain, declaring that it would be better as she had done it, and Anna was so furious that she felt ashamed when she thought of it afterwards. To regain her serenity completely she went into the nursery, and spent the whole evening with her son, put him to bed herself, signed him with the cross, and tucked him up. She was glad she had not gone out anywhere, and had spent the evening so well. She felt so light-hearted and serene, she saw so clearly that all that had seemed to her so important on her railway journey was only one of the common trivial incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no reason to feel ashamed before anyone else or before herself. Anna sat down at the hearth with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly at half-past nine she heard his ring, and he came into the room.

‘Here you are at last!’ she observed, holding out her hand to him.

He kissed her hand and sat down beside her.

‘Altogether then, I see your visit was a success,’ he said to her.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and she began telling him about everything from the beginning: her journey with Countess Vronskaya, her arrival, the accident at the station. Then she described the pity she had felt, first for her brother, and afterwards for Dolly.

‘I imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from blame, though he is your brother,’ said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely.

Anna smiled. She knew that he said that simply to show that family considerations could not prevent him from expressing his genuine opinion. She knew that characteristic in her husband, and liked it.

‘I am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, and that you are back again,’ he went on. ‘Come, what do they say about the new act I have got passed in the council?’

Anna had heard nothing of this act, And she felt conscience-stricken at having been able so readily to forget what was to him of such importance.

‘Here, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation,’ he said, with a complacent smile.

She saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her something pleasant to him about it, and she brought him by questions to telling it. With the same complacent smile he told her of the ovations he had received in consequence of the act he had passed.

‘I was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable and steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.’

Having drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and was going towards his study.

‘And you’ve not been anywhere this evening? You’ve been dull, I expect?’ he said.

‘Oh, no!’ she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him across the room to his study. ‘What are you reading now?’ she asked.

‘Just now I’m reading Duc de Lille, Poesie des Enfers,’ he answered. ‘A very remarkable book.’

Anna smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and, putting her hand under his, she escorted him to the door of the study. She knew his habit, that had grown into a necessity, of reading in the evening. She knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that he was really interested in books dealing with politics, philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it, Alexey Alexandrovitch never passed over anything in the world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency.

‘Well, God be with you,’ she said at the door of the study, where a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his armchair. ‘And I’ll write to Moscow.’

He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.

‘All the same he’s a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in his own line,’ Anna said to herself going back to her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that one could not love him. ‘But why is it his ears stick out so strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?’

Precisely at twelve o’clock, when Anna was still sitting at her writing table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound of measured steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly washed and combed, with a book under his arm, came in to her.

‘It’s time, it’s time,’ said he, with a meaning smile, and he went into their bedroom.

‘And what right had he to look at him like that?’ thought Anna, recalling Vronsky’s glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch.

Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the eagerness which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly flashed from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere far away.

Chapter 34

When Vronsky went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky.

Petritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards evening he was always drunk, and he had often been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve o’clock from the station at his flat, Vronsky saw, at the outer door, a hired carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky’s voice. ‘If that’s one of the villains, don’t let him in!’ Vronsky told the servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from duty, were sitting each side of her.

‘Bravo! Vronsky!’ shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair. ‘Our host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new coffee pot. Why, we didn’t expect you! Hope you’re satisfied with the ornament of your study,’ he said, indicating the baroness. ‘You know each other, of course?’

‘I should think so,’ said Vronsky, with a bright smile, pressing the baroness’s little hand. ‘What next! I’m an old friend.’

‘You’re home after a journey,’ said the baroness, ‘so I’m flying. Oh, I’ll be off this minute, if I’m in the way.’

‘You’re home, wherever you are, baroness,’ said Vronsky. ‘How do you do, Kamerovsky?’ he added, coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.

‘There, you never know how to say such pretty things,’ said the baroness, turning to Petritsky.

‘No; what’s that for? After dinner I say things quite as good.’

‘After dinner there’s no credit in them? Well, then, I’ll make you some coffee, so go and wash and get ready,’ said the baroness, sitting down again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee pot. ‘Pierre, give me the coffee,’ she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called Pierre as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her relations with him. ‘I’ll put it in.’

‘You’ll spoil it!’

‘No, I won’t spoil it! Well, and your wife?’ said the baroness suddenly, interrupting Vronsky’s conversation with his comrade. ‘We’ve been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?’

‘No, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall die.’

‘So much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it.’

And the baroness, detaining Vronsky, began telling him, with many jokes, about her last new plans of life, asking his advice.

‘He persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?’ (He was her husband.) ‘Now I want to begin a suit against him. What do you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it’s boiling over. You see, I’m engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit, because I must have my property. Do you understand the folly of it, that on the pretext of my being unfaithful to him,’ she said contemptuously, ‘he wants to get the benefit of my fortune.’

Vronsky heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one’s children, earn one’s bread, and pay one’s debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

For the first moment only, Vronsky was startled after the impression of a quite different world that he had brought with him from Moscow. But immediately as though slipping his feet into old slippers, he dropped back into the light-hearted, pleasant world he had always lived in.

The coffee was never really made, but spluttered over every one, and boiled away, doing just what was required of it—that is, providing much cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the baroness’s gown.

‘Well now, good-bye, or you’ll never get washed, and I shall have on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would advise a knife to his throat?’

‘To be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his lips. He’ll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,’ answered Vronsky.

‘So at the Francais!’ and, with a rustle of her skirts, she vanished.

Kamerovsky got up too, and Vronsky, not waiting for him to go, shook hands and went off to his dressing room.

While he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines his position, as far as it had changed since Vronsky had left Petersburg. No money at all. His father said he wouldn’t give him any and pay his debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow, too, was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment had announced that if these scandals did not cease he would have to leave. As for the baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially since she’d taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had found a girl—he’d show her to Vronsky—a marvel, exquisite, in the strict Oriental style, ‘genre of the slave Rebecca, don’t you know.’ He’d had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send seconds to him, but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything was supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky’s familiar stories in the familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in, Vronsky felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless Petersburg life that he was used to.

‘Impossible!’ he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin in which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. ‘Impossible!’ he cried, at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to Mileev. ‘And is he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how’s Buzulukov?’

‘Oh, there is a tale about Buzulukov—simply lovely!’ cried Petritsky. ‘You know his weakness for balls, and he never misses a single court ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so he’s standing…. No, I say, do listen.’

‘I am listening,’ answered Vronsky, rubbing himself with a rough towel.

‘Up comes the Grand Duchess with some ambassador or other, and, as ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the new helmets. The Grand Duchess positively wanted to show the new helmet to the ambassador. They see our friend standing there.’ (Petritsky mimicked how he was standing with the helmet.) ‘The Grand Duchess asked him to give her the helmet; he doesn’t give it to her. What do you think of that? Well, every one’s winking at him, nodding, frowning—give it to her, do! He doesn’t give it to her. He’s mute as a fish. Only picture it!… Well, the…what’s his name, whatever he was…tries to take the helmet from him…he won’t give it up!… He pulls it from him, and hands it to the Grand Duchess. ‘Here, your Highness,’ says he, ‘is the new helmet.’ She turned the helmet the other side up, And—just picture it!—plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it, two pounds of sweetmeats!…He’d been storing them up, the darling!’

Vronsky burst into roars of laughter. And long afterwards, when he was talking of other things, he broke out into his healthy laugh, showing his strong, close rows of teeth, when he thought of the helmet.

Having heard all the news, Vronsky, with the assistance of his valet, got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He intended, when he had done that, to drive to his brother’s and to Betsy’s and to pay several visits with a view to beginning to go into that society where he might meet Madame Karenina. As he always did in Petersburg, he left home not meaning to return till late at night.