Anna Karenina
officers, he went up to Vronsky.
“Ah! here he is!” he cried, bringing his big hand down heavily on his
epaulet. Vronsky looked round angrily, but his face lighted up
immediately with his characteristic expression of genial and manly
serenity.
“That’s it, Alexey,” said the captain, in his loud baritone. “You must
just eat a mouthful, now, and drink only one tiny glass.”
“Oh, I’m not hungry.”
“There go the inseparables,” Yashvin dropped, glancing sarcastically at
the two officers who were at that instant leaving the room. And he bent
his long legs, swathed in tight riding breeches, and sat down in the
chair, too low for him, so that his knees were cramped up in a sharp
angle.
“Why didn’t you turn up at the Red Theater yesterday? Numerova wasn’t
at all bad. Where were you?”
“I was late at the Tverskoys’,” said Vronsky.
“Ah!” responded Yashvin.
Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral
principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky’s greatest
friend in the regiment. Vronsky liked him both for his exceptional
physical strength, which he showed for the most part by being able to
drink like a fish, and do without sleep without being in the slightest
degree affected by it; and for his great strength of character, which
he showed in his relations with his comrades and superior officers,
commanding both fear and respect, and also at cards, when he would play
for tens of thousands and however much he might have drunk, always with
such skill and decision that he was reckoned the best player in the
English Club. Vronsky respected and liked Yashvin particularly because
he felt Yashvin liked him, not for his name and his money, but for
himself. And of all men he was the only one with whom Vronsky would
have liked to speak of his love. He felt that Yashvin, in spite of his
apparent contempt for every sort of feeling, was the only man who
could, so he fancied, comprehend the intense passion which now filled
his whole life. Moreover, he felt certain that Yashvin, as it was, took
no delight in gossip and scandal, and interpreted his feeling rightly,
that is to say, knew and believed that this passion was not a jest, not
a pastime, but something more serious and important.
Vronsky had never spoken to him of his passion, but he was aware that
he knew all about it, and that he put the right interpretation on it,
and he was glad to see that in his eyes.
“Ah! yes,” he said, to the announcement that Vronsky had been at the
Tverskoys’; and his black eyes shining, he plucked at his left
mustache, and began twisting it into his mouth, a bad habit he had.
“Well, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?” asked Vronsky.
“Eight thousand. But three don’t count; he won’t pay up.”
“Oh, then you can afford to lose over me,” said Vronsky, laughing.
(Yashvin had bet heavily on Vronsky in the races.)
“No chance of my losing. Mahotin’s the only one that’s risky.”
And the conversation passed to forecasts of the coming race, the only
thing Vronsky could think of just now.
“Come along, I’ve finished,” said Vronsky, and getting up he went to
the door. Yashvin got up too, stretching his long legs and his long
back.
“It’s too early for me to dine, but I must have a drink. I’ll come
along directly. Hi, wine!” he shouted, in his rich voice, that always
rang out so loudly at drill, and set the windows shaking now.
“No, all right,” he shouted again immediately after. “You’re going
home, so I’ll go with you.”
And he walked out with Vronsky.
Chapter 20
Vronsky was staying in a roomy, clean, Finnish hut, divided into two by
a partition. Petritsky lived with him in camp too. Petritsky was asleep
when Vronsky and Yashvin came into the hut.
“Get up, don’t go on sleeping,” said Yashvin, going behind the
partition and giving Petritsky, who was lying with ruffled hair and
with his nose in the pillow, a prod on the shoulder.
Petritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and looked round.
“Your brother’s been here,” he said to Vronsky. “He waked me up, damn
him, and said he’d look in again.” And pulling up the rug he flung
himself back on the pillow. “Oh, do shut up, Yashvin!” he said, getting
furious with Yashvin, who was pulling the rug off him. “Shut up!” He
turned over and opened his eyes. “You’d better tell me what to drink;
such a nasty taste in my mouth, that....”
“Brandy’s better than anything,” boomed Yashvin. “Tereshtchenko! brandy
for your master and cucumbers,” he shouted, obviously taking pleasure
in the sound of his own voice.
“Brandy, do you think? Eh?” queried Petritsky, blinking and rubbing his
eyes. “And you’ll drink something? All right then, we’ll have a drink
together! Vronsky, have a drink?” said Petritsky, getting up and
wrapping the tiger-skin rug round him. He went to the door of the
partition wall, raised his hands, and hummed in French, “There was a
king in Thule.” “Vronsky, will you have a drink?”
“Go along,” said Vronsky, putting on the coat his valet handed to him.
“Where are you off to?” asked Yashvin. “Oh, here are your three
horses,” he added, seeing the carriage drive up.
“To the stables, and I’ve got to see Bryansky, too, about the horses,”
said Vronsky.
Vronsky had as a fact promised to call at Bryansky’s, some eight miles
from Peterhof, and to bring him some money owing for some horses; and
he hoped to have time to get that in too. But his comrades were at once
aware that he was not only going there.
Petritsky, still humming, winked and made a pout with his lips, as
though he would say: “Oh, yes, we know your Bryansky.”
“Mind you’re not late!” was Yashvin’s only comment; and to change the
conversation: “How’s my roan? is he doing all right?” he inquired,
looking out of the window at the middle one of the three horses, which
he had sold Vronsky.
“Stop!” cried Petritsky to Vronsky as he was just going out. “Your
brother left a letter and a note for you. Wait a bit; where are they?”
Vronsky stopped.
“Well, where are they?”
“Where are they? That’s just the question!” said Petritsky solemnly,
moving his forefinger upwards from his nose.
“Come, tell me; this is silly!” said Vronsky smiling.
“I have not lighted the fire. Here somewhere about.”
“Come, enough fooling! Where is the letter?”
“No, I’ve forgotten really. Or was it a dream? Wait a bit, wait a bit!
But what’s the use of getting in a rage. If you’d drunk four bottles
yesterday as I did you’d forget where you were lying. Wait a bit, I’ll
remember!”
Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.
“Wait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was how he was
standing. Yes—yes—yes.... Here it is!”—and Petritsky pulled a letter
out from under the mattress, where he had hidden it.
Vronsky took the letter and his brother’s note. It was the letter he
was expecting—from his mother, reproaching him for not having been to
see her—and the note was from his brother to say that he must have a
little talk with him. Vronsky knew that it was all about the same
thing. “What business is it of theirs!” thought Vronsky, and crumpling
up the letters he thrust them between the buttons of his coat so as to
read them carefully on the road. In the porch of the hut he was met by
two officers; one of his regiment and one of another.
Vronsky’s quarters were always a meeting place for all the officers.
“Where are you off to?”
“I must go to Peterhof.”
“Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?”
“Yes, but I’ve not seen her yet.”
“They say Mahotin’s Gladiator’s lame.”
“Nonsense! But however are you going to race in this mud?” said the
other.
“Here are my saviors!” cried Petritsky, seeing them come in. Before him
stood the orderly with a tray of brandy and salted cucumbers. “Here’s
Yashvin ordering me to drink a pick-me-up.”
“Well, you did give it to us yesterday,” said one of those who had come
in; “you didn’t let us get a wink of sleep all night.”
“Oh, didn’t we make a pretty finish!” said Petritsky. “Volkov climbed
onto the roof and began telling us how sad he was. I said: ‘Let’s have
music, the funeral march!’ He fairly dropped asleep on the roof over
the funeral march.”
“Drink it up; you positively must drink the brandy, and then seltzer
water and a lot of lemon,” said Yashvin, standing over Petritsky like a
mother making a child take medicine, “and then a little champagne—just
a small bottle.”
“Come, there’s some sense in that. Stop a bit, Vronsky. We’ll all have
a drink.”
“No; good-bye all of you. I’m not going to drink today.”
“Why, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must have it alone.
Give us the seltzer water and lemon.”
“Vronsky!” shouted someone when he was already outside.
“Well?”
“You’d better get your hair cut, it’ll weigh you down, especially at
the top.”
Vronsky was in fact beginning, prematurely, to get a little bald. He
laughed gaily, showing his even teeth, and pulling his cap over the
thin place, went out and got into his carriage.
“To the stables!” he said, and was just pulling out the letters to read
them through, but he thought better of it, and put off reading them so
as not to distract his attention before looking at the mare. “Later!”
Chapter 21
The temporary stable, a wooden shed, had been put up close to the race
course, and there his mare was to have been taken the previous day. He
had not yet seen her there.
During the last few days he had not ridden her out for exercise
himself, but had put her in the charge of the trainer, and so now he
positively did not know in what condition his mare had arrived
yesterday and was today. He had scarcely got out of his carriage when
his groom, the so-called “stable boy,” recognizing the carriage some
way off, called the trainer. A dry-looking Englishman, in high boots
and a short jacket, clean-shaven, except for a tuft below his chin,
came to meet him, walking with the uncouth gait of jockey, turning his
elbows out and swaying from side to side.
“Well, how’s Frou-Frou?” Vronsky asked in English.
“All right, sir,” the Englishman’s voice responded somewhere in the
inside of his throat. “Better not go in,” he added, touching his hat.
“I’ve put a muzzle on her, and the mare’s fidgety. Better not go in,
it’ll excite the mare.”
“No, I’m going in. I want to look at her.”
“Come along, then,” said the Englishman, frowning, and speaking with
his mouth shut, and, with swinging elbows, he went on in front with his
disjointed gait.
They went into the little yard in front of the shed. A stable boy,
spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his
hand, and followed them. In the shed there were five horses in their
separate stalls, and Vronsky knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a
very tall chestnut horse, had been brought there, and must be standing
among them. Even more than his mare, Vronsky longed to see Gladiator,
whom he had never seen. But he knew that by the etiquette of the race
course it was not merely impossible for him to see the horse, but
improper even to ask questions about him. Just as he was passing along
the passage, the boy opened the door into the second horse-box on the
left, and Vronsky caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse with white
legs. He knew that this was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man
turning away from the sight of another man’s open letter, he turned
round and went into Frou-Frou’s stall.
“The horse is here belonging to Mak... Mak... I never can say the
name,” said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big finger
and dirty nail towards Gladiator’s stall.
“Mahotin? Yes, he’s my most serious rival,” said Vronsky.
“If you were riding him,” said the Englishman, “I’d bet on you.”
“Frou-Frou’s more nervous; he’s stronger,” said Vronsky, smiling at the