Anna Karenina
which binds with a wire,” said Sviazhsky. “They would be more
profitable in use.”
_“Es kommt drauf an.... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden.”_
And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Vronsky. _“Das
lässt sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht.”_ The German was just feeling in the
pocket where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote in, but
recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing Vronsky’s chilly
glance, he checked himself. _“Zu compliziert, macht zu viel Klopot,”_
he concluded.
_“Wünscht man Dochots, so hat man auch Klopots,”_ said Vassenka
Veslovsky, mimicking the German. _“J’adore l’allemand,”_ he addressed
Anna again with the same smile.
_“Cessez,”_ she said with playful severity.
“We expected to find you in the fields, Vassily Semyonitch,” she said
to the doctor, a sickly-looking man; “have you been there?”
“I went there, but I had taken flight,” the doctor answered with gloomy
jocoseness.
“Then you’ve taken a good constitutional?”
“Splendid!”
“Well, and how was the old woman? I hope it’s not typhus?”
“Typhus it is not, but it’s taking a bad turn.”
“What a pity!” said Anna, and having thus paid the dues of civility to
her domestic circle, she turned to her own friends.
“It would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your
description, Anna Arkadyevna,” Sviazhsky said jestingly.
“Oh, no, why so?” said Anna with a smile that betrayed that she knew
there was something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine that
had been noticed by Sviazhsky. This new trait of girlish coquettishness
made an unpleasant impression on Dolly.
“But Anna Arkadyevna’s knowledge of architecture is marvelous,” said
Tushkevitch.
“To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna talking yesterday about plinths
and damp-courses,” said Veslovsky. “Have I got it right?”
“There’s nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much of
it,” said Anna. “But, I dare say, you don’t even know what houses are
made of?”
Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of raillery that
existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her
will.
Vronsky acted in this matter quite differently from Levin. He obviously
attached no significance to Veslovsky’s chattering; on the contrary, he
encouraged his jests.
“Come now, tell us, Veslovsky, how are the stones held together?”
“By cement, of course.”
“Bravo! And what is cement?”
“Oh, some sort of paste ... no, putty,” said Veslovsky, raising a
general laugh.
The company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect,
and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a
conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on
another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once
Darya Alexandrovna felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she
positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said
anything extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Levin,
describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its
effects on Russian agriculture.
“I have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Levin,” Vronsky said,
smiling, “but most likely he has never seen the machines he condemns;
or if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a queer
fashion, some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort
of views can anyone have on such a subject?”
“Turkish views, in general,” Veslovsky said, turning to Anna with a
smile.
“I can’t defend his opinions,” Darya Alexandrovna said, firing up; “but
I can say that he’s a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he
would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of
doing so.”
“I like him extremely, and we are great friends,” Sviazhsky said,
smiling good-naturedly. “_Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toqué;_ he
maintains, for instance, that district councils and arbitration boards
are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything.”
“It’s our Russian apathy,” said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced
decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; “we’ve no sense of the
duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize
these duties.”
“I know no man more strict in the performance of his duties,” said
Darya Alexandrovna, irritated by Vronsky’s tone of superiority.
“For my part,” pursued Vronsky, who was evidently for some reason or
other keenly affected by this conversation, “such as I am, I am, on the
contrary, extremely grateful for the honor they have done me, thanks to
Nikolay Ivanitch” (he indicated Sviazhsky), “in electing me a justice
of the peace. I consider that for me the duty of being present at the
session, of judging some peasants’ quarrel about a horse, is as
important as anything I can do. And I shall regard it as an honor if
they elect me for the district council. It’s only in that way I can pay
for the advantages I enjoy as a landowner. Unluckily they don’t
understand the weight that the big landowners ought to have in the
state.”
It was strange to Darya Alexandrovna to hear how serenely confident he
was of being right at his own table. She thought how Levin, who
believed the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions at his own
table. But she loved Levin, and so she was on his side.
“So we can reckon upon you, count, for the coming elections?” said
Sviazhsky. “But you must come a little beforehand, so as to be on the
spot by the eighth. If you would do me the honor to stop with me.”
“I rather agree with your _beau-frère_,” said Anna, “though not quite
on the same ground as he,” she added with a smile. “I’m afraid that we
have too many of these public duties in these latter days. Just as in
old days there were so many government functionaries that one had to
call in a functionary for every single thing, so now everyone’s doing
some sort of public duty. Alexey has been here now six months, and he’s
a member, I do believe, of five or six different public bodies. _Du
train que cela va,_ the whole time will be wasted on it. And I’m afraid
that with such a multiplicity of these bodies, they’ll end in being a
mere form. How many are you a member of, Nikolay Ivanitch?” she turned
to Sviazhsky—“over twenty, I fancy.”
Anna spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone.
Darya Alexandrovna, watching Anna and Vronsky attentively, detected it
instantly. She noticed, too, that as she spoke Vronsky’s face had
immediately taken a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this,
and that Princess Varvara at once made haste to change the conversation
by talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering what Vronsky
had without apparent connection said in the garden of his work in the
country, Dolly surmised that this question of public activity was
connected with some deep private disagreement between Anna and Vronsky.
The dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all very good;
but it was all like what Darya Alexandrovna had seen at formal dinners
and balls which of late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it
all had the same impersonal and constrained character, and so on an
ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it made a disagreeable
impression on her.
After dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play lawn
tennis. The players, divided into two parties, stood on opposite sides
of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and
rolled croquet-ground. Darya Alexandrovna made an attempt to play, but
it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the
time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down with
Princess Varvara and simply looked on at the players. Her partner,
Tushkevitch, gave up playing too, but the others kept the game up for a
long time. Sviazhsky and Vronsky both played very well and seriously.
They kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without
haste or getting in each other’s way, they ran adroitly up to them,
waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over
the net. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but
he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and
outcries never paused. Like the other men of the party, with the
ladies’ permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure
in his white shirt-sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his
impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on
the memory.
When Darya Alexandrovna lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed
her eyes, she saw Vassenka Veslovsky flying about the croquet ground.
During the game Darya Alexandrovna was not enjoying herself. She did
not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time
between Vassenka Veslovsky and Anna, and the unnaturalness altogether
of grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at a child’s
game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time
somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be
enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in
a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was
spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of
staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the
game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day. The
maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now,
after a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and
tempted her back to them.
When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya
Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began
arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief.
It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was coming to
see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own thoughts.
Chapter 23
Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her, attired
for the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times begun to
speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she
had stopped: “Afterwards, by ourselves, we’ll talk about everything.
I’ve got so much I want to tell you,” she said.
Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to talk about.
She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in her own mind
all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible
beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that
everything had been said already.
“Well, what of Kitty?” she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently
at Dolly. “Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn’t she angry with me?”
“Angry? Oh, no!” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.
“But she hates me, despises me?”
“Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn’t forgiven.”
“Yes, yes,” said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window.
“But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What’s the meaning of
being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could
it possibly have happened that you didn’t become the wife of Stiva?”
“Really, I don’t know. But this is what I want you to tell me....”
“Yes, yes, but we’ve not finished about Kitty. Is she happy? He’s a
very nice man, they say.”
“He’s much more than very nice. I don’t know a better man.”
“Ah, how glad I am! I’m so glad! Much more than very nice,” she
repeated.
Dolly smiled.
“But tell me about yourself. We’ve a great deal to talk about. And I’ve
had a talk with....” Dolly did not know what to call him. She felt it
awkward to call him either the count or Alexey Kirillovitch.
“With Alexey,” said Anna, “I know what you talked about. But I wanted
to ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?”