ANNA KARENINA (Collector's Edition). Leo TolstoyЧитать онлайн книгу.
you have a drink?’
‘Get away!’ said Vronsky, as he put on the overcoat his servant had handed him.
‘Where to now?’ asked Yashvin. ‘Here are the horses,’ he added as he saw the calèche drive up to the door.
‘To the stables, and then I have to go to Bryansky about the horses,’ said Vronsky.
He had really promised to go to Bryansky’s, who lived seven miles from Peterhof, and pay him for the horses, and he hoped to make time to call there too. But his friends understood at once that it was not only there that he was going.
Petritsky, still singing, winked his eyes and pouted as if to say, ‘We know what sort of Bryansky it is.’
‘Mind and don’t be late!’ was all Yashvin said, and to change the subject he asked, ‘Is my roan doing well?’ looking out of the window at the middle horse, which he had sold to Vronsky.
‘Wait!’ shouted Petritsky to Vronsky, who was already going out. ‘Your brother left a letter for you and a note. Wait! Where are they?’
Vronsky stopped. ‘Well, where are they?’
‘Where are they? That is the question!’ declaimed Petritsky with solemnity, moving his finger upwards from his nose.
‘Come, tell me. This is stupid!’ said Vronsky, smiling.
‘I have not lighted the fire. They must be somewhere here.’
‘Enough of this! Where is the letter?’
‘No, really I have forgotten. Or was it a dream? Wait, wait. Why get angry? If you had emptied four bottles a head as we did last night, you would not know where you were lying. Wait a bit, I’ll remember it directly.’
Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.
‘Wait! So I lay, and so he stood. Yes, yes, yes… . Here it is!’ and Petritsky drew the letter from under the mattress where he had put it.
Vronsky took the letter and his brother’s note. It was just what he had expected: a letter from his mother reproaching him for not having come to see her, and a note from his brother saying that they must talk things over. Vronsky knew that it all referred to the same subject. ‘What business is it of theirs?’ thought he, and crumpling up the letters he pushed them in between the buttons of his coat, to be read more attentively on the way. In the passage he met two officers, one of his own and one of another regiment.
Vronsky’s quarters were always the haunt of all the officers.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have to go to Peterhof.’
‘Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?’
‘Yes, but I have not seen her since she came.’
‘They say Makhotin’s Gladiator has gone lame.’
‘Nonsense! But how will you manage to ride through such mud?’ said the other officer.
‘These are the things to restore me!’ shouted Petritsky on seeing the newcomers. The orderly stood before him with vodka and pickled cucumbers on a tray. ‘Yashvin here has ordered vodka to freshen me up.’
‘Well, you did give it us last night,’ said one of the newcomers. ‘You did not let us sleep all night.’
‘Oh, but how we finished up!’ said Petritsky. ‘Volkov climbed out on to the roof and said he felt melancholy. I said, “Let us have music: a Funeral March!” And he fell asleep up there on the roof to the sound of the Funeral March.’
‘Drink, you must drink some vodka and then some seltzer water with plenty of lemon,’ said Yashvin, standing over Petritsky, like a mother urging her child to take its medicine.’ And after that a little champagne, about … a small bottle.’
‘Now that is reasonable! Wait, Vronsky, let us have a drink.’
‘No, goodbye, gentlemen. I am not drinking to-day.’
‘Why, because of the weight? Well then, we will drink by ourselves. Let’s have seltzers and lemons.’
‘Vronsky!’ shouted some one as Vronsky was already leaving.
‘What?’
‘You should have your hair cut; it will be too heavy, especially on the top.’
Vronsky was really beginning prematurely to get a little bald. He laughed merrily, showing his compact row of teeth, and drawing his cap over the bald patch, went out and got into the calèche.
‘To the stables!’ he said, and was taking out the letter to read, but then changed his mind, not wishing to be upset before examining his horse. ‘Later will do! …’
Chapter 21
THE temporary stable, a wooden structure, had been built close to the racecourse, and it was there his mare was to have been brought the day before. He had not yet been to look at her. During these last days he had not exercised her himself, but had entrusted it to the trainer, and therefore did not in the least know in what condition she had arrived or now was. Hardly had he stepped out of the calèche before his groom, who had recognized it from a distance, had called out the trainer. A lean Englishman in top boots and a short jacket, with only a tuft of beard left under his chin, came to meet him with the awkward gait of a jockey, swaying from side to side with his elbows sticking out.
‘Well, how is Frou-Frou?’ asked Vronsky in English.
‘All right, sir,’ came the answer from somewhere inside the man’s throat. ‘Better not go in, ‘ he added, touching his cap. ‘I have put a muzzle on her, and she is fidgety. Better not go in, it excites the mare.’
‘No, I’ll go in. I want to have a look at her.’
‘Come along,’ said the Englishman frowning and speaking as before without opening his mouth. Swaying his elbows and walking with his loose gait he led the way.
They entered a little yard in front of the shed. A smart, well-dressed lad in a short and clean jacket, with a broom in his hand, met them and followed them. In the shed five horses stood in the horse-boxes, and Vronsky knew that his principal rival, Makhotin’s sixteen-hand chestnut, Gladiator, was to have been brought that day and should be standing there too. Vronsky was even more anxious to have a look at Gladiator, whom he had never seen, than at his own mare; but he knew that horse-racing etiquette not only forbade his seeing it, but made it improper for him even to ask about it. As he went along the passage the lad opened the second horse-box to the left, and Vronsky caught sight of a big chestnut horse with white legs. He knew it was Gladiator, but like one who avoids seeing another’s open letter, he turned and went to Frou-Frou’s box.
‘Here is the horse of Mak … Mak … I never can pronounce his name,’ said the Englishman over his shoulder, pointing with his black-nailed thumb to Gladiator’s box.
‘Makhotin’s? Yes, that is my only serious rival,’ said Vronsky.
‘If you were riding him, I would back you,’ said the Englishman.
‘Frou-Frou is the braver, but the other is the more powerful horse,’ said Vronsky, smiling at the compliment to his riding.
‘In a steeplechase everything depends on the riding and on pluck,’ said the Englishman.
Vronsky felt that he not only had enough pluck (that is, energy and courage), but, what is much more important, he was firmly convinced that no one in the world could