Anna Karenina: Part 6

“I don’t like to see such imprudence.”

She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere.

He was rather vexed at the non-arrival of the old prince, whom he liked more and more the more he saw of him, and also at the arrival of this Vassenka Veslovsky, a quite uncongenial and superfluous person.

Kitty was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple of days from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking big and strong in his shooting-boots and his white blouse, and a sort of sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her, she forgot her own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him cheerfully.

“How fine it must be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? isn’t it?” he said.

Stepan Arkadyevitch shook his head and laughed reprovingly at Veslovsky.

“Damn the fellow!” Levin said to himself, as he went back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire.

“I’ve only just come. Ils ont été charmants. Just fancy, they gave me drink, fed me! Such bread, it was exquisite! Délicieux! And the vodka, I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for anything. And they kept saying: ‘Excuse our homely ways.’”

“Perfectly true!” chimed in Vassenka Veslovsky. “Perfectly! Oblonsky, of course, goes out of bonhomie, but other people say: ‘Well, Oblonsky stays with them.’...”

“Yes, there’s something of a sophistry about that,” Veslovsky agreed.

“Do you suppose I don’t see the line you’ve taken up with your wife? I heard how it’s a question of the greatest consequence, whether or not you’re to be away for a couple of days’ shooting. That’s all very well as an idyllic episode, but for your whole life that won’t answer. A man must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A man has to be manly,” said Oblonsky, opening the door.

They were sheaves of rye.

In a space between two little thickets, at a couple of yards’ distance, he could see a grouse. Then lightly preening and folding its wings, it disappeared round a corner with a clumsy wag of its tail.

Levin was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation, “You might have left me something!” and he felt ready to cry.

Veslovsky sang songs and related with enjoyment his adventures with the peasants, who had regaled him with vodka, and said to him, “Excuse our homely ways,” and his night’s adventures with kiss-in-the-ring and the servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked him was he married, and on learning that he was not, said to him, “Well, mind you don’t run after other men’s wives—you’d better get one of your own.”

“Excuse me, I’ve only just finished my ablutions,” he said, smiling, standing before him in his underclothes only.

The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased.

She knew that Princess Varvara had passed her whole life toadying on her rich relations, but that she should now be sponging on Vronsky, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Dolly on account of her kinship with her husband.

It was only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a household as Anna’s that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse to her child.

And he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the various details of the decoration of his house and garden.

A stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven round chin and a starched white cravat, announced that dinner was ready, and the ladies got up.

“To be sure, I heard Anna Arkadyevna talking yesterday about plinths and damp-courses,” said Veslovsky.

Darya Alexandrovna saw that Anna disliked the tone of raillery that existed between her and Veslovsky, but fell in with it against her will.

Sviazhsky began talking of Levin, describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture.

Like the other men of the party, with the ladies’ permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.

Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine-glass and dropped into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal ingredient was morphine.

In the wealthy Kashinsky province, which always took the lead of other provinces in everything, there was now such a preponderance of forces that this policy, once carried through properly there, might serve as a model for other provinces for all Russia.

The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the nobles, urging them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard for persons, but for the service and welfare of their fatherland, and hoping that the honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province would, as at all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and vindicate the exalted confidence of the monarch.

The meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the nobles, urging them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard for persons, but for the service and welfare of their fatherland, and hoping that the honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province would, as at all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and vindicate the exalted confidence of the monarch.

He was shouting for the very course Sergey Ivanovitch had proposed; but it was evident that he hated him and all his party, and this feeling of hatred spread through the whole party and roused in opposition to it the same vindictiveness, though in a more seemly form, on the other side.

Looks and faces were even more violent and furious than their words. They expressed the most implacable hatred.

He forgot, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him afterwards, this syllogism: that it was necessary for the public good to get rid of the marshal of the province; that to get rid of the marshal it was necessary to have a majority of votes; that to get a majority of votes it was necessary to secure Flerov’s right to vote; that to secure the recognition of Flerov’s right to vote they must decide on the interpretation to be put on the act.

The discussion upon Flerov had given the new party not only Flerov’s vote, but had also gained time for them, so that they could send to fetch three noblemen who had been rendered unable to take part in the elections by the wiles of the other party.

“He’s such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no difference. Only think of it! He couldn’t collect it in three years!” he heard vigorously uttered by a round-shouldered, short, country gentleman, who had pomaded hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and new boots obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped energetically as he spoke.

“Come to take part in our coup d’état?” he said, confidently pronouncing the French words with a bad accent.

“Why, what is there to understand? There’s no meaning in it at all. It’s a decaying institution that goes on running only by the force of inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that it’s an assembly of justices of the peace, permanent members of the court, and so on, but not of noblemen.”

If we’re laying out a garden, planning one before the house, you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s stood for centuries in the very spot....Old and gnarled it may be, and yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree.

The candidate who was being voted on was Nevyedovsky, who had so stoutly denied all idea of standing.

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.

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.