Anna Karenina: Part 1

“Well, what now?” he asked disconsolately.

The most unpleasant thing of all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the question of his reconciliation with his wife.

And for him, living in a certain society—owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity—to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat.

Hearing her husband’s steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to give her features a severe and contemptuous expression.

“Dolly!” he said, sobbing now; “for mercy’s sake, think of the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to blame, no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!”

But in spite of his habitually dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the service, and his comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and lucrative position of president of one of the government boards at Moscow.

But if Karenin had not got his brother-in-law this berth, then through a hundred other personages—brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts—Stiva Oblonsky would have received this post, or some other similar one, together with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for him, as his affairs, in spite of his wife’s considerable property, were in an embarrassed condition.

The clerks and copyists all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference.

He made a joke or two, and talked just as much as was consistent with due decorum, and began work.

“How is it you have deigned to look me up in this den?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and not content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend.

He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums, as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to diminish the disagreeable impression made on them.

But the difference was that Oblonsky, as he was doing the same as everyone did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Levin laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.

“On one side it’s a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I’m neither young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the other side” (he stammered) “it’s a means for the coterie of the district to make money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now they have the district council—not in the form of bribes, but in the form of unearned salary,” he said, as hotly as though someone of those present had opposed his opinion.

“But how can it be helped?” said Levin penitently. “It was my last effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can’t. I’m no good at it.”

Levin went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his hands.

“This way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won’t be disturbed here,” said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed old Tatar with immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind.

“‘I know a gallant steed by tokens sure,
And by his eyes I know a youth in love,’”
declaimed Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his acquaintance in Tver when I was there on official business, and he came there for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great connections, an aide-de-camp, and with all that a very nice, good-natured fellow...."

“Vronsky is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Vronsky, and one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his acquaintance in Tver when I was there on official business, and he came there for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great connections, an aide-de-camp, and with all that a very nice, good-natured fellow...."

“I’ve told you what I know, and I repeat that in this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the chances are in your favor.”

A feeling such as his was profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and the counsels of Stepan Arkadyevitch.

Oblonsky had more than once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.

She talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not taking her supplicating and caressing eyes off him.

“Come, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?” she added, glancing with a simper at Kitty.

And she laughed a mirthless laugh.

Feeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too serious for a drawing-room, Vronsky made no rejoinder, but by way of trying to change the conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies.

And the prince, imagining that he was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word.

And it had become a sort of game among them to sit as close as possible to their aunt, to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring, or even touch the flounce of her skirt.

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.

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.

There, too, she descried Stiva, and there she saw the exquisite figure and head of Anna in a black velvet gown.

And not assisting the harassed young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the thread of which he had lost and could not pick up again, she obeyed with external liveliness the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky starting them all into the grand rond, and then into the chaîne, and at the same time she kept watch with a growing pang at her heart.

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered Anna, as it were wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.

And afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery.

But the same second he looked round at the young man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that Konstantin knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different expression, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested on his emaciated face.

Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto the steps.

He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka.

Old Laska, who had not yet fully digested her delight at his return, and had run out into the yard to bark, came back wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the scent of fresh air, put her head under his hand, and whined plaintively, asking to be stroked.

“Do you suppose I don’t see it, sir? It’s high time I should know the gentry. Why, I’ve grown up from a little thing with them. It’s nothing, sir, so long as there’s health and a clear conscience.”

And in token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably about her old teeth, she sank into blissful repose.

It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day before.

He used to call the Countess Lidia Ivanovna, well known in society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over with excitement.

In the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.

Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky’s, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table making coffee.

To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.