‘Thank you so much. The time has passed so quickly.
Good-bye, countess.’
‘Good-bye, my love,’ answered the countess. ‘Let me have
a kiss of your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell
you simply that I’ve lost my heart to you.’
Stereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Karenina obviously believed it and was delighted by it. She flushed, bent
down slightly, and put her cheek to the countess’s lips, drew
herself up again, and with the same smile fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand to Vronsky.
He pressed the little hand she gave him, and was delighted, as though at something special, by the energetic squeeze
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with which she freely and vigorously shook his hand. She
went out with the rapid step which bore her rather fullydeveloped figure with such strange lightness.
‘Very charming,’ said the countess.
That was just what her son was thinking. His eyes followed her till her graceful figure was out of sight, and then
the smile remained on his face. He saw out of the window
how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously something
that had nothing to do with him, Vronsky, and at that he
felt annoyed.
‘Well, maman, are you perfectly well?’ he repeated, turning to his mother.
‘Everything has been delightful. Alexander has been
very good, and Marie has grown very pretty. She’s very interesting.’
And she began telling him again of what interested her
most—the christening of her grandson, for which she had
been staying in Petersburg, and the special favor shown her
elder son by the Tsar.
‘Here’s Lavrenty,’ said Vronsky, looking out of the window; ‘now we can go, if you like.’
The old butler who had traveled with the countess, came
to the carriage to announce that everything was ready, and
the countess got up to go.
‘Come; there’s not such a crowd now,’ said Vronsky.
The maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler
and a porter the other baggage. Vronsky gave his mother
his arm; but just as they were getting out of the carriage
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Anna Karenina
several men ran suddenly by with panic-stricken faces. The
station-master, too, ran by in his extraordinary colored cap.
Obviously something unusual had happened. The crowd
who had left the train were running back again.
‘What?… What?… Where?… Flung himself!… Crushed!…’
was heard among the crowd. Stepan Arkadyevitch, with his
sister on his arm, turned back. They too looked scared, and
stopped at the carriage door to avoid the crowd.
The ladies got in, while Vronsky and Stepan Arkadyevitch
followed the crowd to find out details of the disaster.
A guard, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost, had not heard the train moving back, and had been
crushed.
Before Vronsky and Oblonsky came back the ladies
heard the facts from the butler.
Oblonsky and Vronsky had both seen the mutilated
corpse. Oblonsky was evidently upset. He frowned and
seemed ready to cry.
‘Ah, how awful! Ah, Anna, if you had seen it! Ah, how
awful!’ he said.
Vronsky did not speak; his handsome face was serious,
but perfectly composed.
‘Oh, if you had seen it, countess,’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch. ‘And his wife was there…. It was awful to see
her!…. She flung herself on the body. They say he was the
only support of an immense family. How awful!’
‘Couldn’t one do anything for her?’ said Madame Karenina in an agitated whisper.
Vronsky glanced at her, and immediately got out of the
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carriage.
‘I’ll be back directly, maman,’ he remarked, turning
round in the doorway.
When he came back a few minutes later, Stepan
Arkadyevitch was already in conversation with the countess about the new singer, while the countess was impatiently
looking towards the door, waiting for her son.
‘Now let us be off,’ said Vronsky, coming in. They went
out together. Vronsky was in front with his mother. Behind
walked Madame Karenina with her brother. Just as they
were going out of the station the station-master overtook
Vronsky.
‘You gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you
kindly explain for whose benefit you intend them?’
‘For the widow,’ said Vronsky, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I
should have thought there was no need to ask.’
‘You gave that?’ cried Oblonsky, behind, and, pressing
his sister’s hand, he added: ‘Very nice, very nice! Isn’t he a
splendid fellow? Good-bye, countess.’
And he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.
When they went out the Vronsky’s carriage had already
driven away. People coming in were still talking of what
happened.
‘What a horrible death!’ said a gentleman, passing by.
‘They say he was cut in two pieces.’
‘On the contrary, I think it’s the easiest—instantaneous,’
observed another.
‘How is it they don’t take proper precautions?’ said a
third.
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Anna Karenina
Madame Karenina seated herself in the carriage, and
Stepan Arkadyevitch saw with surprise that her lips were
quivering, and she was with difficulty restraining her tears.
‘What is it, Anna?’ he asked, when they had driven a few
hundred yards.
‘It’s an omen of evil,’ she said.
‘What nonsense!’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch. ‘You’ve
come, that’s the chief thing. You can’t conceive how I’m
resting my hopes on you.’
‘Have you known Vronsky long?’ she asked.
‘Yes. You know we’re hoping he will marry Kitty.’
‘Yes?’ said Anna softly. ‘Come now, let us talk of you,’
she added, tossing her head, as though she would physically
shake off something superfluous oppressing her. ‘Let us talk
of your affairs. I got your letter, and here I am.’
‘Yes, all my hopes are in you,’ said Stepan Arkadyevitch.
‘Well, tell me all about it.’
And Stepan Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.
On reaching home Oblonsky helped his sister out, sighed,
pressed her hand, and set off to his office.
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Chapter 19
When Anna went into the room, Dolly was sitting in the
little drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy, already like his father, giving him a lesson in French reading.
As the boy read, he kept twisting and trying to tear off a
button that was nearly off his jacket. His mother had several
times taken his hand from it, but the fat little hand went
back to the button again. His mother pulled the button off
and put it in her pocket.
‘Keep your hands still, Grisha,’ she said, and she took up
her work, a coverlet she had long been making. She always
set to work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the
stitches. Though she had sent word the day before to her
husband that it was nothing to her whether his sister came
or not, she had made everything ready for her arrival, and
was expecting her sister-in-law with emotion.
Dolly was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up
by it. Still she did not forget that Anna, her sister-in-law,
was the wife of one of the most important personages in Petersburg, and was a Petersburg grande dame. And, thanks
to this circumstance, she did not carry out her threat to her
husband—that is to say, she remembered that her sister-inlaw was coming. ‘And, after all, Anna is in no wise to blame,’
thought Dolly. ‘I know nothing of her except the very best,
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Anna Karenina
and I have seen nothing but kindness and affection from
her towards myself.’ It was true that as far as she could recall
her impressions at Petersburg at the Karenins’, she did not
like their household itself; there was something artificial in
the whole framework of their family life. ‘But why should
I not receive her? If only she doesn’t take it into her head
to console me!’ thought Dolly. ‘All consolation and counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that I have thought over a
thousand times, and it’s all no use.’
All these days Dolly had been alone with her children.
She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow
in her heart she could not talk of outside matters. She knew
that in one way or another she would tell Anna everything,
and she was alternately glad at the thought of speaking freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of her humiliation
with her, his sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases
of good advice and comfort. She had been on the lookout
for her, glancing at her watch every minute, and, as so often
happens, let slip just that minute when her visitor arrived,
so that she did not hear the bell.
Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she
looked round, and her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not gladness, but wonder. She got up and embraced
her sister-in-law.
‘What, here already!’ she said as she kissed her.
‘Dolly, how glad I am to see you!’
‘I am glad, too,’ said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by
the expression of Anna’s face to find out whether she knew.
‘Most likely she knows,’ she thought, noticing the sympa
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thy in Anna’s face. ‘Well, come along, I’ll take you to your
room,’ she went on, trying to defer as long as possible the
moment of confidences.
‘Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he’s grown!’ said Anna;
and kissing him, never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood
still and flushed a little. ‘No, please, let us stay here.’
She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a
lock of her black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed
her head and shook her hair down.
‘You are radiant with health and happiness!’ said Dolly,
almost with envy.
‘I?…. Yes,’ said Anna. ‘Merciful heavens, Tanya! You’re
the same age as my Seryozha,’ she added, addressing the little girl as she ran in. She took her in her arms and kissed
her. ‘Delightful child, delightful! Show me them all.’
She mentioned them, not only remembering the names,
but the years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could not but appreciate that.
‘Very well, we will go to them,’ she said. ‘It’s a pity Vassya’s
asleep.’
After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in
the drawing room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then
pushed it away from her.
‘Dolly,’ she said, ‘he has told me.’
Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for
phrases of conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing
of the sort.
‘Dolly, dear,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to speak for him
