Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy
help, a last bow to her dress, when she heard the wheels of a carriage grating on the gravel at the entrance.
‘It is too early for Betsy,’ she thought, and glancing out of the window she saw the carriage, and sticking out of it a black hat and Karenin’s familiar ears. ‘How unfortunate! Can he mean to stay the night?’ thought she, and so awful and horrible appeared to her the consequences that might result therefrom that, without a moment’s hesitation, she went out to meet him with a bright beaming face; and feeling within herself the presence of the already familiar spirit of lies and deceit, she gave herself up to it at once and began speaking without knowing what she was going to say.
‘Ah, how nice this is!’ she said, giving her husband her hand and smilingly greeting Slyudin as a member of the household. ‘You are staying the night, I hope?’ were the first words prompted by the spirit of lies. ‘And now we shall go together. Only it is a pity that I promised to go with Betsy. She will be coming for me.’
Karenin made a grimace at the mention of Betsy’s name.
‘Oh, I will not separate the inseparables,’ he said in his usual facetious tone. ‘I will go with Slyudin. The doctors have ordered me to walk. I will walk part way and imagine that I am still taking the waters.’
‘There is no hurry,’ said Anna. ‘Would you like some tea?’
She rang.
‘Tea, please, and tell Serezha that his father is here. Well, how is your health? You have not been here before; look how pretty my verandah is,’ she went on, turning now to her husband, now to Slyudin.
She spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She felt this herself, especially as by the inquisitive way Slyudin looked at her she noticed that he seemed to be watching her.
Slyudin immediately went out on to the verandah, and she sat down by her husband.
‘You are not looking quite well,’ she said.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘the doctor came to see me this morning and robbed me of an hour. I feel that some friend of mine must have sent him: my health is so precious …’
‘Yes, but what did he say?’
She questioned him about his health and his work, persuading him to take a rest and to move out to her in the country.
She said all this lightly, rapidly, and with peculiarly sparkling eyes; but Karenin did not now attach any importance to this tone of hers. He only heard her words, and gave them only their direct meaning. And he answered simply, though jokingly. In all this conversation nothing particular passed, but never afterwards could Anna recall this short scene without being tormented by shame.
Serezha came in, preceded by his governess. Had Karenin allowed himself to observe, he would have noticed the timid, confused look which the child cast first at his father and then at his mother. But he did not want to see, and did not see, anything.
‘Ah, young man! He has grown. He is really getting quite a man. How do you do, young man?’
And he held out his hand to the frightened boy.
Serezha, who had always been timid with his father, now that the latter addressed him as ‘young man’, and that the question whether Vronsky was a friend or a foe had entered his head, shrank from him. He looked round at his mother, as if asking for protection. Only with his mother he felt at ease. Karenin meanwhile talked to the governess with his hand on his son’s shoulder, and Serezha felt so extremely uncomfortable that Anna saw he was about to cry.
Anna, who had blushed when the boy came in, saw how distressed he was, and, rising, lifted Karenin’s hand off her son’s shoulder, kissed the boy, led him out on to the verandah, and returned at once.
‘Well, it’s time we were going,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘I wonder Betsy has not come …’
‘Yes,’ said Karenin, and interlacing his hands he cracked his fingers. ‘I also came to bring you some money, since “nightingales are not fed on fables,” ’ he added. ‘I expect you want it?’
‘No, I don’t… . Yes, I do,’ she replied without looking at him, and blushing to the roots of her hair. ‘But I suppose you will call here after the races.’
‘Oh, yes!’ answered Karenin. ‘And here is the ornament of Peterhof, the Princess Tverskaya,’ he added, glancing out of the window at an approaching carriage of English build with a small body placed very high. ‘What elegance! Charming! Well then, we will start too.’
The Princess Tverskaya did not get out, only her footman in his black hat, cape, and gaiters jumped down at the front door.
‘I am going, goodbye!’ said Anna, and giving her son a kiss she went up to Karenin and held out her hand to him. ‘You were very kind to come.’
Karenin kissed her hand.
‘Well then, au revoir! You will come back for tea, that is right!’ she said, and went out beaming and gay. But as soon as she ceased to see him she became conscious of the place on her hand his lips had touched and shuddered with disgust.
Chapter 28
WHEN Karenin appeared at the racecourse Anna was already sitting beside Betsy in the Grand Stand: the stand where all the highest Society was assembled. She saw her husband from afar. Two men — her husband and her lover — were the two centres of her life, and without the aid of her senses she was aware of the presence of either. From afar she already felt the approach of her husband, and involuntarily watched him amid the surging crowd through which he was moving. She saw how he approached the Grand Stand, now condescendingly replying to obsequious bows, now amiably and absent-mindedly greeting his equals, now watchfully waiting to catch the eye of the great ones of this world and raising his large round hat, which pressed on the tips of his ears. She knew all these ways of his and they were all repulsive to her. ‘Nothing but ambition, nothing but a wish to get on — that is all he has in his soul,’ she thought; ‘and lofty views, love of enlightenment, and religion, are all only means toward getting on.’
She knew by the way he looked at the Ladies’ Stand that he was trying to find her (he looked straight at her, without recognizing her amid the sea of muslin, ribbons, feathers, sunshades, and flowers), but she purposely disregarded him.
‘Alexis Alexandrovich!’ the Princess Betsy called to him, ‘I am sure you don’t see your wife; here she is!’
He smiled his usual cold smile.
‘There is so much splendour here that my eyes are dazzled,’ he replied, and approached the stand. He smiled at Anna as a husband should smile when meeting his wife whom he has seen shortly before, and greeted the Princess and other acquaintances, giving to each what was due — that is to say, joking with ladies and exchanging greetings with the men. At the foot of the stand stood a General Aide-de-Camp respected by Karenin, and noted for his intelligence and education. With him Karenin entered into conversation.
There was an interval between two races, so that nothing hindered the conversation. The General A.-de-C. disapproved of the races. Karenin replied, defending them. Anna heard his high measured voice and did not miss a single word. Each word seemed to her false and grated painfully on her ear.
When the four-verst steeplechase was beginning she leaned forward, and did not take her eyes off Vronsky while he went up to his horse and mounted it, and at the same time she heard her husband’s repulsive, unceasing voice. She was tormented by anxiety for Vronsky, but suffered even more from what seemed to her the incessant flow of her husband’s shrill voice with its familiar intonations.
‘I am a bad woman, a ruined woman,’ she thought, ‘but I dislike lies. I cannot stand falsehood, but his food is falsehood. He knows everything, sees everything — what then does he feel, if he can