Anna Karenina
captain of the guards, Mihail Stepanovitch Snetkov, would now be
balloted for as marshal of the province.
The district marshals walked carrying plates, on which were balls, from
their tables to the high table, and the election began.
“Put it in the right side,” whispered Stepan Arkadyevitch, as with his
brother Levin followed the marshal of his district to the table. But
Levin had forgotten by now the calculations that had been explained to
him, and was afraid Stepan Arkadyevitch might be mistaken in saying
“the right side.” Surely Snetkov was the enemy. As he went up, he held
the ball in his right hand, but thinking he was wrong, just at the box
he changed to the left hand, and undoubtedly put the ball to the left.
An adept in the business, standing at the box and seeing by the mere
action of the elbow where each put his ball, scowled with annoyance. It
was no good for him to use his insight.
Everything was still, and the counting of the balls was heard. Then a
single voice rose and proclaimed the numbers for and against. The
marshal had been voted for by a considerable majority. All was noise
and eager movement towards the doors. Snetkov came in, and the nobles
thronged round him, congratulating him.
“Well, now is it over?” Levin asked Sergey Ivanovitch.
“It’s only just beginning,” Sviazhsky said, replying for Sergey
Ivanovitch with a smile. “Some other candidate may receive more votes
than the marshal.”
Levin had quite forgotten about that. Now he could only remember that
there was some sort of trickery in it, but he was too bored to think
what it was exactly. He felt depressed, and longed to get out of the
crowd.
As no one was paying any attention to him, and no one apparently needed
him, he quietly slipped away into the little room where the
refreshments were, and again had a great sense of comfort when he saw
the waiters. The little old waiter pressed him to have something, and
Levin agreed. After eating a cutlet with beans and talking to the
waiters of their former masters, Levin, not wishing to go back to the
hall, where it was all so distasteful to him, proceeded to walk through
the galleries. The galleries were full of fashionably dressed ladies,
leaning over the balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of
what was being said below. With the ladies were sitting and standing
smart lawyers, high school teachers in spectacles, and officers.
Everywhere they were talking of the election, and of how worried the
marshal was, and how splendid the discussions had been. In one group
Levin heard his brother’s praises. One lady was telling a lawyer:
“How glad I am I heard Koznishev! It’s worth losing one’s dinner. He’s
exquisite! So clear and distinct all of it! There’s not one of you in
the law courts that speaks like that. The only one is Meidel, and he’s
not so eloquent by a long way.”
Finding a free place, Levin leaned over the balustrade and began
looking and listening.
All the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers according to
their districts. In the middle of the room stood a man in a uniform,
who shouted in a loud, high voice:
“As a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of the province we
call upon staff-captain Yevgeney Ivanovitch Apuhtin!” A dead silence
followed, and then a weak old voice was heard: “Declined!”
“We call upon the privy councilor Pyotr Petrovitch Bol,” the voice
began again.
“Declined!” a high boyish voice replied.
Again it began, and again “Declined.” And so it went on for about an
hour. Levin, with his elbows on the balustrade, looked and listened. At
first he wondered and wanted to know what it meant; then feeling sure
that he could not make it out he began to be bored. Then recalling all
the excitement and vindictiveness he had seen on all the faces, he felt
sad; he made up his mind to go, and went downstairs. As he passed
through the entry to the galleries he met a dejected high school boy
walking up and down with tired-looking eyes. On the stairs he met a
couple—a lady running quickly on her high heels and the jaunty deputy
prosecutor.
“I told you you weren’t late,” the deputy prosecutor was saying at the
moment when Levin moved aside to let the lady pass.
Levin was on the stairs to the way out, and was just feeling in his
waistcoat pocket for the number of his overcoat, when the secretary
overtook him.
“This way, please, Konstantin Dmitrievitch; they are voting.”
The candidate who was being voted on was Nevyedovsky, who had so
stoutly denied all idea of standing. Levin went up to the door of the
room; it was locked. The secretary knocked, the door opened, and Levin
was met by two red-faced gentlemen, who darted out.
“I can’t stand any more of it,” said one red-faced gentleman.
After them the face of the marshal of the province was poked out. His
face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion and dismay.
“I told you not to let anyone out!” he cried to the doorkeeper.
“I let someone in, your excellency!”
“Mercy on us!” and with a heavy sigh the marshal of the province walked
with downcast head to the high table in the middle of the room, his
legs staggering in his white trousers.
Nevyedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had planned, and he
was the new marshal of the province. Many people were amused, many were
pleased and happy, many were in ecstasies, many were disgusted and
unhappy. The former marshal of the province was in a state of despair,
which he could not conceal. When Nevyedovsky went out of the room, the
crowd thronged round him and followed him enthusiastically, just as
they had followed the governor who had opened the meetings, and just as
they had followed Snetkov when he was elected.
Chapter 31
The newly elected marshal and many of the successful party dined that
day with Vronsky.
Vronsky had come to the elections partly because he was bored in the
country and wanted to show Anna his right to independence, and also to
repay Sviazhsky by his support at the election for all the trouble he
had taken for Vronsky at the district council election, but chiefly in
order strictly to perform all those duties of a nobleman and landowner
which he had taken upon himself. But he had not in the least expected
that the election would so interest him, so keenly excite him, and that
he would be so good at this kind of thing. He was quite a new man in
the circle of the nobility of the province, but his success was
unmistakable, and he was not wrong in supposing that he had already
obtained a certain influence. This influence was due to his wealth and
reputation, the capital house in the town lent him by his old friend
Shirkov, who had a post in the department of finances and was director
of a flourishing bank in Kashin; the excellent cook Vronsky had brought
from the country, and his friendship with the governor, who was a
schoolfellow of Vronsky’s—a schoolfellow he had patronized and
protected indeed. But what contributed more than all to his success was
his direct, equable manner with everyone, which very quickly made the
majority of the noblemen reverse the current opinion of his supposed
haughtiness. He was himself conscious that, except that whimsical
gentleman married to Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, who had _à propos de
bottes_ poured out a stream of irrelevant absurdities with such
spiteful fury, every nobleman with whom he had made acquaintance had
become his adherent. He saw clearly, and other people recognized it,
too, that he had done a great deal to secure the success of
Nevyedovsky. And now at his own table, celebrating Nevyedovsky’s
election, he was experiencing an agreeable sense of triumph over the
success of his candidate. The election itself had so fascinated him
that, if he could succeed in getting married during the next three
years, he began to think of standing himself—much as after winning a
race ridden by a jockey, he had longed to ride a race himself.
Today he was celebrating the success of his jockey. Vronsky sat at the
head of the table, on his right hand sat the young governor, a general
of high rank. To all the rest he was the chief man in the province, who
had solemnly opened the elections with his speech, and aroused a
feeling of respect and even of awe in many people, as Vronsky saw; to
Vronsky he was little Katka Maslov—that had been his nickname in the
Pages’ Corps—whom he felt to be shy and tried to _mettre à son aise_.
On the left hand sat Nevyedovsky with his youthful, stubborn, and
malignant face. With him Vronsky was simple and deferential.
Sviazhsky took his failure very light-heartedly. It was indeed no
failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning, glass in hand, to
Nevyedovsky; they could not have found a better representative of the
new movement, which the nobility ought to follow. And so every honest
person, as he said, was on the side of today’s success and was
rejoicing over it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was glad, too, that he was having a good time, and
that everyone was pleased. The episode of the elections served as a
good occasion for a capital dinner. Sviazhsky comically imitated the
tearful discourse of the marshal, and observed, addressing Nevyedovsky,
that his excellency would have to select another more complicated
method of auditing the accounts than tears. Another nobleman jocosely
described how footmen in stockings had been ordered for the marshal’s
ball, and how now they would have to be sent back unless the new
marshal would give a ball with footmen in stockings.
Continually during dinner they said of Nevyedovsky: “our marshal,” and
“your excellency.”
This was said with the same pleasure with which a bride is called
“Madame” and her husband’s name. Nevyedovsky affected to be not merely
indifferent but scornful of this appellation, but it was obvious that
he was highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on himself not to
betray the triumph which was unsuitable to their new liberal tone.
After dinner several telegrams were sent to people interested in the
result of the election. And Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was in high good
humor, sent Darya Alexandrovna a telegram: “Nevyedovsky elected by
twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people.” He dictated it aloud,
saying: “We must let them share our rejoicing.” Darya Alexandrovna,
getting the message, simply sighed over the rouble wasted on it, and
understood that it was an after-dinner affair. She knew Stiva had a
weakness after dining for _faire jouer le télégraphe._
Everything, together with the excellent dinner and the wine, not from
Russian merchants, but imported direct from abroad, was extremely
dignified, simple, and enjoyable. The party—some twenty—had been
selected by Sviazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all of
the same way of thinking, who were at the same time clever and well
bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the health of the new marshal
of the province, of the governor, of the bank director, and of “our
amiable host.”
Vronsky was satisfied. He had never expected to find so pleasant a tone
in the provinces.
Towards the end of dinner it was still more lively. The governor asked
Vronsky to come to a concert for the benefit of the Servians which his
wife, who was anxious to make his acquaintance, had been getting up.
“There’ll be a ball, and you’ll see the belle of the province. Worth
seeing, really.”
“Not in my line,” Vronsky answered. He liked that English phrase. But
he smiled, and promised to come.
Before they rose from the table, when all of them were smoking,
Vronsky’s valet went up to him with a letter on a tray.
“From Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger,” he said with a significant
expression.
“Astonishing! how like he is to the deputy prosecutor Sventitsky,” said