Anna Karenina
“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 honor 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....”