ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo TolstoyЧитать онлайн книгу.
himself with respectful dignity, and was in the habit of associating with people of that class. That was why he was chosen to attend the Prince; but the task seemed a hard one to him. The Prince did not want to miss seeing anything about which he might be questioned at home and he also wanted to enjoy as many Russian amusements as possible; and Vronsky was obliged to accompany him in both cases. In the mornings they went sight-seeing, and in the evenings took part in the national amusements. The Prince enjoyed unusually good health even for a Prince, and by means of gymnastics and care of his body had developed his strength to such a degree that, in spite of the excess he indulged in when amusing himself, he looked as fresh as a big green shining cucumber. He had travelled a great deal, and considered that one of the chief advantages of the present convenient ways of communication was the easy access they afforded to national amusements. He had been to Spain, where he arranged serenades and became intimate with a Spanish woman who played the mandoline. In Switzerland he had shot a chamois, in England he had jumped hedges in a pink coat and shot two hundred pheasants for a bet. He had been in a harem in Turkey, ridden an elephant in India, and now in Russia he wanted a taste of distinctive Russian amusements.
Vronsky, who was, so to say, the Prince’s chief master of ceremonies, had great difficulty in organizing all the Russian amusements offered to the Prince by various people: trotting-races, pancakes, bear-hunting, and drives in three-horse sledges, gipsies, and Russian sprees with smashing of crockery. And the Prince imbibed the Russian spirit with the greatest ease, smashed trays full of crockery, made gipsy girls sit on his lap, and yet seemed to be always asking: ‘What next? Is this the whole of the Russian spirit?’
But, on the whole, of all the Russian amusements the Prince liked the French actresses, a ballet girl and white-seal champagne best. Vronsky was used to Princes, but whether it was that he himself had lately changed, or whether his intimacy with this Prince was too close, that week at any rate appeared very wearisome to him. All that week he felt like a man attending a lunatic and afraid for his own reason too. He was obliged to be on his guard the whole time not to deviate from the path of severe official respect, for fear of being insulted. The Prince’s manner toward the very people who, to Vronsky’s astonishment, were ready to go through fire and water to provide Russian amusements for him, was contemptuous. His opinion of Russian women, whom he wanted to study, more than once made Vronsky flush with indignation.
But the chief reason why the Prince’s presence oppressed Vronsky was that he saw himself reflected in the Prince, and what he saw in that mirror was not flattering to his vanity. The Prince was a very stupid, very healthy and very cleanly man — and nothing more. He was a gentleman, it is true, and Vronsky could not deny it. He was quiet and not cringing with those above him, free and simple with his equals, and contemptuously good-natured with his inferiors. Vronsky was the same, and considered it very meritorious to be so, but in his relations with the Prince he was the inferior and felt indignant with that condescendingly good-natured treatment.
‘Stupid ox! can I really be like that myself?’ he thought.
However this may have been, he parted from the Prince (who went on to Moscow) and received his thanks. Vronsky was very pleased to be rid of the embarrassing situation and the unpleasant mirror. He took leave of him at the railway station on the seventh day, on returning from a bear-hunt, after which there had been demonstrations of Russian ‘prowess’ all night.
Chapter 2
ON returning home Vronsky found a note from Anna awaiting him. She wrote, ‘I am ill and unhappy. I cannot go out, neither can I go on any longer without seeing you. Come this evening; Alexis Alexandrovich is going to the Council and will remain there till ten.’ After wondering for a moment at the strangeness of her asking him straight out to come to her house in spite of her husband’s injunctions, he decided to go.
He had that winter been promoted to the rank of colonel, had left the regiment, and was living alone. Immediately after lunch he lay down on the sofa. Five minutes later the memory of the disreputable scenes at which he had been present during the last few days became jumbled and connected with pictures of Anna and a peasant who had played an important part as a beater at the bear-hunting; and Vronsky fell asleep. He woke up in the dark trembling with fear, and hurriedly lit a candle. ‘What has happened? What horrors I dreamt! Yes, yes, the peasant, the beater — I think he was small and dirty with a tangled beard — was stooping down and doing something or other, and suddenly began to say strange words in French. That is all there was in that dream,’ he thought. ‘But why did it seem so terrible?’ He vividly recalled the peasant and the incomprehensible words that the man had uttered, and a shudder of terror ran down his back. ‘What nonsense!’ he thought, glancing at his watch. It was already half-past eight.
He rang for his valet, dressed hurriedly, and went out into the porch, having quite forgotten his dream and feeling worried only by the fact that he was late. As he drove up to the Karenins’ porch he again glanced at his watch and saw that it was ten minutes to nine. A high narrow brougham with a pair of grey horses stood before the front door. ‘She was coming to me,’ thought Vronsky; ‘that would have been better. It is unpleasant for me to enter this house: But no matter! I cannot hide,’ he thought; and with the manner, habitual to him since childhood, of one who has nothing to be ashamed of, Vronsky got out of his sledge and went to the door. The door opened and the hall porter with a rug over his arm called to the coachman. Vronsky, though not in the habit of noticing details, noticed the look of surprise on the man’s face. In the doorway he nearly knocked up against Karenin. The gaslight lit up Karenin’s worn, bloodless face beneath the black hat, and his white tie showing from beneath the beaver collar of his overcoat. His dull, expressionless eyes were fixed on Vronsky’s face. Vronsky bowed, and Karenin silently moved his lips, lifted his hand to his hat, and went out. Vronsky saw him get into the carriage without looking round, take the rug and a pair of opera-glasses through the carriage window; then he disappeared in the darkness. Vronsky entered the hall. His brows were knit and his eyes shone with a proud, angry light.
‘That is a nice position!’ he thought. ‘If he struggled, if he defended his honour, I could act and could express my feelings; but this weakness or meanness… . He puts me in the position of an impostor — which I did not and do not mean to be.’
Since the explanation with Anna in the Vrede Gardens Vronsky’s ideas had changed. Involuntarily submitting to Anna’s weakness, who, ready in advance to accept anything, gave herself up to him entirely and expected him to decide her fate, he had long ceased to imagine that their union could end in the way he had then expected. His ambitious plans had receded to the background, and feeling that he had come out of the range of activity in which everything was definite, he completely gave himself up to his passion, and that passion bound him closer and closer to her.
While still in the hall he heard her retreating footsteps, and knew that she had been waiting and listening for him, but had now gone back to the drawing-room.
‘No!’ she cried when she saw him, and at the first sound of her voice tears filled her eyes. ‘No! If things go on like this for long, it will happen much, much sooner!’
‘What, my dear?’
‘What! I wait in torment, one hour, two hours… . No, no! I won’t… . I cannot quarrel with you. I expect you could not help it. No, I won’t!’
She put both her hands on his shoulders and gazed at him long, with a deep look of ecstasy and yet searchingly. She scrutinized his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She compared, as she did at every interview with him, the image her fancy painted of him (incomparably finer than, and impossible in, actual existence) with his real self.
Chapter 3
‘YOU met him?’ she asked when they sat down at a table under the lamp. ‘That is your punishment for being late.’
‘Yes, but how did it happen? He had to be at the Council!’
‘He