Anna Karenina
Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Stepan
Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife’s room by the
other door.
“I am afraid you’ll be cold upstairs,” observed Dolly, addressing Anna;
“I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer.”
“Oh, please, don’t trouble about me,” answered Anna, looking intently
into Dolly’s face, trying to make out whether there had been a
reconciliation or not.
“It will be lighter for you here,” answered her sister-in-law.
“I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot.”
“What’s the question?” inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out of his
room and addressing his wife.
From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had taken
place.
“I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one
knows how to do it; I must see to it myself,” answered Dolly addressing
him.
“God knows whether they are fully reconciled,” thought Anna, hearing
her tone, cold and composed.
“Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties,” answered her
husband. “Come, I’ll do it all, if you like....”
“Yes, they must be reconciled,” thought Anna.
“I know how you do everything,” answered Dolly. “You tell Matvey to do
what can’t be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make a muddle
of everything,” and her habitual, mocking smile curved the corners of
Dolly’s lips as she spoke.
“Full, full reconciliation, full,” thought Anna; “thank God!” and
rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and kissed
her.
“Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing his wife.
The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her tone to
her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not
so as to seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his
offense.
At half-past nine o’clock a particularly joyful and pleasant family
conversation over the tea-table at the Oblonskys’ was broken up by an
apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some reason
struck everyone as strange. Talking about common acquaintances in
Petersburg, Anna got up quickly.
“She is in my album,” she said; “and, by the way, I’ll show you my
Seryozha,” she added, with a mother’s smile of pride.
Towards ten o’clock, when she usually said good-night to her son, and
often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt depressed
at being so far from him; and whatever she was talking about, she kept
coming back in thought to her curly-headed Seryozha. She longed to look
at his photograph and talk of him. Seizing the first pretext, she got
up, and with her light, resolute step went for her album. The stairs up
to her room came out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.
Just as she was leaving the drawing-room, a ring was heard in the hall.
“Who can that be?” said Dolly.
“It’s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it’s late,”
observed Kitty.
“Sure to be someone with papers for me,” put in Stepan Arkadyevitch.
When Anna was passing the top of the staircase, a servant was running
up to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself was standing
under a lamp. Anna glancing down at once recognized Vronsky, and a
strange feeling of pleasure and at the same time of dread of something
stirred in her heart. He was standing still, not taking off his coat,
pulling something out of his pocket. At the instant when she was just
facing the stairs, he raised his eyes, caught sight of her, and into
the expression of his face there passed a shade of embarrassment and
dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing
behind her Stepan Arkadyevitch’s loud voice calling him to come up, and
the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Vronsky refusing.
When Anna returned with the album, he was already gone, and Stepan
Arkadyevitch was telling them that he had called to inquire about the
dinner they were giving next day to a celebrity who had just arrived.
“And nothing would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he is!”
added Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Kitty blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he
had come, and why he would not come up. “He has been at home,” she
thought, “and didn’t find me, and thought I should be here, but he did
not come up because he thought it late, and Anna’s here.”
All of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look at
Anna’s album.
There was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man’s calling at
half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner
party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above
all, it seemed strange and not right to Anna.
Chapter 22
The ball was only just beginning as Kitty and her mother walked up the
great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen
in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as
from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on the landing
between trees they gave last touches to their hair and dresses before
the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of
the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old
man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror,
and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the stairs,
and stood aside, evidently admiring Kitty, whom he did not know. A
beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince
Shtcherbatsky called “young bucks,” in an exceedingly open waistcoat,
straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and after
running by, came back to ask Kitty for a quadrille. As the first
quadrille had already been given to Vronsky, she had to promise this
youth the second. An officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside in the
doorway, and stroking his mustache, admired rosy Kitty.
Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball
had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she
walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip
as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the
minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment’s
attention, as though she had been born in that tulle and lace, with her
hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on the top of
it.
When, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother,
tried to turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash, Kitty had drawn
back a little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and
graceful, and nothing could need setting straight.
It was one of Kitty’s best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable
anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were not
crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, hollowed-out heels
did not pinch, but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair
chignon kept up on her head as if they were her own hair. All the three
buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered her
hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket
nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet was
delicious; at home, looking at her neck in the looking-glass, Kitty had
felt that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a
doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Kitty smiled here too, at the
ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms
gave Kitty a sense of chill marble, a feeling she particularly liked.
Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips could not keep from smiling from
the consciousness of her own attractiveness. She had scarcely entered
the ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all tulle, ribbons,
lace, and flowers, waiting to be asked to dance—Kitty was never one of
that throng—when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best
partner, the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned
director of dances, a married man, handsome and well-built, Yegorushka
Korsunsky. He had only just left the Countess Bonina, with whom he had
danced the first half of the waltz, and, scanning his kingdom—that is
to say, a few couples who had started dancing—he caught sight of Kitty,
entering, and flew up to her with that peculiar, easy amble which is
confined to directors of balls. Without even asking her if she cared to
dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She looked
round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess, smiling to
her, took it.
“How nice you’ve come in good time,” he said to her, embracing her
waist; “such a bad habit to be late.” Bending her left hand, she laid
it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink slippers began
swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the slippery floor in
time to the music.
“It’s a rest to waltz with you,” he said to her, as they fell into the
first slow steps of the waltz. “It’s exquisite—such lightness,
precision.” He said to her the same thing he said to almost all his
partners whom he knew well.
She smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room over his
shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces
in the ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a
girl who had gone the stale round of balls till every face in the
ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage
between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she had
sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of
the ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together.
There—incredibly naked—was the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky’s wife; there was
the lady of the house; there shone the bald head of Krivin, always to
be found where the best people were. In that direction gazed the young
men, not venturing to approach. There, too, she descried Stiva, and
there she saw the exquisite figure and head of Anna in a black velvet
gown. And _he_ was there. Kitty had not seen him since the evening she
refused Levin. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him at once, and
was even aware that he was looking at her.
“Another turn, eh? You’re not tired?” said Korsunsky, a little out of
breath.
“No, thank you!”
“Where shall I take you?”
“Madame Karenina’s here, I think ... take me to her.”
“Wherever you command.”
And Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight towards the
group in the left corner, continually saying, “Pardon, mesdames,
pardon, pardon, mesdames”; and steering his course through the sea of
lace, tulle, and ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned his
partner sharply round, so that her slim ankles, in light transparent
stockings, were exposed to view, and her train floated out in fan shape
and covered Krivin’s knees. Korsunsky bowed, set straight his open
shirt front, and gave her his arm to conduct her to Anna Arkadyevna.
Kitty, flushed, took her train from Krivin’s knees, and, a little
giddy, looked round, seeking Anna. Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had
so urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her
full throat and shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory,
and her rounded arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was
trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black hair—her
own, with no false additions—was a little wreath of pansies, and a
bouquet of the same in the black ribbon of her sash among white lace.
Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was the little
wilful tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free about
her neck and temples. Round her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of
pearls.
Kitty had been seeing Anna every day; she adored her, and had pictured