Anna Karenina
Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine-glass and dropped
into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal ingredient
was morphine. After drinking it off and sitting still a little while,
she went into her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful frame of mind.
When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her. He was
looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that, staying so
long in Dolly’s room, she must have had with her. But in her expression
of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he could find
nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh though he was
used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that it should
affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of,
but he hoped that she would tell him something of her own accord. But
she only said:
“I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don’t you?”
“Oh, I’ve known her a long while, you know. She’s very good-hearted, I
suppose, _mais excessivement terre-à-terre._ Still, I’m very glad to
see her.”
He took Anna’s hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.
Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, in spite of
the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward
journey. Levin’s coachman, in his by no means new coat and shabby hat,
with his ill-matched horses and his coach with the patched mud-guards,
drove with gloomy determination into the covered gravel approach.
Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the
gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her
hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and that
it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew that
now, from Dolly’s departure, no one again would stir up within her soul
the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt her to
stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of
her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in
the life she was leading.
As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a
delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how
they had liked being at Vronsky’s, when suddenly the coachman, Philip,
expressed himself unasked:
“Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they
gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn’t a grain left by
cockcrow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now down to
forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as much
as they can eat.”
“The master’s a screw,” put in the counting-house clerk.
“Well, did you like their horses?” asked Dolly.
“The horses!—there’s no two opinions about them. And the food was good.
But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I don’t
know what you thought,” he said, turning his handsome, good-natured
face to her.
“I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?”
“Eh, we must!”
On reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and
particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness
telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they had received her, of
the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and of their
recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said against them.
“One has to know Anna and Vronsky—I have got to know him better now—to
see how nice they are, and how touching,” she said, speaking now with
perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction
and awkwardness she had experienced there.
Chapter 25
Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the
country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no steps
to obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they
should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived
alone, especially in the autumn, without guests in the house, that they
could not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it.
Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired.
They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and
both had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her appearance
when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of
novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all
the books that were praised in the foreign papers and reviews she
received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only
given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of
interest to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so that
he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or
architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse-breeding
or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was
disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she
would find what he asked for in some book, and show it to him.
The building of the hospital, too, interested her. She did not merely
assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself. But her chief
thought was still of herself—how far she was dear to Vronsky, how far
she could make up to him for all he had given up. Vronsky appreciated
this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the
sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the
loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and
he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an
ever growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to try whether
they hindered his freedom. Had it not been for this growing desire to
be free, not to have scenes every time he wanted to go to the town to a
meeting or a race, Vronsky would have been perfectly satisfied with his
life. The rôle he had taken up, the rôle of a wealthy landowner, one of
that class which ought to be the very heart of the Russian aristocracy,
was entirely to his taste; and now, after spending six months in that
character, he derived even greater satisfaction from it. And his
management of his estate, which occupied and absorbed him more and
more, was most successful. In spite of the immense sums cost him by the
hospital, by machinery, by cows ordered from Switzerland, and many
other things, he was convinced that he was not wasting, but increasing
his substance. In all matters affecting income, the sales of timber,
wheat, and wool, the letting of lands, Vronsky was hard as a rock, and
knew well how to keep up prices. In all operations on a large scale on
this and his other estates, he kept to the simplest methods involving
no risk, and in trifling details he was careful and exacting to an
extreme degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the German
steward, who would try to tempt him into purchases by making his
original estimate always far larger than really required, and then
representing to Vronsky that he might get the thing cheaper, and so
make a profit, Vronsky did not give in. He listened to his steward,
cross-examined him, and only agreed to his suggestions when the
implement to be ordered or constructed was the very newest, not yet
known in Russia, and likely to excite wonder. Apart from such
exceptions, he resolved upon an increased outlay only where there was a
surplus, and in making such an outlay he went into the minutest
details, and insisted on getting the very best for his money; so that
by the method on which he managed his affairs, it was clear that he was
not wasting, but increasing his substance.
In October there were the provincial elections in the Kashinsky
province, where were the estates of Vronsky, Sviazhsky, Koznishev,
Oblonsky, and a small part of Levin’s land.
These elections were attracting public attention from several
circumstances connected with them, and also from the people taking part
in them. There had been a great deal of talk about them, and great
preparations were being made for them. Persons who never attended the
elections were coming from Moscow, from Petersburg, and from abroad to
attend these. Vronsky had long before promised Sviazhsky to go to them.
Before the elections Sviazhsky, who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe, drove
over to fetch Vronsky. On the day before there had been almost a
quarrel between Vronsky and Anna over this proposed expedition. It was
the very dullest autumn weather, which is so dreary in the country, and
so, preparing himself for a struggle, Vronsky, with a hard and cold
expression, informed Anna of his departure as he had never spoken to
her before. But, to his surprise, Anna accepted the information with
great composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked
intently at her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his
look. He knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and knew
that it only happened when she had determined upon something without
letting him know her plans. He was afraid of this; but he was so
anxious to avoid a scene that he kept up appearances, and half
sincerely believed in what he longed to believe in—her reasonableness.
“I hope you won’t be dull?”
“I hope not,” said Anna. “I got a box of books yesterday from
Gautier’s. No, I shan’t be dull.”
“She’s trying to take that tone, and so much the better,” he thought,
“or else it would be the same thing over and over again.”
And he set off for the elections without appealing to her for a candid
explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their
intimacy that he had parted from her without a full explanation. From
one point of view this troubled him, but on the other side he felt that
it was better so. “At first there will be, as this time, something
undefined kept back, and then she will get used to it. In any case I
can give up anything for her, but not my masculine independence,” he
thought.
Chapter 26
In September Levin moved to Moscow for Kitty’s confinement. He had
spent a whole month in Moscow with nothing to do, when Sergey
Ivanovitch, who had property in the Kashinsky province, and took great
interest in the question of the approaching elections, made ready to
set off to the elections. He invited his brother, who had a vote in the
Seleznevsky district, to come with him. Levin had, moreover, to
transact in Kashin some extremely important business relating to the
wardship of land and to the receiving of certain redemption money for
his sister, who was abroad.
Levin still hesitated, but Kitty, who saw that he was bored in Moscow,
and urged him to go, on her own authority ordered him the proper
nobleman’s uniform, costing seven pounds. And that seven pounds paid
for the uniform was the chief cause that finally decided Levin to go.
He went to Kashin....
Levin had been six days in Kashin, visiting the assembly each day, and
busily engaged about his sister’s business, which still dragged on. The
district marshals of nobility were all occupied with the elections, and
it was impossible to get the simplest thing done that depended upon the
court of wardship. The other matter, the payment of the sums due, was
met too by difficulties. After long negotiations over the legal
details, the money was at last ready to be paid; but the notary, a most
obliging person, could not hand over the order, because it must have
the signature of the president, and the president, though he had not
given over his duties to a deputy, was at the elections. All these
worrying negotiations, this endless going from place to place, and
talking with pleasant and excellent people, who quite saw the
unpleasantness of the petitioner’s position, but were powerless to
assist him—all these efforts that yielded no result, led to a feeling