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‘As you have come to see us — and you are the only one of Anna’s former friends who has (I do not count the Princess Barbara) — I feel you have done so not because you consider our position normal, but because, realizing all the hardship of that position, you love her as before and wish to help her. Have I understood you rightly?’ he asked, turning toward her.

 

‘Oh, yes!’ answered Dolly, closing her sunshade, ‘but . . .’

 

‘No,’ he interrupted; and forgetting that he was placing his companion in an awkward position, he stopped, so that she was obliged to stop also. ‘No one feels all the hardship of Anna’s position more than I do; and that is naturally so, if you do me the honour of regarding me as a man with a heart. I am the cause of that position and therefore I feel it.’

 

‘I understand,’ said Dolly, involuntarily admiring him for the frank and firm way in which he said it. ‘But just because you feel you have caused it, I’m afraid you exaggerate it,’ she said. ‘I understand that her position in Society is a hard one.’

 

‘In Society it is hell!’ he said quickly with a dark frown. ‘It is impossible to imagine greater moral torments¹ than those she endured for two weeks in Petersburg . . . I beg you to believe me!’

 

‘Yes, but here so long as neither Anna nor you . . . feel that you need Society . . .’

 

‘Society!’ he exclaimed with contempt. ‘What need can I have of Society?’

 

‘Till then, and that may be always, you are happy and tranquil². I see that Anna is happy, quite happy, she has already told me so,’ said Dolly smiling; and involuntarily while saying it she doubted whether Anna was really happy.

 

But Vronsky, it seemed, did not doubt it.

 

‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I know that she has revived after all her suffering; she is happy; she is happy in the present. But I? . . . I am afraid of what is before us. . . . I beg your pardon! You want to move on?’

 

‘No, I don’t mind.’

 

‘Well then, let us sit down here.’

 

Dolly sat down on a seat at the turn of the avenue. He stood before her.

 

‘I see she is happy,’ he repeated, and the doubt as to whether Anna was really happy struck Dolly yet more strongly. ‘But can it continue? Whether we acted rightly or wrongly is another question; the die is cast,’ he said, changing from Russian into French, ‘and we are bound together for life. We are united by what are for us the holiest bonds of love. We have a child, we may have other children. Yet the law and the circumstances of our position are such that thousands of complications appear which at present, while resting after all her sufferings and trials, she neither sees nor wishes to see. That is natural. But I cannot help seeing them. My daughter is not mine by law, but Karenin’s. I hate this falsehood!’ he said with an energetic gesture of denial, and looked at Dolly with a gloomily questioning expression.

 

She made no answer, but only looked at him. He continued:

 

‘Some day a son may be born, my son, and he will by law be a Karenin, and not heir either to my name or my property, and however happy we may be in our family life, and whatever children we may have, there will be no legal bond between them and me. They will be — Karenin’s! Imagine the hardship and horror of this situation! I have tried to speak to Anna about it, but it irritates her. She does not understand and I cannot speak out about it to her. Now look at the other side of it. I am happy, happy in her love, but I need an occupation. I have found one. I am proud of it, and consider it more honourable³ than the occupation of my former comrades at Court or in the Service. I certainly would not exchange my work for theirs. I am working here, remaining on the spot, and I am happy and contented⁴, and we need nothing more for our happiness. I like my activities. Cela n’est pas un pis-aller [It’s not a last resort], on the contrary . . .’

 

Dolly observed that at this point his explanation was confused, and she could not quite understand why he had wandered from the point, but she felt that having once begun to speak of his intimate affairs, of which he could not speak to Anna, he was now telling her everything, and that the question of his work in the country belonged to the same category of intimate thoughts as the question of his relations with Anna.

 

‘Well, to continue!’ he said, recovering himself. ‘The principal thing is that when working I want the assurance that the work will not die with me, that I shall have heirs; and that I have not got. Imagine the situation of a man who knows in advance that children born of him and of the woman he loves will not be his, but some one else’s — some one who will hate them and will have nothing to do with them! You know it is dreadful!’

 

He paused, evidently greatly excited.

 

‘Yes, of course, I quite understand. But what can Anna do?’ asked Dolly.

 

‘Well, this brings me to the point of my talk,’ he went on, calming himself with an effort. ‘Anna can do it; it depends on her. . . . Even to be able to petition the Emperor for permission to adopt the child, a divorce will be necessary, and that depends on Anna. Her husband was willing to have a divorce — your husband had almost arranged it — and I know he would not refuse now. It is only necessary to write to him. He then replied definitely that if she expressed the wish, he would not refuse. Of course,’ he said gloomily, ‘that is one of those Pharisaic cruelties of which only heartless people are capable. He knows what torture every recollection of him causes her, and knowing her he still demands a letter from her. I understand that it is painful for her, but the reasons are so important that one must passer pardessus toutes ces finesses⁵ de sentiment [get over all these refinements⁶ of sentiment]. Il y va du bonheur et de l’existence d’Anne et de ses enfants! [The happiness and existence of Anna and her children depend on it!] I do not speak of myself, though it’s very hard on me, very hard,’ he said with a look as if he were menacing some one for making it so hard on him. ‘And so, Princess, I shamelessly cling to you as an anchor of salvation⁷! Help me to persuade her to write to him and demand a divorce!’

 

‘Yes, certainly,’ said Dolly thoughtfully, vividly⁸ remembering her last conversation with Karenin. ‘Yes, certainly,’ she repeated resolutely⁹, remembering Anna.

 

‘Use your influence with her, get her to write, I don’t wish and am almost unable to speak to her about it.’

 

‘Very well, I will speak to her. But how is it she herself does not think of it?’ asked Dolly, suddenly remembering that strange new habit Anna had of screwing up her eyes. And she remembered that it was just when the intimate side of life was in question that Anna screwed up her eyes. ‘As if she were blinking at her life so as not to see it all,’ thought Dolly. ‘Certainly I will speak to her, for my own sake and for hers,’ she said in reply to his expression of gratitude¹⁰.

 

They got up and went back to the house.

 

 

 

Chapter 22

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FINDING Dolly already returned, Anna looked attentively into her eyes as if asking about the talk she had had with Vronsky, but she did not ask in words.

 

‘I think it’s nearly dinner-time,’ she said. ‘We have not yet seen anything of one another. . . . I am counting on this evening. Now I must go and dress, and you too, I suppose. We have dirtied ourselves on the buildings.’

 

Dolly went to her room, feeling amused. She had nothing to change into as she was already wearing her best dress; but to give some sign that she had prepared for dinner, she asked the maid to brush her dress, and she put on clean cuffs, pinned a fresh bow to her dress and placed some lace in her hair.

 

‘This is all I was able to do,’ she smilingly said to Anna, who came to her in a third dress, again extremely simple.

 

‘Yes, we are very formal here,’ Anna remarked, as if excusing her own smartness. ‘Alexis is seldom so pleased about anything as he is at your having come. He is decidedly in love with you,’ she added. ‘But aren’t you tired?’

 

There was no time to discuss anything before dinner. When they entered the drawing-room the Princess Barbara and the men were already there. The men wore frock coats, except the architect, who was in a dress suit. Vronsky introduced the doctor and the steward to his visitor; the architect had already been presented at the hospital.

 

The fat butler — his round, clean-shaven face and starched white tie shining — announced dinner. The ladies rose; Vronsky asked Sviyazhsky to take in Anna, and himself went up to Dolly. Veslovsky offered his arm to the Princess Barbara before Tushkevich could do so, so that the latter, the steward, and the doctor went in by themselves.

 

The dinner, the dining-room, the dinner-service, the servants and the wine and the food were not merely in keeping with the general tone of modern luxury in the house, but seemed even more luxurious and more modern than the rest. Dolly observed all this luxury, which was new to her, and, as a housewife herself controlling a household, she could not help noting the details (though she had no hope of putting what she observed to practical use in her own home, so far was such luxury above her way of life) and asking herself how it was all done and by whom. Vasenka Veslovsky, her husband, and even Sviyazhsky and many others whom she knew, never thought about these things, and readily believed, what every decent host wishes his guests to feel, that all that is so well arranged at his house has cost him no trouble but has come about of itself. Dolly, however, knew that not even a milk pudding for the children’s lunch comes of itself, and that therefore so complicated and splendid an organization must have needed some one’s careful attention; and from the way Vronsky surveyed the table, gave a sign with his head to the butler, and asked her whether she would take fish-broth or soup, she concluded that it had all been done by, and depended on, the master’s care. It was evident that it depended no more on Anna than on Veslovsky. Anna, Sviyazhsky, the Princess, and Veslovsky were all equally guests, gaily making use of what was provided for them.

 

Anna was the hostess only in what concerned the conversation. And that difficult task for the mistress of a house with a small circle which included such people as the steward and the architect — people of quite a different world, who tried not to be abashed by the unfamiliar luxury and were unable to take any sustained part in the general conversation — Anna managed that task with her usual tact, naturally and even with pleasure, as Dolly observed.

 

Reference was made to Tushkevich and Veslovsky having been for a row by themselves, and Tushkevich began to tell about the last boat races at the Petersburg Yacht Club. But at the first pause Anna turned to the architect, to draw him into the conversation.

 

‘Nicholas Ivanich,’ she said (referring to Sviyazhsky), ‘was struck by the way the new building had grown since his last visit; even I, who go there every day, am always surprised how quickly it gets on.’

 

‘It is pleasant to work with his Excellency,’ answered the architect with a smile. He was a dignified, respectful and quiet man. ‘It is not like having to do with the Local Authorities,’ said he. ‘Where they would scribble over a whole ream of paper, I merely report to the Count; we talk it over, and three words settle the matter.’

 

‘American methods!’ said Sviyazhsky with a smile.

 

‘Yes. There they erect buildings rationally . . .’

 

The conversation passed on to the abuses in the government of the United States, but Anna quickly turned it to another theme so as to draw the steward out of his silence.

 

‘Have you ever seen a reaping machine?’ she asked Dolly. ‘We had been to look at them when we met you. I saw them myself for the first time.’

 

‘How do they act?’ asked Dolly.

 

‘Just like scissors. It’s a board and a lot of little scissors. Like this . . .’

 

Anna took a knife and a fork in her beautiful white hands, sparkling with rings, and began to demonstrate. She was obviously aware that her explanation would not be understood, but as she knew that she spoke pleasantly and that her hands were beautiful, she went on explaining.

 

‘Rather like penknives!’ said Veslovsky playfully, never taking his eyes from her.

 

Anna smiled slightly, but did not answer him. ‘Is it not true, Karl Fedorich, that it is like scissors?’ she asked, turning to the steward.

 

‘Oh, ja! [Oh, yes!]’ answered the German. ‘Es ist ein ganz einfaches Ding [It is quite a simple thing],’ and he began to explain the construction of the machine.

 

‘It’s a pity it does not bind the sheaves. I saw one at the Vienna Exhibition that bound the sheaves with wire,’ remarked Sviyazhsky. ‘That kind would be more profitable.’

 

‘Es kommt darauf an. . . . Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet warden [It all depends. . . . The price of the wire must be allowed for],’ and the German, drawn from his silence, turned to Vronsky. ‘Das lässt sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht! [It can be calculated, Excellency!]’ The German was already putting his hand to the pocket where he kept a notebook with a pencil in which he made all his calculations, but remembering that he was at dinner, and noticing Vronsky’s cold look, he desisted. ‘Zu kompliziert macht zu viel Klopot [Too complicated, too much trouble],’ he concluded.

 

‘Wünscht man Dokhots, so hat man auch Klopots [If one wants income one must also have trouble],’ said Vasenka Veslovsky, making fun of the German. [The Russian word for income is dokhod. Veslovsky mispronounces it, and introduces it into a German sentence for fun.] ‘J’adore l’allemand! [I adore German!]’ said he, turning to Anna with the same smile as before.

 

‘Cessez! [Leave off!]’ said she with mock severity.

 

‘And we thought we should find you on the field, Vasily Semenich! Were you there?’ she said to the doctor, a sickly-looking man.

 

‘I had been there, but had evaporated,’ said the doctor, with dismal jocularity.

 

‘Then, you have had some good exercise?’

 

‘Magnificent!’

 

‘And how is the old woman? I hope it is not typhus!’

 

‘No, it’s not exactly typhus, but she’s not in a good state.’

 

‘What a pity!’ said Anna, and having thus paid the tribute of politeness to the retainers, she turned to her friends.

 

‘All the same, it would be difficult to construct a reaper from your description, Anna Arkadyevna,’ Sviyazhsky chaffed her.

 

‘Oh, why not?’ said Anna, with a smile which said that she knew there had been something engaging in her way of describing the reaper and that Sviyazhsky had noticed it. This new trait of youthful coquetry jarred on Dolly.

 

‘But then, Anna Arkadyevna’s knowledge of architecture is wonderful,’ remarked Tushkevich.

 

‘Oh, yes! Yesterday I heard Anna Arkadyevna mention damp courses and plinths,’ said Veslovsky. ‘Am I saying it right?’

 

‘There’s nothing to be surprised at, considering how much I hear and see of it,’ said Anna. ‘And you, I’m sure, don’t even know what houses are made of!’

 

Dolly noticed that Anna did not like the playful tone that had arisen between herself and Veslovsky, yet could not help falling in with it.

 

Vronsky behaved in this matter quite unlike Levin. He evidently did not attach any importance to Veslovsky’s chatter, and even encouraged it.

 

‘Come, Veslovsky! Tell us what keeps the bricks together!’

 

‘Cement, of course!’

 

‘Bravo! And what is cement?’

 

‘Well . . . it’s something like paste . . . no, putty!’ replied Veslovsky, rousing general laughter.

 

The conversation among the diners — except the doctor, the architect and the steward, who sat in gloomy silence — was incessant, now gliding smoothly, now catching on something and touching one or other of them to the quick. Once Dolly was stung to the quick, and so aroused that she even flushed up, and afterwards wondered whether she had said anything superfluous and disagreeable. Sviyazhsky began talking about Levin, and mentioned his peculiar view that machines only did harm in Russian agriculture.

 

‘I have not the pleasure of knowing the gentleman,’ said Vronsky with a smile, ‘but probably he has never seen the machines which he condemns; or if he has seen and tried them, has done it just anyhow, and not with a foreign-made but with a Russian machine. And what opinions are possible on so plain a matter?’

 

‘Turkish opinions,’ said Veslovsky, turning to Anna with a smile.

 

‘I cannot defend his opinions,’ said Dolly, flaring up, ‘but I can say that he is a very well-informed man, and if he were here he would be able to answer you, though I cannot.’

 

‘I am very fond of him, and we are great friends,’ said Sviyazhsky with a good-natured smile. ‘Mais pardon, il est un petit peu toqué! [But, excuse me, he is a little cracked!] For instance, he maintains that the Zemstvos and Magistrates are quite unnecessary, and he won’t have anything to do with them.’

 

‘That is our Russian indifference,’ said Vronsky, pouring water from an iced decanter into a very thin glass with a stem: ‘not to realize the duties our rights impose on us, and therefore to deny those duties.’

 

‘I know no one who fulfils his duties more strictly,’ said Dolly, irritated by Vronsky’s superior tone.

 

‘I, on the contrary,’ continued Vronsky, who was evidently for some reason touched to the quick by this conversation, ‘I, on the contrary, such as I am, feel very grateful for the honour they have done me, thanks to Nicholas Ivanich’ — he indicated Sviyazhsky — ‘by electing me Justice of the Peace. I consider that the duty of going to the meetings, and considering a peasant’s case about a horse, is as important as anything else I can do. I shall consider it an honour if they elect me to the Zemstvo. It is only so that I can make a return for the advantages I enjoy as a landowner. Unfortunately people do not understand the importance the large landowners should have in the State.’ To Dolly it sounded strange to hear how assured he was of being in the right, here at his own table. She remembered how Levin, who held the opposite opinion, was equally positive in his opinions at his own table. But she was fond of Levin, and therefore sided with him.

 

‘Then we may expect to see you at the next Session, Count?’ asked Sviyazhsky. ‘But you must come in good time, so as to be there on the eighth. If you would only do me the honour of stopping with me . . .’

 

‘And I rather agree with your brother-in-law,’ said Anna, ‘though I do not go to his lengths,’ she added with a smile. ‘I’m afraid we have too many of these public obligations nowadays. Formerly we used to have so many officials that there had to be an official for everything that was done, and now we have public workers for everything! Alexis has not been here six months, and I think he is already a Member of five or six different institutions: Guardian of the Poor, Justice of the Peace, a Member of a Council, a juryman, and Member of some Commission on Horses. . . . Du train que cela va [At the rate at which it is going], all his time will be taken up that way. And I fear that with the multiplication of these positions they become a mere form. Of how many institutions are you a member, Nicholas Ivanich?’ she asked, addressing Sviyazhsky; ‘more than twenty, isn’t it?’

 

Although Anna spoke playfully, irritation was perceptible in her tone. Dolly, who was attentively watching her and Vronsky, noticed it at once. She also saw that at this conversation Vronsky’s face immediately assumed a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing these things, and that the Princess Barbara hastened to change the subject by speaking of their Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering that in the garden Vronsky had spoken about his activities inopportunely, she understood that with this question of public work some private difference between Anna and Vronsky was connected.

 

The dinner, the wine, the service were all very good, but they were all such as Dolly — though she had become unused to them — had seen before at dinner-parties and balls, and like those functions they bore a character of impersonality and strain; therefore on an everyday occasion and in a small gathering they produced an unpleasant impression on her.

 

After dinner they sat awhile on the verandah. Then they played lawn-tennis. The players, having chosen their partners, took their places on the carefully levelled and rolled croquet lawn, on the two sides of a net stretched between two small gilded pillars. Dolly tried to play, but was long unable to understand the game, and by the time she did understand it she was so tired that she sat down beside the Princess Barbara to watch the others. Her partner Tushkevich also gave it up; but the rest played for a long time. Sviyazhsky and Vronsky both played very well and seriously. They intently followed the ball sent to them, neither hurrying nor hesitating, ran toward it with agility, waited for it to bounce, and then striking it with the racket sent it back across the net with good aim and precision. Veslovsky played worse than the others. He was too eager, but to make up for that his gaiety inspired his companions. His laughter and shouts never ceased. He, as well as the other men, had with the ladies’ permission taken off his coat, and his large handsome figure in white shirt-sleeves, his ruddy perspiring face and impetuous movements, stamped themselves on the memories of the onlookers.

 

As soon as Dolly that night had gone to bed and closed her eyes, she saw Vasenka Veslovsky rushing hither and thither on the croquet lawn.

 

While they were playing Dolly was not feeling happy. She did not like the bantering tone between Anna and Veslovsky that continued during the game, nor the unnaturalness of grown-up people when they play childish games in the absence of children. But not to disturb the others and to while away the time, after resting she rejoined the players and pretended to like it. All that day she felt as if she were acting in a theatre with better actors than herself, and that her bad performance was spoiling the whole affair.

 

She had come with the intention of staying two days if she could adapt herself to the life. But that evening during the game she resolved to leave next day. Those painful maternal worries, which she had so hated on her journey, now after a day spent without them appeared in quite a different light and drew her back to them.

 

When, after evening tea and a row in the boat at nighttime, Dolly entered her bedroom alone, took off her dress and sat down to do up her thin hair for the night, she felt great relief.

 

Even the thought that Anna would come in a moment was disagreeable to her. She wished to be alone with her thoughts.