Anna Karenina
He looked round discreetly, but he was not seeking her; expecting the
worst, his eyes sought for Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey
Alexandrovitch was not in the theater that evening.
“How little of the military man there is left in you!” Serpuhovskoy was
saying to him. “A diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one
would say.”
“Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,” answered
Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera-glass.
“Well, I’ll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put
on this,” he touched his epaulets, “I regret my freedom.”
Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky’s career, but he
liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.
“What a pity you were not in time for the first act!”
Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera-glass from the stalls
and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old man, who
seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera-glass, Vronsky suddenly
caught sight of Anna’s head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling
in the frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from him.
She was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was saying something to
Yashvin. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and
the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face
reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But
he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for
her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it
attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of
injury. She was not looking in his direction, but Vronsky felt that she
had seen him already.
When Vronsky turned the opera-glass again in that direction, he noticed
that Princess Varvara was particularly red, and kept laughing
unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Anna, folding her fan
and tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and
obviously did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box.
Yashvin’s face wore the expression which was common when he was losing
at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his mustache further and
further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next box.
In that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Vronsky knew them, and knew
that Anna was acquainted with them. Madame Kartasova, a thin little
woman, was standing up in her box, and, her back turned upon Anna, she
was putting on a mantle that her husband was holding for her. Her face
was pale and angry, and she was talking excitedly. Kartasov, a fat,
bald man, was continually looking round at Anna, while he attempted to
soothe his wife. When the wife had gone out, the husband lingered a
long while, and tried to catch Anna’s eye, obviously anxious to bow to
her. But Anna, with unmistakable intention, avoided noticing him, and
talked to Yashvin, whose cropped head was bent down to her. Kartasov
went out without making his salutation, and the box was left empty.
Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between the
Kartasovs and Anna, but he saw that something humiliating for Anna had
happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and most of all from
the face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve to carry
through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining this attitude of
external composure she was completely successful. Anyone who did not
know her and her circle, who had not heard all the utterances of the
women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and amazement, that she
should show herself in society, and show herself so conspicuously with
her lace and her beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness
of this woman without a suspicion that she was undergoing the
sensations of a man in the stocks.
Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what,
Vronsky felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find out
something, he went towards his brother’s box. Purposely choosing the
way round furthest from Anna’s box, he jostled as he came out against
the colonel of his old regiment talking to two acquaintances. Vronsky
heard the name of Madame Karenina, and noticed how the colonel hastened
to address Vronsky loudly by name, with a meaning glance at his
companions.
“Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment? We can’t let you off
without a supper. You’re one of the old set,” said the colonel of his
regiment.
“I can’t stop, awfully sorry, another time,” said Vronsky, and he ran
upstairs towards his brother’s box.
The old countess, Vronsky’s mother, with her steel-gray curls, was in
his brother’s box. Varya with the young Princess Sorokina met him in
the corridor.
Leaving the Princess Sorokina with her mother, Varya held out her hand
to her brother-in-law, and began immediately to speak of what
interested him. She was more excited than he had ever seen her.
“I think it’s mean and hateful, and Madame Kartasova had no right to do
it. Madame Karenina....” she began.
“But what is it? I don’t know.”
“What? you’ve not heard?”
“You know I should be the last person to hear of it.”
“There isn’t a more spiteful creature than that Madame Kartasova!”
“But what did she do?”
“My husband told me.... She has insulted Madame Karenina. Her husband
began talking to her across the box, and Madame Kartasova made a scene.
She said something aloud, he says, something insulting, and went away.”
“Count, your maman is asking for you,” said the young Princess
Sorokina, peeping out of the door of the box.
“I’ve been expecting you all the while,” said his mother, smiling
sarcastically. “You were nowhere to be seen.”
Her son saw that she could not suppress a smile of delight.
“Good evening, maman. I have come to you,” he said coldly.
“Why aren’t you going to _faire la cour à Madame Karenina?_” she went
on, when Princess Sorokina had moved away. “_Elle fait sensation. On
oublie la Patti pour elle_.”
“Maman, I have asked you not to say anything to me of that,” he
answered, scowling.
“I’m only saying what everyone’s saying.”
Vronsky made no reply, and saying a few words to Princess Sorokina, he
went away. At the door he met his brother.
“Ah, Alexey!” said his brother. “How disgusting! Idiot of a woman,
nothing else.... I wanted to go straight to her. Let’s go together.”
Vronsky did not hear him. With rapid steps he went downstairs; he felt
that he must do something, but he did not know what. Anger with her for
having put herself and him in such a false position, together with pity
for her suffering, filled his heart. He went down, and made straight
for Anna’s box. At her box stood Stremov, talking to her.
“There are no more tenors. _Le moule en est brisé!_”
Vronsky bowed to her and stopped to greet Stremov.
“You came in late, I think, and have missed the best song,” Anna said
to Vronsky, glancing ironically, he thought, at him.
“I am a poor judge of music,” he said, looking sternly at her.
“Like Prince Yashvin,” she said smiling, “who considers that Patti
sings too loud.”
“Thank you,” she said, her little hand in its long glove taking the
playbill Vronsky picked up, and suddenly at that instant her lovely
face quivered. She got up and went into the interior of the box.
Noticing in the next act that her box was empty, Vronsky, rousing
indignant “hushes” in the silent audience, went out in the middle of a
solo and drove home.
Anna was already at home. When Vronsky went up to her, she was in the
same dress as she had worn at the theater. She was sitting in the first
armchair against the wall, looking straight before her. She looked at
him, and at once resumed her former position.
“Anna,” he said.
“You, you are to blame for everything!” she cried, with tears of
despair and hatred in her voice, getting up.
“I begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be unpleasant....”
“Unpleasant!” she cried—“hideous! As long as I live I shall never
forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me.”
“A silly woman’s chatter,” he said: “but why risk it, why provoke?...”
“I hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had
loved me....”
“Anna! How does the question of my love come in?”
“Oh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am!...” she
said, looking at him with an expression of terror.
He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his
love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and
he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her.
And the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that
he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually
became calmer. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the
country.
PART SIX
Chapter 1
Darya Alexandrovna spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe, at
her sister Kitty Levin’s. The house on her own estate was quite in
ruins, and Levin and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer
with them. Stepan Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the arrangement. He
said he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from spending
the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the
greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came down to
the country from time to time for a day or two. Besides the Oblonskys,
with all their children and their governess, the old princess too came
to stay that summer with the Levins, as she considered it her duty to
watch over her inexperienced daughter in her _interesting condition_.
Moreover, Varenka, Kitty’s friend abroad, kept her promise to come to
Kitty when she was married, and stayed with her friend. All of these
were friends or relations of Levin’s wife. And though he liked them
all, he rather regretted his own Levin world and ways, which was
smothered by this influx of the “Shtcherbatsky element,” as he called
it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed with him only Sergey
Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of the Koznishev and not the Levin
stamp, so that the Levin spirit was utterly obliterated.
In the Levins’ house, so long deserted, there were now so many people
that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day it
happened that the old princess, sitting down to table, counted them all
over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate
table. And Kitty, with her careful housekeeping, had no little trouble
to get all the chickens, turkeys, and geese, of which so many were
needed to satisfy the summer appetites of the visitors and children.
The whole family were sitting at dinner. Dolly’s children, with their
governess and Varenka, were making plans for going to look for
mushrooms. Sergey Ivanovitch, who was looked up to by all the party for
his intellect and learning, with a respect that almost amounted to awe,
surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about mushrooms.
“Take me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms,” he said,
looking at Varenka; “I think it’s a very nice occupation.”
“Oh, we shall be delighted,” answered Varenka, coloring a little. Kitty
exchanged meaningful glances with Dolly. The proposal of the learned
and intellectual Sergey Ivanovitch to go looking for mushrooms with
Varenka confirmed certain theories of Kitty’s with which her mind had
been very busy of late. She made haste to address some remark to her
mother, so that her look should not be noticed. After dinner Sergey
Ivanovitch sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, and
while he took part in a conversation he had begun with his brother, he
watched the door through which the children would start on the