Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy
will send to him and find out, and will let you know,’ Betsy whispered to her.
On leaving the stand Karenin as usual spoke to people he met, and Anna as usual had to reply and make conversation: but she was beside herself and walked as in a dream, holding her husband’s arm.
‘Is he hurt or not? Is it true? Will he come or not? Shall I see him tonight?’ she thought.
In silence she took her place in her husband’s carriage, and in silence they drove out of the crowd of vehicles. In spite of all he had seen, Karenin would still not allow himself to think of his wife’s real position. He only saw the external sights. He saw that she had behaved with impropriety and he considered it his duty to tell her so. But it was very difficult for him to say that and nothing more. He opened his mouth to say that she had behaved improperly, but involuntarily said something quite different.
‘After all, how inclined we all are to these cruel spectacles,’ he said. ‘I notice …’
‘What? I do not understand,’ said Anna contemptuously.
He was offended and at once began to tell her what he wanted to.
‘I must tell you …’ he said.
‘It’s coming — the explanation!’ she thought and felt frightened.
‘I must tell you that you behaved improperly to-day,’ he said in French.
‘How did I behave improperly?’ she said aloud, quickly turning her head and looking him straight in the eyes, now without any of the former deceptive gaiety but with a determined air beneath which she had difficulty in hiding the fright she felt.
‘Don’t forget,’ said he to her, pointing at the open window behind the coachman’s box; and, slightly rising, he lifted the window.
‘What did you consider improper?’ she asked again.
‘The despair you were unable to conceal when one of the riders fell.’
He expected a rejoinder from her; but she remained silent, looking straight before her.
‘I asked you once before to conduct yourself in Society so that evil tongues might be unable to say anything against you. There was a time when I spoke about inner relations; now I do not speak of them. I speak now of external relations. Your conduct was improper and I do not wish it to occur again.’
She did not hear half that he said, but felt afraid of him and wondered whether it was true that Vronsky was not hurt. Was it of him they were speaking when they said that he was not hurt but the horse had broken its back? She only smiled with simulated irony when he had finished; and she did not reply because she had not heard what he said. Karenin had begun to speak boldly, but when he realized clearly what he was talking about, the fear she was experiencing communicated itself to him. He saw her smile and a strange delusion possessed him. ‘She smiles at my suspicions. In a moment she will tell me what she told them: that these suspicions are groundless and ridiculous.’
Now that a complete disclosure was impending, he expected nothing so much as that she would, as before, answer him mockingly that his suspicions were ridiculous and groundless. What he knew was so terrible that he was now prepared to believe anything. But the expression of her frightened and gloomy face did not now even promise deception.
‘Perhaps I am mistaken,’ said he. ‘In that case I beg your pardon.’
‘No, you were not mistaken,’ she said slowly, looking despairingly into his cold face. ‘You were not mistaken. I was, and cannot help being, in despair. I listen to you but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress, I cannot endure you. I am afraid of you, and I hate you… . Do what you like to me.’
And throwing herself back into the corner of the carriage she burst into sobs, hiding her face in her hands. Karenin did not move, and did not change the direction in which he was looking, but his face suddenly assumed the solemn immobility of the dead, and that expression did not alter till they reached the house. As they were driving up to it, he turned his face to her still with the same expression and said:
‘Yes! But I demand that the external conditions of propriety shall be observed till’ — his voice trembled — ‘till I take measures to safeguard my honour and inform you of them.’
He alighted first and helped her out. In the presence of the servants he pressed her hand, re-entered the carriage, and drove off toward Petersburg.
After he had gone the Princess Betsy’s footman brought Anna a note.
‘I sent to Alexis to inquire about his health. He writes that he is safe and sound, but in despair.’
‘Then he will come,’ thought she. ‘What a good thing it is that I spoke out.’
She looked at the clock. She had three hours still to wait, and the memory of the incidents of their last meeting fired her blood.
‘Dear me, how light it is! It is dreadful, but I love to see his face, and I love this fantastic light… . My husband! Ah, yes… . Well, thank heaven that all is over with him!’
Chapter 30
AS always happens where people congregate, the usual crystallization, if we may so call it, of Society took place in the little German watering-place to which the Shcherbatskys had come, assigning to each person a definite and fixed position. As definitely and inevitably as a particle of water exposed to the cold assumes the well-known form of a snow crystal, did each newcomer on his arrival at the watering-place immediately settle into his natural position.
‘Fürst Shcherbatsky samt Gemahlin und Tochter’ [‘Prince Shcherbatsky with his wife and daughter’], by the premises they occupied, by their name, and by the people they were acquainted with, at once crystallized into their definite and preordained place.
There was a real German Fürstin [Princess] at the watering-place that season, and consequently the crystallizing process was accomplished with special energy.
Princess Shcherbatskaya particularly wished to introduce her daughter to the German Royal Princess, and on the second day after their arrival performed that rite.
Kitty made a low and graceful curtsy in her very simple dress — that is to say, very stylish summer gown ordered from Paris. The Royal Princess said: ‘I hope the roses will soon return to this pretty little face,’ and at once a definite path was firmly established for the Shcherbatskys from which it was impossible to deviate.
They made acquaintance with the family of an English ‘Lady’, with a German Countess and her son who had been wounded in the last war, with a Swedish savant, and with a Mr. Canut and his sister. But the people with whom they necessarily associated most were a Moscow lady, Mary Evgenyevna Rtishcheva, and her daughter, whom Kitty found unpleasant because her illness was due to the same cause as Kitty’s — a love affair; and a Moscow Colonel, whom Kitty from childhood had seen and known in uniform with epaulettes, and who here — with his small eyes, low collar and coloured necktie — looked indescribably comical, and was also wearisome because it was impossible to get rid of him. When all this had become firmly established, Kitty began to feel very dull, especially as her father had gone to Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She was not interested in the people she knew, for she felt that nothing new would come from them. Her chief private interest at the watering-place consisted in observing those whom she did not know and making conjectures about them. It was a characteristic of Kitty’s always to expect to find the most excellent qualities in people, especially in those she did not know. And now, when guessing who and what kind of people the strangers were, and in what relation they stood to one another, Kitty attributed to them extraordinary and splendid characters, and found confirmation in her observations.
Among these people she was specially interested in a young Russian girl who had come to